He laughed again, and around us people sped up, hoping to leave us behind if we were planning to fight. We fell to the back of the line.
“I’m not planning to kill you, Vera. No, I want you to see why your people hate you and everything you stand for.”
“If you want humility, believe me, I’ve had so much humble pie lately that it’s pouring out my ears,” I said dryly.
“Good. That’s what you’ll need.”
“I need humility and a further sense of my own failure in order to die on Baldric? Hardly. It will kill us all, the virtuous along with the vile,” I said.
“We fear that our actions have split the planet irreparably. I’ve never seen anything like it in all my time here. I didn’t even know it was possible to split the soul of a planet in two. Planets don’t have souls! We can see residents, now that we know what to look for. They are fading just like the animals, and they are everywhere…”
“No. But maybe once you realize your place you will think about helping us.”
“Helping you kill Matsumotos? I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I have a bit on my plate already, and I’m not much of a killer.”
He gave me an assessing look.
“So far you’ve been killing just fine. And no, that’s not what we’re interested in. We’re interested in changing Blackwatch society forever.”
“Well, I’m all for that,” I said, still distracted by the video, “but I’m not sure how much good I’d do you as a revolutionary. I’m a touch recognizable.”
“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.
“That’s a very good trait… for an Emperor,” Driscoll said, and my eyes snapped to his face as the video silenced in my head.
“What?”
“Revolutions come and go, and people usually just kill the revolutionaries and install someone exactly like the former corrupt regime to take their place. I don’t want to be dead for nothing,” Driscoll said. Some strong emotion clouded his eyes, but I couldn’t tell what it was. “An heir who brings change – change that’s legitimate and that will actually work to benefit all the people. And no one has to die except Nigel Matsumoto.”
“And how do you plan to kill all the other Matsumotos and put me on the throne?” I said with a wry curve to my mouth.
“Think about it,” Driscoll said.
Near the front of the line people started yelling and stopped. Driscoll and I caught up.
“Command is under attack, that’s why we have to hurry. We need to back them up!” Fergus said.
“With five guns? Yeah, we’ll be stellar back up,” Ian said, red-faced.
“Stop arguing and go,” Fergus said, gesturing to the north.
“What’s going on here?” I asked, coolly.
“Command called,” Mutambi addressed me. His jaw was jutting out more than usual. “They are under attack and they need us to pick up the pace and join them.”
“We’re already going as quickly as we can,” I said, “or at least we were before this argument.”
“But we’re heading towards the colony, not Command,” Private Mutmabi said.
“We’re both headed towards the colony.”
“We need to change directions and go straight towards command.”
“We already settled this, we can’t cross the river. “
“They’ve already crossed up ahead and we can meet them on this side.”
“We’d be flying blind, we have no idea where they are,” I said, although it wasn’t technically true, since I still had a green inverted caret blinking on my map for them.
“I know. I can see it on my eyepiece computer.”
“Handy,” Ian said, “That you would be the only one to get us there, and we will have to follow your lead.”
Mutambi’s voice grew louder, “No more handy than you being given the right to lead when you were not the one chosen!”
“Enough,” I said, quietly. “We’ll course correct to meet them a little further out from the base, but we can’t afford to lose air making a beeline for them. Ian, take us more that direction.” I pointed. “And Mutambi, I designated Ian to take point.”
“Whatever,” Mutambi said, and I could tell by his glare that I’d be seeing retribution if we ever met up with Command.
We picked up the pace over the hilly landscape, which was still mostly open and sparsely treed, but growing thicker as we moved.
I scanned the waving grasses and solitary trees, thinking about how silent the land felt now that I knew about the birds and the animals. What sort of terrible thing had our scientists done that turned life on this planet into shadows? And what had kept us from becoming shadows, too…except for Sammy, who shared that fate.
