After Earth: A Perfect Beast

by Peter David Michael Jan Friedman Robert Greenberger

  When Conner was called into Lennon’s office in the command center, all kinds of thoughts went through his head.

  First, he thought he was going to be disciplined after all for fighting in the barracks. But if that were the case, Lucas would have been summoned to Lennon’s office as well, and Lennon had sent only for Conner.

  Next, it occurred to him that Lennon wanted to apologize for making his response to the fight a personal diatribe. After all, Conner was entitled to his beliefs, and Lennon had reamed him for them. But he rejected that possibility even more quickly than the first. Lennon wasn’t the sort to apologize for anything. Ever.

  The third notion that came to mind was that Lennon was going to promote Conner to squad leader for what he had done during the war games. Not because he wanted to but because Wilkins had ordered him to.

  In the end, Conner found out that his superior had none of those things in mind. “So,” said Lennon when Conner arrived, “when was the last time you stood satellite duty?”

  “I haven’t ever stood satellite duty, sir,” Conner said.

  Lennon smiled. “Well, Cadet, there’s a first time for everything.” He told Conner when to report and what to expect. “Details on your tablet in case you’ve got any questions. Dismissed.”

  It might have been the quickest conversation the command center had ever seen. Satellite duty, Conner mused as he walked out of the building.

  He was recalling what he had heard about such an assignment when he saw a familiar face waiting for him outside the command center.

  “Dad?” he said.

  It was a surprise, to say the least. Frank Raige hadn’t visited his son the whole time Conner had been in training. They had gotten together those times when both he and Conner went home on leave but never once when Conner was on duty.

  His father couldn’t have shown up at a better time. “Listen to this,” Conner said. “You know what that lowlife Vander Meer’s been saying about—”

  “I heard,” said his father.

  His response was clipped, abrupt. It brought Conner up short, making him wonder why Frank Raige would react that way.

  He thinks I let Vander Meer’s comments go, Conner decided. He thinks I looked the other way. “Don’t worry,” Conner said, “I put Vander Meer in his place. I didn’t let him get away with that garbage.”

  “That’s the problem,” said Frank Raige. “You didn’t let him get away with that garbage. Since when are you the official spokesman for the Rangers?”

  For a moment, Conner thought his father was kidding. His dad would do that sometimes—pretend to be deadly serious and then break out into the world’s biggest grin. But not this time. Frank Raige’s eyes looked like they had been chiseled from rock.

  “I—I’m not,” Conner stammered. “But I couldn’t—”

  “But nothing,” his father said. “There’s a chain of command in the Corps. You know that, right? It starts at the top and it works its way down, and it’s been there since long before either of us was born. Some people in that chain, usually the ones with the most experience, are authorized by the Prime Commander to speak on behalf of the Rangers—and others are not. You are one of those who are not.”

  Conner felt his throat constrict. He couldn’t remember the last time his dad had spoken to him with an edge in his voice. He was angry; that much was clear. Angry and embarrassed.

  The worst part was that Conner didn’t deserve it.

  The Rangers would never in a million years make an official response to Vander Meer’s crap. If Conner hadn’t opened his mouth, those people in the plaza would never have heard the other side of the argument: the Rangers’ side. They would have accepted everything Vander Meer coughed up without exception.

  Conner started to say so.

  But before he could get two words out, his father held up a hand. “The Prime Commander makes that decision, not you. If she wants to say something, that’s her business. And if she doesn’t, that’s her business as well.”

  “But Dad,” Conner asked, “how would the Prime Commander even have known what Vander Meer said? She wasn’t there—I was.”

  “It’s not your problem,” said his father. “Someone else’s, maybe, but not yours. Your problem is acting like a Ranger, and you’re nowhere near a solution from what I can see. You get into fights in your barracks, you insult your commanding officer, and you mistake yourself for the Prime Commander. You’re part of a family that’s been a credit to the uniform since before we came in sight of this planet. Act like it.”

  And that was it. There was no room for protest, no room for argument, nothing else that could be taken into account. Conner was supposed to listen to Vander Meer’s nonsense and remain silent regardless of how untrue it was.

  “You read me?” asked Frank Raige, his gaze still hard and unyielding.

  Conner did his best to contain his disappointment. “Yes, sir. I read you.”

  His father nodded. “Good.”

  Then he turned around and walked away. As if they weren’t related, as if they had never even met before.

  Conner knew his fellow cadets would be standing around looking at him even though they were pretending not to do so—looking and listening. He didn’t give them anything more to talk about. He just made his way back to the barracks as if nothing had happened.

