“Won’t die, huh?”
Cyrus kept saying the phrase to himself over and over. He kept waiting for Cortanus to laugh and say it was a joke. He said it in the lab, in the bedroom, in the cockpit, and in the mess hall. The fact never changed.
Deciding he might as well get a good view of the sky, Cyrus trudged over to the cockpit. He assumed the commander’s seat and sighed.
“So, really, it won’t die?”
“As I’ve said many times, Cyrus, it can die. But it won’t die on its own. It would have to be killed with brute force. I suspect a mild virus would not bring it down.”
“Won’t die,” Cyrus said.
But this time, as he looked up at the sky and saw no stars blotted out, he allowed Cortanus’ caveat to sink in. They could kill the monster. Such a task seemed impossible, but it was not actually impossible.
But he couldn’t do it alone. He had to have the two women with him. He tried to imagine fighting the creature by himself and instead tragically laughed at the image that came to mind, that of him pricking the creature’s toe before getting stomped to death.
“How would you do it, Cortanus?”
“Do what?”
“Defeat the greatest monster you’ve ever known when you couldn’t even kill a precora?” Cyrus said.
“Such a probability would seem low,” Cortanus said. “I—”
“I’m just messing with you, Cort. Don’t actually use your processing to imagine such a scenario. It’s not going to happen.”
Cyrus sighed and started to fall asleep in the chair. Maybe he could dream up a way of defeating the enemy. At worst, maybe if it were so imaginative as to be considered, it would make for a fun discussion.
Slowly, he started to drift off. Some time passed—he didn’t know how much, but it didn’t feel like a lot—before he heard a jarring scream.
But it didn’t sound like an animal. It sounded like… a woman?
He looked over the edge and saw nothing. It was too dark to see far ahead, though he thought he could see the outline of something moving. Perhaps two creatures had fought to the death, and one was nearing its final seconds of life.
A very familiar, feminine, “NOO!” echoed through the air.
“Cortanus, shine lights ahead!”
Immediately, he saw them. Celeste and Crystil. Both of them laid on the ground, writhing in pain. Crystil shook uncontrollably while Celeste barely moved.
“Cortanus, send me down! I will break this cockpit window if you don’t!”
When he got to the airlock, the door had already opened. It dropped more than it descended, and Cyrus took a second to regain his footing. He sprinted to Celeste. He kneeled beside her and saw how swollen her entire body had become. She looked drugged and, worse, her breathing was so shallow he had to put his ear up to her mouth to make sure she was still breathing. He saw Crystil shaking as if in a seizure, but in the moment of decision, he picked Celeste up and rushed her back to the ship, promising to come out for Crystil next.
“Cortanus, open up a medical pod and do whatever it takes to treat Celeste!”
He ran with Celeste in his arms, too much adrenaline pumping for him to consider any possibilities. Her boots collided on the wall, but Cyrus ignored that. A pod had just finished opening when Cyrus dropped his sister in. He waited until it had closed before he sprinted back out for the commander.
When he reached her, he saw her tibia broken through the skin. The sight made Cyrus vomit. He took a deep breath when he finished and turned to Crystil, grabbing her. He took the same path back to the medical bay and dropped Crystil in. When her pod closed, Cyrus collapsed in a chair, watching as the ship inserted different tubes and gasses, beginning the recovery process for each woman.
“Will they recover?” Cyrus asked, out of breath.
“I have the best medical knowledge from Monda in my programming, and I know how to handle all sorts of problems,” Cortanus said. “But I cannot promise anything. There are no guarantees in medicine.”
Cyrus grimly nodded. He stood over Crystil’s pod first, given it was closest. The wound was a nasty one, one that he would never forget. But she seemed fine otherwise. Her vitals were steady. Cyrus figured she’d need crutches or a wheelchair for a while, but she could guide them from the cockpit.
But Celeste…
He walked over and saw her vitals were critically low. Her heart rate was below thirty beats per minute, and her oxygen intake was extremely low. Cortanus had set up an environment making it easier to breathe, but…
“How long until you can pump the poison out of her?”
