Kastori Revelations (The Kastori Chronicles Book 1) (11 page)

Celeste found herself unable to argue.

“If he could stop moping around like a whiny kid and get it together, and if he could ever listen to orders, then our situation would have half its problems removed immediately. He’s a danger to us right now, one that I would be just as happy leaving behind.”

“Crystil!”

Celeste had responded more aggressively than she wanted. With her response out, though, she doubled down.

“Yes, he makes mistakes. Yes, he’s his own man, and he does things often without regard for orders, and yes, that can cause problems. But my father trusted him to be the heir to the empire. Cyrus is reckless, but he’s fiercely protective and loyal of those he cares about, so much so that I know he’d sacrifice himself for me. If he’s a danger, it’s only because he doesn’t see how we can bring things together and save ourselves. Right now, he’s probably thinking about how there’s a monster that we have terrible odds against and we have no water beyond the next three years. Show him that there’s still hope. He won’t be a danger. I promise.”

Celeste braced herself for a pointed rebuke, but refused to budge from her position.

“That’s all fine,” Crystil said. “But my mission is—”

“Forget the mission,” Celeste said, and she spoke quickly as Crystil’s eyes widened. “I don’t mean, literally forget the mission. I just mean, all we’ve got is each other. There’s no mission to finish if there are no people to do it with. OK?”

Celeste had trouble making out how Crystil actually felt.
Maybe it’s because even she doesn’t know how she feels.

“How you handle him is up to you,” Crystil finally said.

Celeste gently placed her hand on the container and closed her eyes, trying to think about anything but Crystil’s anger.

“Where have we not tried searching?” Celeste asked.

“The mountains,” Crystil said. “Cortanus says he found some caves we can try and explore. This is going to take a very long time, though. Depending on how those caves connect, if at all, or how deep they go, we may run out of supplies before we ever finish exploring.”

“Is there any chance that the ship can create new technology to purify the water?” Celeste asked.

“I would need proper programming to do so,” Cortanus said. “It would depend on your research.”

Crystil walked out of the room with a look that said, “Don’t count on it,” and her boots clearly indicated where she was going.

“Crystil!” Celeste said.

Her commander didn’t stop, and Celeste ran full speed to Cyrus’ quarters. She got there just in time to see the door open with Crystil at attention, looking at the older Orthran reading a book.

“It’s getting good just now, they finished riding their second sandcrawler,” Cyrus said, not looking up. “Maybe we should learn how to ride the beast at night. That’s what they did in the book, and I’ll bet they can use them to conquer their enemies.”

“Oh, really?” Crystil said in a voice that put Celeste on edge. “And who are our enemies?”

Cyrus smirked, still not looking up.

“Ourselves, obviously.”

Finally, he closed the text and looked up at the two of them.

“And that’s a battle we can’t win anyways, so I’m not sure any amount of riding skills will save us.”

Celeste held out the weak hope that this encounter, both of them on different edges of despair, would not end in disaster. Cyrus used the silence as a chance to saunter casually over to the window and gaze out.

“Cortanus has recommended we explore the caverns in the mountains,” Crystil said deliberately. “We first need to chart a course to the mountains, given the extensive length of the forest. We leave in the next thirty minutes.”

She paused and waited for Cyrus’ answer. Celeste couldn’t tell if this was a test or miraculous patience from the commander. Cyrus slowly turned, the same defeated look on his face from just minutes ago.

“And then what? We find water? Yay. We can prolong our misery. Instead of dying from thirst, we’ll eventually die from a giant monster killing us—or from who knows what else on this planet. Or maybe I’ll just kill myself the way you, Crystil, drive me mad. You think you’re some dominant warrior in charge over us simple-minded fools, but it takes all of us. There can’t be a leader. Only an organized group. You, Miss Dictator, just want to do things your way—OK, that’s cool. But, if you do, it’ll be a one-woman show. Or at least a no-man show.”

Celeste slowly backed away from Crystil. Celeste could practically feel the heat in Crystil rise.
This is the breaking point. Someone’s going to kill the other.

Crystil walked over to Cyrus, mere inches from his face.

“Let me make one thing clear, Cyrus. Your father appointed me commander of this ship. I didn’t appoint myself. You didn’t. Your sister didn’t. Your father did. If you want to defy the wishes of your father, you will do so outside this ship, where you will not harm Celeste’s or my survival. I will never defy Emperor Orthran as long as I live, and he comes before you. You can mock me behind my back, or directly. You can pit your sister against me. But there is no ‘we’ when you don’t know the first thing about surviving an environment like this. Get in line, listen for once, and then maybe I won’t be such a ‘Miss Dictator.’ Are we clear?”

“Oh yeah, we’re as clear as our chances of surviving that thing,” he said, circling Crystil and putting her back to the window. “And to you, I have to say, I’m out of here. I’m going to die, at least I can admit that. But I’m sure not going to do it listening to some ‘commander’ with severe anger and trauma issues who begs for her husband back.”

Celeste braced for the punch sure to come. She closed her eyes and waited for the groan from Cyrus. Instead, after a long pause, she only heard two words.

“Get out.”

They came weakly. Celeste saw Crystil’s eyes watering, and Cyrus refusing to back down. Finally, he stormed off, fuming en route to the airlock. Celeste looked at Crystil, who sniffled once, and motioned to her commander she’d be back. She ran at Cyrus and, just before the airlock opened, slapped him across the face. Cyrus stared in shock at Celeste, who gazed at him with a rage she didn’t know she had.

“Crystil won’t hit you again as your commander, but I sure will as your sister,” she said. “Dad would be ashamed of you, Cyrus. I’m ashamed of you. I’m not going with someone who quits like you have and insults those he disagrees with. I’m staying with Crystil.”

