CHAPTER EIGHTEEN—THERE IS NO PAIN, THERE IS NO DEATH

Covering his face with the crook of his arm, Aso coughed into his sleeve as the roiling dust wafted forth. Once he felt oriented enough to stand, he got up, unable to see anything,

What happened? Are we under attack?

Men screamed and coughed.

Someone was hurt.

He grunted, and left the room where there was less smoke. Still coughing, his eyes began watering. They felt dry and itchy.

The door on his left opened and more dust wafted into the room, followed by someone, but through the haze, he couldn’t make out who. The man was only a silhouette and for some reason he just stood there.

One of the lights above them buzzed and popped out of existence.

“I’m—I’m okay,” Aso said. He coughed again as the man stepped into the room through the dust. Before him was a young man of medium build, perhaps in his thirties.

He wore loose trousers cut off at the ankle, sandals and a wide blue shirt, almost like a tunic. In his left hand there was a naked katana and slung over his back was an assault rifle.

Squinting, Aso wondering who this man was. He was so out of place in the palace. He almost looked like a heavily armed vagrant. Like a… like resistance fighter!

“Who are you?” Aso asked as he glanced back toward the other room—the room where he had lost his rifle.

“I am Ichiro Kasai. I was an Imperial Ninja.”

“Was?”

“Yes,” the strange man said. His hair fell over his forehead half covering his eyes. “I am here to kill Baila Madison.”

“Wh—What?”

Aso’s heart jumped as he took two steps back, the man before him stepping forward to maintain the same distance between them—a distance reachable by his sword.

“Where is she?”

Swallowing, Aso said, “I… No.”

“Tell me, or I will kill you.”

Life flashing before his eyes, the most prominent images though of his wife and young child.

“Tell me now, or you die.”

“She’s…” He gritted his teeth.

“Very well,” the man who called himself Kasai said, and raised his sword.

“No! Wait!” He raised a hand, as if that could stop the blade before him. “She’s not on this level. She will be on one of the higher floors.”

The man nodded. “Thank you. Now stay here, or I will kill you if I see you again.”

Swallowing, Aso nodded emphatically, knowing this assassin’s words to be true.

Ichiro turned around and left the room, closing the door behind him. There was the very real possibility that he had just lied to Ichiro, but even so, he would fell as many of Madison’s soldiers as possible—to cause the most damage possible.

And the most shame!

Footsteps stamped down the narrow corridor of wooden-paneled walls. As the first man turned the corner, Ichiro pushed his blade forward into the man’s chest, then let go of the hilt and slung his rifle around his hip and started firing fully automatic.

To hit the other soldiers, he shot through the corner of the wall. Wood chipped and shredded and men cried out.

The magazine emptied and his rifle clicked. A hot wisp of white smoke trailed up toward the ceiling from the hot barrel of his rifle.

All was quiet, save for the nearby shouting of soldiers in some other rooms.

Ichiro turned the corner and found the three dead men he had shot. He bent and picked up their magazines, slipping them into his belt. Then he reached over twisted his katana, the soldier laying immobilized on the carpet groaned as he pulled his katana free.

Continuing forward, Ichiro slung his rifle back over his hip so that it hung behind him and out of the way when he used the sword.

Stalking forward, he came to a juncture of stairs leading both up and down. Despite the first soldier he had come upon telling him that Madison was on the upper levels, if she had a bunker, she would need to move down to the ground floor.

Ichiro decided to be thorough and head downstairs.

As he hurried down the steps he hit the landing and turned around the bannister where two soldiers were coming up. He sliced one across the neck, then stabbed his katana into the other man’s eye.

They both dropped without making any sounds.

But when Ichiro came into the main hall a group of soldiers spotted him and shouted as they opened fire.

Ichiro ducked into the nearest room after crashing through the door. He ran haphazardly as he searched for an escape.

To stall the soldiers, he used one hand to point his rifle and fired a quick fusillade of bullets though the wooden door.

Without a conventional exit, Ichiro had no other choice but to go out through the window.

An explosion cracked in the front of the room. It must have been a grenade. Angling his rifle with one hand once again, Ichiro fired several more shots in the direction of the door and then opened the window. He stepped out onto the tile roof and ran.

He wasn’t on the uppermost floor, but perhaps two floors up from ground level. He found another window, tried it, but it wouldn’t open. He moved on, stepping unevenly over the roof tiles.

In the skies overhead the roar of jet engines sounded.