“I cannot say, Cyrus. We are already pumping it out now, but some of it will take days—if it can be removed at all. I am sorry.”
Cyrus nodded. With no more tasks in front of him and no adrenaline to push him, he broke down in tears, lying on top of Celeste’s pod.
“I’m sorry, Celeste. I’m so sorry,” he said between sobs. “Come back. I need to make this right. Please. Please!”
He remained by her side for the next several hours, never glancing at anything other than his sister and her vital readings. They did not worsen, but they did not improve.
Cyrus braced himself for the question he did not want to face but one that not only seemed possible, but probable.
“Should we let her die?”
29
The sound of a saw buzzing furiously jolted Cyrus out of an unintended slumber. He cursed himself out for falling asleep while standing over his dying sister. He looked inside Celeste’s pod and saw nothing. He took two steps toward Crystil’s and saw a saw heading for a marked line about an inch below her knee. He quickly turned away, but he’d seen enough to know what was coming.
Even with the nauseating sight, he knew Crystil would be fine. He didn’t spend more than a couple more seconds lingering by her pod, glancing at her vitals while avoiding looking at her actual leg. They were lower than normal but, given her medically-induced sleep, were at healthy levels.
“A new foot to kick my old butt with,” he mumbled groggily, turning his attention to Celeste.
His sister’s condition gave him too much angst for him to handle. He went over to her pod, his hands gently on it, as if trying to comfort her through the glass. Her eyes remained closed, her face was still swollen, and much of her body was discolored from whatever had happened. He tried to stifle tears, but it did no good.
But at least I haven’t gotten the question yet. She hasn’t gotten any worse. Maybe no news is good news.
He pulled up a data report on Celeste’s vitals over the last six hours. She had gotten better, albeit by margins so slim they could’ve just been random variance. The variance skewed upward, however, giving Cyrus a hope that she’d eventually recover.
He headed back to Crystil’s pod. He looked down at her right leg, below the knee. It had a visible titanium replacement but was receiving skin grafts to make it look remarkably human.
The skin grafts finished in less than a couple of minutes. The system gave a beep, marking that all systems had finished. Cyrus looked at her pod and, rather than wait two hours for the system to automatically release her, brought her out of her sleep. He had no desire to be alone any longer than he had to.
Crystil’s eyes flickered, and she coughed. Cyrus quickly moved to open the pod, and when it opened, she sat up. Cyrus nervously backed a couple of steps up, unsure how his commander would act. She looked down at her leg and wiggled her toes. She also flexed her ankle. Finally, she gently swung her leg at the knee. From Cyrus’ view, she had the typical amount of flexibility. He wouldn’t have known it was artificial if he had missed the procedure. He watched her body language, which morphed from confused to curious to accepting relatively quickly.
She turned her eyes to him, and he stiffened.
“Celeste,” Crystil said, her voice softer but still with as much authority as before. “Is she OK?”
Cyrus said nothing, instead turning his body to give Crystil a
view. Every time he glanced at Celeste, it felt like he wasn’t really looking at his sister. She was more beautiful and glowing than her swollen, discolored body indicated.
Crystil swung her legs over the bed and gently put her feet on the ground. The sound of the bare artificial foot touching the ground produced a distinct sound, which Crystil tested a few more times. She stood up and shifted her weight onto the foot, and seemed to be in a comfortable space with it. Cyrus watched her, impressed with how quickly she adapted.
Crystil walked over and analyzed Celeste, looking over her body and examining her vitals. Cyrus wanted desperately to know what went through her mind, and what they had done in the time he’d left. Unlike before, he reined in his thoughts, choosing proper decorum over asking every question.
“Celeste,” she said with an admiring tone. “You’re the toughest person I’ve ever been with.”
That piqued Cyrus’ curiosity. It didn’t surprise him—the slap had largely dispelled any notions of her being soft—but for Crystil to say it…
“How so?” he said quietly, hoping not to enrage Crystil.
