Crash Land on Kurai – Chapter 30

The crash site is farther away than I estimated. We skirt the mountains, keeping them on our right, and I curse whoever’s idea it was to take this mission without vehicles of some kind. But energy signals from aircraft can be detected, and if we want to be sneaky, we have to go in on foot. The element of surprise is our only advantage.

I huff and puff trying to keep up with Rin, his men and women, and Kazuo. But let’s face it. Even though I was in relatively good shape before we left, my job involves a lot of late nights editing video at the studio or sitting in cafés. I can stay awake for days at a time, but walking great distances is not my forte.

“Do you smell that?” I ask, running up beside Rin. It’s a scent I know too well. Fire. Smoke. Different from the chemical fire of the life pod but burning all the same. It took three showers to get the rancid odor of smoke out of my hair when I returned to the temple from the Aoi Uma compound.

Rin points at the horizon as he hastens into a jog. “Whoever is there set something on fire about three minutes ago. I’ve been keeping an eye on it as we’ve been walking. I also count about ten people around the crash site.”

He runs faster, and I struggle to keep up. “What are we going to do?” I pant out between breaths. A stitch forms in my side, and I wince as I try to alleviate the pain while still running.

Rin runs while crouching down. “We’ll come at them from three sides. Keep them penned in.” He motions to several people, and they peel off from the main group, sprinting ahead as we slow down. “Get down here.” He points to a boulder we’re approaching, large enough to shield four or five men behind it.

Kazuo crouches next to me, looking me over from head to toe. “I don’t think you’re well enough to travel.”

“Too late now. I’m certainly not feeling my best but what can we do?” I wave him off. There’s nothing I can do about this. “Who has the binoculars?”

Kazuo pulls them out of his backpack. “I do,” he says, rising to the top of the rock and putting them to his eyes. “Oh shit.”

“What? What’s happening?” I tug on his leg, my imagination running wild.

“It’s Ayamé and two other people from her team.” Kazuo hands the binoculars down to me. I scramble to get up, but I need a boost from him to get over the edge of the rock.

Pressing the binoculars to my eyes, the crash site pops into focus. Past the downed life pod, the grass is afire, red flames licking at the sky. But crouched next to the life pod is my best friend, the person who’s been with me as long as Kazuo or Shintaro. She has a long branch in her hand, holding it like a weapon. She’s actually a better fighter than I am, has even kicked my brother’s ass in the dōjō on one or two occasions. Then she stopped coming once her crush on him grew too great to handle in a fighting environment where emotions were always on display. She looks terrified but determined, her jaw set and shoulder muscles tight.

Beside her, two people I recognize from her team also carry handmade weapons and stand back-to-back fending off men creeping up on them. I pull the binoculars away from my eyes to get a better lay of the land. Someone is lighting the grass on fire at regular intervals between the life pod and the forest beyond, keeping anyone from making an escape.

Back to the binoculars, I catalog Ayamé’s sunburnt face and wild hair. She’s probably exhausted and sick from exposure. She won’t last long with a fire descending on them.

“We have to go in there and help them, please,” I plead with Rin as I drop back to the ground. “Ayamé and her team can fight off a few of them, but they’re plant biologists. Scientists. They can’t go up against trained fighters.”

Rin glances between Kazuo and me. His eyes tell me he’s wary.

I grab and squeeze his arm. “Please. I may never go home. I have nothing left but these people.”

He turns and tears away from me, sprinting around the rock so quickly I blink my eyes and he’s gone.

“Go,” Kazuo prompts.

I snap out of my shock, grab a rock from the ground, and call forth speed from my legs to follow. By the time I’m around the giant boulder we were hiding behind, Rin is more than halfway across the dead grass to the life pod. Smoke curls over the site, and seeing Rin’s advancement on the scene, his other men and women break into a run as well.

Rin jumps, draws his sword, and comes down on two of the men penning in my friends before they can even turn. Ayamé screams, her jaw dropped open and her legs shaking. Rin’s sword is true and swift, and the heads of two of the four men drop to the ground. Blood, sinew, and… sparks fly. Sparks? The other two turn to fight.

I swing wide as I approach the scene, keeping to the exterior of the life pod. One man setting fire to the grass walks straight through the flames towards us, covering several meters of hot, burning ground. What the hell?

Ayamé’s jaw drops even more when she sees me.

