Crash Land on Kurai – Chapter 9

The campfire glows and gives off warmth and light as the planet above us hangs in the way of the local sun. We are a team divided for about an hour as Gen and Ryoko huddle together away from us, but as soon as Kazuo lights the fire, they come right back.

I slip off into the darkness of the trees to breathe on my own for a moment and change clothes. Stripping down to my underwear and using a low power flashlight, I examine the gash on my thigh. It doesn’t look good. I’m sure Gen did a decent job, but he’s no surgeon, he’s a programmer. I touch the skin around the wound, and it’s swollen and hot. I don’t think that’s what I want. Maybe there’s still some of the foreign object in there? It must be something like that. Kazuo gave me antibiotics, but if there’s debris inside of me, I doubt much can be done without sterile surgery.

I sit back and let the cold of eternal twilight seep into my skin. What was I thinking when I volunteered for this mission? When I was eight, I was asked if I wanted to participate in the mission, spend fifteen years training with my peers to go to Hikoboshi. Who the hell asks an eight-year-old to do something like that?

I sigh and close my eyes. At first, my life was the same schooling everyone else did, the only difference was we had our own campus, and new people showed up each year to become a part of the crew. Every summer I got the message, “Do you want to continue with the Hikoboshi training?” Every year I said yes. My mother was so proud. Going to Hikoboshi was something her family had supported for generations. I knew it was what she wanted. Did I do it for her? I really don’t know. Shintaro would have gone without me, and the family legacy would’ve been just fine. But after I turned sixteen, after I gave up on my idea of a family or marriage of my own, Hikoboshi and being the top journalist on the trip was all I wanted.

I close my eyes and push out a long breath with a short laugh. Ha. My brother still believes in a happily ever after for me. A husband and kids. A life of love.

That’s just not in the cards for me. It’s not what awaits me back home. What awaits me back home is rejection and resentment.

Home.

My fingers sink into the earth at my hips. This place feels familiar, looks familiar, smells familiar. If I close my eyes, I’m on Orihimé. My gut tells me they terraformed here and probably the planet too. Why terraform them both? The planet is massive, about ten percent bigger than Earth or Orihimé. And we observed several land masses on the planet too, plenty of room for billions of people.

I have so many questions and so few answers. All I want are answers.

The flight suit I slip into is a size too big, so I roll up the sleeves and transfer my knife. I heft the blade in my hand, pulling it from the leather sheath and checking to make sure it’s undamaged. My father gave me this knife when I turned twelve, saying it was a family heirloom and how it would safeguard me if I kept it near. ‘This knife protected the empress and later saved our family from a dishonorable end. It’s not a sword, but you’re the only one I trust with this.’

I wrap my fingers around the grip, wondering how a piece of metal could have so much history. How does a knife save one from a dishonorable end? I imagine the blade plunging into the soft flesh of a belly, hands red with blood. Is it a memory or fiction? My own hands shine white in the wan half-twilight of this foreign moon. The blood is not mine, not yet. Slipping the knife back into its sheath and into my bra strap, my anxiety lessens. This situation is crap, but at least I have a piece of home.

Powering on my tablet, I check the battery life. Eighty-five percent. I should be able to stay afloat for a week or two.

“Have you given much thought to filming yourself?”

I don’t flinch. I knew Kazuo wouldn’t leave me be for too long. It’s his job to keep an eye on me, and though he’ll deny it, he does care about me.

“Why in the name of all the gods would anyone want to see and listen to me?” I scoff as I tuck the tablet back inside my flight suit.

Kazuo leans against a tree and folds his arms across his chest. “Plenty of journalists deliver the news. They interview people on camera and give updates about what’s happening. They give their unique point of view.”

“Not me. I prefer to be transparent. I’m behind the lens. I ask questions, but no one wants to hear what I think. No one ever has.”

“That’s not true. I care what you think.”

I shrug my shoulders. “You don’t count. You’re like… my dad. It’s expected you’ll listen to me. No one else, save maybe Chieko, cares what I think.”

