Under the Shadow of the Plateau: Frontier Forever

by Benjamin Krieger

  Turning Morton’s chair to align his eyes with a chart he had pulled up on the desk’s terminal screen, Frank continued confidently, “So, I started thinking about why someone might want to make a fake Brennan, then who had the means to do it, and of course, I started with the arms dealer who hooked us up with him in the first place–” Morton’s body suddenly stiffened and Frank got very excited. Tapping through some more slides, he brought up some communication logs, and pointing to a long column of identical entries, he continued, “–and as you can see, all of her transactions go through these same ports. Not necessarily atypical, but if you look here–” He brought up more color-coded sheets that produced a distinct pattern and began pointing to it excitedly, “–and here, and here, and here? Look at the names on those contacts... Do you see the pattern?”

  Morton still didn’t move.

  Frank loaded a beautiful map with long lists of corresponding names, dates, and cross-referential indicators. Pointing to a column that showed they were using similar routing protocols, the henchman inhaled deeply, but before he could start explaining, Morton turned and snapped at him. “You really are fantastic at making charts, Frank, but I don’t have time for this right now!”

  Frank was thrilled to see his master breaking free of his apathetic state, but he asked, with stern professionalism, “Do you see it?”

  Morton wanted to scream about how he didn’t understand the importance of so many conversations going through the same funnel, but he said with a disarmed sigh, “I guess...”

  Not bothering to hide his elation, Frank said ominously, “All the ones marked in red are routed directly through the Matron’s office.”

  Morton remained motionless but something about him had changed.

  Not wanting to lose momentum, Frank handed him the tablet he had been using to navigate the map and said, “Here I wan–”

  Shoving the tablet away, Morton said in a dark and dangerous grumble, “That bitch...” Slamming his fists into their grooves in his desk, he pushed down to help stand himself up. “Thaaaaat bitch!” Snatching the tablet from Frank’s hand, he threw it against the wall and began violently knocking over everything within reach. “No!” Morton yelled again, “No!”

  Taking a step back, Frank wore a look of gentle concern but was inwardly rejoicing.

  Continuing around the workshop on a low-level rampage, smashing whatever was convenient, Morton eventually landed on one of the rear panels of the train and just kept wailing on it. With each one of his master’s punches and kicks, Frank’s smile grew unabashedly wider as he prepared bandages and ointment to apply to his master’s fists. Screaming with rage until he wore himself out, a sudden calm washed over Morton as he turned his attention to the liquor cart. As if nothing had happened, he casually walked over to it and began to drink from one of the bottles. After several long gulps, Morton sounded as though he were in pain as he asked, “Can you pull up the recording from when she ordered those antique guns? I’m trying to remember exactly how she said it.”

  Frank ran back to his workstation to sync another tablet. “Here.”

  On the big screen appeared a video of a young woman wearing a sharp suit covered in adornments suggesting an informal relationship with the military. “Hello again, Mister Morton–”

  “No,” said Morton, upset. “Not this part. Give me that.” He finished his drink and snatched the tablet from Frank’s hand. Fast forwarding, he found the correct point in time. “This.”

  The woman in the video said, “I’m sure someone will buy them. It’s a pretty niche idea, but there will be collectors who li–”

  “Hah!” Morton said triumphantly, pausing the video and dropping the device as he went back for another drink.

  Frank caught the controls as they fell, then, as if considering it for the first time, the loyal henchman asked, “You think she knew what we would end up doing with those guns back then?”

  “Yes!” Morton screamed, as if Frank were a total idiot. “Are you kidding? She just happens to order some strange guns that never end up selling, and then they just happen to be perfect for fighting the Marshal? A plan proposed by the counterfeit Peacekeeper, who she happened to introduce us to?! She’s the Matron! All of them are! All of them!” Downing the rest of his drink angrily, Morton continued to yell, “This whole goddamn time! How could we have been so stupid?!”

