After Earth

i

The world returned to him bit by bit. That wasn’t bad, actually. He hadn’t expected the world to return to him at all.

First there was simply the blackness. All around him, so thorough that on some level Kitai was convinced that he was in fact dead.

Then he slowly became aware of his breathing. It seemed highly unlikely that he’d be dead if he was breathing. The slight hum of computers followed, and moments later, something even stranger: the humming of insects.

Insects? We’ve… landed?

Kitai slowly and nervously attempted to open his eyelids. It held a moment of fear for him, because if he couldn’t in fact open his eyes, he was in some sort of bizarre in-between state: not dead, not alive.

His eyes opened.

Okay, well… that’s a start.

The world around him was slanted. Not a lot; just enough to get his attention. The backs of the seats in front of him were tilted, and cords hung from the ceiling at angles.

Slowly Kitai tried to sit up. He had no luck, and it was only after a few moments of near panic that he remembered he was double harnessed into the seat. His fingers fumbled slowly with the buckles. He felt as if it took him hours to undo them, though it actually took less than a minute. Technically he was in shock, but he wasn’t capable of understanding that. He just felt unsteady and groggy.

He noticed that some of the observation ports had been broken open. Reflexively he braced himself, certain that he was going to be sucked right through the window. It was only when he saw shafts of daylight streaming through the windows that he remembered that they’d landed. Kitai was having trouble recalling various statuses. Dead, alive, dead, landed, still in space, still hurtling forward—he had to remind himself actively from one moment to the next what his personal situation was.

Tentatively, very tentatively, he started to pull off his oxygen mask. He wasn’t really thinking when he did that. It was simply an obstruction that he wanted gone from his face. He wasn’t even consciously considering what its basic purpose was.

Yet he received a very swift reminder as he gasped, finding it extremely difficult to breathe. He held the mask up, looking at it incomprehensibly, as a digital readout blinked on it: LOW OXYGEN: 15%. CAUTION.

This was all Kitai required to jog his memory, to make him remember that he needed to keep the mask on his face. Quickly he fastened it back into position and sat there a few more moments, gratefully breathing in lungfuls of air. Right. Air mask. Need the air mask. Remember that. Once he was certain that he liked the positioning of the mask, he clambered out of the tilted seat and moved into the aisle.

His first confrontation with mortality came a few seconds later, when he saw a body tangled between seats. It was twisted and contorted in a position that left no question in Kitai’s mind that he was looking at a corpse. Yet still he could not take his eyes off him. After a moment, he realized who it was: the Ranger who had placed the oxygen mask on him.

Now he was dead. First alive, then dead.

Kitai’s eyes were huge and terrified. There was no reason for him to worry about repressing his reactions because there was no one there to see them.

Dad… have to find Dad…

Slowly, tentatively, he started moving up the aisle. There was another body to his left, crushed under a section of the ship. He ignored it. If he just stopped and stared at every dead body he spotted, he might simply collapse and let the gravity of his situation immobilize him. He was faced with the reality that he might do well to lie down and die himself just because he had no business being alive. But on the off chance that his father was somewhere in this disaster, waiting for his help, Kitai was not going to deal with the situation by lying down and collapsing.

He made his way down the hallway until he got to a section that led to the cockpit. The door was sealed shut. All around him was debris from different sections of the ship. It had been tossed around enough in space for everything within to come apart and scatter itself throughout the vessel. And that was without looking outside to see where the rest of the ship had scattered.

It was only at that point that Kitai had an awful realization.

The Ursa. Its pod had been one of the things that had struck the planet’s surface. The chances were that the creature inside it had not survived.

But what if it had…?

As quickly as he could, Kitai pushed all such concerns away. Dwelling for any period of time on such disastrous possibilities was simply not going to do him any good.

Suddenly he was startled by a loud, ear-piercing screech of noise that came from everywhere at once. A loud series of beeps echoed throughout the area. He couldn’t even begin to discern where it was coming from, until he looked behind himself and saw the air lock doors grinding together in the passenger section.

He’d gone right by that part of the ship, taking no notice of the body that was wedged into the opening. The lifeless corpse had been shoved out of the cabin, but his arm must have gotten stuck in the doors, preventing them from closing. Slowly Kitai advanced, seeing something tattooed on the man’s arm. Of all the stupid things to notice, a written word on a man’s arm was what caught Kitai’s attention.

It was the word Anna. The doors continued to try to close on it, obviously out of whack since the obstructing arm would have made them cease closing under ordinary circumstances. Since the doors were functioning improperly, they kept rolling open and closed, open and closed, trying to seal despite the arm that would not give way.

“Remove obstruction,” a computer voice began repeating. “Remove obstruction. Remove obstruction.”

Kitai continued to watch, transfixed and horrified. He felt as if he couldn’t just walk away and leave the imprisoned arm behind. But he likewise couldn’t bring himself to touch it.

Finally he hit on a compromise. Carefully, worried he might step on something or, even worse, someone else, he moved over to the arm. Slow and timidly, he extended his foot, hesitated, then sheepishly lifted the arm with his boot. He gingerly nudged it back with his foot through the door onto the other side, allowing the door to slide shut with a thud and a suction sound. Air started blowing hard through the vents, and a tinny computer voice announced, “Repressurizing complete.”

Tentatively, Kitai removed his respirator mask. This time, with an air supply around him, he was able to breathe steadily.

There was an opening in the wall that looked into an adjacent corridor. Kitai peered through it, not thinking he was going to see anything of any use.

There was another human arm there, and at first it didn’t register on Kitai as anything more than another piece of a person. That was all he thought about it until it suddenly dawned on him that its hand looked like his father’s.

Instantly Kitai rushed through the opening and lifted the first piece of debris he could get to. He was preparing himself for the vast likelihood that he was wrong, that the man who was buried under the rubble was simply another stranger.

The moment he pulled away the debris, however, he gasped aloud—and looked down at the battered body of Cypher Raige. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was at best erratic. However, the fact that he was breathing at all was a huge relief to Kitai. He felt that as long as Cypher was still alive in any way, shape, or form, he himself had a solid chance of surviving. That was, admittedly, a hugely selfish reason for being glad that his father was still alive.

A large broken section of the ship was lying across Cypher’s legs. Kitai tried to lift it clear of him. It didn’t budge. Unacceptable, Kitai thought, and started working on another plan.

He looked around and in short order discovered a long metal rod that had fallen from the ceiling. With an effort, he wedged it between the floor and the debris. Then he set his jaw, positioned his feet, and pushed with all his strength. At first he thought he wasn’t equal to the task. But then slowly, miraculously, the broken section of ship lifted off his father’s legs.

Kitai wasn’t strong enough to clear it all in one shot. It took several prolonged efforts as he continued slowly but steadily to pivot the debris clear. Finally, after what seemed like endless straining, when every muscle in his upper body felt like it was on fire, he managed to tip the debris so that it fell away from Cypher and hit the deck with a dangerously loud slam. The ship echoed and shuddered with the impact.

Kitai knelt next to his father. Cypher’s mask was still on his face, slightly fogged with his breathing.

Kitai realized that he no longer had any idea what he should do. He had discovered his father, learned that he was still alive, and done everything he could to maintain that situation. But he had run out of ideas. His father was unconscious. What was he supposed to do about that? Yell at him until he was forced awake? How would that help?

Kitai felt his face getting wet and didn’t understand why that was happening. He reached up and touched it and came to the slow realization that he was crying. He was so mentally disconnected from his body that it took him several moments to put it together. Once he realized what the wetness was, he lost all semblance of self-control and began sobbing openly. Got to get under control, he thought, but he failed utterly.

He continued crying that way, in huge heaving sobs, until slumber overtook him.

ii

The first thing Cypher Raige became aware of was the presence of his son next to him. Kitai’s eyes were closed, and his chest was slowly rising and falling. Cypher was unsure where his son had come from before he remembered that he had brought Kitai along on this… this disaster.

Then it took him a few more moments to assemble what had just happened: the asteroids, the wormhole, the shattering of the ship, and the crash landing in the one place that no human in his right mind wanted to be.

Cypher noticed that Kitai didn’t have a mask on anymore, but he didn’t seem to have any trouble breathing. Frowning, Cypher removed his own mask. No problem, he thought, sampling one deep breath after another.

First things first.

He gently shook Kitai, uncertain of what sort of response he was going to receive. His son woke up slowly at first, but then he saw his father’s calm gaze and snapped fully awake.

Before Kitai could say anything to his father, Cypher’s face conveyed a message of all business. “Let me see you,” he said. His voice sounded raspy, but he had to examine matters one at a time. “Can you stand?”

Kitai nodded and slowly got to his feet. Okay. Good start. “Evaluate yourself,” Cypher said briskly.

Kitai proceeded to do exactly what he’d been ordered to do. Slowly and systematically, he started checking his joints. He rolled his wrists, flexed his elbows, rotated his shoulders and neck. He was moving with slow confidence, so much so that Cypher was convinced of his son’s wholeness even before he finished testing his knees and legs.

“Good to go,” Kitai said. “Fully functional.”

That wasn’t enough for Cypher. “Turn around.”

Kitai probably didn’t think he needed to do so, but Cypher wasn’t in the mood to worry about what he thought at the moment. Kitai said nothing but turned slowly in a circle until Cypher satisfied himself that he was indeed fully functional.