We were moving quicker and quicker by mutual consent without anyone speaking, our pace almost at a jog. We came up over a ridge and spread out as we moved into a dip beyond. Ian led with the marines right behind him. Driscoll and I had drifted to the rear again. He had a look in his eyes that said we were going to have another talk.
“Faster!” Mutambi urged Ian from up ahead, and I rolled my eyes. Was I seriously going to have to go up there? They were well ahead now, halfway up the hill, and I was the only straggler still at the base of the hill. Maybe I should have eaten something. The wind was picking up and Ian’s response was lost to me.
It was in that chaotic moment that they came. A herd of shadows galloped around the hill we just came from, surging through the dip. I ran towards the hill, but they were faster, surrounding me with their galloping bodies, and sweeping me up in their movement. Jostled from one spot to the next, they compelled me to follow the tide of bodies surging east.
Ian yelled something from the hillside and looked like he was going to come after me. For a moment there was a look of actual concern in his eyes. Driscoll looked on, his mouth a hard line. He was a realist.
“Go! Forget me!” I yelled, over the wind.
Ian took two steps back towards me.
“GO!” I shouted, putting all my will into my face and voice.
He stopped, seeming unsure of what to do, and took a step forward. Driscoll ran up the hill, put a hand on his shoulder, and whispered in his ear. They both looked at me with their mouths set in grim lines and then turned and ran up the hill. I tried my best to keep on my feet in the surge of bodies thundering by, but I was out of control, watching as my link to humanity ran on without me.
THE SPLITTING: 15
IAN GLANCED BACK ONE MORE time before disappearing over the hill, but by then I was almost out of sight, propelled by muscular shadow bodies. How in the world could something as insubstantial as a shadow cause a stampede, or carry a person along?
I had no time to think about that. I was focused only on keeping my feet and surviving the press of bodies. From the surrounding tumult various shadow-parts emerged. My new acquaintances looked like a herd of rhinos, but larger and with strange, mane-like coverings over their backs and shoulders. The features shone when the light hit them, but the rest of the time they were as opaque as velvet. I found my own terror and loneliness overwhelmed by fascination with them.
I was being pushed towards one of the behemoth trees. As we passed underneath, I reached up and grabbed a thick limb, wrapping my arms and legs around the sleek bole, monkey style. Amethyst leaves brushed my arms and face from lower branches, and I tucked in as tight as I could to my new anchor. Eventually the press of bodies ceased, and the rumblings of their passing cleared. I untangled by limbs and dropped down to the ground into a clump of stripy grass.
At the base of the tree one shadow creature was left. All the rest had stampeded away. The sole straggler looked like he was grazing on the shadows of the grass. Watching the black shadow feasting on the shadows of the grass twisted my mind. I kept trying to find a source for the shadow creat
ure, even though I knew there was none to be found - at least not anymore.
Had we really drilled into the soul of the planet and somehow unleashed a spiritual crisis? If my clan had committed no other crimes, this one alone would be enough to condemn us. I was growing weary of bearing the guilt for crimes I had not committed and knew nothing about. More than anything I wished I could just opt out of it all, but it seemed the only opt-out was death. And maybe even that wouldn’t be the end. Maybe the Matsumotos – the whole wretched lot of them – would just haul me back and require me to pay the penance for their many sins as well as my own.
“You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with this mess,” I told the shadow beast.
Glints in his shadow revealed six powerful legs, an armoured hide, thick horns and a heavy mane of hair running from neck to tail along his spine and spilling over his back. He was almost the size of a ground-car, or a very large specimen of Earth Elephant. I idly thought that a rider could comfortably sit on that mat of hair and even have a handhold to grip.
Would you take a rider, though? That’s the question.
I accidentally slipped into the channel, my mind distracted by weighing the huge, but calm, shadow-beast before me.
He perked up and looked at me. My eyes widened, and I repeated what I said, to see if he would react again. Could he hear me?
Would you take a rider?
