Crash Land on Kurai – Chapter 19

Either painkillers in general suck on this world or the monks get all the weak drugs. I find it hard to believe that any advanced society can’t handle a migraine but that’s exactly what I deal with for eighteen hours straight. Back home, I can visit the clinic, get help, and be back on the job four to six hours later. Here? No such luck.

I tolerate the situation as best as I can. The room can’t be dark enough. The temple, usually so peaceful, sounds like elephants are running through the halls at all hours, and the smells of breakfast and lunch make me vomit more than once. The painkillers knock me out, and then I wake from unconsciousness curled into a ball on the floor, not remembering how I got there. I’m alone, I blink my eyes, and Kazuo is with me. I have no idea when he joined me.

“These migraines wipe us both out,” he says, pushing on my forehead to relieve the pain. He’s the most patient person I know.

Dawn filters into the room an hour after I start to feel relief. Time has passed, but how much I’m uncertain.

“Why are you so patient?” I ask Kazuo, sipping on weak tea after a mild meal of porridge once the majority of my headache subsides. Halos surround everything in the room, and my forehead aches from where Kazuo pressed on it for hours.

“I need to be to deal with you.” He winks at me, and I don’t have the energy to smile. “Being patient has always come with the jobs I’ve had. Dealing with my crazy sister required patience. The work I did before you were born required patience.”

“The survival training with Julia or when you were an assassin?” I’m not okay with assassins (I do value life, I swear), but knowing the sweet and patient man I grew up with once killed people for a living reminds me that people are full of dark secrets. Secrets I always want to know.

“Both,” he says, kicking his feet out and leaning against the wall of my room. We sit next to each other on cushions on the floor, the only places to relax besides the bed. Temples are not known for being luxury accommodations. “I once had to follow someone for six weeks without them seeing me.” His eyes soften, and he stares off into space. “That was a long time ago, and I learned on that job I was meant to do other things.”

I finish my tea and set the porcelain cup aside, sighing as I rest the back of my head against the wall. It smarts, though, so I pull it back. I still have a small bump there from the attack on the ship. My rib aches, but the huge gash on my leg is holding together.

“How are you feeling?” Kazuo asks, gauging my reaction.

“Better. My head is sensitive, and my eyesight is blurry, but otherwise, same old same old.”

He nods, pursing his lips. “I believe you.”

Well, that’s something. His instincts are still intact.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a package of black plastic. “Guess what this is?”

It doesn’t look familiar at all. I shake my head as he turns the package over. On the opposite side are glass vials stamped with a kanji character I recognize.

“Is that a sedative?” I take the package from him and squint at the tiny writing. My eyes are fuzzy enough to make reading hard though. A bulge in the plastic of the wrapping makes me think the package is wired for inventory, maybe with a tracking chip.

“It’s a barbiturate. I’m not sure which one, but the dosage indicates a small amount would put a horse out.” Kazuo raises his eyebrows at me, and I hand them back to him.

“So? Are you holding onto them in case I need them?” They probably already used barbiturates on me during my surgery and migraine. It’s good to know they’re around.

“No,” Kazuo says, jumping up and pulling me from my spot on the floor. “We’re going to escape and go find Shintaro.” He crosses the room and grabs the native tablet Tamura gave to him.

“No, no, no,” I say, waving my hands in the air. “Don’t turn it on.”

“Stop worrying. Rin showed me how to use it. We haven’t been chipped yet, so the tablet and their satellite system won’t be able to track us or interact with us.”

I avoided getting microchipped at home, where we use a specialty microchip to communicate with animals, but it looks like I won’t be able to avoid it here. And who knows what theirs does?

“You have to see what they have in here,” he says, tipping the tablet to me. “I’ve been studying what to expect on Hikari when we arrive there. Yumi, it’s so advanced. Even more than what I was used to on Earth. You’re going to be blown away. But then I found maps of this moon.”

On the screen of his tablet, the topographical map of this area zooms in. “Here we are in the temple. And these are all the safe areas within thirty kilometers.”

“What’s a safe area?”

Kazuo pulls out the chair for me to sit. “It’s like a neutral zone. The moon is divided up into areas for each of their corporations and these places lie between them. Then there’s a whole dark area of the map that just says ‘RESTRICTED’ and I don’t have access to information about it.”

I blink my eyes to force them to focus. Eighty percent of the moon’s surface is split between Aka Matsuba and Aoi Uma with the safe areas between them. The black area sits vacant with no data.

“Hmmm, that might be where the exiled people are, no?” I tap on the restricted zone, and nothing happens.

“My guess is yes.” He points to each blinking dot on the map. “Rin tells me he suspects our people are being held in caves in this area — Aoi Uma territory.”