  “They had the high ground, Sir,” Frank said with a reassuring military cadence. “Literally and figuratively. The advantages of–”

  “Not they, you moron! She!” Suddenly, Morton was back on his feet and moving for his desk. “You buffoon! Each and every one of the assholes on your stupid list is the Matron. They aren’t just using the same communication relays, they’re the same damn person! And it’s been that way for years!” Taking back the tablet, he said with a deep and painful laugh, “See this one? Ohhh, ho hoo. That’s when I got invited to that gala where I first met Brennan. That highfalutin bitch was the Matron too! It’s not just this bullshit that we’ve got going on right now, it’s been her the whole time!”

  Collapsing to sit cross-legged on the floor, Morton began to sob quietly. “My entire career... Every big break... It was all the Matron. You said it yourself, Frank. No one on Earth could have made a counterfeit Peacekeeper and sent him to us. She gave us the guns. She’s the only reason we survived the Marsh–” Suddenly he stopped. His tone had been full of self-pity, but when he resumed, it was dark and incendiary. “She’s the one who sicced that law-dog on us in the first place...”

  Frank saw the paralyzing fury beginning to percolate in his master’s eyes, and knew this could go one of two ways. In a desperate attempt to relieve some of the pressure, he shouted with great enthusiasm, “Holy shit, Boss! You’re a genius! She’s our offworld connection too!”

  “Yeah, I know,” Morton said listlessly. “Our entire business is a joke. Everything we’ve worked so hard for was built on her back. I’m worse than a goddamned middleman. I’m a puppet. A tool...”

  Realizing that this was an emergency and blaming his presentation for starting it, Frank replied accusingly, “I don’t think you’re being fair. No matter what she did from outer space, we’re the ones doing the legwork down here on Earth. We’re still the ones making sure the workshops are running, and that all the little people have jobs. You built this business on their backs. You’re a self-made man. We’re the ones living like kings and that bitch probably hasn’t ever even been to Earth, so don’t give me this middleman bologna.”

  Sounding slightly consoled by the henchman’s logic, Morton poured himself another drink and said, “You’re right about that first part, Frank. We worked hard as hell to get where we are. And I love your enthusiasm, I really do. But what did all that hard work get us?” Frank knew better than to answer. “All that bullshit with the Marshal, and we end up with nothing but the crater... a literal hole in the ground... and now we’re gearing up to do it again...”

  For hours, Morton went on and on, thinking out loud about everything they had just discovered, while Frank listened patiently. Together, they went through decades worth of conversations, and after sifting through all the correlations and implications, they both found themselves left wondering why. “It doesn’t make any sense, Frank! She has all the power in the world, why is she putting so much effort into us? She created the world’s first Marshal, sent her to kill us, and then spawned a Peacekeeper just to help us kill her? Tell me I’m missing something... You have to assume we’re not the only ones she’s toying with like this. I give up.” Morton went back to his desk and started typing out correspondences to all of his black-market affiliates as he tried to piece a bigger picture together.

  Frank couldn’t figure it out either and wished he had done more research before bringing it to his master’s attention. Listening to Morton’s despondent keystrokes, he tried to remember that it could be worse. More silent hours went by as they both poured over information that had been sent back from their various pa
rtners in crime. Upon reading something Kravinov wrote about a person named Wolfchan, Frank went down a rabbit hole about the creature people were now calling the “werwolf.” After preparing a more thorough presentation, he said, with subtle enthusiasm, “Hey, Boss... I just had a great idea.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Guns in the Valley

  Despite having declared war after that first brazen but broken ambush, Marion had not realized how prophetic her words would be. There was still a lot of debate as to why the humans had suddenly become so aggressive, but they had been attacking for months now, so the bottom line was that it didn’t matter. Poachers engaged the Starrletts at least once a day, and according to neighboring herds, the vile humans were everywhere. Although their forces were usually much smaller now, between twenty and seventy people, they were just as poorly organized. The time of day didn’t seem to matter, but the element of unpredictability was the only thing they had going for them. They always attacked with the same rudimentary tactics and were brutally slaughtered each time.