Such a silly thing to send a computer-connection based message to a creature made of shadow and light. In response, he walked right up to me, huffing puffs of shadow out of his great nose right into my face. My heart sped. The terror of being eye to eye with a massive beast was in no way lessened by his strangeness.
He bobbed his head once and snorted.
Well, there were a lot more ways to die. I should know. This was certainly not the worst. I put out a hand and laid it gently on his nose. He snorted. I was shocked to find my hand did not pass through him. I shouldn’t have been surprised. If anything, the stampede had proved these were no ordinary shadows, but I couldn’t help myself. I gasped.
Time to take a risk. I carefully edged to his right, my hand gently tracing the side of his body as I edged closer. When I reached his first shoulder I grasped a foot-long tuft of shadow-hair, took a deep breath, steadied myself mentally, and then hauled myself onto his back. I expected bucking and hollering. Instead, he went on eating shadow-grass.
I blinked. Well that was easy. He must have been trained to ride. My belly churned with acid at the thought of those thousands of shadow people charging into our ranks mounted on these. It was a horrible idea that went on for way too long before I squelched it.
I was riding a shadow. It was an enormous shadow that was more intent on eating than anything else, and that apparently, could hear my thoughts. It was alien. That thought made me laugh. The only normal thing about this world was that it felt alien. He was surprisingly solid under me, and where I sat his body was completely opaque. At his head and behind me things were a little translucent, though, and I swallowed. If it wasn’t one thing on Baldric making your belly churn with worry, it was another.
Move out, I tried, and he lifted his head. I’d like to go that way, I said, picturing the path in my mind. He ambled forward, not in a hurry, but in the right direction. My eyebrows were fighting to see which could reach my hairline fastest.
An intriguing idea occurred to me. I had a mount. Everyone thought I was dead. I had a backpack of provisions and a water filter. I could ride off into the sunset, free of being a prisoner, a killer, and a Matsumoto. I pictured myself roaming the hills of stripy grass, yellow stone, and purple leaves. It looked good. Until I ran out of air. And the shadows surrounded me and added me to their mushroom farm…
I guess that option was never really an option. I sighed and asked, Any chance we can pick up the pace?
The rhino sped up. I aimed him mentally towards the flashing inverted carets ahead and checked the command channel. It was all combat talk in code. I could probably translate it if I concentrated, but I thought my skills were better spent hurrying towards them. After all, I still had one of the few guns left.
We were moving at a good pace, not so fast that I was having trouble balancing, and not too slow to be useless. I was about to double check my map when my vision glazed over and a monochrome view from Roman’s eyes overwhelmed my rhino ride. It must be stress that triggers this, but it was unfathomable as to how.
He was fighting someone – terrorists? – and his unit was being forced back. I couldn’t help but wonder if it were Patrick’s men. They were in torn-up buildings that looked like some sort of blast had hit them. I saw no dead bodies or civilians. It looked like warehousing that had been abandoned even before it was torn apart.
“Where are they?” Roman muttered, stress evident in his voice. My heart leapt at the chance to hear it again.
“Sergeant, they’re on our flank!” someone said.
I expected the blonde to acknowledge, but it was Roman who did. He must have been promoted…again. That was extremely rapid, if it were true. How fast were we losing marines to have to maintain such fast mobility through the ranks?
“Understood. Keep them off us while we wait for Anton and Yukiro.”
Something shook the building and rubble crashed out of Roman’s sight line. Gunfire started again, and Roman’s head popped up over a window ledge as he started firing. The freck freck freck of the flechette gun dominated my hearing and a pair of marines came limping into sight, one mostly carrying the other. The one being carried was the blonde. Her uniform looked wet. As they ran she left red droplets on the concrete under their feet.
Roman paused in shooting as they went by and then started firing twice as quickly, clearly trying to distract the enemy.
They were hauled into the door by another marine, and then Roman raced to the blonde, yelling, “Keep the cover fire up. Don’t give them a break.”
