But ill will had entered the equation pretty quickly. And Conner couldn’t imagine it going away anytime soon.
Contrary to what people liked to say, Frank Raige wasn’t always on duty. Sometimes he was lounging, watching a replay of the scholastic football championship from the night before.
Not that he was as rabid a fan as his sister-in-law Bonita. She was what he called “off the charts.” But like anyone else, he sometimes liked to just relax.
He was just watching the first half of the game come to a close when the comm unit beeped. He answered the way he always did, on the job or off: “Raige.”
“It’s Meredith,” said the voice on the other end.
Even in her most casual moments, the Prime Commander didn’t give away her feelings. Sometimes that was a good thing. At the moment, Frank had a feeling she was calling about Conner again; it could only be bad. After all, Wilkins had already said that Conner had turned the corner. The news couldn’t get any better than that.
But it could get worse. “What is it?” he asked more abruptly than he had intended.
“I’m calling about Conner. I wish it was good news, but it’s not.”
Frank’s heart sank in his chest. “What happened?”
“He got into a fight with Lucas Kincaid. They’d had words before, but this time it blossomed into a knock-down-drag-out. Or rather, it would have been if Tariq Lennon hadn’t broken it up.”
Frank saw Rebecca come into the room, a smile on her face. It vanished as soon as she looked at him.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance Kincaid started it?” he asked. It was as close as he would let himself come to giving his son the benefit of the doubt.
“Not from what Lennon said. Apparently, Conner accused Kincaid of parroting Trey Vander Meer.” Wilkins sighed. “Can’t say I blame him for being sensitive to Vander Meer’s vitriol.”
Frank couldn’t, either. Vander Meer’s unrelenting criticism of the Rangers had him on edge as well.
“But that’s no excuse for fighting with his fellow cadet,” he said. “Especially a Kincaid.”
The Raiges and the Kincaids had been rivals since before humanity had landed on Nova Prime. Sometimes that had brought out the best in both families. Other times it had brought out the worst. When that happened, it created cracks in the Corps. But this was no time to let those cracks turn into schisms. The Rangers had to present a united front if they were going to weather the storm of public opinion sweeping across the colony.
“Do you want me to talk to him?” Wilkins asked.
Frank considered it for a moment but only for a moment. “Nobody ever became a good Ranger by receiving special treatment. He’s going to have to figure things out on his own.”
“That’s my take on it as well. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.”
“Thanks for calling,” he said.
“Sure thing, Frank.”
Only after he put the phone down did Rebecca say, “What?”
“You’re not going to like it,” he said.
CHAPTER FIVE
“So you’re okay?” asked Lyla Kincaid.
Her brother nodded on the other end of the vid connection, his face looking like he’d volunteered it for pulser practice three days in a row. “I’m fine.”
“Was it really Conner Raige? Didn’t you two used to be friends?”
He shot her a dark glance. “Used to be.”
“Right. But not anymore, I guess.”
“Not anymore.”
“So what did you fight about?”
He shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Makes sense,” Lyla said. “Good thing it wasn’t about something. Who knows what would have happened then.”
What a creep, she thought. Were she and Lucas really related? It was hard to believe sometimes.
Despite her concerned-sister questions, he’d said nothing at all. And unless she prompted him, he wouldn’t ask a thing about her work. No “How’s it going?” No “Any progress?” No indication that he even knew what she was working on. The only work he cared about was his own. That was the way it had been since the day he became a cadet. No, even before that.
My training. How often had she heard that phrase? As if no one else could make a valuable contribution to civilization. As if the only people who had ever done anything worthwhile in the entire history of Nova Prime were the damned Rangers.
Well, the Savant’s corps of engineers had made some pretty sizable contributions, too. Not that she needed her brother to start reeling them off. It would just have been good if once—once—he could have said, “How’s that hearing device going? Are you having any luck? Or are you pouring your heart and soul into it just for the hell of it?”
“Well,” she said, “take care of yourself, all right?”
“Sure,” he said, and terminated the connection.
Lyla let out an exasperated sigh. Such a creep.
Conner didn’t often find himself in a place like O’Hara Street. He knew a couple of things about it, though. One was that it was named after a former Prime Commander of the Rangers who had presided over a difficult time in the colony’s history. The other was that it was a busy thoroughfare, probably the busiest in Nova City, full of restaurants and shops and such.
Conner preferred open spaces, places where he could hear the wind if he listened closely enough, places where he could feel the rhythms of the planet and all the different forms of life that humanity had brought to it. But Blodge had wanted to visit O’Hara Street, and he had asked Conner to go with him. So there they were, navigating their way through the flow of colonists in either direction.
“You’ve got to love this place,” Blodge said.
“Absolutely,” Conner said, trying to work up some enthusiasm.
“The sounds, the smells …”
“All of that.”
“I’m in the mood for crab balls. You?”
“Sure,” said Conner, who was actually quite partial to crab balls. “I, uh, didn’t know they have them here.”
“Pal, they have everything here.”