  The lioness generally tried to avoid conflict, but that wasn’t an option with the new human threat. She had tried speeding up the herd’s migration, breaking out of normal travel patterns, venturing into unfamiliar territory, and backtracking to places that had already seen the ravages of war, but none of it worked. Just four days ago, the Starrletts had crossed into the Green Valley—a sacred land protected on all sides by high mountain walls, where they normally would have spent a full month milking the land of its bounty—but the poachers kept coming, so they kept moving.

  Only a few humans had managed to escape after having attacked the Starrletts, which helped explain why the poachers hadn’t realized how spectacularly they were failing, but it was still hard to understand why they kept coming. With so many of them dying every day, there was no way their masters were unaware of such severe casualties, so Marion assumed that whoever was sending them simply didn’t care. As far as they knew, the poachers had yet to take a single Starrlett as a prize, but a number had died and the stresses of war were taking a heavy toll on the herd. Life inside an omnivorous society could never have been described as peaceful, but hunting for food was vastly different from killing in combat. Animal-on-animal consumption was at an all-time low because human meat was so abundant, although not everyone would eat it. Nevertheless, there were tasteless jokes going around about the war being like a meal-delivery service.

  Surging with motherly adrenaline, Marion’s protective nature pushed her body into overdrive and made her one of the herd’s most efficient human slayers. Despite the satisfaction that came from defending her animal brethren, the lioness was particularly tired of the fighting. Careful not to let it show, the matriarch was afraid to think this might be the new normal. At first, she hadn’t wanted the younger gorillions exposed to the combat, but with no relief from the onslaught in sight, she had allowed Rhodes and Lincoln to start teaching them team-takedown techniques. Her instinctual hatred for humans was still throbbing, but watching the cubs take down entire human outfits to feast upon their carcasses was absolutely adorable. Their mother took great pride in their ability to learn so quickly, but it also pained her to see them growing up under such harsh conditions.

  In terms of deadly potential, Goliath was undoubtedly still the king of the jungle. The indomitable wrecking ball needed no technique or form, and his roar bolstered his troop while curdling the blood of their enemies. Having adapted some of the techniques that Rhodes used with his warclub, he and some of the larger gorilla children were now using trees as weapons and their extended range was devastating. Lincoln was also getting noticed for his contributions to the war effort. Looking more like his father every day, the gorillion’s forearms and mastication muscles were growing especially fast and his roar was maturing nicely.

  With every battle, Lincoln’s fighting style became an even more beautiful blend of his parents’, but what garnered him the most attention were the wild duo-maneuvers he performed with Rhodes. Even though they weren’t achieving the same numbers as Goliath, watching them tear through poachers together was truly a sight to behold. The younger gorillions especially admired how cunning and vicious their coordinated tactics could be, like when Rhodes would use his warclub to launch Lincoln into a pack of poachers, then throw it to knock down a tree and cut off their retreat. Many animals were better at hunting for food, but the training Rhodes received as an Onondaga made him the most technically skilled warrior in the herd. Having practiced for most of his life against tribesmen who were far more skilled, he and his warclub made quick work of any number of the paltry poachers and their pathetic gadgetry.

  Lincoln and Rhodes were war heroes, and it warmed Marion’s heart to see her sons succeeding so spectacularly. Still, she was reluctant to praise them. No Starrlett would ever forget the atrocities of war, or could possibly confuse Rhodes with a poacher, but she didn’t want it going to their heads. Females were already fawning over Lincoln, and although she was always excited about the prospect of grandchildren, the big lug didn’t need any extra confidence. There were no potential mates for her human son, but he had other problems.

  Since the war started, Rhodes hadn’t so much as hinted at wanting to leave, but Marion could see it eating away at him. In battle, it came out as righteous fury. At night, she would hear him stirring with bad dreams or waking up with screams of terror. There was passionate affection in his voice while training with the cubs, but she knew they reminded him of Pathos. War was the only thing keeping him there, and the lioness wondered how much longer that would last.