He circles his finger between two safe areas, about ten kilometers from here. “You and I will lace the afternoon tea with barbiturates. That will slow down about sixty percent of the staff.” He pulls up a map of the temple, zooms in on the back quarter where the kitchen is and points to a tunnel. “This tunnel here leads to the outside. It’s how they bring in and out supplies for the temple kitchen. The exit is out by the mountains, past the sunshades. If we’re lucky, we’ll sneak out and away before most people wake up.”

If we’re lucky? When have I ever been lucky? I have a cracked rib, an injury on my thigh that’s healing, and I’m just off a migraine. Sure, I’m not usually one to think anything is too risky. I’ve gotten myself into a bunch of situations where my life or job was on the line, but this does not sound like a good idea.

“Eh, I’m not so sure about this,” I say, standing up and pacing the room. “We don’t know the land, the people, and the conflicts. What’s up with those androids? And this treaty Tamura was talking about? What about those people in exile? How angry are they? We have a million questions and no answers. You know how much I hate that. And what happens when we find our people? Do we become hostages too?” I sit down on the bed, well aware that just talking and standing is hard for me. Yet Kazuo wants us to go on the run.

Kazuo squats down in front of me. “There’s no time like the present. While you were suffering, Tamura left the compound and took several of his men with him. I haven’t seen Rin since then. I think he went with them.”

I grab his hand. “Let’s wait for him to come back. He seems sympathetic, and maybe he would side with us. Help us.” Yes, this is our best possible move. We need someone on our side.

“Yumi.” Kazuo’s voice aches with regret. “Rin works for a corporation too. Did you see the yellow mountain crest on his clothes?” I nod, remembering it on the sleeve of his shirt. “Red Pinecone, Blue Horse, Yellow Mountain. Aka Matsuba, Aoi Uma, and Kiiroi Yama.” He ticks them off on his fingers. “It’s some police or military corporation. They don’t take sides.”

My throat is dry, and my head swims. I knew about Kiiroi Yama, but I didn’t realize they wouldn’t take sides. But if Rin could be persuaded to join us, I feel certain we’d have a chance to survive. He joked with me, smiled at me. We had a tenuous connection I could’ve nurtured into something more.

Kazuo frowns. “I can tell you’re disappointed, but it’s not like any of these people are our allies. Look, it’s mostly monks, students, and kitchen staff left here. If we drug them, we can get away. No problem. Do you want to clean toilets for the rest of your life?” I shake my head as he crosses the room to the dresser. Opening a drawer, he pulls out the kind of clothes Rin was wearing. “Of course you don’t. You’re Minamoto, and we have so much more we have to do. I believe other Minamotos are hidden in another corporation, and we need to make contact with them.”

“How do you know that?”

“Conversations I’ve overheard. You’re the talk of the temple. Here. I stole these from other people’s rooms. They should fit us both.”

Shoving the image from my mind of Rin’s face as he smiled at me, I concentrate on Kazuo and the clothes he carries across the room.

He delivers a pair of pants to my outstretched hand. “This is the material that can shed water.”

I hold the pants up to the light, stretching the material and peering into the weave. I wonder what it’s made of. “Do you know how it works?”

“Not really. But according to the tablet, it will stay dry and protect us from UV radiation as well. This is why they used it to cover themselves from head to toe.”

I weigh the options.

We can stay here, surrender ourselves to Aka Matsuba, and try to live peacefully until the rescue mission shows up. It’s the most sensible thing to do, and the majority of Orihimé people would do well in a competitive environment like this. Would I even fit in on this world? I know I personally will have problems finding satisfying work, and yes, I’ll most likely be screwed by the system, but wouldn’t it be better for everyone else? Tamura gives me the chills with his talk of life credits and what we owe him. I don’t trust him.

Or we can try to do this thing on our own. We find shelter on the moon and avoid detection until the rescue mission shows up. But who knows when that will be? Did our distress beacon make it out? Do we have a chance to return home? How would we defend ourselves? Eat? Live? The situation might be hard, but we’d all be together. We’d be able to live like we were raised, maybe even thrive if we can travel to the blank areas of the map.

If we stay and live peacefully, though, I might get more answers about this moon, Hikari and its way of life, the androids, why they’re at war, et cetera. But I’m not allowed to be a journalist here, so I may not get answers anyway. My life is worth very little.

“What’s the word, kako? Even if we leave and we’re caught, I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world. At least we’d have tried to help our fellow crew members.”

Perhaps not for him. He has over 80,000 credits now to bargain with. Me? I’m poor by Hikari standards, and I’m not so sure I can live without Aka Matsuba giving me a living wage.

“I don’t know what to do. Honestly.” I worry the fabric of the pants between my thumb and forefinger. “All I know is that Shintaro or Ayamé could be out there, injured or dying, and I don’t want to give up on them yet.”

We should fight for them. It’s the right thing to do. I would hope someone would search for me if the situation was reversed.

“Let’s do it.”