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 them. 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.
Chapter Nine
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 Matsu
moto 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 just 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.
There was one who looked ex-military. His gun was trained on the dark, and he was scanning and re-scanning the hillside. He glanced at me once and then ignored me. I was a lot more worried about him.
The third stood just behind the tough. He was older, at least mid-forties, tall and lean with narrow features. He had the air of someone who was used to giving orders and being obeyed. I can identify people like that easily because until just recently that description covered most of the people I knew and all of my relatives.
It was him that I looked at when I spoke, my hands held up, and my palms spread wide.
“Colonist,” I said.
The tough grunted.
The man behind him looked at me a long time.
“Matsumoto,” he countered, his voice so low, it was almost a hiss.
It happened for the second time. I split so suddenly that if I was still in my body it would have taken my breath away.
I was in Roman’s body again. I was standing out on a balcony or a deck of some kind and hovercraft were zipping all around, blocking any outside sound. It had all the usual charm of a public park on a rooftop. They had a lot of those on New Greenland. I must have been near a downtown to have so much traffic whizzing around.
The blonde from before was staring intently at Roman. She didn’t know it was me looking back at her. She was the Sergeant of his fireteam, right? No self-respecting Sergeant that I knew wore a dress like that. The hem line was miles high and the v-neck dipped dangerously low. I frowned in disapproval. No need to put all the goods in the front window.
Of course Roman was doing amazing things now that he had possession of my body. My long braid flew like a thick sailing rope, and my feet and hands flew even faster. A series of quick blows had the tough doubling over and his flechette gun in my hands.
“Roman?” The blonde asked, “Did you hear me? You need to hear me, Roman. It’s for your own good. I...care...about you.”
Her eyes lowered and then peeped up through her lashes. Man alive, she was giving him the works. Those eyes were so full of desire that you could hardly mistake her intent. Poor Roman. I had unintentionally interrupted a special moment. I hoped he’d take his body back promptly. I wasn’t sure what to do with it.
Back on Baldric I had the tough laid out on the floor, one foot on his neck and the other pointing the flechette gun at the older man. My whole body heaved with my breath, but I looked like death made alive I was so dangerous.
I snapped back into my body.
I was grateful to Roman for saving my bacon again, but worried about what I’d just experienced. Having lost him so fully, I was now beginning to appreciate what I’d had with my guardian. Seeing someone else rushing into my place with him wasn’t easy. I was trying not to feel hurt. After all, I’d done nothing but ruin Roman’s life. He had a right to try to find some happiness with someone else if he could. I pushed a little more weight into the foot I had on the tough’s neck. I wasn’t jealous of the blonde. How much weight would it take to hurt him? I stomped down a little harder, trying not to think of low v-necks and mile-high legs.
“Matsumoto,” the older man said, narrowing his eyes. “But not as advertised...”
“I don’t look good in Pacifism,” I said, lowering one eyebrow.
“So I see,” he said speculatively, eyeing his tough. The military man was still ignoring me. He must be taking orders from the older man, “but I was referring to the fact that you are alive.”
“For now.”
“Mmmm,” he looked like he wanted to say more, but stopped himself. “You are all colonists?”
“Prisoners,” I confirmed, “and three marines escorting us to the colony from where our ship crashed.”
“Your ship crashed,” he repeated, “as did our shuttle.”
“It seems like SOP for prisoner delivery on Baldric,” I agreed with a straight face.
He chuckled, but the hard look never left his eyes. It was then that I recognized him. He was the man in the holograph that Roman had been studying in his briefing.
“You would be Vera Matsumoto,” he said, as if he were laying down a face card.
“And you are Patrick Driscoll,” I said. It satisfied me when his face went from smug to alert. His eyes narrowed. “I hate to rush you Mr. Driscoll, but on Baldric ‘jumping at shadows’ isn’t nearly enough of a response to them. My compatriots are waiting to be picked off one by one. We would be less nervous with a human structure over our heads.”
As if on cue, someone screamed. I hoped it was just for effect, and not because they were now choking on a bright shade of yellow. These days when I hoped for something I was almost guaranteed to get the opposite result.
“Well then,” Driscoll said, slowly, “Sammy?”
“Yep,” the military man said, lowering his flechette gun, but still eyeing the shadows.
“If Schumner,” he said, pointing to the man under my foot, “is still alive, I think you could show an act of good faith as well, Matsumoto.”
I had almost forgotten I was standing on someone’s throat. I removed my foot carefully, taking a step back. I held onto the gun though. It was about
time I was armed. Besides, I didn’t like how Driscoll said “Matsumoto.” Our truce seemed temporary, like it was borne of his curiosity and would only last as long as that curiosity did.
I racked my brain to think of what they’d said about him in the briefing. I’d been pretty occupied with everything else going on at the time. Oh, yes... he was a terrorist. He’d been targeting Matsumotos. I suddenly had a bad feeling about entering that tiny space with him. What was the worst he could do though? No, really, what was the worst? Because if it was worse than spending the rest of my life as a giant mushroom, then maybe I should be staying outside. I clung to the flechette gun with white knuckles.
For the present I stood outside, cancelling out Sammy with his flechette gun, as my original cronies started to filter in. Ian gave me an odd look. He was becoming more opaque as time went on.
There were twelve colonists in total. Our numbers were dwindling. What had the doctor called us? Reinforcements? Mutambi and Fergus brought up the rear.
“Corporal Maxwell?” I asked.
Mutambi shook his head.
“I’ve been promoted.”
“Guns at the door or no enter-ee,” Driscoll said in a weird accent.
Fergus dropped his and headed in with no objection. Mutambi looked like he would, but another scream in the dark made him shrug and put his down, too.
I clutched mine tightly in my fists.
Chapter Ten
“Well then, Matsumoto?” Driscoll asked, nodding to the flechette gun.
I hiked up the assault rifle-style weapon to my shoulder. I wasn’t letting go. Based on the readouts it was armed and still loaded with 68% of its original flechette armament. I didn’t know the specs on this gun. I was an ambassador, not a gun nut, but they were usually topped up with about 10k of tiny flechettes.
The Splitting (The Matsumoto Trilogy Book 2) Page 6
