He bowed his head, mumbling to himself as Crystil ended the replay. Seeing it again, Celeste wondered if she’d exaggerated the creature’s features. Even if so, the creature could crush them with its feet.
“We are if you think like that,” Crystil said. “Don’t make any assumptions. Maybe the creature will never notice us and won’t care. In the meantime, get ready. We’re going outside.”
Celeste perked up at the chance to finally leave the ship.
“Do we need any protection? Like for the atmosphere or anything like that? Just wondering since breathing might be tough and—”
“Shouldn’t be,” Crystil said, heading back to her quarters. “However, go to the armory by the training room before heading out. Grab some weapons just in case. Better to have an unfired gun than a bloodied body if we run into anything predatory.”
Celeste didn’t want the first moment contaminated by a reminder of Monda’s annihilation but could not find the counterargument.
She also knew she had to stop finding counterarguments. She told herself, walking to the armory, that she had to get more comfortable with war and fighting. If fights come here, have to fight. Nowhere else to run. Dad’s army can’t protect. Crystil can’t do it alone. Be strong, Celeste. Own the gun.
She walked up the armory and waited for authorization. After fifteen seconds, Cortanus permitted her entrance, her first into the armory. To her left, five rows of twenty pistols lined the wall. To its right, higher caliber rifles, ten per rack, ran up the wall. In the center of the room shotguns, grenade launchers, and RPGs rested. And finally, to Celeste’s right, various knives, swords, and protective armor covered the racks. She began to think she had to sleep in the armory before she could come to grips with war’s equipment.
“Hahaha, beautiful,” Cryus said as he walked behind Celeste, heading straight for the assault rifles.
He gently brushed his hand over it, almost caressing the metal of the weapon.
“I’ve gotten rather sick of shooting at imaginary creatures and practicing sword fights against Crystil. I’m ready to blow things up! It’s been too long.”
“Cyrus!” Celeste said, yanking his arm. “You don’t get unlimited ammo in real life. If you want to blow things up, use a sword and pretend you have magic.”
He grunted but stepped away from the gun.
“She’s right, Cyrus,” Crystil said, standing in the doorway. “Don’t shoot unless something attacks you. But, Celeste, imaginary playtime is over. We aren’t magicologists, thankfully.”
Cyrus gleefully grabbed an assault rifle and a clip, and Celeste begrudgingly followed. With the eyes of Crystil on her, Celeste attempted to display strength and confidence in holding her gun. Crystil followed without a word, grabbing her rifle and a knife, sliding it in her boot. The three walked to the airlock between the dining hall and Celeste’s quarters. Crystil opened the door to the platform, and they stepped inside the small circular room. Celeste could feel everything the other two felt. Cyrus felt anxious like he wanted to sprint around Anatolus. Crystil seemed nervous, her breathing lighter than normal.
The whirl of the airlock descending came, and Celeste took a deep breath.
“You should see your face,” Cyrus said with a pat on her shoulder. “You look like you’re about to go to the bottom of the ocean!”
“What if we can’t breathe?” Celeste hissed.
“Well, given we aren’t gasping for air, I’d say we are fine,” Cyrus said with a smirk Celeste disappointingly knew she could not wipe off his face.
Crystil stepped out first, the soft crunching under her feet providing a sweet nostalgic sound. When Crystil turned to the Orthrans, she had positioned herself in front of the sun, making their commander almost glow with white light. Her features were barely visible, but they could all see her bright smile, as beautiful as Celeste had ever seen.
Celeste took a deep breath and loved the purity of the air. No matter how much Cortanus said the air composition of Omega One matched Monda, Celeste could tell its artificiality . But this was real.
She took in the view with a full spin. Behind her, the forest rose with tall, thick trees, branches jutting out from every level. Small pines shot out at the end of the branches, but only at higher levels—pines below served as feeding grounds for nearby creatures.
