SLATE

Air is never free and I forgot to pay the price.

Spine meets spine as I slam into the ridge of the tree. My skull hits hard bark like a kettle drum. I bounce, bend, and am born up by my attacker.

Sweeps of nauseating pain. My mind is in and out of hot noise. The world contorts, bends, and splits open like my skull.

A blow to the back of the head always feels wet. I can taste the iron from here. I bite into something soft.

Steel slips from my hand. My arm is dislocated behind my back.

I draw the justicar on instinct.

She is stronger than I credited. Technique could account for only so much of the impact. Technique — as though the alien practiced it.

Her hand is over my mouth.

I pour salt and fury into her blue eyes.

I will put the bullet in her spine, and watch her try to crawl. but if she wants to kill me, why now? Why not do it on the ship?

I cough blood and spittle which bubbles in the hand over my mouth.

Everything. I could lose everything because I am weak. Because I let my guard down. But I will not waste water on her.

The heat of a sharp edge or a shallow cut - or both - is at my throat.

Her eyes are bottomless; they drink my rage and pain, without flinching. She nods her head slowly, rhythmically.

It comes back slowly. In the twist of the forest, over a root and under branches, I sprint into a clearing and am speared by a striking snake. The motion is elastic acceleration and pinning force.

I breathed too much and too deep. Took more than my share, and now I am punished. The collector comes calling.

Then I see it.

The forest stalks forward. Figures like trees blurring. My eyes shift into focus — men. Or, at least, aliens, moving silent as wraiths.

Pain is a fuzzy embrace of my brain. With it comes a noise-canceling stillness, like a ship emerging from an asteroid field.

I see everything. The motes of dust on a rebel beam of light that warms my face. An eyelash on a pale cheek. The delicate reflective patterns on her eyes, and the cool depths beyond, like water.

I retreat into my mind space as the world splinters into fragments.

There is no pain in the mindspace - unless you want there to be. Pain registers as interference; it slows things, makes them hazy. The mind-space cannot mingle with the stream of consciousness - not directly - so the removal of pain is a requirement for the smooth operation of the mind-space.

A clock appears and slows to a crawl. From the mindspace, I control the perception of time or the speed of thought.

I summon my avatar, without context. Data from the nervous system is collected at a cellular level and reconstructed by the mind-space. Every injury and sensation is collected and analyzed. The conscious mind, overwhelmed by sensation, is not able to give an accurate report. But the mindspace is not limited in the same way.

There is no need to visualize the injuries - in the mindspace I know what they are. But we are visual animals. So I turn the avatar with mental gestures, surveying the injuries that would be obscured by the tree I am impaled on.

The avatar is an anatomical model that can be pulled apart by layers.

I swipe aside my hair to examine the impact - minor head trauma to the back of the skull. The skin of my skull has split, and blood trails my neck.

Minor spinal trauma to the thoracic vertebrae is visualized with a red glow. With a command, the skin and muscle become translucent.

Muscle trauma through the neck and back highlighted throb through transparent skin. Muscle and nerve pain radiates through the nervous system.

Dislocated shoulder, dangling a gauntleted right hand.

The avatar turns to me. It is the arrow in my gut that is the real problem.

Health at 43% and falling.

There are fewer nerve endings in the internal organs. Even so, the avatar registers that the arrow has pierced mid-abdomen, and nicked the aorta and gut. Bloody shit. Literally.

This means a good chance of infection and little chance of surgery. No hope of self-repair, not unless I’ve got nanites left in my bloodstream - their presence might not register in the mindspace.

5 minutes of functional time, before my shell becomes a prison.

I set a five-second timer — real-world time. A soldier does not usually enter the mindspace in the heat of battle. So whatever scene plays out, is already old. But I have nowhere else to go.

I call up the surroundings.

The rendering spreads outwards from the avatar — Yven, the tree at my back, the underbrush, the figures in motion — until I stand in the crawling tableaux. It renders in the speed I have assigned. The fuzz of pain registers as blurred detail.

She presses me against the tree. With her left arm, she pins my shoulders, the blade still in her hand but no longer at my throat. With her right, she staunches the bleeding abdomen.

She presses against me with her body, making her form large, her cloak spread over us. Her head just from the deep hood to take in the scene.

She is in exquisite high definition - my mind knows her form. Every dark hair drifting, every long eyelash curling.

I dismiss her; she sucks up the resources of the mind-space.

Better.

I walk in frozen time, leaving my avatar pinned to the tree. Wood splinters in from trees in concussive clouds. Arrows crawl in mid-air. I add trajectory lines like multicolored lasers and see no immediate threat from pointy objects - besides the obvious. Are we hidden, or just unattended?

I trace the lines - they are not aimed at me. At least, I am not the only target.

The moment of the arrow's impact is lost, even to the unconscious mind.

I have to assume, at this point, that the figures are racially identical Yven, though I have no immediate confirmation. I see no pale forms and glowing blue eyes but I have no idea of the genetic variance of her species.