“Yumi?” She lets go the makeshift weapon and throws herself at me. I squeeze her once and then push her off as the fire-walking man runs at us. She drops to the ground, and I crank back my hand and throw the rock I picked off the ground straight at the man’s face. It bounces off of his cheek, and he doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t bleed.

I scramble backwards, pushing Ayamé behind me. The man lunges for us but crashes to the ground. Rin’s sword sticks out of his back, sparks flying and popping.

Not a man, despite the blood dripping from Rin’s sword. What did he say? “The Model Six is their most advanced, the most human android yet.” The ones I saw with Kazuo in the town had no blood to bleed. Narumi’s androids have come a long way since then.

I make eye contact with Rin as he pulls his sword from the back of the android.

“Three down,” he says, and in two leaps, he scales the life pod and disappears to the other side.

“Look, Yumi,” Ayamé says, her hand and voice shaking as she points across the grass. The two men Rin killed were androids too. Their heads disconnected from their bodies expose milky white wires.

My head swims with the sights and sounds of battle. Swords swoosh, men and women scream and even laugh as they jump and run at each other. Something sharp and metallic flies past my head and ricochets off the metal exterior of the life pod. Fights continue in the grasses around us, and the fire is spreading. I moisten my dry lips as words come back to me.

“Grab whatever you can and let’s go.”

“José can’t. His leg is broken.” Ayamé gestures to a young man, propped against the life pod, his arm limp by his side holding a knife. It looks like they set his leg and splinted it, but he’s whiter than a fair weather cloud.

“Okay, let’s drag him.” I loop one of my arms under José’s, and Ayamé takes the other side. He cries out in pain before we even get one meter away, so we heft him to his feet, and he limps between us, heading back to the safety of the mountains.

Our getaway is slow and painful, and my legs shake, trying to assist someone twice my size. I don’t want to let go because I know José is a good person. He and Ayamé have worked together for six years, and he’s always been someone both of us could depend upon for help. Now he needs our help more than anything. I can’t give up, even though I want to desperately.

“Yumi!” Ayamé stumbles, and José teeters towards her. “Behind us!”

I duck out of José’s shoulder, letting him fall to the ground in a pile next to Ayamé, and turn to face our pursuer, my knife out.

The man is a blur as he runs at us and hits Ayamé, a freight train at full speed ramming into a tiny tree. She flies through the air, hitting the ground with a sickening crunch.

Time decelerates as the android’s fist raises and slams back into Ayamé, crushing my best friend like a bug. The world is an echo chamber, bouncing screams and shouts through my empty head. My eyes register her last breath, but my brain refuses to acknowledge it.

“No!” Leaping onto the killer, I wield my knife, bringing it down into the back of its neck. Though I try to hold on, it flings me off and tackles me full force to the ground. All the breath in my body rushes out, and my chest cracks as he smothers me with the weight of his body. No one should weigh this much in such a small package!

As I’m trying to come back to my senses, I realize androids make perfect killing machines. They feel no pain. They’re strong, made of synthetic materials, not weak skin and bone like human beings. They have no feelings, no remorse.

They’re also silent as the grave. No gloating, and no need for their victims to spout last words. The android’s hand comes down on my neck, and its fingers are a powerful vise, pinching my airway closed. Its knees pin my arms down, my knife useless.

This is it. This is what I’ll see before I die.

I try to move, try to do something to save myself. I get my knee loose and pump it as hard as I can into its groin, but it doesn’t move, doesn’t grimace. He doesn’t even breathe. My vision begins to fade as José screams for help. I’m about to give up, just end it, before the android’s hand lets go, and it collapses onto me. I blink and gasp as air returns to my lungs.

“Yumi! Yumi, are you okay?” Rin swoops down, his face a few centimeters from mine as he levers the android’s body off of me. I gasp for air again, one long inhale before coughing and shrieking in pain. Several more ribs are broken, and my throat is on fire. Much like the grass surrounding the life pod.

“Oh no,” Rin says, running his hands over me. His eyes follow the path of his fingers, cataloging my injuries, and ultimately determining I can’t stand and run away.

“Grab her!” Kazuo screams, and I burst into tears, happy to hear his voice. I want to turn my head and see him for myself, but I’m afraid to move. Surely, I’m almost dead. “I’ve got José.”

“Ayamé,” I squeak out.

“I’m sorry, Yumi.” Kazuo’s voice confirms my greatest fear. I was so close to rescuing her, and I wasn’t fast enough. Dead? How can Ayamé be dead?