Suddenly, a noise from the trees startled her. She saw an aviant-like creature, with an elongated body, almost six feet in length, flying out of the trees. Its feet had two claws each, and the wings had magnificent bright blue feathers. It screeched, but the cry was more natural and warmer than the horrors she’d heard the night before.
She shifted her focus from the trees to what lay beyond—the incredible mountain, so high she could not see the actual peak. It vanished and blended in with the rest of the clouds. Beneath it, several other peaks rose, creating the appearance of a massive fortress, with an ivory tower in the middle of it all. She wondered what it would take to scale such a thing, if it was even possible. Did anything live at the top? Could that aviant fly to the top if it wanted to?
Does that monster go up there?
Celeste squatted and ran her hand through the grass. It had the mildly damp feeling only a natural environment could produce. No VR. No ship. Just the planet.
“Not too bad,” Cyrus said, enchanted by the world. “Not bad. Pops really did do us right.”
Much to Cyrus’ and Celeste’s surprise, Crystil suddenly started laughing, almost hysterically.
“You guys! We can actually do this. We can do this. I had my doubts. And as a commander, I still will. But as your, uh, friends, I have to say, I feel a lot better now than I did five days ago.”
“You and me both,” Cyrus said with a smile.
But for Celeste, even with all of the joy she felt, the unease did not vanish. The monster of last night had not just disappeared because of their daytime presence. She kept waiting for it to appear and hunt them down or wreck Omega One.
A croak came from the forest, and Celeste jumped, her hand on her rifle. She felt terrified when she saw what looked like a giant green arachnia, but the creature quickly scampered off.
“Cyrus!” she said. “If one of those so much as comes five feet within me…”
“Relax, sis, we had to have something here that terrified you.”
The look Celeste gave reminded Cyrus quickly of the previous night. He apologized quietly, but it did little to calm his younger sister.
“OK, guys, mission,” Crystil said, clapping her hands together twice. “We have to get our basic needs met before we can even begin to think about anything else. Food, water, shelter. We have shelter in Omega One as long as the ship stands, which it should for a good while, probably longer than our lifetimes. For food, we have three years of supplies on the ship, and if we get desperate, there’s plenty of wildlife in the area. For water, though we have three years of it, we should begin searching immediately for some on this planet. Once we run out of it on the ship, if we don’t have any from this planet, we die. The ocean is about fifty miles west of here. We can leave now, or tomorrow, and treat today as an acclimating day, but I will say right now that this is only because we are not in dire conditions. The more time we spend getting comfortable, the less room for error we have.”
“Tomorrow,” Celeste said, much to Crystil’s surprise. “Sorry, after last night, I need some quiet. I didn’t sleep.”
Crystil squinted with annoyance.
“Very well. Do not go out of sight of the ship without a partner, but you can go anywhere else otherwise.”
Celeste walked toward the plains, away from the forest, the better so she could walk far away while still adhering to Crystil’s rule. The wildlife seemed cautious of her, watching in a frozen position. It did not hunt her, but it also did not run away. Celeste sensed a respectful distance, which she tried to adhere to as well.
She walked for nearly a dozen minutes. When she reached the top of the hill and turned back, she realized she’d reached th
e horizon of the ship’s view. Anything further would violate Crystil’s command. She looked ahead and saw nothing beyond the bottom of the hill.
But then she looked at the bottom and saw something frightening.
A skeleton.
She approached cautiously and looked at the bones. They were covered in ash and were charred. She grabbed a long limb and examined it.
“Odd,” she said.
Celeste remembered that the medical bay doubled as a research lab. She quickly looked around for anything guarding the bones. She saw nothing and took the bone in her hand back to the ship.
At the base of the ship, Cyrus sat with his eyes shut, one leg crossed over the other, almost asleep.
“Did you have a good walk, sis?” he said, his eyes remaining closed.
“I did. I found something that might pique your curiosity.”
He opened one eye but ended the humorous charade when he saw the bone.
“Oh, way to awaken every spirit here.”
Celeste rolled her eyes, not falling for his serious-but-joking facade. Cyrus gave it up and laughed.