“Confirm the Ursa is contained,” Cypher said.

At that order, Kitai’s confidence seemed to evaporate. When he first spoke in reply, his voice trembled slightly and he obviously had to fight to bring it under control. “It’s gone,” he said slowly. “The whole back of the ship is gone.”

This was not news that Cypher welcomed. Unwilling to accept it purely on the basis of what his son was telling him, he raised his voice and shouted, “Rangers! Count off!”

No one responded to the general’s order. There was simply a deathly silence.

“Most of them were in the back when the tail broke off,” Kitai said slowly.

Cypher absorbed the news. This was the worst possible report he could have received… except for the fact that the Ursa was nowhere close. The last thing they needed was to have the creature escape from its pod and hunt them down.

Cypher had shown up in the cargo bay just in time to see the damned thing locking onto his son. If they had landed safely at their destination, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. But because of where they had landed and the circumstances that faced them, it was a huge deal. Of course, if the rear section of the ship had landed nowhere near—maybe, in fact, hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away—the Ursa would be one less thing for Cypher to worry about.

At least for now.

Cypher noted that his body was unobstructed. That was a positive sign. At least he didn’t have ship debris all over him.

But that positive appraisal of the situation lasted for about as long as it took Cypher to try to stand. Kitai tried to shout a warning, but it was too late. The moment Cypher tried to get up, he let out an earsplitting cry of pain. It was obvious that he couldn’t apply any weight to either leg. He was effectively crippled; neither leg was going to function.

He collapsed back onto the floor as Kitai shouted for him to lie still. “I know, I know!” Cypher shouted back, mentally scolding himself for allowing pain to overcome him that way. It took him a few seconds more to compose himself fully and assess the damage he had sustained. In the meantime he lay there unmoving, the seconds stretching out until he was done. He was hardly thrilled with what he came up with.

I’m in bad shape, he thought. Very bad.

He looked up and saw where they were in relation to the rest of the vessel. “The cockpit is directly above us. Go. Now.”

Kitai hesitated. It was obvious that he wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of leaving his father. Cypher didn’t know why and didn’t really care. Whether Kitai was worried that Cypher would lapse back into unconsciousness or was simply afraid to leave his source of confidence, it didn’t matter.

Cypher needed him to climb up into the cockpit and get a handle on the situation there. End of story. “Go, Kitai,” he said. Kitai stood reluctantly but did as he was told.

iii

There was a ladder well down the hallway, and Kitai headed for it. He had no idea why Cypher had insisted that he make it to the cockpit, but that fact didn’t stop him. Whatever reason Cypher had for asking him to do something, Kitai would do it. Cypher Raige wasn’t in the habit of making arbitrary requests. If he wanted it done, he had a valid reason. Period.

When Kitai reached the ladder, he clambered up into the cockpit. He suspected he wasn’t going to be thrilled by what he saw there. He was correct. There were two people in the cockpit—he took them to be the pilot and the navigator—both of them dead. Some sort of structural beam had detached from overhead, falling on them and crushing them in their chairs. There were emergency lights blinking steadily everywhere.

Adjoining the cockpit was the avionics room. Much of the equipment in there was still lit up and blinking. Kitai moved to a control panel on the wall and tried to determine whether the panel was functioning well enough to give him some degree of control.

He heard his father’s voice, raised so that Kitai could make it out. “Go to the control board,” Cypher told him. “In front of the left seat. Top row, fourth from the right. Activate exterior motion sensors.”

Kitai tried to touch the panel, but he wasn’t able to—his hands were shaking too violently. He realized immediately what the problem was: He was shaking because he’d survived. Survivor’s guilt; that was what it was.

He tried to tell himself that he had no business being shaken by the fact that he’d survived. Nor was he going to do his father any good by being terrified simply because he had lived. That was a good thing, not a bad thing.

Kitai clamped his hands together to get them to stop shaking. He took a deep breath and let it out to compose himself. After a few moments he tried again, finding the screen labeled “EXTERIOR MOTION SENSORS.” His fingers still were shaking, but he got the result he wanted.

“MOTION SENSORS ACTIVATED” appeared on the screen.

“Check,” Kitai slowly managed to say in a calm voice, as if this had been the simplest and least demanding undertaking in the history of humankind.

Cypher did not hesitate to continue. “Over your right shoulder where you just came through… there is a utility compartment. Go through it. There is an emergency beacon. Rounded silver top like a saucer, tapers at the bottom. We need it to send a distress signal. Bring it to me.”

Kitai followed his father’s instructions. The communication rack had been damaged, which did not surprise him in the least. Considering the pounding the ship had taken upon entering wherever the hell they had wound up, Kitai would have been astounded to find anything intact. Nevertheless, he managed to find the emergency beacon. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands; the bottom of it had been crushed.

Figures.

Disappointed, Kitai climbed down from the cockpit and brought it to his father. As he handed it over, he said in a voice kept deliberately low to hide his emotions, “I don’t think it works.”

Cypher made that determination quickly by trying to switch it on. Nothing. The activity light remained off. Quickly Cypher detached and examined the mangled lower section of the beacon.

Kitai didn’t know any of the construction details of the device, but seeing Cypher’s expression told him how completely screwed they were. For just a heartbeat he saw despair in his father’s face. But just as quickly as it appeared, it vanished. Cypher Raige was not someone who gave in to despair, and he certainly wouldn’t do so with anyone watching, much less his son.

Cypher didn’t say anything for a few long seconds. Then, still studying the beacon in his hands, he said, “Kitai, my left shoulder is dislocated. Come here.”

Dislocated? Kitai thought. Oh, God. You’ve got to be kidding me.

Cypher was already positioning himself flat on his back, his face unreadable. He then took Kitai’s left foot and placed it on his shoulder. “Take my wrist with both hands.”

Kitai’s stomach muscles clenched. “Wait… Dad, wait—!”

Cypher ignored his son’s obvious concern. “You need to pull as hard as you can.”

No, I can’t. You can’t ask this of me. You—

Even as all his protests rampaged through his head, Kitai knew there was no point in offering any of them aloud. They all boiled down to the same thing: Dad, please don’t make me do this. I know you’re in huge amounts of pain right now, but pulling on your arm really hard is more than I can take.

And that was unacceptable. Kitai had to do what he had to do.

He took hold of his father’s wrist, grasped it as tightly as he could, and mouthed, “One… two…” before pulling as hard as he could, his muscles straining.

Cypher screamed in agony.

It was such a horrifying noise that it jolted his arm right out of Kitai’s grasp. Kitai fell backward and lay there, terrified, as Cypher spent long seconds gasping for breath. As soon as he had air in his lungs, Cypher said with grim determination, “We didn’t get it. We didn’t get it.”

A pit opened in Kitai’s stomach.

“One more!” Cypher insisted. “Pull harder, cadet. I’ve been through worse.”

Kitai picked himself up. He had no choice in the matter.

Kitai braced himself as he held his father’s wrist. He was going to do it this time. He had to.

This time it was Cypher who did the counting, and he did so out loud. “One,” he said, looking steadily into Kitai’s eyes. “Two.” And then, unhesitatingly, without the least hint of the pain he had to be anticipating, “Three.”

Kitai leaned back and pulled for all he was worth. The cracking sound in his father’s shoulder was awful, like stones grinding together. But worst of all was the long bellow of agony that escaped from Cypher’s lips.

It came from a place so deep inside that Kitai didn’t even want to think about it, and it echoed through what remained of the ruined ship for what seemed like an impossibly long time.

By the time it was over, Kitai was sure it was his own pain. It took him a moment to remember that it wasn’t, to separate himself from it, and to look up into his father’s face to see if his effort had done any good.

Gasping for air as if he had run a sprint, Cypher tested his shoulder. He revolved his arm in its socket—not exactly all the way, but most of it. The movement made him wince, but not as much as Kitai would have thought.

“You got it,” Cypher breathed, sweat streaking down the side of his face in rivulets. “You got it.” He swallowed and looked around. “We need to get me into the cockpit.” He frowned, no doubt trying to figure out how that could be done. Then a solution seemed to come to him. “There’s a cargo loader at the rear.”

Kitai nodded, but he was too wrung out to absorb what Cypher had said. It took him a moment to lock in on the words. Cockpit. Cargo loader.

Got to move…

And he did. He half walked, half crawled in the direction of the loader, glad that he had eased his father’s pain—and even gladder that he wouldn’t have to pull on Cypher’s arm a third time.

Cypher watched his son move down the length of the ship toward what was left of its aft quarters. He wished he had time to reflect on how hard it had been for the boy to do what he had done and how proud he was of Kitai for doing it.

But he didn’t, because it was only the beginning of what was in store for both of them. Pain, hardship, sacrifice… when it came to such things, they hadn’t even scratched the surface.

Clenching his jaw, Cypher propped himself up on his good elbow and assessed the damage to the ship. The hull was twisted like a double helix, completely useless for the purpose of transportation.

All things considered, it was a one-in-a-million shot that either he or Kitai would have survived the crash. A statistical aberration of the highest order but one he was surely grateful for.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just the ship that had been twisted, maybe beyond any hope of repair. It was also Cypher himself.