  It hadn’t been easy being a cadet all these months, but at least he had known that his family was behind him, that if push came to shove, they would support him as they always had. Unconditionally. Now he had learned otherwise.

  To that point, Conner had worshipped his father. It was shocking to hear the object of his worship tell him to shut up and obey orders, even if it wasn’t in so many words.

  All right, Conner thought. I can do that. He would shut his mouth and keep it shut.

  No matter what he saw.

  Bonita Raige was tired and miserable when she got home. But she wouldn’t be able to sleep; she was pretty sure of that. She needed to talk, to work out some of the anger that was churning around inside her.

  Her husband, Torrance, was sleeping already when she entered their bedroom. Had she been a considerate wife, she would have slipped in beside him as quietly as she could and allowed him to go on sleeping.

  Consideration be damned, she thought.

  “You awake?” she asked.

  “I am now,” he replied. He sat up in a shaft of the moonlight coming in through the skylight. “What’s up?”

  Bonita was reminded of how handsome her husband was. Tall, broad-shouldered, brown-eyed, and brown-haired, he was the spitting image of his father, a good-looking man in his own right. Torrance’s brother, Frank, with his craggy features, was a throwback to their grandfather. As far as Bonita was concerned, Torrance had gotten the better of the deal.

  Which meant that she had, as well.

  “Did you hear the Primus?” she asked.

  “I did,” he said.

  “And?”

  Her husband shrugged. “It’s all politics, Bon. It’ll sort itself out.”

  She stared at her husband in disbelief. “Wow, that’s it? Just politics as usual?”

  “It’s not?”

  “Not to me. It’s the future of the Rangers Rostropovich is talking about. And Vander Meer; I could kill that—”

  “Hey,” Torrance said, laying his hand on top of hers, “calm down. We’re all just cogs in the machinery. The Primus, Vander Meer … they think they’re more than that, but they’re not. They’re cogs, too. The machinery … it’s been in place for hundreds of years. The Rangers have done a good job. We’re not going anywhere.”

  “How can you be so certain?” Bonita demanded.

  “History. You think this is the first time someone’s gone after us? And here we are, still standing. There may be changes, modifications … but the Rangers will endure. So go to sleep, will you?”

  His complacency ate away at her. On another occasion, she might have listened to him anyway. But not this t
ime.

  She got up and walked into the next room.

  “Bon?” he called after her. “Bonita? Where you going?”

  “Back to work,” she muttered, and left the house.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Meredith Wilkins paced the conference room as her department heads filed into her office, which had been stocked with additional chairs. Once the last of them settled into a seat, she sat down as well and began.

  “Elias,” she said, turning to Hāturi.

  Hāturi activated the portable holo display device he had planted in the middle of the room. Suddenly a complex of charts and images of tools, weaponry, and aircraft was floating above the meeting.

  “We’ve been criticized for siphoning off too many resources from the colony,” she said. “So as a show of good faith, we’re going to cut our demands to the bone. That’s why I called you all here: to help me decide what we absolutely must have and what we can do without.”

  “Well,” said one of her assembled officers, “we can slow down the modernization of the flier fleet. Instead of upgrading every ten years, we can make it every fifteen.”

  “Of course,” said another officer, “that will mean revisiting the manufacturing process. If we’re going to wait fifteen years to replace fliers, they need to be built to last twenty.”

  Wilkins hated to equip her pilots with anything less than what was the state of the art. Frank Raige wouldn’t be happy.

  “What else?”

  “We’ve been talking with the Savant’s team,” said a third officer, “about ceding satellite monitoring to them except for periodic checks. That’ll save us on personnel.”

  “By how much?” a fourth officer asked with an edge to his voice. “And how long will it be before we’re relieved of satellite duty completely?”

  “He’s right,” said the second officer. “You give the Primus a hand, he’ll take an arm. He won’t stop till we’re too small to matter.”

  Wilkins held her tongue. This was what it felt like, she guessed, to be nibbled to death by a thousand insects. A layer at a time gets stripped away until I wake up one day and there’s no one left to command.

  But she didn’t have a choice. If she was going to preserve the Rangers, she had to do this. “Next?” she said, and waited to hear the next cost-cutting suggestion.

  Looking at his sister, Frank Raige was reminded of what his mother had been like when she was alive.

  Rosaria Raige had been a slender woman with bright blue eyes and auburn hair, just like Frank’s older sister, Theresa. She had been quiet and thoughtful, just like Theresa. And like Theresa, she had been a voice of spirituality in the family.

