“And no one is giving you that honorific, prisoner,” Maxwell said, “I said ‘welcome to life with the marines’, not in the marines.”
“I thought we were colonists,” Ch’ng said.
“Yeah. Whatever.”
Maxwell shut up pretty quickly after that. I guess he was supposed to maintain this ‘colonist’ fiction and had slipped up. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t think any of us were stupid enough to think we weren’t prisoners. I wondered, though, what the point of sending us here was instead of just executing us. We didn’t seem terribly helpful in an environment like this one. I could almost hear what Roman’s snide remark would have been, ‘Cannon fodder, of course. Typical Empire stuff.’
We all were given the privilege of visiting the facilities one last time, and then it was masks on and single file out the hatch. As we entered the alien world of Baldric once more my implant chirped.
Download Complete.
Well, at least there’d be something to think about while we were walking. Something other than how my stomach did a flip, and I felt all affectionate every time I remembered Roman saving that kid. I should probably start at the beginning, but I decided to play the last entry first. I’d always been the sort of person who read the last page of a mystery book half way through.
Play last entry.
A video screen popped up in the bottom right of my vision. I paid it some attention, multitasking so I could concentrate on walking behind Ian. He was conveniently ignoring me, which made it easy to watch the video.
A woman with her hair tied back looked into the screen with big eyes. She was in the facility we just left.
“It’s gone horribly wrong. We never could have predicted this. They’ve got Baker, and now…”
She screamed horribly then, as a shadow slid over her and a brilliant yellow fungus started to spurt out her nose, climbing into the air.
I checked the time code. There was fifteen more minutes of the video log. That told me two things. First, that someone had been there to shut off the video and clean up her body and the fungus tower, and second, that I was going to have to watch these from the beginning after all.
THE SPLITTING: 8
THE TERRAIN WAS HILLY AND jagged, but the thick forest had thinned out. There were still stands of trees and thick brush, but there were also open spaces of packed, bare earth. The soil was hard and clay-like, and a sickly yellow. In most terraformed worlds that would indicate poor soil, but it was hard to tell on this planet without testing. The terraforming efforts hadn’t gone very far if we were still using breathing apparatuses.
How long had we owned this planet? It was one of hundreds of numbered planets of the Blackwatch Empire. Few were habitable without major terraforming efforts which could take hundreds of years. Some of them took decades to develop an atmosphere thick enough to support more complex life forms, but that probably hadn’t been necessary here since there was already some sort of native life. If you can call shadows life.
That was particularly interesting. Sentient species were exceedingly rare to find. Sentient species that were humanoid – or sometimes humanoid – were almost unheard of. I would have thought that some news organization would have caught hold of this and broadcasted years ago. A more likely theory would be that these were other colonists, somehow mutated into what we were seeing. Government propaganda was capable of deceiving us into believing that they were ‘native’ to the planet, but what would have to happen to a person to turn him into a shadow?
It was downright creepy. I wondered what Roman would make of it. Roman. Roman who had helped that little boy when no one else cared enough to notice. I couldn’t stop thinking about that.
The sun was finally beginning to sink towards a sunset, although if the previous hours had been any judge it would take a long time going about it. The long days made me feel very tired.
Play Records from beginning.
The timestamp on the recording was from before I was born. I sighed. This was going to take a while.
If I had to be honest, I would admit that I don’t know the science of terraforming very well. I am extremely well educated, but there is only so much you can fit into a curriculum, even one aimed at future rulers. My training as an Ambassador leaned very heavily towards the social sciences. I have an excellent grasp of language, communication technology, psychology, history, politics, rhetoric, strategy, tactics, logistics, government, economics, culture, the arts, and I was given a sufficient physical education. My general knowledge is good, but it was always intended that I would rely on advisors and experts for the things that I couldn’t possibly fit into my course of study.
I was following the basics of the video logs, but to say that I understood the specifics would be a lie. I got the gist of it. I understood some of the reasoning and the problems that were coming up as the months faded into years, but the nuances were lost to me.
It was dry subject matter, mostly relayed in dry voices. The people reporting would do a number of reports in sequence and then be replaced by another speaker giving similar reports. I let them play continuously as I hiked behind Ian.
My pack was heavy, the landscape was hostile, and the company was unfriendly, so I had a lot of things to distract me as I walked. We were four hours into our hike before anything interesting happened in the logs.
Up until that point I could summarize them as follows:
The Blackwatch Empire first set up a tiny installation running planetary tests. It was the installation we slept in last night. It had a staff of three. After finishing the required battery of tests, they determined that the planet was ripe to terraform for human colonization. No encounters with sentient native life had been made at that point, nor had they travelled more than 5 km in any direction from their small base, although a satellite made a full map of the planet. The first mission lasted six months.
A year later another group of scientists were sent (numbers unrecorded) and they set up shop in the same base. They went to great pains to explain that their mission was secret, that they were personally vetted by the Emperor at the time, Hiro Matsumoto (Nigel’s father), and that this was a personal project of his. I remembered Uncle Hiro as being a secretive and moody man. Maybe the scientists were jittery for that reason, or maybe for reasons unknown, but they seemed nervous in their reports. They began work on the atmosphere and under the planet’s surface.