Crystil looked up and gazed at Cyrus, but the gaze did not intimidate or strike fear into Cyrus. It instead seemed to express appreciation, as if he had something to do with Celeste’s growth.
“She’s a tougher, more determined woman than many people I worked with on Monda,” she said, her gaze turning back to Celeste. “Two days ago, she got nicked by a poisonous plant, but it didn’t even affect her until the next day. Even then, she wanted me to continue exploring a potential lead. I told her she, and, if you came back, you were my priorities, and only then did she go back.”
Cyrus felt a pleasant warmth coming from Crystil. He’d never heard her acknowledge him as a priority.
“Then, on the road back, she tripped and got nicked all over by the same thicket. That’s why you see her as she is. An arachnia tried to kill us, but she stayed near me and didn’t cower. I carried her at the end, but she did eighty percent of the legwork to get back here.”
Crystil turned her attention back to Cyrus, who noticed the appreciative smile matching her warm eyes.
“I did five percent, and you picked up the remaining fifteen percent. She’s alive because of you, Cyrus. Without you being here, she’s dead and I’m almost certainly dead.”
So taken aback was Cyrus by the honesty and genuine pleasantness of his commander that he found himself speechless.
“Knowing her, she’ll survive this,” Crystil said, quickly returning her attention back to Celeste. “She’s tougher than an ancient nakar. It might take some time. But I promise you this girl isn’t dying here.”
Cyrus, overwhelmed by this new sympathetic commander, could only speak two words.
“Thanks, Crystil.”
“Of course. I see now why Celeste kept speaking well of you, even as I may have spoken ill,” she said with a smirk. “You aren’t just her big brother. You played the role of caretaker. I can’t even imagine how that was, with your mother dying when she was born.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s fine,” Cyrus said quickly. “But… thank you.”
Crystil seemed to get the hint and dropped the conversation.
“Also…,” she said, her voice trailing off until Cyrus looked back at her. “I’m sorry. For before. It’s my job as commander to relate to all of you properly, and I wanted you to get in line with me. That’s my failure as a commander. For that, I’m sorry.”
We’re getting there.
“Thanks, Crystil. I’m sorry, too,” Cyrus said, though he didn’t want to apologize for his personality, which he knew he couldn’t change. “I… promise not to be quite so obnoxious as before.”
“Not quite so?” Crystil said, her eyebrows lifting.
“Hah, exactly.”
Crystil chuckled but said nothing more as she tested her foot out. Cyrus thought of saying something more but declined. They’d reached a good point in their relationship, and he didn’t want to say anything that might strain it. He instead went back to his chair by Celeste’s pod and sat down, watching his sister, grateful he didn’t have to think about the question anymore and instead could just ask a much better question on the mind.
“How long until she’s recovered?”
30
As she watched Cyrus sit down by Celeste, Crystil took her leave. She headed back to her favorite spot on Omega One and sat down in the commander’s chair. She felt pretty certain someone else had taken her spot earlier by the seat’s indentation.
“That little punk,” she said with a smile.
That little punk had not spelled the end of their mission or the failure of humanity’s survival. Instead, he’d prolonged it. She could not help but feel tremendous gratitude. Cyrus reminded her, much to her amusement, of his father. Emperor Orthran handpicking her as his bodyguard had given her security she’d craved ever since her childhood. He had become her metaphorical savior, and now, on a new planet, his son had become her literal savior.
At the moment, that was all she would allow herself to feel for him. Whatever feelings she might have explored, wherever they might have led… she would keep those at bay until they found water and figured out a way to get rid of the ugly nightmare. She had expressed her sincere gratitude and her genuine sorrow for kicking him out. There was nothing else that needed to be expressed.
She knew, though, she was lying to herself when she thought she didn’t want to examine her feelings.
She thought about what she didn’t know—specifically, about Cyrus’ time alone. Crystil had to know all the details.
