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 a source for the shadow creature, 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 fade
d, 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.
Chapter Sixteen
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.
The position of the human victims painted the picture precisely. It looked like it had been a long fighting march for our counterparts. Worse, their numbers had dwindled to the point where both my original group and the rest of the humans from our ruined starship were the same number strong. There was just shy of two dozen humans left below me.
Usually, I think for myself, but the timing seemed a bit urgent.
Pick us a least-time, safe route to the inverted carets, I told my implant and then immediately steered Rhinric down the path my implant spat out.
The path was rocky and steep, but the computer had calculated the angles based on the ability Rhinric had shown so far, and the path was attainable for him. I held on and didn’t look too closely at the height. Heights make me nervous.
What happened next must have looked strange from the outside. To me, battling just one more obstacle in a series of impossible tasks it seemed like just another thing I survived, but I gathered from what I saw later that it looked rather different on the other end of things. Major Reynolds had his eyepiece set to record and when I found the recording later it looked something like this:
They were battling impossible odds, losses piling in too rapidly to keep an accurate count. The reinforcements arrived, but brought little in the way of firepower or manpower.
“This is it?” Reynolds asked Private Mutambi.
“I’m sorry sir, but it is,” he said, the running battle still taking place behind them.
They continued to fight, taking heavy losses, their visibility impaired by the fungus towers that kept popping up with every loss.
Then, from far off they heard a bugling sound.
“It sounds like those animals from the stampede,” Ch’ng said from nearby. He sounded strained. Even toughened criminals found Baldric upsetting.
“Good. Maybe they’ll distract the shadows and we can make up some ground,” Fergus muttered.
They fought on, but now the enemy gave ground. There seemed to be no reason for it. The human line had weakened, but the enemy was being drawn away from them, rather than pressing in.
“It must be a trap! There’s nothing out here to weaken them but us, and we sure as hell aren’t pressing them!” Fergus said, desperation and confusion warring in his tone.
“There’s nowhere else to go. Push towards their retreat!” Major Reynolds ordered, and push they did.
The shadows fell back. Something behind their ranks was slaughtering them.
“Could it be another stampede?” Ch’ng asked Ian.
And then something emerged.
A tiny woman, her long black hair flying like a flag every time she whipped her head back and forth rode on a massive beast built of shadow. He bugled as he ran, smashing into the shadow humans, and pawing them under his feet, a terrifying visage of death.
The woman was worse. She fired her gun into one alien shadow after another, her fire so precise that each shadow only needed a tiny burst of fire to scatter and dissolve. Their numbers were so great that despite the Rhino-shadow’s aggression some still managed to launch themselves onto her beast. She fought them hand to hand while riding, taking them out with elegant martial arts moves, almost like she was programmed by a computer and not human at all.
Her fight was over in seconds. Once she and her alien beast had slain almost a hundred shadows, the beast bugled once again and the shadows ran, retreating en masse at her coming.
“Matsumoto!” someone from beside Reynolds breathed, reverence in his voice.
“Unlikely,” Reynolds said, but he didn’t sound sure.
“Did you know she could do that?” Ch’ng asked, his eyebrows battling to reach his hairline.
“No. But it’s exactly the kind of thing she would do,” Ian replied, sounding proud for some reason.
“Matsumoto. Matsumoto.”
The name echoed on tongue after tongue.
She rode up to the Major, flinging off her mask but holding her nettlegun pointed upwards in a practiced manner.
The camera wavered, as if he had almost bowed to the woman with the wild hair and commanding eyes, but he restrained himself.
But that was how the story played out in the recording.
To me it was more of a flurry of fighting and letting the program direct my aim and my fighting motions. I was surprised and pleased that Rhinric decided to fight with me, feeling a surge of affection for the rhino, and I felt more than a little remorse for every nettle I fired and every being I hit.
Could I comfort myself that they may not be living, having turned into shadows of what they were? Maybe, but it felt like no comfort to me. I may have broken the taboo against violence enough to commit it, but my heart mourned as I rode up to Major Reynolds and stripped off my mask, nettlegun in my hand.
The shadows were routed for now, whether because of Rhinric’s defection or to reassess. I knew they would return once they had decided on a new course of action. I had bought my fellow humans a little time, and that was all.
“Ms. Matsumoto,” Major Reynolds addressed me warily.
/> “Major Reynolds.”
“Are you for us or against us?” he asked.
“I would hope what I did just now proved I care about the humans on this planet.”
“That is not the same thing.”
I shrugged. Was I for them? Not exactly. Was I against them? Not right now. It seemed like my allegiance was rather based on how things went from here.
“I’d like to keep Rhinric with me,” I said, “He’s a formidable deterrent.”
Reynolds smiled, but it didn’t look friendly. He aimed his nettlegun at my chest.
“I know what that whirring means, Ms. Matsumoto. It means you are out of ammo.” I looked at the read-out on the gun. I hadn’t even noticed the whirring. “Get down off that shadow. Hand over the nettlegun and fall in line with the other prisoners.”
I weighed my options. I really wouldn’t mind dying right now, but if I was reasonable maybe there would still be a time some day when I could resolve some of the things that were bothering me. I complied.
Rhinric lowered his head and followed me as I placed my gun at Major Reynold’s feet.
“He seems very attached to you,” Reynolds said, and I glanced behind me at Rhinric, with a slight smile. He was probably my favorite thing - or person for that matter – on this whole planet and I’d only known him an hour, give or take.
Everything went black.
Chapter Seventeen
I woke with a splitting headache in a room I hadn’t been in before. It looked like a command room, like the command deck on a starship or a large military planning room. There were screens with data readouts, maps, and what looked like footage from security cameras. Various data entry stations were located near the screens and five doors dotted the walls. At the center of the room was a large crescent-shaped table with slots for personal data readers. They all looked like they were functioning. After the last few days of schlepping through the jungle in a neo-barbarian state, it felt homey to see some usable technology everywhere.
The Splitting (The Matsumoto Trilogy Book 2) Page 10