I try to slip past him. I have work to do, and then I really need to sleep. Maybe some rest will help heal this injury of mine.

He grabs my arm as I walk past. “Shintaro cares what you think.”

I burst into a short laugh. “Shintaro hasn’t cared about me or my feelings or opinions in years. He pretends to care, for the sake of the family, but that’s it.”

“You can’t actually believe that,” he says, his eyes narrowing. I stare back hard. “You do believe that.” He lets go and stares at me. “I thought things were bad between you two, but you always brushed it off. Does this have to do with Takéji?”

It’s as if he’s pushed me to the ground and stabbed me directly in the heart.

I draw in a long, hissing breath, straightening into a solid line. “Don’t. I’ve accepted that situation. Anything other than that is none of your business.”

I stalk off, angry at myself for confirming Kazuo’s suspicions. Yes, it’s Takéji. You’d have to be dumb not to know that.

“Everything okay?” Ryoko asks as I come back to camp, kicking up sandy dirt along the way.

“Everything’s fine. Just great,” I mumble, dropping to my knees and opening the bundles we packed away. “We’re stranded on a hostile world, we let Shien die at the bottom of a river, and the damned life pod is probably a wreck now.”

I pull out the three medkits and open each, looking for something that’ll help with the gash in my leg.

“Don’t be so dramatic. It’s not like you cared about Shien at all,” Gen says, tossing a stick into the fire.

I lay my hand on each of the three kits, looking at their contents. Something’s… wrong, missing.

“Of course, I cared about Shien.” I whirl around and face Gen and Ryoko at the fire. “I didn’t spend a lot of time with him or anything, but I didn’t want him to die, especially not like that.” I wave to the empty cliff before turning back to the medkits.

Shit.

“Where’s the data device Chieko gave me?” Pulling everything from each of the kits, I turn them inside out and dump them onto a blanket we kept.

“Hey, be careful with those. They’re sterile unless you break the packaging.” Gen jumps forward to stop me.

I push him out of the way as I lunge for the other packs. It’s not here. She told me the memory device would save lives. It has the gifts from the empress! How could I have forgotten about it?

“Kazuo, it’s not here. Remember? It was in the medkit I had when the doors closed.”

He squats down and rifles through the bundles as well. “Are you sure it’s gone?”

“What does it matter?” Gen asks. “It’s just a data device. It’s not matches or medicine or anything else we really need. You’re wasting your energy. We should pack up and get out of here. Try to find some of the other life pods.”

Kazuo and I keep our backs to Gen and Ryoko at the fire.

“What should we do?” I whisper to him, dropping to my knees and pretending to put everything back. He follows me. “Did Chieko tell you what was on it? She didn’t give me any details.”

“The empress never told you?” His eyes are wide, incredulous. I shake my head.

“The data device is important. It contains records going back to Earth and before the Environmental Decline. Classified information too. Things we could use for bargaining with the native population. We’re going to need it if we want to make any progress here.”

“So we should go find it, no?” My heart pounds in my chest, a confrontation looming. I clench my hands a few times wishing I had more than my knife. I can fight with a staff. I should make one as soon as I find a straight piece of wood.

Kazuo turns and clears his throat without warning.

“We’ll rest for a few hours and then hike down out of here to the river to bury Shien and get whatever we left behind in the life pod.”

“The hell we are,” Gen growls, jumping up to face Kazuo.

Ryoko comes around the side of the fire. “Are you out of your mind? We should go back to the life pod? That’s the first place our enemies will look. Standard operating procedure is to abandon the life pod, get to higher ground within eyesight, and await rescue.”

“We shouldn’t do that either.” Gen rounds on Ryoko. “We should find the other life pods and band together. We were fired upon for no good reason. This is war, not a fucking tea party.”

Everyone looks at me since I haven’t said a word.

“I’m with Kazuo. I need that missing data device. And I don’t want Shien to be eaten by wild animals.” I shudder and look around the woods, but nothing moves. Clutching my arms to my chest, I strain my ears to hear into the forest around us. Nothing.