“Cortanus,” she said, happy to have something take her out of her head. “Alert Cyrus that I want to talk to him about the past few days. I want a debriefing on what he has gone through.”
Cortanus confirmed a few seconds later Cyrus was headed her way. She stood up and assumed an authoritative position, with her hands behind her back and her shoulders back. At the last second, she consciously chose to relax, instead leaning on the back of her chair with her arms crossed. Cyrus walked in, and Crystil could not help the smile that came to her face.
“Rumor has it you had quite the adventure while you were alone,” she said, eventually managing to chill her smile.
“Hah,” Cyrus laughed weakly. “I don’t know if I would go that far. It was interesting, though. I walk out in an angry rage and just think, ‘nope, nope, never seeing those two again.’ I felt sad for Celeste but more pissed at you than anything.”
Crystil could not argue the point.
“So then I kept wandering and wandering and wandering… and wandering… and you get the picture.”
“Quite,” Crystil said, hoping Cyrus would get to the critical points sooner.
“Well, eventually, after more wandering, I finally come across a graveyard of skeletons. Looked like lupi. Cortanus confirmed later they were similar to what you and Celeste said you saw that first day here. But it was so bizarre! There was more ash than vegetation, and the fire made a perfect semicircle. It was too perfect. Like someone had lit up the individual trees but made sure the fire couldn’t spread. I don’t know, I’d lost my mind from the lack of food and water at that point—”
Crystil put her hand up to stop Cyrus.
“Do you remember where this ash pit was?”
“Oh, well, no, but not hard to find, you’d just wander on the edge of the forest and the one place that doesn’t look right, it’s the right spot.”
“Understood. Anything else?”
“Well I took the skull and we went into the trees to sleep, and Mr. Monster decided to try and sing me to sleep with a lullaby. When you’re four hundred feet tall, have claws and spears that can impale you, and like to sing in a deep baritone, lullabies don’t really have the effect that your mother would.”
Crystil cracked a smile, but quickly turned serious as she nodded.
“Anything more?”
“Nope. Woke up the next day, brought the stuff here, and
Cortanus was analyzing it. Oh, right, then the monster decided a lullaby wasn’t working and knocked on the ceiling of this ship to get my attention. I didn’t answer, though, because I’m a rude neighbor.”
Last night, the scratching.
“He did leave behind a part of his body, a scale, which Cortanus analyzed. Oh! Oh. Ohhh. You’re going to absolutely love what Cortanus figured out. Come on.”
He waved for Crystil to come with him, and though she had more questions, she obliged. She followed a few feet behind, curious as to what was uncovered. A weakness? Hopefully?
They went past the medical bay and into the research lab. Cyrus put his arm up and held Crystil in place.
“Forgot to mention. When our friend knocked, he did so really loudly and broke the glass in here. So your water is now condensation on the walls, and the skull is in a bunch of pieces. But the scale is still in one piece.”
Cyrus brought it out, and Crystil looked in amazement. It was so large yet, relative to the creature, just another individual piece, like a single hair on her body. Yet according to Cyrus, this piece held a critical piece of knowledge to their survival.
“Anyways, Cortanus can tell you the wonderful news.”
“This being cannot die from natural causes,” Cortanus said.
“But it can be killed?” Crystil said without missing a beat.
“Yes.”
Cyrus threw his hands up in mock disbelief.
“See, this is why I need you on this ship, because you don’t panic and think, ‘oh, it can’t be killed, and we’ll live sadly ever after, and—’”
Crystil rolled her eyes with a smile, enough to get Cyrus to quiet down. Despite her expression, she felt rage against the terrible luck they’d had so far. He looked like he wanted to say more—when does he not?—but he did not resume.
“We’ll figure that out later. We know it can be killed. We just know time won’t be the thing to do so. In the interim, I want to see this pit of ashes that you’ve talked about a few times.”
Cyrus nodded.
“Just walk out and keep your eyes peeled and—”
Kastori Revelations (The Kastori Chronicles Book 1) Page 13