Rin scoops me up from the ground and races away from the wreckage. I close my eyes and try to concentrate on my body — what’s broken, what needs first aid, and what’s still working. My head and neck, possibly the two things I need most, are damaged and painful. My shoulders and chest hurt, but everything from the waist down is okay. I guess it’s better than nothing.

My mind, though, is broken beyond repair. My best friend is dead, the only person who ever believed in me one hundred percent, the person I’ve loved since I was a little girl. I’ll never see her smile or hear her voice again.

Rin sets me down on the other side of the rock we used to survey the scene before we went to rescue people. “You’re going to be okay. This is really messed up, but you’ll be okay.”

“This?” I ask, my voice a whisper.

Rin ignores me, standing up to look over the rock. He sprints away, but I have no energy and am too injured to hold him back. Within a few heartbeats, Rin has returned with José and Kazuo too.

“Watch her, and see if you can stop the bleeding,” Rin directs Kazuo, pointing at me. I want to close my eyes, go to sleep, and wake up when everything is over. Or never.

“Stay with me,” Kazuo says, his hands on my cheeks. “I bet you have a concussion, and your head is bleeding pretty heavily.” He waves over one of Rin’s men who pops open a first aid kit.

“Oh my God, Ayamé! How…? Why…?” José’s voice is lost, and my heart is gone with it. We both tear up, and my brain relives her death over and over as Kazuo tries to patch me up.

Ayamé didn’t deserve to die.

“Who is that man?” José asks me, lying down at my side and trying to peer around the rock at the battlefield. He practices the detachment I’ve seen in so many grieving widows. Talk about something else. Anything else. “I’ve never seen anyone like that.”

“Rin?”

José’s face turns back to look at the life pod, watching Rin return to the fight.

“He’s a… police officer, I guess. I don’t know what they call them here.”

“He’s pretty kick ass,” José says, a slur to his words. I make eye contact with Kazuo as he and the other man wipe down my face. Kazuo rolls his eyes, his fingers working to close up the gash on my head.

“Hopefully this won’t leave a scar, but I think your hair will cover it.”

I have no idea where the injury is. I can only thank the gods I’m still alive. My eyes fill with tears, overflowing buckets of tears. How did I survive and Ayamé did not? Why me?

Rin appears again with more of his men and another Murasaki crew member, a woman I recognize but don’t know her name.

“How many people were in your life pod, José?” Kazuo asks. Only three people here? That can’t be right.

He closes his eyes and shakes with shock. “Four. We waited for more people up on the ship, but our section lost air quickly, and the life pod launched automatically. One guy from our group wandered off in the middle the night. We haven’t seen him since then.”

This is messed up. All of it. We had protocols for what to do in a crash landing. So far, none of us has abided by them.

“I’ve shut down the remaining androids,” Rin says, kneeling down at my side. “I’m so sorry about your friend. What would you like me to do?”

I shake my head, not knowing, not sure about anything. Kazuo grabs and squeezes my hand.

“Can you drag her close to the fire? We cremate bodies at home.”

“We do as well. Wait here.” Rin runs off again, and I’m unable to stop the image of him dragging Ayamé close to the fiery grass. A moan that rises to a sob bursts from my chest. Heightened by pain, the anger and sorrow coats every nerve in my body, cutting me in two. Watching death take my best friend has cleaved my soul, bloodied it and left it broken, never to heal.

Rin returns and assesses the first aid on my body. I turn my face to him, hoping for his strength, though he owes me nothing. “Things are worse than I suspected them to be,” he says, trying to return to normalcy. “Androids are programmed not to kill. ‘Do no harm’ is the first rule in the book.” He shakes his head, sadness clouding his eyes. “When I’m sent to deal with errant androids, it’s because they’re malfunctioning and they may be a threat to humans or animals. But I’ve never seen androids programmed to attack. I’ve never seen one fight like that.”

The men and women of Kiiroi Yama whisper to each other.

“We need to be even more careful.” Rin stands and scans the horizon, the smoke around us getting thicker. “If they’re programmed to kill and on this moon, they’re even more dangerous because the radiation here breaks down their neural pathways. Even normal androids are more dangerous here. This? This is not good.”

If this is true, we’re in a lot more trouble than I originally thought.

I don’t care.

Ayamé speaks to my soul, “You should care. You still have to live.”

She’s right, of course. She always was. But, I’m allowed to mourn. I need to mourn.

“Let’s get you on your feet and moving,” Rin says, pulling me upright. “I want to leave before someone sends reinforcements.”