They’re probably mechs.

Ichiro had counted on the incompetence and arrogance of Madison’s soldiers—and that’s exactly what he got.

Now they would pay the price.

He tried another window, finding that it was open.

Ichiro climbed in and found two people huddled down by the floor. One of them, a woman, screamed when she saw him. He punched her in the face, knocking her unconscious.

The man cried out and Ichiro hit him as well, but he didn’t lose consciousness. Though he did become silent as he covered his head and shook like a leaf.

“Do not make another sound,” Ichiro warned. “I will kill you if you move.”

He left them there in the room, closing the door leading to the next chamber, a drawing room. This couple had probably been visiting government officials or upper class nobles from another province.

They wouldn’t venture into this next room for fear of their lives. What they would not know, was that Ichiro would not even been in their rooms.

Cracking the door, he peeked into the hall, first left, then right. Upon finding nothing, he moved across the gold patterned carpet past expensive paintings, vases and armor sets.

Shinju Palace truly was an opulent place.

If the Governor’s Guard didn’t know the palace was under attack before, they certainly did now. He needed to head her off if they were taking her to an underground safe room.

Normally attackers would have to assault the front gate or battle though the grounds to get to the palace. There was no need to have the safe room upstairs, especially if it was believed explosive ordinance could collapse part of the house.

No, the safe room—and there was indeed one—would be on the ground floor.

He went down another flight of stairs, but paused before hitting the landing while a group of soldiers rushed through the corridors shouting.

Heart beating a little faster, he sat in silence.

When he heard nothing more, Ichiro continued on. The stairs here met the corridor, but then continued down to the ground floor.

He took them and ended up on a tile floor. Soldiers were shouting through the house, but it was a large palatial mansion, and the house was not a barracks, so there weren’t that many soldiers inside.

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Not yet at least.

But if Ichiro took too long, reinforcements would arrive to deal with him.

“Do not move.”

Ichiro tuned, found a samurai standing before him. The man had his left hand over the scabbard of his sword, his right crossing his waist as he grasped the hilt of his katana.

The man was wearing a full set of green robes.

Ichiro regarded him.

It wasn’t befitting a samurai to cry for help.

“You will fight me here, intruder.”

Narrowing his eyes, Ichiro pushed the strap of his gun off his shoulder, letting the weapon fall to the tile floor. He had no reason to answer the samurai—his actions were answer enough to the other man’s challenge.

Grasping his sword, Ichiro held his katana forward with his hilt held low. It was a defensive stance.

The Shimajima samurai, a hard looking man with short hair and a goatee, looked at him with wild eyes.

Then he screamed and rushed forward.

Ichiro blocked his sword slash and turned his feet, forcing his body to turn about. The other man was already facing him.

Ichiro backed away near the wooden wall, waiting as the cooks beyond in the kitchen behind him watched over his shoulder.

One of them must have come forward with a meat clever, because the samurai put out his hand and screamed, “Stop! He is mine!”

The samurai rushed forward for another strike, but Ichiro moved out of the way, nearly getting his shoulder sliced as the other man’s sword landed into the soft wood behind him.

The split second it took for the samurai to dislodge his blade was enough time for Ichiro to slam his forehead into the samurai’s nose.

There was a crack and blood squirted out of his face.

As he was stunned, Ichiro cut him down with an overhanded strike across the neck.

“Here!” a soldier cried, and Ichiro jumped, rolled over the tiles into the kitchen. The cooks and maids cried out and ran out the back.

Ichiro turned around immediately as he hugged the wall.

When the soldier lunged through the doorway Ichiro brought his sword in an upward slash that took the man in the stomach. Blood sprayed and the soldier fell with a heavy grunt.

Jumping to his knees as bullets cracked through the wall, Ichiro grabbed the fallen soldier’s assault rifle. Footsteps stamped forward. He opened up in that direction, firing a screaming wave of death through the wall—his muzzle flash lighting up the darkened space until his gun emptied.

Without waiting to find out if he had killed all his targets, Ichiro turned and ran through the kitchen the way the cooks had gone.

He passed through the dining chambers and cut a soldier across the face as he turned the corner, then he ran toward the center of the palace, looking for the safe room or bunker.

If there was one, and there was no reason to doubt such a thing, then it would undoubtedly be near the central part of the house where the most protection from outside attack would be.

Sprinting through the house, he found a narrow corridor with black and white tiles. On either side were inlayed coatracks filled to the brim with furs from extinct animals.