About two years after they began their mission a group of colonists were sent to them. By the tone of their report it sounded like they were ‘colonists’ like us – political prisoners. It turned out good old Uncle Hiro had plans from the very start to make this a functional prison planet. The scientists were worried. Security, in their opinion, was not sufficient, and the colonists jeopardized their work just by being there. They thought Baldric was a gem to be studied and treasured, not treated like a human trash heap.
That’s when things got interesting to me. There were hints that one of the colonists was a Matsumoto. Interesting. I wondered which one. I knew my own genealogy the way that any royal does. It’s drilled into your head from the time you are tiny, and all the portraits and history books just reinforce that. A Matsumoto here in prison. It wasn’t in the histories at all, which meant that likely they had died here. I felt a sudden, and instant, affinity with this hell-hole of a planet knowing that my blood was buried somewhere here.
It got better. The scientists, it seemed, were nervous for a reason. The colonists weren’t happy with their fate and had been making false reports, claiming to have seen shadowy life forms that none of the scientists had seen. Then, one day, they were drilling deep into the core and they hit…something. They thought that maybe it was a pocket of natural gas. Nothing, of course, was powered by such a primitive and wasteful fuel, but there were worries about potential safety hazards. They went to investigate, and then…
“We were investigating the drill. Janzen, two marines and I. They came flooding over the hill. There were thousands of th
em. Thousands. Black. Like the night. Thousands.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to say. They were shadows, but they weren’t, and they said something about splitting, and they looked like our mirror images,and they killed Janzen and we were all running, and then… and then… and then there was only me, and I made it back here, but I’ve looked and looked and no one is left. Not a single colonist, and not anyone. I’m alone.
“I’m alone in a world of shadows and fear. I don’t dare go out, but…oh God…I think they are coming in. I don’t know where, but how do you keep a shadow out? I leave the lights on. I pushed the furniture to the edges of the room, but there are still shadows and I just can’t sleep anymore. Especially at night. Do you know how long a night is on Baldric?
“We tapped into their soul when we drilled. Their collective soul. I’m certain of it. We’ve released a power here that is unexplainable by science.”
I almost tripped when he spoke, and my own eyes scanned the shadows looking for our enemies, and thinking I saw them behind every rock and tree. I was freaking myself out in an already terrifying situation.
What, I wondered, happened to the colonists? Did they die in the flood of thousands of shadows?
A video came up for this entry, playing in the corner of my vision. It was someone new, and the timestamp was five years later. Oddly enough, they were in the same domed facility. It must have really been built to last.
The next videos were normal. Scientists set up shop. A brief investigation led them to believe that the remaining scientist of the last session (his name was Ed Yokiro) had gone mad after an accidental natural gas explosion killed the rest of the population. They reported on terraforming efforts. They were seeing success. There was no contact with inhabitants, and no subterranean exploration had recommenced. Colonists were sent. Facilities built. Work was done on experimenting with local flora and fauna for human consumption.
These scientists were keeping extensive records. I was still into the first year of their mission when the final sliver of sun on Baldric disappeared behind a ridge and darkness flooded our path.
“Lights are located on your headpiece,” Corporal Maxwell reminded us. “Use them.”
I fumbled at the headpiece, wondering if the light was solar-battery powered or if I needed to worry about conserving energy. I’d query my implant later when I wasn’t busy watching videos.
“I don’t like the dark here,” one of the other colonists muttered. I didn’t know his name. I wasn’t trying especially hard to get to know my fellow prisoners. The mystery of Baldric seemed more intriguing than they did.
I silently agreed with him though. It was hard to keep an eye out for shadows when the place was one huge shadow.
“Don’t be a girl,” Sentry growled.
I was a girl, and I didn’t think Sentry should warn anyone against being something that was definitely a step up from what he was.
I was afraid of this dark though, and I chewed my lip and wished I had Roman or even poor Edward here with me now. Just hearing their reassuring voices in my implant would have been a slice of heaven. Instead, all I heard was a dispassionate scientist. I was secretly certain that he would become impassioned all too soon.
“How much further?” Ch’ng asked.
I checked the top right of my vision for the map. I didn’t know for sure where the shuttle was, but we had veered far from the least-time course to the colony. I hoped it was worth it. I hoped we weren’t attacked in the open.
“Not far. Now shut up,” Maxwell, the ever-compassionate, said.
Our lights moved wildly over the path and each other’s backs, scanning the trees for threats. The only ones who seemed truly comfortable were the marines. I wondered if they were really comfortable in the middle of a terrifying alien world at night, or if they were trained to look the part. Oddly enough, I thought Roman might be. He approached terror differently than I did – almost like a challenge to overcome rather than an enemy to avoid. Maybe that was why he didn’t mind being around me.
Warmth radiated from the earth into the chill of the air. The sweat that had been running along my spine made me shiver in the sudden cold and my eyes scanned the shadows, aching as they tried to make out things I could not see.