He looked down at his left leg and saw what he had kept Kitai too busy to notice: Blood had soaked through his pants, leaving a crimson stain that was spreading with each passing minute. And it wasn’t just his left leg that had been damaged, because he couldn’t turn his right ankle without a bolt of fire shooting up his leg.

I’ve done it now, he thought. I have most assuredly done it now.

iv

Kitai lowered the flatbed of the cargo loader—a hydraulic machine on a set of four tough wheels—next to his father. Cypher looked impatient as he watched the thing descend beside him. But then, he always looked a little impatient, as if he had something more important to do somewhere else.

It was dark outside. Night. The ship’s observation ports had frozen over with ice.

Must be cold out there, Kitai thought. Much colder than anyplace he had ever visited on Nova Prime. Fortunately, it wasn’t cold inside the cabin. There was at least that to be thankful for.

Kitai extended a small ramp from the end of the loader to the ground. Then he hit a button, and the ramp started to move like a conveyor belt. He looked at his father, who was bracing his arms at his sides. He didn’t look happy about being so helpless.

The first step was for Kitai to lift Cypher’s leg and place it on the ramp. Even the slightest touch made Cypher wince, and so Kitai was as gentle as he could be. As the belt started to drag his father’s leg, Kitai lifted the other leg and put it beside the first one. Then Cypher jockeyed his upper body around until that was on the belt as well.

As Kitai looked on, the belt moved Cypher up until he was on the flatbed at the top of the loader. Mission accomplished.

But it also underlined how badly Cypher had been hurt. There was blood from his legs on the ramp and also on Kitai’s hands, and the effort of sliding himself onto the loader had left Cypher exhausted.

It was jarring to think that his father could be broken like any other human being. Cypher had always been bigger than life to Kitai. More than a hero.

And now he needs help from somebody like me.

He pressed a button, and the elevator began to rise. He craned his neck to watch his father as he ascended.

Cypher called down to him. “Inventory. Full assets. Now.”

Because I’m just standing around gawking. I get it. “On it,” Kitai said.

Occupying the space where the ship’s navigator sat—or, rather, would be sitting if the navigator were still alive—Cypher considered the portion of the pilot’s control panel that hadn’t been wrecked in the crash.

He needed to access the panel despite the damage to his left leg. With that in mind, he manipulated the cargo loader’s controls, using the machine like an adjustable gurney. Little by little he tilted himself forward until he was sitting upright. Then he propped his leg on the console beside him.

That done, Cypher placed his palm on a terminal to activate the cockpit computers. The initial burst of power gave him hope that he and Kitai might get out of this spot after all.

A hologram flashed in front of him: IDENTITY VERIFIED: GENERAL CYPHER RAIGE.

Having recognized him, the computers booted up with a soft hum. He tapped out a command, and a holographic display appeared over the panel, spitting out initial readings: MAIN CABIN BREACH… SELF-SEALING IN PROGRESS… TRANSPORT SHIP… CONDITION CRITICAL.

Cypher glanced at the recorder on the other side of the cockpit. Then he spoke and watched voice waves undulate on one of the monitors, indicating that the recorder was doing its job.

“General Cypher Raige,” he said. “First quarter Earth day. Crash-landed.”

v

Kitai dragged the navigator’s inert form along the deck and tried as hard as he could not to acknowledge the fact that he was pulling a corpse.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first corpse he had hauled that way since the crash. But it’s the last. His back was sore from the effort since each of the bodies he had dragged had outweighed him, but he wasn’t complaining.

It could have been worse. It could have been me that died in the crash.

When he reached an open hatch, he stopped. Clouds of cold white vapor rose from the opening. A sign beside it read “NITRO STORAGE CONTAINER.”

They were Rangers, the navigator and the others. It was only right that their bodies be preserved. That way, when someone from Nova Prime found the ship—or this part of it, anyway—the dead could be transported back to the world of their birth and given a decent burial. Not to mention the fact that a decomposing corpse could attract predators and maybe even an Ursa.

As gently as he could, Kitai deposited the navigator into the container below. The man looked more like a statue than someone who had been alive not too long ago. With a shiver of revulsion, Kitai swung the hatch door closed.

And what about me and Dad? he wondered. If we don’t make it, who will preserve our bodies? Again he shuddered.

Supplies, he thought, putting the hatch and all thoughts of its contents behind him. Forget the bodies. Got to get supplies.

Little by little, he lugged everything he found back to the cockpit, where Cypher was waiting for him. Before long, he had built up a considerable pile. That was a good thing, he supposed.

The bloodstain on Cypher’s leg was a bad one, and it was spreading. Worse, it was dripping onto the floor. Kitai had noticed it earlier—he couldn’t help it—though his father had seemed to want to distract him from the sight.

“That’s it,” Kitai said, placing a med-kit and Cypher’s personal kit bag beside the pile. He was mentally and physically drained, more so than he had realized when he’d been busy collecting everything. How long had it been since the crash? He had no idea, no idea at all.

His mind was even more tired than his body. The things he had seen in the last few hours, the things he had done… he wanted to forget them, pretend they had never happened. But they had. His father’s injuries, for instance. They weren’t going to go away. They were real. And Kitai wondered if he would have to deal with them.

“I need you to focus right now,” Cypher said, bringing Kitai out of his reverie. “Assets?”

One shell-shocked teenager. One badly damaged Prime Commander, Kitai thought.

“Cadet?” Cypher said calmly. “I need an accounting of our assets.”

Kitai struggled to focus. He looked to the pile of supplies in front of him, aware that his father was studying every nuance of his body language: every facial twitch, every stutter, everything. After all, that was what he did. It was what made him who he was.

“Four bodies,” Kitai reported. “I put them in the nitro compartment. Radio nonoperational.” That had been a disappointment, of course. “Four Ranger packs. Cabin pressure stable.” What else? Oh, yeah… “Five—no, six cutlasses. One emergency med-kit. And I got your bag from the troop bay.”

Was that it? He thought it was. Not that it seemed to matter to his father. Cypher had turned away before Kitai had finished his list and begun manipulating the cockpit controls. Suddenly, a holographic image of a landscape rose over the console. It was formed by thousands of wavy lines. And there was a marker blinking on the holographic landscape.

Cypher stared at the blinking marker, his expression grim, for a long time. Finally, he turned to Kitai and said, “Hand me the med-kit. Ranger pack.”

Kitai didn’t know why his father needed those things, but he moved to comply. Picking up the med-kit and the Ranger pack, he gave them to Cypher, who placed them in his lap. Then he took his son’s wrist, turned it over, and activated the naviband on Kitai’s lifesuit.

Instantly, lines of data crawled around the naviband, creating what looked like a holographic bracelet. Kitai had never seen a naviband do such a thing before.

At the same time, the monitor to Cypher’s right filled with a cascade of numbers and graphs, all of which matched those on Kitai’s naviband. It took Kitai a moment to realize what his father was doing: syncing the band with the cockpit’s computers.

But why? Kitai felt panic creeping back into his bones.

“Cadet,” Cypher said, “center yourself.”

Kitai did so. Slowly, he became calm again. Cypher seemed satisfied. Sitting back, he looked into Kitai’s eyes, and Kitai looked back. The weight of their predicament hung between them, a shared burden.

Then Cypher began to speak. “The emergency beacon you brought me will fire a distress signal deep into space.”

Kitai nodded. But it seemed to him that his father was speaking to himself as much as to his son, trying to cut through the haze of his pain by thinking out loud.

“But it’s damaged,” Cypher said.

“There is another one in the tail section of our ship.”

Kitai’s heart fell. The tail section was gone, and more than likely, the beacon was gone, too. But Cypher didn’t seem daunted by what he had learned. If anything, he seemed intrigued.

As Kitai watched, his father manipulated the controls and altered the holographic landscape. In the grainy computerized image, Kitai could make out mountain ranges, rivers, valleys, forests, deserts, small storm patterns, animals, birds, and so on.

Cypher pointed to the screen. “This is us here. I can’t get an accurate reading, but the tail is somewhere in this area, approximately one hundred kilometers from here.” He glanced at his son. “We need that beacon.”

Kitai considered what his father was saying. One hundred kilometers…

“Kitai,” Cypher said in measured tones, “my legs are broken. One very badly. You are going to retrieve that beacon or we are going to die. Do you understand?”

Kitai nodded his head. “Yes.” He felt tears welling in his eyes and wiped them away and awaited his orders.

Cypher opened a small black medical case marked UNIVERSAL AIR FILTRATION GEL—EMERGENCY USE ONLY. Inside, there were six vials sitting side by side.

“You have air filtration inhalers,” said Cypher. He removed one of the vials. “You need to take one now. The fluid will coat your lungs, increase your oxygen extraction, and allow you to breathe comfortably in the atmosphere.”

Cypher demonstrated how to use the inhaler. Kitai watched carefully. Then he placed the vial to his lips, pressed the release, and inhaled deeply. He had expected the air in the vial to be tasteless at best, but it wasn’t. It was sweet, like the air in the mountains back on Nova Prime just before first sun.

“You have six vials,” Cypher said. “At your weight, that should be twenty to twenty-four hours each. That’s more than enough.”

Next, Cypher helped Kitai with his naviband. A digital map appeared as a hologram above Kitai’s wrist.