Heading straight would take him to a set of antechambers. The pathway east led back to the kitchens and the dining room. But to his left, there was another path with a sturdy metal door.

If Madison’s guards were moving toward this point, he could head them off. Opening the door, he found a dark corridor. He did not turn on the light, as it would alarm Madison’s guards as they brought her down.

Closing the door behind him, Ichiro stepped down the cold stairs, his footfalls echoing down the space. His feet landed on the tiles at the bottom.

Something moved inside the walls—like mechanisms turning. This must have meant the space was being prepared by Madison.

Venturing further, Ichiro’s eyes were beginning to adapt to the darkness as faint shapes became visible to him, allowing him to make his way without needing to put a hand forward.

There was a door ahead and further rooms deeper into the bunker.

He opened the door and proceeded forth.

The next chamber was clearly a larger space. His feet hit carpet and he bumped into a sofa. It was a living space.

Madison could probably live down here for weeks if need be.

Those mechanisms churned again and something—like a sliding motion—echoed through the room.

This is strange.

The lights were not coming on, nothing was visibly activating.

Something scurried, then dropped into the room.

Ichiro whirled as he held his sword high.

Something was there.

He could hear it breathing, the sound of its inhalations and exhalations like that of a beast with a large mouth and lungs.

And then he saw them.

Two eyes—glinting blue in the darkness.

Something else lunged into the room on the other side.

Ichiro had nothing to lose right now, but that didn’t prevent a knot forming in his stomach as his heart tried to escape his chest.

He swallowed as those eyes rose up and then took a step forward.

So then she knows I’m down here.

Fine.

Lifting his arms, he held his katana high so he could attack with powerful slashes from on high.

“Come at me, you beasts!”

The one before him growled as the other set of eyes turned from him toward the other, then encircled the other beast and came up beside it to face Ichiro.

This was no different than when he faced off with a samurai who wanted to kill him.

Ichiro took a deep breath.

There is no fear.

Only blades.

He screamed and lunged forward, slicing forward with his katana. The beast growled, recoiling from him. Ichiro then slashed upward at the other creature, his blade landing a blow.

The creature snarled and jumped back, it’s movements quick, deft, like that of a predator of prey.

Something hit Ichiro in the side and he nearly toppled over, but he caught his balance and swiped his razor sharp katana in the direction of the attack.

It had been the first beast.

After lunging back, the second had come in to attack him, then as it retreated the first and it had attacked him.

These creatures were fighting in sync—like a pack!

There is no pain.

Only blades.

He raised his sword like before as the beasts split up and surrounded him. Slowly Ichiro backed away.

Swallowing hard, he thought, There is no death.

Only blades.

Not waiting for the beasts to attack him, Ichiro lunged toward the one on his right, striking fast, then lunging around to strike at the air behind him.

There was not “nothing” there.

The second beast had moved in to attack him while he had his back turned, and instead he had sunk his blade into something hard—a skull.

The creature snarled and yelped as Ichiro fell atop it. He grunted loudly as the beast squirmed and thrashed, a strange composure of fur and cold slickness.

It whipped at him, striking him across the face. He landed heavily on his back. As he was momentarily immobilized the other set of eyes lunged forward with its blue orbs, snarling and snapping.

Ichiro spread his legs so they wouldn’t be scratched as sliced downward with his katana. He hit something, but the creature jerked back away from him.

He hadn’t landed a wounding blow, otherwise it would have made some kind of noise, just as they had when he had struck them previously.

The creature he had struck across the head flopped noisily, still yowling and snapping, but now its movements were faint and pathetic.

It was dying next to Ichiro.

As he got up, the pain from the slash in his back made itself known.

There is no defeat.

Only the blade of a ninja and that of his enemies.

The ninja gritted his teeth and screamed, all his hate and rage boiling up into his action. He lunged at the second beast as he moved his sword in practiced arcs, providing an offensive defense as he moved up in its space.

The creature hissed and snarled, lunged back, lashed out, but it hit his katana like a tree and snarled.

Ichiro gave the creature no time to recover.

These… things—they were not like any beast Ichiro had ever encountered. They were skulking, but ferocious. In a way, they were powerful, yet careful and almost cowardly.

He lunged forward and something heavy landed on his left shoulder. He thrust forward with his palm behind his katana hilt. The point of Ichiro’s blade hit something soft and his weapon sunk into the beast as its claws sunk into his shoulder.