Through the haze, I see blurring swords and axes. Their clothing is a blur, though I make out some in muted greens and shades of black. It is not any type of uniform, but I judge these to be opposite sides.

Then there is the black of the unknown - the void - on the other side of the tree. Arrows trace back to it, as though appearing from the darkness of non-existence.

But there are also things I cannot account for. An old man with a staff or walking stick which seems a poor choice of weapon, with no obvious application — a poor choice for the soldier, also. An unarmed woman with her arms thrust outwards is nowhere near enough to land a hit with whatever martial combat she wields. A lance of red fire in the air. Wounds appear that seem to have no source.

In the center of it all, glides a mind, wobbling under the unbalanced weight of a bundle of excited fur - I had almost forgotten the ship's computer and the wolf somehow snagged on the floating transport device.

I pull up a war room table on the forest floor and consolidate the information onto the war map so that there is nothing left but the table and an accurate representation made of a hand-crafted landscape with painted figurines.

It is a psychological tool to prepare my mind for battle. My mind is the only weapon I have at my disposal, and it will not be in its optimal state.

Sometimes, too much information can be just as dangerous as too little.

I bend down to look at the figure against the tree.

The primary problem is one of mobility - the arrow pinning me, like an insect or a display, is severely limiting my options.

I cannot break the arrow, or it will, with high probability, splinter inside me. Not that splinters will make a difference to the outcome. I’m dead either way — unless there’s a butcher nearby, or whatever passes for a surgeon in this world.

I could slide off the arrow forwards if the girl will permit it. She is the entomologist in this scenario, I am her specimen.

Death will come fast, at least I will die on my feet.

The beginning of a plan begins to form in my mind.

The timer completes its revolution. The clock accelerates.

The world rushes back.

From the silent mindspace, the rush of pain is excruciating, as though felt for the first time - indeed, far worse.

The pain resolves into a fog of comforting pain. There is more clarity now like I have spent time in deep meditation.

Yven catches me at the moment my eyes roll back into my head. I have her attention then. Good, I will need her help.

I make moves to push off the tree, feeling the tug of the arrow on me. So doing, I signal my intention.

Yven gives a vigorous shake of her head and pins me with force, that ignores muscle and connects bone to bone to grinding tree. She relents quickly and I can breathe again.

She does not know her strength or rather my weakness.

This is why her tackle split my scalp.

I have seen her body, though not as much as she has seen of mine. She is fit but not excessively muscular. How can an inferior physique, at least in dimension, could possess superior strength? Perhaps it is something like density? Could I also become so strong?

Another attempt to climb the arrow is met by another shake of the head, and a firm push, that seems to require conscious restraint.

I meet her eyes. She understands. Language is just a game to her, reading expressions and behavior is her real talent. Are they all this strong, or is it just her?

Let’s see how they do against bullets.

I look down at the justicar on the ground, an impassible distance for the crippled arm that can do not more than dangle with purpose. The arrow just opened negotiations. Let me off or hand me the weapon.

She might not have seen a gun before, but the inference is not difficult to make.

We exchange looks that speak.

“You’ll fall over if I don’t hold you up.” She says.

“But I’m held up by this pointy stick, see?“ I say.

“Your arm is useless.” She says.

“But I have two of them, see?” I say.

“One looks as good as the other.” She says.

“You’re going to need me,” I say.

“You are a liability.” She says.

“You don’t know guns,” I say.

The look I give her does not make arguments but settles the argument. The last wish of a dying man will do that.

“Fine,” her eyes say. “Just don’t shoot me with it.”

“No promises," I say aloud.

I can't say I'm not tempted. But the itch to put a bullet in her faded once I realise she was trying to save me. I don’t have the luxury of shooting people who are trying to help me. If it was a helpful world, maybe, but with a sample size of one? Who knows? She may be my only ally.

And as hard as it is to admit - I need her.

Something slithers on the ground — a white coil falls from underneath her heavy cloak. I think I’m hallucinating. I look between her and it. She arches an eyebrow.

The gun lifts into my field of view, over her right shoulder.

I am too shocked to take it right away and, frankly, a little suspicious.

I don’t know why it takes me so long or I am so shocked — something to do with my declining mental state.

The devil has a tail.

I feel the tug of the arrow as I laugh to myself. “Giddy” is not a word I would often use of myself. Yet something about the situation, and the loss of blood makes me lightheaded. I nod to her in and she appears satisfied that I acknowledge her. Her expression contains a trace of vulnerability.

Was she hiding it or did she just not have a reason to use it?

What a world - and I have only seen the smallest part.

We adjust awkwardly; my chin brushes her forehead. She shimmies. My left-hand rests on her shoulder. I take the gun in my off-hand.

The gun is heavy in my hand, and I think it is more comforting than useful.

The world around is still and silent as though waiting to hear its first gunshot.