“Your lifesuit and backpack are equipped with digital and virtual imaging,” Cypher noted. “So I will be able to see everything you see and what you don’t see.”

Kitai took comfort from that more than from anything else. Equipment was great; it was reassuring. But knowing that his father would have access to everything he saw was ten times more reassuring.

Cypher picked up the Ranger pack and placed it on Kitai’s back. Then he turned his son around so that his backpack camera was facing Cypher. Turning so that he could access his console, he tapped a control, and a monitor in front of Kitai came alive. Kitai could see Cypher’s face on the screen, its eyes looking into him the way his father’s real eyes did.

On the monitor, Cypher said, “I will guide you.” He tapped the same control to shut down the monitor. Then he turned Kitai around to face him.

“It will be like I’m right there.” He looked Kitai up and down for a moment. Then he said, “Take my cutlass.”

He picked it up and held it out to his son. Kitai looked at it, a little stunned. It was his father’s cutlass. The one he had used to fight and kill Ursa, the one that never left his side.

And he was handing it over to Kitai.

That, more than anything else, brought home the gravity of the situation. If Cypher was entrusting his son with his most prized possession, it was because he wanted to give Kitai every advantage he could.

“Go on,” Cypher said, “take it. C-40. The full twenty-two configurations.”

Not just the ones Kitai had used as a cadet—pike and hook and blade and so on—but every possible cutlass form the Savant’s engineers could come up with. Only the most skilled and experienced Rangers were given the C-40. And now, despite his fledgling skills and his utter lack of experience, he had one, too.

Kitai felt the weight of the cutlass in his hands. It was heavier than the ones he had practiced with as a cadet. It even looked big.

He looked up at his father. Cypher could have comforted him. But true to form, he went in the other direction, underscoring the magnitude of Kitai’s task.

“This is not training,” he said. “The threats you will be facing are real. Every single decision you make will be life or death. This is a class 1 quarantined planet. Everything on this planet has evolved to kill humans.” A beat. “Do you know where we are?”

Where? Nowhere near home, that was for sure. Nowhere near the planet of Kitai’s birth.

“No, sir,” the cadet said.

Cypher frowned. “This is Earth, Kitai.”

Earth? As in the world that gave birth to humanity but faltered under the lash of humanity’s abuse? That Earth?

Kitai often had wondered what it would be like to walk the surface of the world his distant ancestors had walked. Lots of kids had wondered about that. Now he would have the chance. But there was a danger beyond the ones his father had outlined, one that had been in the back of Kitai’s mind.

“The Ursa?” he asked.

Saying the words out loud made them seem even worse, made it seem as if the creature were right outside. Kitai saw his father’s eyes narrow.

“There are three possibilities,” Cypher said. “The first and most likely is that it died in the crash. The second and less likely is that it is injured very badly and still contained.”

Kitai would have signed up for either one. He would have done so in a heartbeat.

“And the third and least likely,” Cypher concluded, “is that it is out.”

The words hung in the air between Kitai and his father. Cypher had said that was the least likely scenario, but he hadn’t ruled it out completely. He couldn’t.

“We will proceed,” Cypher continued, “in anticipation of the worst-case scenario. Every movement will be under protocol: escape and evade. If he’s out there, I will see him long before he gets anywhere near you.”

Kitai nodded. Escape and evade. What else was he going to do? Fight the Ursa on his own?

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Cypher said. “Do everything I say and we will survive.”

And that was it. There was nothing left to say. For a moment, Kitai and his father just looked at each other. The cadet looked down at his cutlass, felt the weight of his pack on his back. He was a Ranger, outwardly at least, and he had a mission to carry out. But he wasn’t just a Ranger, and the man with the broken legs sitting in front of him wasn’t just his commanding officer.

Surprising himself, Kitai wrapped his father in a hug.

He could barely get his arms around his father’s broad shoulders, but it didn’t matter. Kitai hugged him hard and for a long time. And Cypher hugged him back. After all, it might be the last time they had a chance to do it.

Finally Kitai’s father said, “Time’s wasting. And we’ve got a lot to do.”

Kitai let go of Cypher. Then he stood up and snapped his cutlass onto the magnetic plate on his backpack.

He took a last look at his father, managed a weak military turn, and left the cockpit. In a way, it was the scariest thing he had ever done.

But in another way, a way he hadn’t expected, it was exciting.

vi

Kitai stood in the little gangway between two air lock doors. Outside the outer door, the ice was melting as the warmth of the sun’s first rays started penetrating the darkness.

Just one sun, Kitai thought. Weird.

He turned over his wrist, activating his naviband and its many holographic layers, and said, “Can you hear me, Dad? Over.”

There was the briefest of pauses. Then Cypher’s voice came through clear and crisp: “Copy.”

Good, Kitai thought.

There was so much he didn’t know about this place. He looked around warily. So much. And from what his father had said, all of it was deadly. Experimentally, he tapped a combination on the handle of his cutlass. Instantly, one end transformed itself into a large curved blade—a blade that, if not for the protection afforded Kitai by his lifesuit, would have cut a nice gash in his arm.

Idiot, he thought, shaken by the near miss. Until you know what you’re doing, don’t do it. He retracted the blade end of the cutlass and tapped in a different pattern, one with which he was more familiar. In the next breath, the cutlass’s fiber ends extended outward until the weapon was a couple of meters long.

That’s better, he thought.

Taking a deep breath, he exited the torn end of the ship into a rocky ravine. A moment later, the hatch door closed behind him. As he jumped down to the ground, he saw more Rangers—dead like all the others—hanging from the straps of their seats. Kitai sighed. He thought he had seen the last of the corpses. The sight of so much death made his heart pound again.

“Kitai,” his father’s voice said, “take a knee.”

Kitai knelt as he was told.

“I want you to take your time,” said his father. “Acclimate yourself to the environment. Root yourself in this present moment. Tell me any- and everything. No matter how inconsequential it may seem. Everything you see, hear, smell, how you feel. Over.”

Kitai could see daylight above, past the walls of the ravine. He was breathing heavily. “My body feels heavier.”

“Very good,” Cypher said. “The gravitational pull on this planet is slightly different than at home.”

Beat by beat, Kitai grew calm. He appraised the distance to the top of the ravine walls. “It’s about sixty meters to the top.”

“Okay,” Cypher said. “Get going.”

“Roger,” Kitai said.

Cautiously, Kitai began to climb, paying close attention to each placement of his hand or foot. This wasn’t any different from standard rock-climbing walls back home, he realized, and he had climbed those rocks a thousand times.

It wasn’t long before he reached the top. As he found purchase for his left hand, he felt something tickle. His right. When he looked to see what it was, he found a huge multicolored tarantula sitting on his hand.

“Aahhhhh!” he yelled, unable to control himself, and flung the creature from his hand. But in doing so, he lost his balance and slid a meter down the side of the ravine before catching himself. He looked down and shook his head. It could have been worse.

“What happened?” his father asked over their communication link.

Kitai took a deep breath and regained his grip. “You didn’t see that? I thought—”

“What’s your SitRep? Your vitals spiked. I say again—what is your situation report? What happened?”

“No change,” Kitai said, a little embarrassed. “I slipped. I’m good to go.” Then, to make it sound plausible: “There’s condensation on the stones. I’m fine.”

That seemed to appease Cypher. In any case, he didn’t demand any more information. Kitai continued his ascent until he reached the top of the ravine. Even before he pulled himself out, he saw the glorious confusion of colors in the eastern sky. Purple, orange, fuchsia. He had never seen anything like it. Back on Nova Prime, there were sunsets, but they were mainly crimson and gold. These colors were new to him.

Mesmerized by them, he emerged onto what appeared to be an elevated plateau. He shaded his eyes. This sun was bigger than the ones he could see from the surface of his homeworld. Was there another one right behind it? Or was it on its own?

Funny… he had studied Earth but couldn’t remember something as simple as how many moons it had. Then again, he would have considered that a pretty useless piece of information. When would he ever get a chance to use it?

Yeah, he thought. When?

All around him, plants and animals were waking up. He could hear the melodic morning calls of eagles majestically soaring overhead. Off in the distance, maybe a kilometer away, hundreds of buffalo roamed the plain. Well, they resembled the buffalo back home, but these seemed larger, bulkier in front. So much life. Kitai wasn’t used to it. Back on Nova Prime, he had grown up in the desert. This was noisy, full of smells, full of shapes and colors he had never imagined. The spectacle took his breath away.

Abruptly, Cypher’s voice came through Kitai’s naviband: “There’s an escarpment where two Earth continents collided. Looks like it could be a waterfall. It’s at about forty-five kilometers. We’ll call that our midway checkpoint.”

Kitai absorbed the information. Back on Nova Prime, forty-five kilometers wasn’t so much. A day’s run for the colony’s best long-distance athletes.

“There’s no way you can return after that point,” Cypher advised him soberly. “We’ll assess rations and reevaluate when you get there. But let’s break it into sections.”

A moment later, Kitai’s naviband produced a new hologram, one that his father must have generated. It was a map with an icon for Kitai and a large grouping of trees to the north of him. As Kitai watched, a line appeared and connected him to the trees.

“First leg,” Cypher said, “is twenty kilometers to the mouth of the north forest. Let’s take it easy. Set chronometer for 180 minutes. Over.”