The next thing he knew, all the air was pressed from him as the beast fell atop him.

He moaned, half suffocated of air.

The beast was heavy.

Ichiro squirmed, grabbing and grasping with his hands, pulling the carpet and moving the furniture from the other side of the room.

As soon as his torso was free he sucked in a deep lung full of the putrid air coming from this creature’s fur covered, yet scale-ridden body.

Once he was free, Ichiro gasped for air and fell.

He blinked at the lights in his eyes, the pain in his ribs on his right side smarted like alcohol had been pressed to his open cuts. Glancing at his wounds, he saw that he had slashes across his clothes. The wound on Ichiro’s left shoulder felt similar, along with the wound on his back.

The lights were on!

Something inside him jumped.

Glancing up, he saw the beast and shouted out of pure shock and fear, but the creatures were both dead.

All of his strength was sapped. His limps felt like wet paper. He used his katana to stand, pushing the point into the carpet. He grunted as he lifted himself up, holding his left fist over his shoulder wound.

The creature…

It had the head of some kind of cat-like creature. There were no back legs. The body ended in a scaly tail. But what was most shocking were the creature’s bare shoulders and arms.

They looked like…

Like a man’s!

The hands were very man-like, but they were grotesque and clawed with curving nails half again the length of any man’s fingers.

Swallowing, his stomach heaved.

Ichiro glanced up at the door leading to the main antechamber and snarled. The creatures… they were chimeras! Unholy amalgamations of various beasts and men—an abomination against the world and the gods.

Glancing through the tempered glass, Ichiro saw the outlines of people coming down the stairs. There had to be at least ten or fifteen.

The doors opened with a hiss of pneumatic parts, revealing two soldiers with their guns raised, Baila Madison behind them.

She smiled smugly.

Ichiro’s lip curled in hatred and disgust.

She came into the room after her soldiers and glanced down at the beasts. She covered her mouth with her hand. “They may reek, but they’re powerful beasts, would you not say so, Mister…?”

“My name,” he growled, “is Ichiro Kasai.”

She nodded. “These beasts are only two of many.”

“You are sick.”

She laughed.

“The amalgamation of science and sorcery can be a cruel and grotesque mistress,” she said, her gray hair bobbing at her shoulders. She was middle aged and had an arrogant expression, her eyes narrow and her skin white like milk. She was a half breed.

“I was quite concerned when you came crashing in here on your mech,” she added. “Someone will have to pay for that mistake.” She paused. “And yet…”

With his katana still in his right hand, he held his arm close to his bleeding ribs. “And yet?”

She shook her head as she smiled. “And yet, you’ve provided me with the perfect test—a powerful intruder versus my chimeras.” She looked at them and laughed triumphantly. “I would say they did quite well.”

“If you mean they ambushed me in an enclosed space in the dark,” he said, “then yes, maybe your disgusting pets did well.”

She chuckled.

“Well, thank you for everything, Mister…”—she had already forgotten his name—“whatever your name was.” She turned around to leave. “Now execute him.”

Ichiro grunted.

There is no pain…

Only blades. And my enemy.

Using his reserved of strength, he lashed out with his katana, taking the two soldier’s heads off in a single slash.

As she turned, her eyes widened and she stepped back, but tripped and fell on her backside. “KILL HIM!”

Ichiro tossed his katana through the door at the soldiers in a twirling horizontal spin that forced them to cringe and jump out of the way as he simultaneously jumped forward, his palms landing on the handles of the two fallen assault rifles laying in front of him.

The soldiers opened up, their guns flashing and their bullets cracking into the room as Ichiro grasped those handles, rolled and brought the two assault rifles to bear.

Bullets exploded through his already torn flesh and the ninja saw his own blood splatter in front of him.

There is no pain.

Only death.

He slammed down both triggers letting loose a double fusillade of gunfire.

His guns flashed, taking the soldiers down as Governor Madison’s body shook and convulsed while bullets passed through her.

Ichiro’s rifles clicked and smoke rose above the barrels.

When all was quiet, he was pleased to see the bodies before him, but mainly the body of that monster Baila Madison, a dead soldier slumped over her lap.

Smiling, he laughed.

Then something hot leaked out of his mouth and over his chin.

Dizziness took him and the room swayed.

“There… is… no death…”

He coughed and more blood came out of his mouth tasting of metal and salt.

“There is… only… vengeance.”

Then the room whirled and the carpet rushed up to meet his face.