“What happened?” he asked the marine carrying the blonde. She looked bad, close to dead.
“They came out of nowhere. Hit the LT with fire. I got her out, but she’s not responding.”
Roman took her from the other marine’s arms.
“Ashlyn,” he said, quietly, the affection in his voice hidden from everyone but me, “Ashlyn, wake up!”
Her eyes flickered open. Pain was predominant, but there was love in those eyes. I knew that look. Even with her inches from death I had to fight down envy at the woman who dared to love my Roman.
“Roman. I have so much to say.” Her words were barely audible, even with his face so close to hers.
He pressed his forehead to hers. “Save your energy.”
“I need you to know I’ve never seen anyone like you, ever, and I’ve fought with the best marines in Blackwatch.”
Well, that was likely true. Roman was worth his weight in banned technology.
“Stay away from the Matsumotos. Don’t let them do to you what they’ve done to the rest of us,” her voice was failing. Great. She’d warned him away from me with her dying breath.
“Don’t go, Ashlyn.”
His breath was ragged. Sobs were close to the surface. I found myself overcome by a grief that wasn’t even mine.
“I love…” she began, but her words faded and the light of her eyes faded, too.
I swallowed, and saw great splashes fall on her face. Roman’s tears. I thought he’d said he’d cried all his tears out years ago. I guess they came back for her.
I love you, too, I thought, and I felt him freeze.
He was gone as quickly as he’d arrived, leaving me with tears pouring down my face as I rode a lumbering alien herbivore. I didn’t know if I was crying for her, or for his pain, or for my own broken heart. I was so damn tired of feeling. I just rode on, tracking the inverted caret, and rubbing my dripping nose on my sleeve. I wanted to punch something really hard. I figured that if I kept riding, I’d eventually get my chance.
THE SPLITTING: 16
I RODE A FULL
TWENTY more minutes before I saw the two inverted carets merge on my map. Our lost splinter group had finally found Command. Were they battling together now? What would Driscoll think of that? Or Ian? Worse, what would Major Reynolds do to them when Mutambi got a chance to report? I didn’t include myself in the worrying. I was past worry for my own well-being. It was entirely possible that I was already dead and in hell. It would explain a lot.
I was finding the Baldric rhino a pleasant companion. He was mercifully quiet and inexplicably comfortable. What should I call a near-rhino from Baldric? A Baldro? Bad. A Rhinric? A bit better.
Rhinric? I tried it out. He didn’t buck me off, so I figured it was ok.
It was still twenty minutes, approximately, until we’d meet up with their inverted carets. I prepared myself, unslinging the nettlegun and re-checking the read-outs and safeties. I repositioned my pack and adjusted the straps. I loaded the marksman program and let the crosshairs remain over my vision. I scanned the terrain. We had slowed to a walk as the trees grew thicker. Rhinric was squeezing through the heavy brush with little trouble, doubtless used to it. Visibility was poor. I wouldn’t see them until I was right on them.
I wasn’t wrong. Long minutes later, I heard them while I was still seeing only thick purple leaves and smooth, white trunks. There were screams – of course, because this is Baldric – and shouting and nettlegun fire. I felt a little antsy. Rhinric might survive nettlegun fire, but I certainly would not. I wondered how I would convince my own allies not to shoot me.
We pushed past a tangle of thick branches and Rhinric pulled up short. I swayed, balancing and gripping his hair firmly in one hand. We were on the edge of a bluff, looking down over a wide plain. I could see the river far in the distance from here, but below me was nothing but yellow rock and black-and-white grass. It was a different variety than the stuff I’d encountered before. It was in patches of black and patches of white and grew in a strange zigzag fashion. I wasn’t a botanist, though, so what riveted my attention was the humans below me on the plain. They were fighting hard, surrounded by shadows. Speckling the plain to the east, out over the expanse leading to another forest, and then rolling out towards the river, I saw a pathway of chartreuse pillars.
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