“One hundred eighty minutes?” Kitai said. “That’s not right. I can do 10K in fifty minutes. You’ll see.”

Kitai began a light jog. That was all it would take, after all.

“I might even do it in under forty minutes,” he said. “Over.”

He listened for a response from his father, but he didn’t get one. Concerned, Kitai slowed down.

“Dad?” he said. “Do you copy? Over.”

Still no response. Kitai came to a stop.

“Dad, do you read me? Over.”

Nothing but the sighing of the wind.

“Dad, do you copy? Are you there?” Kitai asked, panic setting in. After all, Cypher had been in bad shape. What if one of his organs had given out?

Damn, Kitai thought, and ran back toward the ship. He hoped desperately that his father was still alive when he got there.

“Dad,” he said, “I’m coming back!”

“No need,” came the almost casual response through Kitai’s naviband. “You just go ahead.”

Kitai stopped in his tracks. “Huh?” He didn’t get it.

“Seems to me that you’re in charge of this mission. And in my limited military experience, when two people are in command, everybody dies. So I will defer to your leadership, cadet.”

“Dad,” said Kitai, “I was just saying—”

“What is my name?” Cypher barked unexpectedly over the comm link.

Kitai was confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“What is my name?” Cypher demanded.

Kitai swallowed. “General Cypher Raige.”

“And who am I?”

“Prime Commander of the United Ranger Corps.”

“You’re goddamned right! And from this second forward, you will refer to me as sir, Commander, or General! You will follow my every command without question or hesitation. Am I crystal clear, cadet?”

Kitai’s head was spinning. His father had never been this angry with him before. Without thinking about it, he came to attention.

“Sir, yes, sir!” he snapped.

A moment of silence—but only a moment. Then Cypher said, “Now at H plus 180 I need you at that forest. Set your chronometer.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” Kitai responded.

He could hear his father speaking in the cockpit—but not to him. Evidently, he was speaking to the cockpit recorder.

“General Cypher Raige. Beginning probe search to confirm Ursa is not released.”

Kitai waited.

“You may proceed,” the general said.

Kitai set his chronometer and began to walk with no idea of what dangers—if any—lay ahead.

vii

Cypher was pleased with the way his son had responded. He had commanded many men in combat, and he knew that they needed different things from their superiors at different times. Just then, Kitai needed a firm hand, and Cypher gave it to him.

But he couldn’t just send his son off across unknown territory. He had to give the kid some help. With that thought in mind, he deployed a probe-cluster projectile.

If he had been outside the ship, he would have seen it shoot straight up, out of the ravine and into the sky. He would have seen it rise higher and higher, as it was rising on his monitor, and then—once it reached the requisite altitude—explode. But not in a self-destructive explosion. It would be an explosion that produced dozens of separate probes and sent them flying vast distances from one another.

As they vectored back toward Earth, Cypher’s monitors filled to the brim with the images the probes sent back to him. And it wasn’t just images they transmitted. It was telemetry as well, including information on the curvature of Earth, topographical details, and so on.

One probe was lost in an ionic cloud, which appeared as a floating mass of white noise. Another slammed into an ocean, sending back data on undersea life. Yet another burrowed into the earth, revealing soil, weather, and erosion data. A fourth crashed in a copse of trees and went to black, and a fifth floated over packs of animals, thousands of them.

Cypher flipped through the images the probes sent back to him. And the more he did so, the more he came to appreciate the tremendous variety of life on Earth.

All of it deadly.

Periodically, he switched to the image that showed his son’s progress from Kitai’s point of view. As time wore on, Kitai reached a series of pastures that seemed to go on forever. Then he followed a ridge that looked down into a lush valley with a profusion of leafy green plants and wildflowers. Mentally, he began composing a report on the planet for the Primus and the Savant, evaluating its condition and making recommendations for the future. After all, if he got here, so could others. And they needed to be prepared.

Cypher studied the numbers floating over the pilot’s control board. “I estimate H-plus-four days to reach the tail,” he told Kitai. “Use your naviband. Stay on azimuth. The temperatures on this planet fluctuate dramatically daily, and most of the planet freezes over at night.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” came the response.

Cypher manipulated the hologram of the terrain in his son’s vicinity. There were areas demarcated by deep red lines. He understood what they meant. “There are hot spots,” he informed Kitai. “Geothermal nodes between here and the tail that will keep you warm during the freeze-over. You must reach one of these nodes each evening before nightfall. Over.”

“Copy,” Kitai said.

As he looked up to either side of him, Cypher saw what Kitai saw. Clouds were moving over the mountains and fields like huge, ghostly spirits. “Standard operating procedure,” Cypher said, “till I give you further instructions.”

“Copy,” Kitai said again.

Cypher looked down at his legs. The floor around him was covered with a thin sheen of blood. His blood. And there was more dripping from his pants leg second by second, minute by minute. He reached for the med-kit Kitai had brought him and hit a control on the pilot’s console. Instantly, the medical analysis holographic screen came up.

Cypher pulled a flat box out of the med-kit. Then he activated it and ran it over his legs. A light illuminated his legs wherever he performed a scan. At the same time, the holographic screen over the console erupted with biomedical data.

“Code five trauma to left leg,” said the cockpit’s computer voice. “Situation critical. Arterial shunt recommended.”

Cypher accepted the news as calmly as he could. He reached out and touched the words arterial shunt, whereupon the holographic screen showed him a three-dimensional outline of a human body. He touched the outline, and it zoomed in on the left thigh, revealing a network of arteries and veins. One of the blood vessels had been severed.

The words arterial shunt—explanation of procedure appeared on the screen. They were followed by a coldly mechanical animated segment. In it, a scalpel appeared on the screen. Next, a dotted line on the thigh. As Cypher watched, the scalpel plunged into the flesh of the animated thigh. Cypher forced himself to watch the procedure. After all, he was going to have to carry it out on himself. There was no way he could survive otherwise. And if he didn’t survive, neither would Kitai.

There was no decision to be made.

He looked into the med-kit. There was a cylinder inside marked “NARCOTIC.” He held it close and read the side effects on the cylinder’s side. It said, “IMPAIRED VISION, DIZZINESS, DROWSINESS.” Cypher turned to the screen that showed him Kitai’s moving point of view. It was critical that he continue to monitor that screen, that he do so with a clear head. All it would take was a momentary lapse in his vigilance and his son would be yet another casualty of their ill-fated crash.

With a sigh, he put the cylinder back in the med-kit untouched. Too bad, he thought. It would have been a lot easier if he could have used the narcotic. Suddenly, a wave of pain engulfed him. His leg was getting worse.

“Hey, Dad,” someone said, “you there?”

He found himself remembering… He was in a trench back on Nova Prime, dressed in full battle gear. Not alone. There were other Rangers with him. They were enjoying a moment of peace. Senshi appeared on Cypher’s naviband. He moved it into the shadows to see her better. She was young, not a Ranger yet. Sitting in the family apartment. Kitai, even younger, was playing in the background.

“Dad, you there?” she repeated.

Cypher smiled. “I’m here.”

Senshi held up the old copy of Moby Dick. “A boy I know had this. It’s a real book, from a museum. It’s Moby Dick.”

Cypher’s head swam. “Mm hmm…”

“He said I could even hold on to it,” said Senshi.

Hold on to…? “Hold on to what?”

“The book, Dad.”

She laughed. He managed a smile. She had that effect on him. Cypher stared at his daughter, so full of life and possibility, her future like a flower that barely had begun to bloom.

“Did they really kill these whales?” she asked.

“Yes,” Cypher said. “For their oil. And they almost disappeared. Just before the age of carbon fuels…”

Then it wasn’t Senshi he was talking to anymore. It was Kitai’s voice he heard saying, “Dad, you there? Over. Dad?”

Cypher took a steadying breath against the pain, which was beginning to bring on delirium. He cleared his throat and collected himself before he spoke.

“Copy, cadet.” He turned again to the holographic displays. “The Earth’s rotational cycle is shorter than back home. You have six hours to reach the first geothermal site. Over.”

Cypher imagined Kitai’s expression as he absorbed the information. Then his son said, “Roger.”

At that point, Kitai was moving through a valley, alongside a deep, jagged fissure in the ground. Rocks jutted up from the darkness below as if someone had cracked the surface of the Earth like an egg. The sun seemed very strong. Cypher checked his holographic display and confirmed it. More than very strong, he thought. Deadly, like everything else on the planet.

“Let’s stay in the shade as much as possible,” he advised. “Direct sunlight is intensely carcinogenic. You must limit exposure. Over.”

“Roger that,” Kitai said.

“The rain used to be acidic,” Cypher noted, “but it doesn’t seem to be a problem now.”

Cypher checked his son’s position vis-à-vis his objective. The kid was making good progress. But he needed to know the position of something else as well.

The Ursa.

Cypher checked some of the images he was receiving from his probes. Probe 11 showed him an animal he did not recognize but one that probably had evolved since the days when people still lived on this planet. The creature reared up on two legs and looked directly at the probe.

The computer sent Cypher information: Giraffa camelopardalis.

Cypher looked at the live image of the giraffe with awe. He had read about these long-necked beings, but they were extinct on Nova Prime. It was almost like seeing a live dinosaur. Then the giraffe swatted at the probe with its horned head and moved away.