“No but really, take it to the research bay. We can check it out there. Run some DNA scans. See what it looks like.”
“And maybe figure out what happened to it. See how it’s burned?”
Cyrus leaned forward, nodding when he saw the black and brown marks. Celeste walked past him and let the platform down.
She entered the ship and silently hoped she had not just found the remains of one of many victims of the beast.
11
Crystil had gone back to the cockpit once she saw Cyrus asleep and Celeste returning. She wanted to chart a walking path toward the ocean but realized how little planning that required.
“We still do not detect any wildlife during the day which would pose a threat to you,” Cortanus said. “You would walk along the edge of the forest for a couple of days before you hit the ocean. You are, however, aware of the creature at night—”
“Yes, I am quite aware, even though I haven’t seen it,” Crystil said as she watched a few of the lanky aviants fly away. “But what about in the forest? Or in the mountain ranges?”
“I would imagine that our scans have not shown all of this planet. Some life knows better than to go out in the open.”
“Crystil.”
The voice of Celeste made Crystil quickly kick her feet up and stand at attention, in the process kicking her foot against the paneling too hard. She swore as she turned to the younger Orthran and cleared her throat.
“Celeste. How can I help?”
Celeste, amused, walked forward with a long, charred object in her hand.
“I’m pretty sure this is a limb. I’m going to take it back to the research lab to examine, but I just thought you’d want to know what we’re doing.”
“I see,” Crystil said Looks burned. That could be interesting. Forest fire? I should ask Cortanus.
Celeste waited a beat, then headed to the research room. Once Celeste was gone, Crystil sat back down, gently rubbing her foot. She pulled off her boot, and no swelling appeared. Still, she beat herself up for feeling the need to always be “on.”
“Cortanus, have there been any fires recently?”
“There was one spot where it looked like a fire had taken place, but it was so contained that it did not look like the result of a storm.”
Before letting her mind wander, Crystil quickly put her boot back on and marched to the research bay. When she got inside, she found Celeste carefully placing the bone inside an analysis receptacle, a small box which slid into the ship as numerous instruments analyzed the bone.
“What do you think you’ll find?” Crystil asked.
Celeste turned, her back leaning against the wall.
“I’m not too sure. It looked like a large four-legged creature. The entire skeleton probably stretched about ten feet long.”
Crystil felt like Cortanus had missed something important because she couldn’t imagine any creatures of that size she would want to encounter. She attempted to brush off the concerned feeling while waiting for the ship.
The two waited more. They wound up sighing, neither wanting to talk in case Cortanus interrupted.
“You need a reboot, Cortanus?” Celeste asked after about three minutes.
“No, I am still analyzing the bone. It is odd. This contains a structure unlike anything I have ever seen. I cannot create an image of what this could be because I do not even have a foundation to start from. If I have more samples of this, then I could start to piece this puzzle together.”
The two locked eyes immediately, knowing the solution.
“We’ll be back, Cortanus,” Crystil said as she led Celeste to the airlock.
The two dropped down and Crystil gave Celeste permission to lead. She saw Cyrus still sleeping to the side, but saw no point in waking him for a quick mission. She and Celeste jogged to Celeste’s discovery spot. They reached the hill and looked down from the peak.
“How much further to this skeleton, Celeste?”
“Well…” she said, her voice trailing off as she slowed down. “It was supposed to be right here, but it’s gone.”
Crystil had learned not to doubt Celeste, but—
A low pitched growl came thirty feet in front of them. At the top of another hill stood two massive creatures resembling lupi, and they barked and howled.
“They look—”
“We don’t need the bones for survival, Celeste. Let’s go.”
Celeste didn’t need to be told twice as they turned away. Crystil had her gun ready, but never fired. As they walked back, Crystil began to think about Celeste’s words, and how well those two creatures—both ten feet long, one with black and brown fur, the other with black and white fur—met her description. How did Cortanus not see this?