Gen’s face hardens, and I remember why I punched it. It’s his way or nothing. He’s always been like this. Shintaro would come home from work some days boiling mad because Gen had taken over another meeting or insisted things be done his way. Shintaro didn’t like it, but he toed the line to keep the peace. It drove me nuts he didn’t speak up for himself.

I turn from the fire and their probing stares. My brother is somewhere out there, I hope. My best friend, Ayamé, too. I want to find them more than anything, but I have a job to do, and so do they. A blind mission to search for my family and friends is probably the worst idea I could have right now. It’ll label me as emotional and irresponsible. I can’t afford to be either.

“Fine,” Gen says, chucking a stick into the fire. “Let’s divide the supplies and split up. Ryoko and I will go find other life pods, and you two can go on your suicide mission. I want no part of it.”

I turn around to glare at him, but he’s already stooped over the bundles we pulled from the life pod.

“Hey,” Ryoko says, pushing Gen in the shoulder. “What gives you the right to boss me around?”

He pauses. “Are you coming or not?”

She looks between us and mouths ‘sorry’ to me. I shrug my shoulders. You gotta do what you gotta do.

“Fine.”

Kazuo and Gen sit and divide up the supplies, turning out the medkits and fashioning them into backpacks with some of the chair straps we stripped from the life pod. Ryoko and I sit around the campfire, chewing on smoked protein strips, munching on freeze dried berries, and drinking water.

“Will you be okay traveling alone with him?” I whisper to her.

She waves me off. “Psh, he’s fine. More bark than bite. It’s just…” She sighs and folds her arms over her knees while staring into the fire. “Will you tell them, when this is over, that I wanted to follow procedure?”

My lips quirk as I remember her interview. Ryoko always did play by the rules, and she knew them backwards and forwards. No need to learn them yourself if she’s on your team.

I knock my elbow into her. “Of course. If I’m still alive, I’ll be sure to tell them you were the pinnacle of honor and forthrightness.”

She laughs at me. “You’re a walking thesaurus, you know that?”

“I believe that’s my job.” I clear my throat and put on my best newscaster voice. “Today, on a foreign moon off the third planet in the Altair system, the Murasaki encountered certain doom at the hands of an inimitable foe. After missiles were fired and damaged the ship without provocation, the crew escaped to the moon’s surface to be met with incurable injuries, starvation, and cannibalism.”

“Ew!” She chucks a freeze-dried berry at me.

“I made that last part up, but you know, stay safe.”

“Let’s go, Ryoko.” Gen hoists a bag on his back and steps away from the fire.

Ryoko looks up at the sky and the planet hovering in the stars. The interesting part of the planet-sun dynamic is that the planet has moved through the sky while still blocking the sun. I’m bad at celestial mechanics and lunar theory, and maybe I could figure out when we’ll see the sunrise if you sat me down at a table with a flashlight, a few different sized balls, and a spool of string. I’m a visual learner.

“Look,” Ryoko says, pointing. Up in the sky, a blinking light holds steady while other flares flash into existence and die out quickly. The Murasaki. “Is it… Is it exploding?”

“Hard to tell,” Kazuo says, his face tilted back to the sky. “Could be more missile hits? Could be repairs?”

“Could be we’re in a lot of trouble if we both don’t get moving soon.” Gen holds out his hand to Kazuo, and Kazuo hesitates before grasping it. The two bow to each other. “We disagree on a course of action, but I appreciate that you’re willing to work with us, that you didn’t deny us supplies.”

Again, Gen flip-flops from being a total and utter ass to a decent human being.

He turns to me, and I perk up. “Yumi, don’t be stupid and fall off a cliff.”

Ah, he’s still an ass.

“Keep it up, and we’ll see who’s laughing when I give you a black eye next time.” I jerk my lips in a brief smile and kick my feet back at the fire. “I think you’re going to regret splitting up.”

“I think you’re going to regret staying behind. Nothing is certain.”

I hate to admit it, but he’s right.

“If you see my brother, Ayamé, or Chieko, you’ll tell them I’m still alive?”

Gen says, “No,” at the same time Ryoko says, “Yes.”

Good enough.