Cyrus rubbed his cheek, an angry look on his face, but one which masked his hurt.

“Fine.”

He stepped into the airlock door, and Celeste walked away. She went back into Cyrus’ room to find it empty. She made her way to the cockpit, where Crystil had her legs propped up.

“I’m sorry, Crystil,” Celeste said, placing a hand on her commander’s shoulder. “I’ll fight with you until the end.”

Crystil looked up, her eyes red with fresh tear streaks down her cheeks. Celeste prayed she would never have to see that pain again from anyone.

“Thanks,” Crystil whispered as both turned their attention to the outside, watching Cyrus walk off without looking back.

17

Cyrus couldn’t turn around as he left
Omega One.
To do so would force him to confront the boiling emotions in him.

Crystil provoked an extreme amount of anger. She could never adapt to him and would always be the caricature of a militant officer. She had almost appeared human on their walk to the ocean but switched back the instant their situation became dangerous.

His situation also stirred anger at himself, for he knew he’d screwed up by mocking her deceased husband in a moment of petulance. He knew wouldn’t get the chance to fix it.

He felt sorry for making a bad situation worse, but still felt Crystil had made it bad in the first place.
We might die when our supplies run out, but we don’t have to make it awful.

Cyrus didn’t see a point in apologizing, not when she would never accept it or learn.

But Celeste…

“Celeste,” he said as he kept walking, having done so for nearly half an hour, never once turning back. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I told you I’d never leave you. And now I’m leaving. I’m sorry I lied. I hope you come find me. If not, I hope Crystil treats you better than she ever did me.

The slap she had given him felt like not just a rejection of his choice to leave. It felt like a rejection of him, and everything he’d done for her. Saying their father would be ashamed of him felt like the worst possible insult. From Crystil, that might have produced a fatal brawl. From Celeste, it invoked a series of incoherent swears, screams and sighs, all in an attempt to avoid breaking down.

The sun soon set ominously. He looked up at the darkening sky and the trees. Only now did he realize how poorly he’d prepared for surviving in the wild, never mind in an entirely new world. He had no rifle, no water, and no food. Only a knife slid into his boot from the last trip, which he had forgotten to remove, gave him a fighting chance. He knew better than to expect it to give him a chance against any wildlife larger than a baby precora.

But for one night, if he climbed high enough, he could give himself the illusion of surviving. As he reached for the first branch, he recognized his nihilistic viewpoints weren’t his true viewpoints, but rather, a defense mechanism. He didn’t like operating in the gray zones of chance—he liked the highly likely or the impossible. The two women were right.
I am a quitter if it doesn’t look like I’ll have a great shot of success.

He climbed to a branch about fifty feet up and slumped against the tree trunk. He put his knee up and rested his arm on it, quietly reflecting. About an hour in, he heard the low grumbling of the monster and looked up. He could see it a couple miles away, out in the plains, but it never threatened to come closer. For one night, he got to observe the great creature almost reverently.

In doing so, as much as he tried to believe they might have a shot, he couldn’t see how. The only way was to call in some fighters from Monda, and there weren’t any coming, in the most improbable of scenarios, for another two years.

And if they did, the problems would start all over again. War, violence, genocide, and murder would spring from their arrival.

Maybe I should take the nihilistic view. It’s the most peaceful one.

18

“You can’t come back,” she said. “You left me. I don’t want you back.”

“Please.”

“No, Cyrus. It’s over.”

Cyrus woke up with a jolt, his body gripping the bark of the branch. He shook his head furiously at the nightmare, having envisioned returning to
Omega One
only for Celest, with a much darker disposition and her face obscured, to ban him from returning.

“Uhh,” he groaned. “Close to the truth.”

He slowly swung down, not interested in acrobatic maneuvers. He landed on the ground and dusted off the debris from his suit. He made his way to the fields and looked right first. Nothing unusual.

He looked straight ahead. Some precora grazed, and a few aviants flew in the sky, but nothing he hadn’t yet seen.

He looked left, and something seemed a bit out of place. A few trees were missing.

Curious, and with nothing better to do, he trudged over, hunger and dehydration starting to deflate his energy. He felt lightheaded, his vision displaying spots when he began walking. He told himself he had to retreat back to the ship. He understood it went completely against what he’d done the previous day, but the isolation had unraveled all of his false beliefs.
Strange how thinking about dying doesn’t suck nearly as much as actually dying.

When he came to the odd spot a few hundred feet away, he mumbled swears and felt sick.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

A U-shaped indent into the forest formed about twenty feet in, but that was not the odd part. Charred skeletons, with bones similar to the one in the research bay on
Omega One
, lay strewn in almost too organized of a pattern.
They aligned for battle, but got annihilated before leaving their stance.

“Is this real? This doesn’t seem fair,” he said, words which only encouraged the nervous suspicion that the monster had produced this ugly sight.

Or something worse. Something that would hunt them down in the day. Cyrus wished he hadn’t had that thought, as he began to imagine creatures far worse than the nocturnal nightmare.

He closely examined the skeletons, starting from the original edge of the forest. The skeletons all faced outward. A fight seemed plausible. But the contained nature of the fire—the trees not burned down didn’t even look singed—didn’t make any sense.

Cyrus did his best to come up with an answer other than the one that echoed in his thoughts. He soon had to confront what he considered the closest thing to a truth.

There’s life we don’t know about here, and it’s fighting an ugly battle. A war amongst animals? A war for the top of the food chain? A war among hiding civilizations? Where would we fit in? Do we even fit in?