They returned to find Cyrus awake, stretching his arms out. He looked like he finally wanted to work.
“What’s going on?” Cyrus asked, hands on his hips.
“Nothing we can worry about now,” Crystil said, her voice on edge. “Right now, we can either start getting water, or we can spend the day relaxing. I want to reconsider our decision.”
“Let’s at least see if Cortanus has any updates,” Celeste said.
“Fine, but I’m making the decision that we’re getting prepared in the meantime. You can stay here if you want, Celeste, but I don’t want to sit back and—”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll go.”
She sounds testy. I probably sounded testy. I should be a bit gentler. They aren’t following you. They’re not hunting you.
Crystil turned back just to make sure and saw no sign of the lupi.
“OK, thank you, Celeste.”
Everyone convened in the tight quarters of the airlock and immediately dispersed to their separate quarters for water and food supplies.
“Cortanus, speak to everyone on this ship. Talk about how long it’ll take.”
“Acknowledged,” Cortanus said. “Your commander has decided to go to the ocean, fifty miles west of here. The journey will take you the rest of today, and then most of tomorrow. Assuming you return immediately, you will be back here in two days time, in the evening. Just in case, however, it is recommended that you pack for four days of hiking. Do you have any questions?”
“Yeah, I do,” Cyrus shouted, Crystil figuring it was for her “benefit.” “We have a ship that can get there in a few minutes. Why are we going to walk?”
“Cortanus, I’ll take this,” Crystil said, darting to Cyrus’ room.
Her nerve was slipping, thanks in no small part to the delay in the expedition, the discovery of the nocturnal monster, and the encounter with the lupi. Adding in Cyrus’ sarcasm and defiance created a recipe for an explosion from Crystil.
“Our legs will last a lot longer than our fuel, Cyrus,” she said, annoyance palpable in her voice. “We may never use this ship again for flying. But if we do, we’re not going to do it when our legs
suffice. As long as we stick together, we’ll survive.”
Cyrus said nothing, his lips curled in, and Crystil walked out.
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
She paused and her body tensed up. She did not dare turn around, lest she lose her cool.
Instead, she stormed to the cockpit, not subtle in her footsteps. She breathed slowly, let out a long sigh, and nodded.
“I’m good.”
She walked out and met Cyrus and Celeste at the airlock. Both had their backpacks and rifles.
“You guys are prepared,” she said.
“We always are,” Celeste said. “Even if some of us take more time than usual.”
Cyrus gave a short laugh, and Crystil told herself to give him a longer leash as the door shut behind her and the pod opened up below.
12
Crystil ran through a quick mental checklist of her supplies as the pod descended to the ground.
Four days of water. Four days of food. An assault rifle with two hundred rounds. A knife. A small container for any materials they would collect.
She had them all. Feeling in control, she felt less stressed. The three of them talked about their favorite places to eat in Monda and their favorite vacation spots, but when two miles turned into five, which turned into ten, the conversation turned into sheer silence. One foot in front of the other. Keep the forest to the right. Listen for anything unusual. Stay focused.
Crystil didn’t mind, having years of experience going silent for hours, if not days, for a mission. But she could see the frustration building in the impatient Cyrus and the concerned Celeste.
“Does this ever end?!?” Cyrus said.
“Think of it as a chance to enjoy the views, Cyrus. Hiking’s an opportunity to do that,” Crystil said from the front.
“Hiking is a four or five-hour endeavor with ever-increasing better views, not flatlands!”
Crystil just focused on her walk, leaving Celeste to calm Cyrus. They soon resumed conversation again, but only for a half a mile before the silence kicked in again.
When the sun set, by Crystil’s estimation, they’d made it about seventeen miles. Tomorrow’s gotta start early, and we can’t stop. We may need that fourth day of supplies. Nevertheless, with the burnt red backdrop that the sunset produced, along with the confidence that a full day could get them to the ocean, Crystil stopped.
Kastori Revelations (The Kastori Chronicles Book 1) Page 6