More important, however, than what he saw was what he didn’t see. He hit the cockpit recorder and said, “Probe cameras unable to detect signs of Ursa in the wild.” For now.

viii

Kitai arrived at the mouth of a forested valley. Gorgeous views of green woodlands stretched out before him. He checked his naviband.

“Twenty kilometers, 184 minutes. Request breather, Da—” He caught himself. “Sir.”

“Negative,” Cypher said over the naviband. A pause. “You’ve got three hours to reach the hot spot. That’s plenty of time. Hydrate now and keep moving.”

Kitai swallowed his irritation, flipped up a hydration tube from his backpack, and drank. Then he moved deeper into the forest. As he progressed, the trees around him grew taller and taller. Over a hundred meters high, he estimated. They were wide, too, maybe seven meters in diameter. At that size, they blotted out most of the sunlight. Kitai had to move cautiously through the shadows, peering into the foliage every few steps.

Suddenly, he realized that his lifesuit had changed. It had become jet-black. Harder, too. And it had the kinds of bumps one might find on body armor. Concerned, he stopped walking and said to his father, “My suit’s turned black. I like it, but I think it’s something bad. Over.”

“Your suit’s made of smart fabric,” came the reply. “It has motion sensors. I’m tracking a life-form moving near you from the west.”

Kitai felt ice climb the rungs of his spine. When he spoke, he tried to keep the fear out of his voice. “The Ursa? Over.”

“Negative. It’s smaller. Biosigns read only a meter and a half long.”

Kitai stood motionless. Behind him? Where was it?

He wasn’t comforted by the word only. “I’m a meter and a half long! Over.”

“It’s closing rapidly from the west,” Cypher told him. “Do not move! It is what it is. Relax. Get ready. Try to give me a visual.”

Kitai wished he could give himself a visual. But if he wasn’t allowed to move…

“Creatures on this planet have evolved from the ones we have on record because of radiation bursts,” Cypher said as calmly and clinically as if he were lecturing a class of cadets. “It’s at fifty meters, forty, thirty…”

Kitai found that his breath was coming in gasps.

“It’s slowing down. Twenty… ten…”

Kitai balanced himself, trying to be as ready as he could be. He could hear plants snapping as the life-form got closer.

In a whisper, his father said, “It’s right there, Kitai.”

Where was there? Kitai bit back his panic and whispered back. “I don’t see it! I don’t see anything.”

“Relax, cadet,” Cypher said. “Recognize your power. This will be your creation.”

Then Kitai did see it. It emerged slowly from the undergrowth: a small baboon-type creature. But like everything else on Earth, it seemed to have evolved. Its face was hauntingly human, but it walked on all fours.

“It’s fine, Kitai,” his father said. “Be still. Let it pass. Do not startle it.”

Easy for you to say. Kitai picked up a rock and made a motion as if he meant to throw it at the creature. He could feel his pulse racing.

“Back up!” he yelled at the baboon creature.

It reacted with a loud screech.

“Don’t do anything!” his father insisted, a note of anger in his voice. “Kitai, no!”

Kitai heard the words but continued to threaten the thing with the rock. He couldn’t help it.

“Get the hell out of here!” he yelled.

“Kitai, stop! Over.”

Kitai couldn’t catch his breath. He was gasping like crazy. Unable to tolerate the presence of the baboon any longer, he threw the rock at it. It glanced off the creature, but it had the desired effect. With a last look at Kitai, it turned and left. But his breathing was out of control. Beads of sweat ran down both sides of his face. For a moment, between blinks, it felt like he was back in that box. A scared little boy. A coward.

Cypher studied his holographic readout. His son’s vitals were spiking.

“You are creating this situation!” he insisted. “Be still. Over.”

Suddenly, his monitor showed him something else to worry about. A cluster of dots—maybe fifteen of them—began moving toward Kitai. Moving rapidly.

“Damn it!” Cypher breathed. Then, louder so that his son could hear him, “Cadet, get control of yourself! Listen to my instructions.”

Despite everything, Kitai was pleased he had gotten rid of the baboon—until he heard a rustling and saw six more of the creatures blasting through the foliage. Screeching bloodcurdling war cries, they surrounded Kitai.

As he had been trained, he tapped a pattern into the handle of the cutlass. Instantly, the weapon shifted shape, but not into the one Kitai wanted. Instead, the fibers on the end of the cutlass retracted into the handle and disappeared. Panicked, he looked up at the baboons. Try it again, he thought, and tapped out another pattern.

This time the weapon did what he intended it to do: separate into two parts. The fibers flattened out at the ends, making two distinct batons. Kitai swung his new weapons in every direction, figuring that would drive the creatures back. But it didn’t. They began charging and jumping backward, mimicking Kitai’s moves. Before long, they were picking up sticks and clubs from the forest floor and using them to mimic the two ends of the cutlass.

“To your rear, cadet! Out to your rear!”

Through his gathering malaise, Kitai recognized the voice as his father’s. He looked behind him and saw that there was indeed an opening. Using it, he escaped the circle of baboons and took off into the forest. But the creatures gave chase.

Kitai was feeling faint, but he couldn’t let them catch him. He slashed and darted his way through the forest, trying to shake the creatures from his trail. Still, it seemed to him they were getting closer.

No, he thought, redoubling his effort. Instead of running around the rocks he encountered, he ran over them and launched himself over long stretches. He began putting more distance between himself and his pursuers.

But they switched tactics, too. They took to the trees. And up there, among the thick, plentiful branches that blocked the sunlight, they were in their element.

He glanced back over his shoulder: The creatures were gaining on him again. They began snatching branches and large pinecones from the trees and hurling them at Kitai. And they were growing in number. If there were six of them before, there had to be fifty now, all swinging and jumping from branch to branch, throwing whatever they could find at him.

Suddenly, Kitai felt something hit him in the middle of his back hard enough to send him flying forward. But he didn’t dare go down or they would have him, and so he let his fall turn into a forward roll and came up running again. No sooner was he on his feet than he heard his father’s voice.

“Cross the river, cadet! I repeat, cross the river!”

What river? Kitai asked himself. Then he saw it up ahead. It wasn’t just a river. It was a torrent punctuated with gouts of leaping white water. It’s going to be hard as hell to get across, Kitai thought.

Then he realized: That’s the point.

Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the baboon creatures advancing through the trees. He took just long enough to secure his cutlass to his back before he dived headlong into the roiling water. As he swam, he saw the surface of the river explode with a relentless barrage of tree branches. But none of them reached him.

Unfortunately, he had to come up for air. When he did, the creatures unleashed another volley. But Kitai dipped down deeply enough into the water to avoid this one, too. Finally, he reached the other shore. Wading out of the water as quickly as he could, he cast a single glance back to see if anything was coming at him. Nothing was. Then he continued his frantic flight.

“Cadet,” said his father, “they are no longer in pursuit.”

But Kitai didn’t register his father’s words. He barely noticed that his lifesuit was its normal rust color again.

“I say again, they are not following you. Over.”

Kitai kept sprinting. He couldn’t stop. He didn’t dare.

“Cadet, you are not being followed! Kitai, you are running from nothing!”

There was a clearing up ahead. As Kitai reached it, he pulled his cutlass off his back and held it out in front of him. Then he made a 360-degree turn, prepared to fight anything in his vicinity.

“Put my damn cutlass away,” his father said. “Take a knee, cadet.”

Kitai forced himself to obey. But he still searched the edges of the clearing, looking for evidence of the baboons.

Cypher regarded the image of his son on his probe monitor. Kitai was wide-eyed, hyperventilating, frantic. The general had to get him to calm down.

Cypher rubbed his eyes. He was tired and getting more so. But he wasn’t going to let fatigue stop him. Suddenly he heard a beeping sound. Kitai’s vital signs… He checked the readout.

“Kitai,” he said, “I need you to do a physical assessment. I’m showing rapid blood contamination. Are you cut?”

His son didn’t respond. He looked shell-shocked, not at all like a Ranger cadet. Hell, he seemed like a child. And his lifesuit was fading to white. Not good, Cypher thought.

“Kitai,” he said sternly, “I need you to do a physical evaluation. Are you bleeding? Over.”

Slowly, ever so slowly, Kitai regained control of himself. Responding to his father’s command, he began to check his body. Of course, the evaluation required him to stand up, but when he tried to do so, he looked unsteady.

Off balance, Cypher thought. “Kitai?”

“I’m dizzy,” said the cadet.

“Check yourself!” Cypher insisted.

Kitai looked at his hands. On the back of his left hand there was something Cypher couldn’t make out at first. Then he zoomed in and saw what it was: some kind of leech. Or, rather, what leeches might have evolved into.

Repulsed by the sight of it, Kitai tore it off. But in doing so, he tore his skin. Instantly, a livid rash blossomed across the damaged skin. It can’t be allowed to spread, Cypher thought. It had to be tended to immediately.

As calmly as he could, he said, “Your med-kit, Kitai.”

His son snatched his pack off his back and fumbled around blindly in the med-kit. He looked worried. After all, he could see the rash, too. Kitai started to sway.

“I can’t stand up…” Still, he managed to open the med-kit.

In a clear, measured voice, Cypher said, “You have to administer the antitoxin in sequence. Inject yourself with the clear liquid first. Do it now.”

