Christine Peymani - Kitai's Journal

“General Cypher Raige,” he said, glancing at the cockpit recorder to confirm that it was capturing his words. “Crash-landed.”

Even though the reports were all bad, watching him go through the standard checks helped me calm down. If he could keep doing his job, I figured I could too. So I got to my feet and went looking for whatever supplies I could find. We would need them.

I managed to accumulate a decent pile. A med kit and my dad’s kit bag were the best finds. But now the scavenging was done, and I was at a loss again.

“I need you to focus right now,” my dad told me. “Assets?”

“Four bodies. I put them in the nitro compartment.” Not exactly an asset, but it seemed like an important part of my report. “Radio nonoperational. Four Ranger packs. Cabin pressure stable. One emergency med kit. And I got your bag from the troop bay.” I could feel him watching me, assessing my every word and movement. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for, exactly, but it seemed safe to assume I wouldn’t measure up.

But he just flipped through a few screens until a holographic image of a landscape appeared over the control console. Tons of wavy lines showed the contour of the land, with a blinking light in the midst of it.

As Dad stared at the image, I saw his mouth tighten, uncertainty flashing for the first time in his eyes. Then he drew in a deep breath, and he was the Commander General once more. Whatever he had decided, I knew I would have to obey. “Hand me the med kit and Ranger pack,” he ordered.

I retrieved both and handed them to him. He grabbed my wrist and activated the naviband on my lifesuit. Data from the band appeared in layers around my wrist, like a holographic bracelet. I stared at it, amazed. I had always known I would get a naviband when I made Ranger, but I’d never seen one close up. It was even cooler than I could’ve imagined.

The monitor beside my dad filled with numbers and graphs that matched the ones surrounding my wrist. I realized that he was syncing me with the cockpit computers, but I still didn’t know why.

“Cadet. Center yourself,” he said, and I used the breathing techniques and mental exercises we had learned at the academy to calm myself as much as I could. I knew he was checking my heart rate to monitor my anxiety level.

My dad sat back and stared at me intently. We both knew how much trouble we were in. We both knew only he could hope to get us out of it. And we both knew he wasn’t going anywhere without medical attention.

“The emergency beacon you brought me will fire a distress signal deep into space,” he told me, and I nodded. “But it’s damaged.”

He ran a scan for a spare beacon. “There is another one, in the tail section of our ship.”

But I’d told him the tail was gone, so what good would that do us? When he pulled up the holographic landscape again, I picked out mountain ranges, valleys, forests, and deserts, all represented on the display. Storm patterns and moving animals also showed up on the sensors. My dad pointed to a blinking circle. “This is us here. I can’t get an accurate reading, but the tail is somewhere in this area, approximately one hundred kilometers from our location.” He pointed to a dark section of the landscape where the sensors weren’t picking up much. Another blinking dot marked the tail there, but without the details around it, it wasn’t much help.

“We need that beacon,” he said, and that was when I finally understood. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I tried to swipe them away—too late. I saw that he had seen. But he spoke with kindness, like the father I longed for, not the Commander General I had come to expect. “Kitai, both my legs are broken. One very badly. You are going to retrieve that beacon or we are going to die. Do you understand?”

I could only nod. If that was what I had to do, I would try my best. But for the first time since I became a Cadet, I doubted my abilities. I saw tears welling in his eyes too, and hid my shock. I simply wiped my eyes and awaited my orders.

Dad opened a small black case from the med kit marked Universal Air Filtration Gel—Emergency Use Only . Six vials were lined up inside.

“You have air filtration inhalers,” he explained, holding up a vial. “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.” He showed me how to use the inhaler, and I repeated his movements, bringing the vial to my lips, pressing the release, and drawing in a deep breath.

“You have six vials. At your weight, that should be twenty to twenty-four hours each. That’s more than enough.” He pressed a button on my naviband, and a holographic map appeared again. “Your lifesuit and backpack are equipped with digital and virtual imaging,” he explained. “So I will be able to see everything you see, and what you don’t see.” After helping me into the Ranger backpack, he activated my rear-facing backpack camera, then tapped a control on the console so the feed appeared on the monitor in front of me. The monitor showed his face as he promised, “I will guide you.”

Then he shut the monitor down, and I turned to face him. “It will be like I’m right there with you,” he said. I nodded, but I’m sure I looked unconvinced. Having my dad watch my back would be great, but he wouldn’t be able to help me fight off anything that might be out there, and I wasn’t used to fighting alone. Then he offered me the best tool he had. “Take my cutlass.”

He held it out, but I just stared at it in awe. General Cypher Raige’s cutlass, the most advanced one ever made. “Go on. Take it. It’s the C-40. The full twenty-two configurations.” If I had passed my Ranger exam, I would’ve only gotten a C-10—like my sister’s. Only advanced Rangers were cleared to access that many weaponry options. His cutlass could transform into basically any weapon I could imagine.

I accepted his cutlass, noticing how big it looked in my thirteen-year-old hands, how much heavier it felt than any of the others I had held. I locked eyes with my father, not ready to turn away. We both knew this might be the last time we ever saw each other. The knowledge made me wish even more that we hadn’t spent so much of my childhood apart. But there was no point in thinking about that now. All I could do was complete my mission so we could both have a second chance.

“This is not training,” Dad reminded me, as if I weren’t completely aware. “The threats you will be facing are real. Every single decision you make will be life or death. This is a Class-One Quarantined planet. Everything on this planet has evolved to kill humans.” I looked at him in surprise, and he asked, “Do you know where we are?”

“No, sir,” I replied.

“This is Earth, Kitai.”

But how could we have ended up back here, when humans hadn’t been near Earth since we left it over one thousand years ago? Out of everywhere in the whole universe, why did we have to land on the one planet that had turned on us and nearly killed us all? It seemed like a cruel joke.

The worst part, though, was knowing that the Ursa was out there somewhere. I shivered at the thought of it waiting for me. It had my scent, after all. I was the human it would hunt to the death, if it had survived the crash, if it had escaped. “The Ursa?” I said, and my dad understood exactly how terrified I was.

Cool as ever, my dad replied, “There are three possibilities. The first and most likely is that it died in the crash.” I nodded, comforted by his words. He continued, “The second and less likely is that it is injured very badly and still contained. And the third and least likely is that it is out.” He spoke with a calm certainty that steadied me, but I knew better than to simply hope for the best. My dad gave voice to that thought too. “We will proceed, however, in anticipation of the worst-case scenario. Every movement will be under protocol: escape and evade. If it is out there, I will see it long before it gets anywhere near you. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Do everything that I say and we will survive.”