Suddenly, a couple of kids slid past them on colorfully decorated gyro boards, one of them bumping Conner’s arm as he went by. Conner’s first impulse was to turn and shout something at the offender, but he restrained himself. He had been that age himself not so long ago.
When had he become such a curmudgeon?
“Hey, Con,” Blodge said.
He had stopped in front of a jewelry store. The necklaces in its window, made of rare colorful stones found in deep mountain caves, glittered wildly in the afternoon sunlight.
“Jewelry’s good,” said Blodge, who had brought him to O’Hara Street. “Don’t you think?”
“For what?” Conner asked.
“For Julie.”
“Your girlfriend?”
“You know another Julie?”
“Well … no.”
“So that’s the one.” Blodge jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Jewelry?”
Conner shrugged. “Why not?”
“All right, then.” Blodge turned back to the items in the window. “A necklace, you think?”
Conner wanted to be helpful. “How long have you been going out? A year?”
“Almost two years. Where have you been?”
“Two? Really?”
“Really. So … a necklace? Or maybe something more serious?”
Conner wanted to give his friend good advice. The problem was that he was ill equipped to do so. “I may not be the best person to ask.”
“Why?” asked Blodge. “Because you’ve never gone out with a girl for more than … what? A couple of months?”
“Well, yeah.”
“But you’ve gone out with a whole lot of different girls, right? You must have learned something about them.”
Conner frowned. What had he learned? Nothing he could articulate.
“Okay, then,” Blodge said. He glanced at the jewelry display. “
A necklace. But a really nice one.”
Conner felt relieved.
“Come on,” said Blodge, taking hold of his friend’s arm and pulling him up the steps. “You can help me pick it out.”
“Right,” Conner said, wishing he were somewhere else but determined not to let his friend know that.
He was halfway up the steps when he heard a cheer. Glancing back over his shoulder to see where it had come from, he noticed a knot of people—fifteen or twenty of them—that had gathered in the street. Conner wondered why and stopped to see. Again he heard the roar.
“What is it?” asked Blodge, looking back at him.
“That,” said Conner, pointing.
“It’s just a bunch of people.”
But something about it made Conner want to know why they had gathered. “Come on,” he told Blodge, making his way back down the steps.
“Sure,” said his friend, allowing Conner to pull him along. “Why not?”
As they got closer, Conner saw that someone was standing in the middle of the crowd. Someone tall, with a thatch of pale yellow hair. Someone who looked painfully familiar.
Trey Vander Meer, he thought.
“Hey,” Blodge said, “that’s—”
“I know,” Conner said.
“Why do we continue to support the Rangers?” Vander Meer asked the crowd. “In this day and age, what’s the point?”
It had been hard for Conner to tolerate Vander Meer’s garbage when he’d heard it on a computer. Hearing it in person made it twice as hard.
“Come on,” Blodge said, tugging at Conner’s sleeve. “He’s just going to tick you off. Let’s go.”
But Conner wouldn’t budge.
“The answer I’ve come up with,” Vander Meer said, “is that they’ve always been around. We’ve gotten used to them, like a pair of old shoes. We may not need them anymore. We may have lots of other places to put our resources where they’ll do more good. But out of habit, we keep them around.”
Conner felt his teeth grind.
“Con?” said Blodge, tugging harder.
Conner ignored him.
“Do we need someone to say that’s wrong?” asked Vander Meer. “Well, friends, I’ll say it. I’ll shout it from the rooftops. The Rangers are obsolete. They’re a waste of credits. And the sooner we accept that, the better off we’ll be.”
Conner couldn’t stand there anymore and let Vander Meer’s rhetoric go unchallenged. He had to say something.
What he said, loudly enough for everyone to hear, was, “You’re wrong!”
That drew everyone’s attention.
“We’re not obsolete, and we’re not a waste of credits,” Conner continued. He moved across the street. “We’re as necessary now as we were the day the Skrel attacked, when the Rangers were all that stood between the colony and annihilation.”
Vander Meer looked back over his shoulder and smiled. “Ah, one of our men in uniform.” He turned to Conner. “Happy to make your acquaintance, Cadet …” He leaned in to peer at the name on Conner’s uniform. “Ah, Cadet Raige. I believe I know that name.”
“It doesn’t matter what my name is,” Conner said. “All that matters is that you’re plowing this world under with your garbage.”
“My garbage!” Vander Meer echoed. “That’s some strong language, Cadet Raige. What exactly is your objection to my speaking my mind? Don’t you believe in free speech?”
Conner saw what the older man was doing. “This isn’t about what I believe. It’s about the safety of Nova Prime. Without the Rangers, there is no safety.”
“History shows otherwise,” Vander Meer said. He looked around, playing to the crowd. “We haven’t had an incident in hundreds of years—or did I miss something?”
People laughed.
“And when we do have an incident, as you call it?” Conner asked. “Are we going to start the Rangers up from scratch? You think whoever attacks us will give us time to do that?”