“There were thousands of them. Thousands.”
Those words from the scientist kept ringing in my ears.
“Thousands.”
“There it is!” Ian shouted from in front of me. I still couldn’t see anything, but he was at least a head taller than I.
At the same time someone else screamed. It wasn’t the short, “I’ve tripped and hurt myself” scream, but a long, drawn out ululation.
Ian cursed. Other curses rang out and lights scanned so rapidly that I had to close my eyes to avoid nausea.
We were frozen in place. In the dark everything is a shadow. How could you identify an enemy? My breath came quicker, even though I was standing still. The edges of terror caressed my consciousness. What if one of them grabbed my foot in the dark and dragged me away?
The echoes in my implant resurfaced, and I thought I could hear voices, just on the edge of being able to recognize their words. It sounded like a thousand different voices so far away I could barely hear them at all.
“Thousands.”
I swallowed. This damn implant must act up when I’m under intense stress. That was the best explanation for how badly it was malfunctioning.
A second scream started right beside me. I could tell by the tone of voice that it was Sentry. His scream broke the spell of our fear, and we scattered, running towards the shuttle.
Somewhere out front Private Mutambi shouted, “Make for the shuttle!”
It was redundant. We were all heading there anyways. It was the only human place in kilometers. By chance, I was still hard on Ian’s heels. I preferred to stay close to someone. Two lights were better than one in this darkness.
There were faint lights at the top of the hill, probably from the shuttle. I ran as hard as I could, tripping every so often, and sometimes crashing hard in the undergrowth. My heavy pack made it hard to keep my balance when I slipped. I noted that Ian was doing no better, and his own light went perilously close to the ground on more than one occasion.
We were a scattered mass of dark bodies as we closed on the shuttle. Only the smallest moon was in the sky, and its light was paltry. Ian and I had chosen a path that was taking us there more quickly, and the others were spread out on the hillside mostly behind us. I hated the thought that it somehow made us safer, but I couldn’t help thinking it.
We were close. We would be there in a few moments.
The shuttle doors opened. Three black figures exited, with the light streaming out from behind them. They carried guns. My instincts were screaming. Without even knowing why I screamed, “Down!” and threw myself to the ground.
Around me flechettes buried themselves in stumps and rocks and made a terrible “zing” as they slit the air around me. The idiots at the shuttle were firing on us.
THE SPLITTING: 9
I HEARD IAN CURSING, WHICH I took to be a good sign, since it meant he was still alive. No one said anything beyond screaming and cursing. I waited, hoping Maxwell would step up and tell them who we were, but there was no sound from him.
Well, isn’t that just the way of things? Somehow it’s always a Matsumoto that has to sort things out – even on a horror world made by Matsumotos.
“We’re human. Hold your fire!” I called.
The recording was still playing in my view, some scientist reading off terraforming data.
Pause playback.
I didn’t have time for that right now, with hostage negotiations about to start.
“Good for you. The shuttle pilot and these other two chumps were human, too, before we shot them,” one of the figures called.
“You shot humans?” I asked, just to confirm. This wasn’t what I had expected.
“Are you stupid or ju
st extra anxious to die? We’re prisoners. We shoot our captors. It’s how it works. If you chumps think you’re going to incarcerate us again you’ll see how fast we can kill whoever comes…human or otherwise.”
He punctuated the speech with another round of flechettes. Still no Corporal Maxwell, which just said everything that needs to be said about military solutions.
“There’s a bit of a situation here that you might not be aware of,” I called.
“We don’t care how many you have with you out there.”
“Would you care if they were aliens made out of shadows that grow ten-meter yellow fungi out of your contorted corpses when they’re done with you?”
“We’re not stupid enough to believe that - ” the man with the gun started to say, but then another voice from the shuttle cut him off.
“Wait. Can you prove that, girl?”
“When the sun rises you can see for yourself. Or if you keep talking, maybe you’ll get to experience it personally,” I said.
“We’re colonists, too!” Ch’ng said from somewhere in the dark.
“Then come up here and show yourselves,” the first voice said.
“Screw that,” said Ch’ng. There were general grunts to the affirmative on our side.
I sighed. Like I said, it’s always a Matsumoto in these situations. It’s how my mom died. Negotiating with terrorists. Good times.
I stood up.
“What are you doing?” Ian hissed from close by.
“I don’t like mushrooms,” I said with a false note of bravado.
“Who does,” he muttered. Since he wanted me dead he must have felt no more inclination to stop me, but I noted the hint of admiration in his tone.
I strode through the dark to the shuttle’s glow. Now that I was closer, I could make out our counterparts more clearly. There were three men. Seriously? Was I the only girl on this whole rock? Charlene had been there when I first awoke, but she was a poor representation of women.
One was young and heavily scarred. He had something…evil…about him. I thought he might be the one who was so flechette happy, especially since he had his gun trained on my belly. I mentally dismissed him as a violent tough, but not the brains of this rebellion.
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