Kitai took the first hypodermic from the med-kit and popped off the protective cap. His hands were trembling.

“Dad,” he said, ignoring his father’s earlier admonitions to call him General or sir, “I can’t see.”

Cypher wanted to help his son, to administer the drugs himself. But he couldn’t. He was sitting in the cockpit of a ruined ship, his legs broken, and Kitai was too far away.

“The poison is affecting your nervous system,” he said instead. “Relax. Stay even.”

Kitai fumbled with the needle—not once but twice. He stopped, looked up, looked around, his eyes dilated and swelling shut. Cypher could see his son’s panic deepening. The veins of Kitai’s hand began turning black.

“Dad,” he pleaded, “please come help me. I can’t see! Please come help me!”

“Stay even,” Cypher said. “Inject yourself directly into the heart with the first stage now!”

Kitai took a deep breath, struggling to remove the top of his lifesuit. He couldn’t control his fingers, which he couldn’t see, and they shook from fear. He was running out of time and needed to do this quickly no matter how sick he felt. As he exposed his chest to the warm sun, it was hot to the touch and slick with sweat. He shook with increasing violence and just had to inject the antitoxin. It sounded so simple, but he was shaking so hard. Finally, he gritted his teeth so hard that they hurt, grimaced, and finally stuck himself with the hypodermic squarely in the chest. Then he pressed the plunger.

“Now the second stage,” Cypher said. “Hurry.”

“Your left,” Cypher told him. “To your left!”

Finally, Kitai’s fingers seemed to find the second hypodermic. But by then, his eyes were swollen closed. His hands shaking, he removed the protective cap on the hypodermic. Then he stuck himself with it. But he couldn’t press the plunger. His thumb looked like it was too swollen to move.

“I can’t feel my hands!” Kitai groaned. “I can’t—”

Suddenly, his eyes rolled back in his head. His eyes flickered. He fell to his knees, on the verge of losing consciousness.

Cypher got an idea. “Press it into the ground! Kitai, roll over on it and press it into the ground!”

For a moment, he didn’t know if his son had heard him. Then, with a final effort, Kitai threw himself forward. The plunger on the hypodermic pressed against the ground as he slumped over. After that, his limp body lay motionless.

But had he pressed the plunger? Had the hypodermic released its payload into Kitai?

Cypher watched the holographic monitor. Come on, he thought. Work, damn it.

Then, ever so slowly, Kitai’s blood contamination levels began to change, to decrease slowly. The red beeping lights turned to yellow, signaling the gradual return of his vital signs to normal. Cypher sat back, relieved. “Great work, cadet. Now you’re going to have to lie there.”

Of course, Kitai couldn’t hear him. He was unconscious. But Cypher kept talking as if his son were still awake because it felt better than talking to himself.

“The parasite that stung you,” he said, “has a paralyzing agent in its venom. You’re just going to have to lie there for a little bit while the antitoxin does its job.”

Cypher glanced at the feed from Kitai’s backpack camera. It captured the grotesque doughiness of his badly swollen face. A single tear rolled from the corner of his misshapen eye. For Cypher, it was an excruciating experience. There was nothing he could do to help his son. Nothing. He thrived on control, insisted on control, but in this situation control eluded him.

Compared with the forest in which Kitai had collapsed, he looked pitifully small. And the sun, Cypher noticed, was starting to slip past its apex. Cypher glanced at his timer. It would take a while for the contents of the hypodermic to do their job, but Kitai didn’t have forever.

As the sun dropped in the sky, approaching the horizon, the temperature began to drop as well. Cypher didn’t like it. He could see plants withdrawing into themselves, closing up to conserve heat in anticipation of what would be a brutal nighttime chill.

But Kitai couldn’t close up. He couldn’t protect himself. And Cypher couldn’t protect him, either. He could see that his son’s face was getting better. The swelling was gone. But he still lay unconscious, his eyes closed, his lifesuit pale.

“Kitai,” Cypher said.

No response. A gentle dusting of frost began to form on and around Kitai’s weakened frame. Cypher wanted to wake him, needed to wake him. He could hear the wind howling around his son, see the edges of the furled leaves flutter ferociously.

“Kitai,” he said again, “it’s time to get up.”

But Kitai’s eyes remained closed.

Please, Cypher thought, looking at his son’s beautiful face. He prayed for anything, anything at all. A muscle twitch. A flicker of life.

“Kitai,” he said more forcefully, “I want you to blink your eyes.”

Suddenly, Cypher heard something over his comm link. It was faint, shallow, but there was no mistaking it. Kitai was breathing. Breathing.

It was a start. But there wasn’t much time left. A tiny hint of ice showed up on the cadet’s left eyebrow.

“Son,” Cypher said, deeply concerned, “I need you to please blink your eyes.”

Slowly, ever so slightly, Kitai did as he was asked. In a raspy voice, he said, “Hey, Dad.”

He was looking directly into his backpack camera as he spoke. Cypher stared at the monitors and the bio-readings and exhaled a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

“That sucked,” Kitai said. Looking a little unsteady, he got to his feet and began gathering his gear.

“That is correct,” Cypher stated, always seeing things for what they were. “The temperature is dropping five degrees every ten minutes,” he added, emphasizing the urgency of the situation. “You’ve got twelve kilometers to the hot spot.”

Cypher checked Kitai’s vitals. They were stable. As he watched, his son gathered his gear and got ready to go.

Reassuming his general mode, Cypher said, “Let’s see that ‘ten kilometers in fifty minutes’ that you spoke about earlier, cadet.”

Kitai set his naviband and turned to the north. “Sir, yes, sir,” he said, but in a voice that betrayed how weak he must have felt from his ordeal. Still, he set out at a sprint over the rugged terrain ahead of him. All around him, there were signs of the deep freeze that would accompany the onset of darkness. Animals were scrambling underground. It began to snow, lightly for now.

“SitRep?” Cypher said.

“Ten mikes out,” his son reported. “Good. All good.”

Out there, maybe, Cypher thought.

ix

Inside the cockpit, it wasn’t good at all. The words arterial shunt stared back at Cypher from the med screen. He pulled a long, narrow piece of tubing from the med-kit, then took out a thin surgical knife, leaving it positioned over his left thigh. Next he ripped open the side of his uniform pants, exposing the side of his leg. He could see the nasty gash there that was leaking all the blood. The holographic screen behind him displayed his arteries and veins. One blood vessel had been severed.

Cypher cast a quick glance at Kitai’s camera view. It showed the cadet pelting through a snowy landscape that was getting snowier all the time. Kitai was doing all he could to enable them to survive. It was up to Cypher to do the same. Without fanfare, he plunged the thin surgical knife into the side of his leg.

It hurt like hell. There was nothing Cypher wanted more than to slip the knife back out again. But he didn’t. Instead, he cut through the flesh of his leg, using the readout on the holographic display to guide him as he sought the end of the severed artery.

Finally, he pulled the knife out. But only for a moment. Then he drove the knife into his leg again, this time higher up on his thigh. Again the knife cut through tough muscle tissue until it reached the other severed end of his artery.

Only then did he withdraw the knife for good. By then he was shaking uncontrollably. He stared at a point in the distance and regained his composure for a moment. At the rate he was losing blood, he couldn’t afford any more than that. Jaw clenched against the pain, he inserted the tubing into one of the incisions in his leg. He could see its progress on the holographic image behind him. As he fed the tubing into his leg, it slid toward the artery and then into it. As Cypher watched, the artery closed around the end of the tubing.

Cypher felt something feathery touch his cheek. It took him a moment to realize that it was a tear. He wasn’t a robot after all. He could feel pain like anyone else. He just couldn’t give in to it.

With shaking hands, he inserted the piece of tubing into the second incision. Again using the holographic display for guidance, he slipped the tube into the ragged end of the severed artery. This time the fit was less perfect. Cypher wiggled it, almost passing out from pain. His readout told him that the arterial shunt was 87 percent effective. Looking down, he saw that blood was flowing through the piece of tubing sticking out from his leg. He had repaired the damage, at least temporarily. It was good enough for the time being.

Cypher leaned his head back against the loader, focused on the screen showing his son’s point of view, and struggled to remain conscious despite everything he had been through.

He could hear Kitai’s voice as he ran. “Five mikes out.” His voice was stronger now, more confident. “Who wasn’t advanced to Ranger? Who was it? Watch him go. Watch him go.”

Cypher stared, on the verge of losing consciousness. His eyes closed, opened, fluttered closed again. A memory came to him…

He was on a Ranger ship. It was dark. Someone was yelling, “Five mikes out!”

It was a drop captain. Cypher couldn’t remember the guy’s name, but he recalled being one of the Rangers waiting in the ship. He remembered, too, the piece of smart fabric in his hands. On the fabric was a face. Senshi’s face. She was sitting at a table with a birthday cake in front of her. There were nineteen candles on the cake. Faia and Kitai, who was only eight at the time, looked on from the background.

Senshi held up the cake. “Dad,” she said, “you help me.”

“No,” he told her as he sat among his fellow Rangers, “you go ahead. You blow.”

“Come on, Dad,” Senshi insisted with a grin. “Blow.”

Cypher looked around at the other Rangers. They were watching him, making him self-conscious. “Now,” he told Senshi, “you know there’s no way I can actually do that from here.”

“No,” she said, full of faith, “I think you can.”