“You look like a smart kid,” said Vander Meer. “Why don’t you go back to your bunk and apply some of that math you learned in school. Take the Rangers in your Corps—the ones who aren’t doing a whole heck of a lot for us, which is pretty much all of them—and multiply that number by a hundred and twenty thousand credits, which is what it costs us to maintain each of them for a year.” He turned to the crowd. “A hundred and twenty thousand credits, my friends, at a time when many of us are still reeling from the drought and its attendant supply shortages. A hundred and twenty thousand credits for each and every Ranger. And for what?”
“For peace of mind,” Conner said, interrupting him. “For the security of knowing we’ll be ready if a threat does materialize. For insurance that no matter what, Nova Prime will be as safe a place for your children as it was for you and me.”
As Conner spoke, he saw people begin to nod. At the same time, Vander Meer’s expression changed. His eyes lost their humorous glint, and his mouth became a thin, hard line.
But only for a moment. Then he seemed to remember where he was, and his smile came back as big as before.
“You’re quite the phrase turner,” he told Conner. “But the truth is that the Rangers are an anachronism, a relic of times past. We need them about as much as we need quill pens, or eyeglasses, or gasoline-powered transports.”
“That’s your truth,” Conner said. “Not mine. And not theirs.” With a sweep of his arm, he included those who had gathered around them. “We know better.”
“You think you do,” Vander Meer said. “But hey, by all means go on deluding yourself. Some of us have something to accomplish today—as you’ll come to understand if you tune in to my program in less than an hour.” And with a loud chuckle, he walked off.
With that, the crowd began to dissipate. But not before a few of the onlookers cast appreciative looks in Conner’s direction.
“Wow,” Blodge said, genuine admiration in his voice, “you really told him off.”
Conner smiled to himself. “I did, didn’t I?”
“Without a doubt. I’m proud of you, Con. Now, that necklace …?”
Conner felt so good about himself that he didn’t even mind following his friend into the jewelry shop.
Cecilia Ruiz had been on her way to the jewelry store on O’Hara Street when she saw the crowd gather in the middle of the road.
It took her a moment to realize that the focus of the crowd was Trey Vander Meer, the news commentator. She didn’t have much time to listen to the media, but everyone knew Vander Meer.
Even if not everyone necessarily agreed with him.
Come on, she thought. You came here for a reason.
But it was hard not to be drawn into the crowd, hard not to pay closer attention to what the man was saying. Of course, she didn’t like the idea of the Rangers getting downsized. Not at all.
So say something, she thought.
But she had enough on her plate without getting involved with a damned celebrity. Besides, she wasn’t much of a public speaker. She would probably just make a fool of herself.
And there was the jewelry store standing there, waiting for her. The jewelry store she had to go into but dreaded going into, because it was her mother’s bracelet she had come to pawn there. My mom’s bracelet, for godsakes! But she was a mom now herself, and she and her family needed the credits.
And the guy who owned the store was known for his honesty. If she was going to pawn the bracelet her mom had loved and cherished when she was alive, the bracelet she had handed down to her only child, at least she’d get a decent price for it.
Not that she had a choice in the matter. I’ve got no choice, no choice at all.
But before she could go into the store, a Ranger cadet made his way through the crowd and confronted Vander Meer. Did a damned good job of it, too. And the longer Cecilia listened, the better she felt.
It seemed somebody could speak up, after all. Somebody could take a stand and in doing so make people like Cecilia feel a little les
s helpless. It came as no surprise to her that the kid was a Raige. Raiges had never been shy about speaking their minds, had they?
Finally, the argument broke up, with Vander Meer retreating. Cecilia’s spirits were buoyed a little as she eyed the jewelry store again. But before she could get to the steps, she saw the Raige kid and his friend go up them.
Cecilia hung back and waited some more, pretending to window-shop on O’Hara Street when the truth was that she couldn’t afford anything in those windows. After all, it was hard enough for her to think about pawning her mom’s bracelet without having to do it while someone was watching.
Trey Vander Meer straightened the lapels on his new green suit, put the unexpected and slightly jarring incident on O’Hara Street behind him, and waited for the red light on the studio wall to go on. As soon as it did, signaling that his show had started, he turned to the camera and began speaking.
“Welcome, friends, to an unprecedented conversation with our three most important voices on Nova Prime,” he said. “Over the last few weeks, the size and scope of the Rangers’ role on our world has become a topic of heated discussion in the workplace, at home, and in houses of worship. But until now, we haven’t heard from our leaders. You know who they are, so let me get right to it.”
He turned to Wilkins. “Prime Commander, let’s start with you. What is the current mission of the Rangers?”
Vander Meer settled back in his plush chair and spared a glance at the small studio audience—his wife and two older children included—that had been gathered so that the cameras could capture its reactions. He was happy that at least part of his family could be there to witness in person this historic exchange and, of course, his role in it.
Wilkins, looking every bit the professional in her all-white dress uniform, looked her host in the eye as she considered the question. “My mission is to keep you and your family alive. Should this studio catch fire, who will clear the area and allow the firefighters to do their work? Should your home be robbed, who will investigate and apprehend the burglars? What if there’s a flood? An epidemic? The Rangers maintain the peace and security of this world. We’re fortunate to be a growing population, Mr. Vander Meer, adding new communities and cities with every passing generation. But make no mistake, they all need protection.”
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