“Volcanic eruption,” Cypher informed him. “Twenty kilometers east. There are volcanoes all over the planet now. You’re fine. Keep moving.”
Expelling a breath in relief, Kitai resumed his progress through the woods. For a while, it was uneventful. He liked it that way. Little by little, the ground underfoot began to rise. Then the rise became more pronounced, too steep to negotiate without some assistance.
Pausing for a second, Kitai tapped a combination into his cutlass. The handle separated into two pieces, the end fibers of which formed twin picks, each half a meter long. With them, he began to scale the hill. He was getting better with his father’s cutlass. Good thing, he thought. There were plenty of things on this planet capable of killing him without his doing the job himself.
As Kitai climbed, he felt the fatigue of not having slept. But he couldn’t let it slow him down. He had an objective to reach. Then he heard something in the forest behind him. Or he thought he did.
“Is there anything behind me?” he asked his father. “Over.”
“Negative,” Cypher told him.
Normally, Kitai would have trusted his father’s observation, trusted it implicitly. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was following him. He froze and cocked his head like a dog. Then he heard it: a sound. Like static in the distance.
“I hear something,” he said emphatically. He listened some more. “I think it’s water. A lot of it.”
“You’re close. Keep hustling,” Cypher told him.
Kitai climbed faster, digging into energy reserves he didn’t know he had. Whatever fatigue he had felt seemed to fade, at least for the moment. Abruptly, he came to the end of the foliage. Pushing aside the last of the leaves with his hands, he emerged onto a rocky ledge. The sound around him was deafening, the product of an immense waterfall that stretched in either direction as far as the eye could see. A thousand feet below, it crashed into a shallow basin and raised a thick white cloud of mist. Birds circled above it in flocks. Every so often they dived into the mist and came up with something in their beaks.
Beautiful, Kitai thought. It looked as if two continents had smashed into each other, one coast considerably higher than the other. No longer in need of the cutlass’s help, he connected its two halves and tapped them with his fingertips. A moment later, they contracted into a single piece. Then he took that piece and snapped it to his back, where it stuck magnetically.
“Inventory your remaining supplies,” his father said, bringing him back to reality.
Kitai began unloading his gear. As he did so, he described it to Cypher: “Roger. Food rations half available. Flares full. Med-kit half available. Breathing fluid—”
He bit his lip. Was he going to lie to his father again? Yes, he thought, though not without a considerable load of guilt.
“Breathing fluid—four vials available,” Kitai reported.
“Why are you not showing me the case?” Cypher asked. “Let me see it.”
Kitai swallowed. “What?”
“Show it to me now.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Cadet, let me see the case.”
This is it. There was no hiding the situation any longer.
Kitai held the case up where Cypher could see it. Only two vials were left. He waited for his father’s response. And waited.
“I thought that I could make it, sir,” he said finally.
No answer. Then Cypher said, “Abort mission. Return to the ship. That is an order.”
For a split second, Kitai’s mind flashed back to when Senshi put him in the glass box and told him not to come out. That, too, was an order, and she died.
“No, Dad. We, I can do it, I can, I don’t need that many. I can get across with just two.”
“You need a minimum of three inhalers to make it to the tail; you have exhausted your resources,” Cypher said, failing to keep the frustration and anger out of his voice.
“I can get across,” Kitai insisted. “I can do it with just two, Dad.”
His father was adamant. “This mission has reached abort criteria. I take full responsibility. You did your best; you have nothing more to prove. Now return to the ship.”
Kitai hung his head in shame. His father was right. There was no way he could make it to the tail on the breathing fluid he had left. He looked out at the waterfall.
Unless…
“What was your mistake? Trusting me? Depending on me? Thinking that I could do this?”
There was no hesitation in his father’s response. “I am giving you an order… to turn around and return to this ship.”
I’ve got 80 percent, he thought to himself. I could sky it.
“You wouldn’t give any other Ranger that order,” he said to the air.
“You are not a Ranger, and I am giving you that order,” his father snapped.
No, he wasn’t a Ranger, but he knew what it took to be one. He had prepared so hard, including being able to use the lifesuit’s aerial abilities.
“Come back to the ship, cadet.”
But what good would that do? “You said we would both die if I didn’t make it to the tail.”
“An error in strategy on my part. I take full responsibility. Now, I gave you a direct order.”
All his life, he had been in awe of his father. He would never even have considered disobeying a direct order from Cypher. Until now.
Kitai felt himself overcome by a wave of emotion. Everything he had always kept bottled up inside, everything he had wanted to say to his father. How it was so obvious that he didn’t believe in his son. How the mere sight of Kitai made Cypher so ashamed, he stopped coming home.
Everything he felt, he was saying it now.
“What was I supposed to do?” he screamed. “What did you want me to do?! She gave me an order! She said no matter what, don’t come out of that box! What was I supposed to do—just come out and die?”
“What do you think, cadet? What do you think you should have done? Because really that’s all that matters.”
There was a moment’s silence before Cypher said again, “What do you think you should have done?”
Kitai walked up to the edge of the falls. He could see the mist, the birds rising from it and diving into it. He could hear the incredible roar of the water far, far below.
Kitai was boiling with fear, anger, and frustration. His reply was unguarded and came out with a rush. “And where were you? She called out for you; she called your name! And you weren’t there ’cause you’re never there! And you think I’m a coward? You’re wrong! I’m not a coward! You’re the coward!
“I’m. Not. A. Coward.” Cypher stared at Kitai, at his son. What was he supposed to have done? He felt as if he had been hit with a rock—and by his own son. No one had ever said that out loud to him. He had thought it on his own many times, too many to count. But he could never admit it, never confront it, never face up to the truth that he hadn’t been there when Senshi needed him most.
Kitai had been a boy, a small, frightened boy. But what was my excuse? Cypher asked himself. Where was I when she needed someone to defend her from that Ursa?
He felt himself falling as if from a great height into a dark, bottomless pit. Where was I?
He’d sworn an oath to the colony. An oath to the Corps. That was why he had been away from home all the time, why he had never given enough of himself to his family.
Because of my oath.