Cypher sighed and addressed his wife. “Faia, why don’t you step in here and help the girl?”

Faia came into the frame of the smart fabric and said, “You can do it.”

“I know you can,” Senshi added.

Cypher shot a glance over his shoulder. A Ranger was sitting there, stone-faced. Cypher turned back to the cake and Senshi’s expectant face. Resigned to his fate, he leaned forward quickly and blew. As if by magic, the candles went out.

Suddenly Kitai leaned into the frame, laughing. It was he who had blown out the candles. Faia was laughing, too. So was Senshi. Cypher basked in the laughter. He smiled. “Happy nineteenth birthday, Senshi.”

Just then, an alarm went off in the ship. The other Rangers turned to Cypher.

“I have to go,” he told Senshi.

He tapped the piece of smart fabric, and it turned off. Sometimes it unsettled him, seeing his family vanish with one flick of his finger. All that he knew, gone in a flash. Then he tucked it away. All the Rangers in the ship stood, strapped on their gear, and looked to Cypher. The back of the ship began to open. Cypher stared at it. “Rangers,” he called out, “in formation! Move!”

They moved.

“Hot spot one arrival,” came a voice.

Cypher blinked away the memory and checked his son’s camera. It showed him that Kitai had reached a geothermal node that was elevated from the landscape around it. Steam rose from the ground. Fallen trees were overgrown with moss. There was decay everywhere, the product of the place’s warm, wet air.

“H-plus-forty-eight minutes!” Kitai announced, an unmistakable note of satisfaction in his voice.

Outside the geothermal zone, the forest was going into a deep, rapid freeze. Every tree in the vicinity was developing a thick skin of ice.

Kitai began to cough. “Sir,” he said, seemingly hoping for a response from his father, “I made it. I’m here.”

Ignoring his own condition, he checked his son’s vital signs. They scrolled in front of him. “Make sure you have everything,” he instructed Kitai. “Take your next inhaler. Your oxygen extraction is bottoming.”

Dutifully, Kitai opened the med-kit. His father had gotten him this far. The last thing he was going to do was diverge from Cypher’s instructions.

We’re doing all right, Kitai thought. Spacing out the oxygen. Had a little setback before, but I’ll be calmer next time, smarter. Then he saw something bad—very bad. Of the five oxygen vials left to him, two were broken. Quickly, he closed the case, hiding its contents from Cypher’s view.

I don’t have enough breathing fluid, he thought. What am I going to do? How am I going to reach the tail section and the beacon if I don’t have enough to breathe?

“Use the next dose of breathing fluid,” Cypher said.

Kitai strained not to cough. “I’m good, Dad. I don’t need it right now.”

Cypher watched his son, knowing that he was lying but refusing to berate him for it. “Okay,” he said.

Finally Kitai coughed a deep cough, his chest making a hollow wheezing sound. He was starving for oxygen, no question about it. Still Cypher said nothing. He just watched and waited even though his son’s struggles gradually were getting worse. Kitai’s coughs became more brutal, driving home the sad but inescapable fact that human beings no longer could breathe the air of their homeworld.

To make things worse, the cockpit’s medical computer displayed a graphic: ARTERIAL SHUNT 70% EFFECTIVE. Cypher was still getting blood, getting oxygen, but not as much as he had gotten before. Why?

Then he saw it on the holographic readout: His self-administered shunt was slipping on the ragged end, where the fit hadn’t been perfect. Blood was escaping from it, running down to the floor. The medical computer advised him to commence transfusion. It told him he needed four units of O-positive.

But all he cared about, all he could hear, was Kitai’s deep, racking coughs. All he could see was the pain on Kitai’s face as he fought for air. It was a tough lesson, but one Kitai had to learn: Listen to your father.

x

Kitai dragged in breath after breath, each more difficult than the last. Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore. If he went without breathing for another minute, he would pass out. And that might be a disaster from which he couldn’t come back. Finally, reluctantly, he administered the second vial of breathing fluid.

Instantly, he could feel the oxygen spread throughout his body, meeting his needs. His breathing slowed. His strength came back to him.

“Second dose of breathing fluid complete,” he said. “Over.”

“Count off remaining so you can keep track,” his father said. “Over.”

Kitai hated the idea of lying to his father. However, he had no choice. He couldn’t take a chance on Cypher pulling the plug on the mission, especially when it was their only hope.

His face flushed with shame, Kitai replied, “Four vials remain, sir.”

Just then, a pack of wolves slinked past him, seeking a warm spot against the frigid cold. A couple of deer lay down to go to sleep. Bison crowded in, side by side with jade-eyed tigers. Everyone had sought the same refuge. Even insects, Kitai thought. During the day, they might be bitter enemies, but at night, when their world froze over, they enjoyed a kind of truce.

Otherwise, none of them would survive.

Kitai saw a bunch of monkeys with bioluminescent eyes staring at him. He couldn’t help staring back. Suddenly the sky opened up and unleashed a mighty downpour. Kitai ducked back into the musty hollow of a huge rotting tree, but it didn’t keep him very dry.

Right in front of him, a bee struggled to free itself from a spiderweb. The more it moved, the more it sent a signal to the spider that had made the web. Suddenly, a spider bigger than Kitai’s fist showed up and rushed down to claim the bee. But the bee wasn’t defenseless. As the spider approached, it tried to sting its captor. Kitai watched the struggle, caught up in it. Lightning flashed as the bee tried to free itself, but to no avail. The spider just hung there, waiting. Finally, the bee got too tired to buzz its wings. But instead of moving in for the kill, the spider backed up. It looked confused.

Kitai supposed the spider couldn’t find the bee unless it moved and sent a vibration through the strands of the web. The spider began testing each thread for its tension until it came upon the thread on which the bee was trapped. Suddenly, the spider made another charge. The bee flailed wildly, trying to escape from the thread that was holding it down. Meanwhile, the spider came in low, its venomous fangs visible.

Abruptly the bee went still again, ceasing to fight, and again the spider seemed to become confused. It backed up, testing the tension on the web threads until it located the bee again. By this time, the bee seemed exhausted. It barely struggled, tracking the spider circling across its web. Then the spider came in for the kill.

Suddenly the bee snapped to life and flew up despite the thread stuck to its leg. Attaining a position over the spider, it sank its stinger into the spider’s soft exposed back. The spider twitched. Then the bee stung it again and again. The spider, poisoned with the bee’s venom, moved slowly to the middle of its web. The bee took advantage of the respite to try to fly away. But the spider’s thread held it in place. Finally the bee died, hanging from the thread.

Kitai watched it hang there. After what it had done, it seemed to deserve a better fate.

A question came to mind, something Kitai had meant to ask for a long time. “Dad…?” he said. “Dad—”

He imagined his father awakening from a state of semiconsciousness, dealing with his injuries as best he could. For a moment, there was no response.

Then Kitai heard: “I’m here. SitRep?”

“How did you beat it?” he asked his father. “How did you first ghost? Tell me how you did it.”

Cypher pictured his son, alone in an unfamiliar and hostile world. Afraid of what he could see—and especially of what he couldn’t. Now more than ever he needed to hear this.

“I was at the original Nova Sea of Serenity,” Cypher began matter-of-factly. “The settlements. I went out for a run. Alone. Something we are never supposed to do. An Ursa de-camos not more than a few meters away. I go for my cutlass, and it shoots its pincer right through my shoulder.

“Next thing I know, we’re falling over the cliff. Falling thirty meters straight down into the river.

“We settle on the bottom. It’s on top of me, but it’s not moving. I realized it’s trying to drown me. I start thinking, I am going to die. I’m going to die. I cannot believe this is how I’m going to die.

“I can see my blood bubbling up, mixing with the sunlight shining through the water, and I think, Wow, that’s really pretty.”

Kitai was amazed that his father could come to that conclusion at such a time. Hell, it amazed him that his father thought anything was pretty. It was a side of him Kitai hadn’t seen before, or if he had seen it, it was so long ago that he didn’t remember.

“Everything slows down, and I think to myself, I wonder if an Ursa can hold its breath longer than a human? And, I think of Faia. She was pregnant with you, and close, too. Half a moon’s cycle away, maybe twenty-three days. She was so beautiful.

“And suddenly I knew one thing with perfect clarity, and it obliterated all other thoughts: There was no way I was gonna die before I’d met my son. Before I met you.”

Kitai felt a lump grow in his throat. Me?

“I look around, and I see its pincer through my shoulder, and I decide I don’t want that in there anymore. So I pull it out, and it lets me go, and more than that, I can tell it can’t find me. It doesn’t even know where to look.

“And it dawned on me: Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity, Kitai.

“Do not misunderstand me: Danger is very real, but fear is a choice.

“We are all telling ourselves a story. That day, mine changed.”

Kitai thought about that: We’re all just telling ourselves a story. It made sense, as if he had known it all his life and had just never had the words to express it.

Kitai looked around the geothermal zone and took in the sight of the animals all resting in close proximity to one another. He wished his father could see it, could see the majesty of it. Maybe someday, he thought. He sighed. It didn’t look like he would get a lot of sleep that night.

And how could he, with his father’s words still fresh on his mind? If we’re nothing more than the stories we tell ourselves… we can change the story, the way Dad did.

And if the story changes, we do, too.