  At the end of that morning’s poacher attack, Zed casually said to Rhodes, “They were fools to let you go.”

  To his face, Rhodes had accepted the comment as a compliment, but the words sent him down a dark path of self-doubt and resentment. The Onondaga hadn’t let him go—they had cast him out, and the distinction stung. Now he sat alone in a tree at the edge of a particularly tranquil clearing while the rest of the herd digested their spoils.

  Regardless of his upbringing, the human knew the adult gorillas would always have a physical advantage over him. When they were young, he and Pathos hadn’t been able to use their full strength while wrestling with Lincoln because they could have really hurt him. Now that it was more evenly matched, they both had to pull their punches, as their strengths had outgrown their ability to defend. But watching the adolescent gorillion in battle, Rhodes could tell that the tables would soon irreversibly turn. He had always known that Lincoln would become the “big” brother eventually, but didn’t realize how soon the day would actually come.

  The sense of belonging that Rhodes felt among the Starrletts was helping him heal emotionally, but every time the poachers attacked the herd, it was like an assault on his human heritage. Powerful pride in his tribal upbringing collided with a wall of guilt built on the notion that either the Onondaga tribe or the Starrlett herd was inherently better than the other. Love for his families tore at each other, and he felt a roaring compulsion to denounce them both before a victor could be declared. As much as he wanted to stay and keep the herd safe, Rhodes knew they would be fine without him. He resolved to leave, alone, later that night.

  Both Marion and Lincoln were laying in the tall grass that covered the bright green field below. He wanted to tell his mother about his decision, but his brother would insist on coming. As if the gorillion had heard his human brother’s unspoken betrayal, Lincoln’s voice floated up on a breeze, “That’s bullsh–” Catching himself, the ape-cat stopped yelling, but Rhodes could still hear. “–it, Mom! C’mon! He’s not like them! He–”

  “I know that, Lincoln,” Marion interrupted with a dull purr. “This is not about race. I trust your brother with your life–” She gestured to the cubs laying all around them. “–and the little ones’ every single day. But it’s not about him being human. It’s for his own good. Trust me.”

  “That’s bullshit, too,” Lincoln replied plaintively. “We talke
d about it. He said he wouldn’t feel right leaving with the war on.”

  “Well, my dear,” Marion mimicked his tone placatingly, “what you two talked about doesn’t mean scat. I’m your mother and you’ll do as I say.”

  Whining loudly again, Lincoln protested, “But back when we were kids–”

  As firmly as she could with a purr, she stopped him.“You’re still kids!”

  “So you’re going to throw one of your kids out into the wild while there’s a war on?” Lincoln was still whispering but in an obvious panic. “He’ll go if you tell him to! But he’ll never come back!”

  “I’m not throwing him out–” Marion grunted.

  Knowing full well she wasn’t finished talking, Lincoln snuggled closer to her, hoping some sweetness would end the discussion there. “Thank you.”

  Calmly, she whispered into his ear, “If I thought he was scared, or in any way incapable of taking care of himself, I wouldn’t let him go. And you’re going with him.”

  Lincoln froze, trying to comprehend what his mother was telling him.

  “We will be fine without you. Rhodes needs to resume his search. He needs you to go with him. Circle back through the Green Valley, then meet us at the Five Points. We’ll go nice and slow so you two can take your time.”

  “Mom!”

  “Shhh, you’ll wake the children.”

  “I am a child!”

  “And I’m telling you, child, that for your brother’s sake, you need to go.”

  Lincoln didn’t want to leave with the war on either. He was scared, but instead of saying so, he whispered with all the anger he could muster, “You’re full of shit! You’re throwing him out just like his tribe did. This is some racist bullshit, and that’s why you’re making me tell him instead of doing it yourself.”