  An unwelcome voice at times but one that none of them would dare deny: not Frank’s father when he was alive; not Frank’s younger brother, Torrance; and not Frank himself, even when he was old enough to have his own family.

  It was that last quality that came to Frank’s mind as he met Theresa’s gaze across a scarred wooden table in an old-fashioned Irish tavern called Tir Na Nog. “Bad day?” he echoed. “These days, they’re all bad.”

  His sister, who was still wearing her brown augur robes, looked sympathetic. Just like Mom, he thought. “Sorry,” she said.

  They had been close as kids despite all their obvious differences. Frank was tall and broad where Theresa was petite. He had been rough and tumble where she was reserved. But separated only by a couple of years and older than Torrance by half a dozen, they had been coconspirators growing up, most notably in the “Frankie Has Run Away from Home” caper, in which his sister swore she had seen him take off for the mountains when he had been hiding in the broom closet all along.

  Unfortunately, they weren’t coconspirators anymore. “Don’t be sorry,” he said. “You’re not the one bad-mouthing the Rangers on the vid.”

  But the Primus was, now that he had made it clear he was siding with Trey Vander Meer. Frank left that part out.

  Theresa patted his hand. “I know. That seems to be all anyone wants to talk about.”

  “I’d rather it be about who serves the better sandwich, us or New Earth City. Or some hybrid flower that fights chromosome damage like the one that engineer came up with last year. Anything but the Rangers.”

  Theresa took a sip from her cactus ale. That was one thing Frank and his sister still had in common—a love of good brews—and Tir Na Nog had as good a beer list as anyone this side of Earth.

  “I understand,” she said. “But we’re all in the public eye, aren’t we? Even augurs get their share of criticism.”

  Not really, he thought. “Vander Meer’s not just in the public eye. He’s in the public ear.”

  “He’s got a right to say what he wants,” Theresa reminded him.

  “Except we listen even when we should know better.” He looked to a waitress passing by with a tray and three glasses, each one beaded with perspiration and topped with sudsy foam. “Are we crazy?” he asked her on a whim.

  She flashed a smile and said, “No more than the other customers. Get you a refill?”

  “Not me,” Theresa said.

  “I’d like one,” said Frank. He drained the last of his beer and passed the waitress his empty mug.

  “Do you think Wilkins will give in?” his sister asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Mainly because he hadn’t asked. And he wouldn’t. Wilkins could handle the situation without any help from him.

  “What about the augury?” Frank asked. “What’s the drone?”

  Theresa seemed to hesitate. But then, his sister wasn’t one for confrontation. But if she didn’t want to answer, it meant the colony’s priests had turned against the Rangers, too, just like their Primus.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “Frankie,” Theresa protested, “it’s not a simple answer. Of course there are some who agree with Vander Meer. But not everybody.”

  Frank looked at his sister, as much an augur as any who had ever taken vows, and still couldn’t believe their father had allowed her to take her life in that direction. Joshua Raige had still been the Prime Commander when Theresa had sat him down one night after dinner and gently explained why she had decided to become an augur.

  Joshua Raige had expected all three of his children to join him in the “family business.” But Theresa was firm in her resistance to the idea. She didn’t have the instincts to be a soldier, she said. She was made for more spiritual pursuits.

  Bitterly disappointed, Frank’s father had blamed his wife for their daughter’s decision. In fact, it came close to breaking up their marriage. On his deathbed, Joshua Raige had said he accepted Theresa for who she was, but Frank never believed he meant it.

  “Frank?” Theresa said, bringing him out of his reverie.

  “Sorry,” he said, focusing on her again. “I was—”

  “I know what you were doing. It’s not the first time I’ve seen that look in your eye. You’re thinking about Dad and what he thought about my joining the augury.”

  “Here’s your refill,” the waitress said.

  As she breezed by, she plunked down Frank’s beer. None too soon, he thought. He could buy time by taking a swig before he responded to his sister’s observation.

  “I was,” he said finally, putting his beer down on the table. “To be blunt, he wouldn’t have liked Vander Meer any more than I do. And he wouldn’t have liked any Primus who stood with Vander Meer.”

  Theresa nodded. “Probably not. But he’s our Primus. And as an augur, I’m bound to look to him for spiritual guidance.”

  There was a moment of silence between them. An uncomfortable silence. Then Theresa asked, “So what’s happening with my nephew?”

  He managed something like a smile. “Conner could be better. But he’ll get the hang of it. As Torrance likes to say, it’s in the blood.”

  “Would you like me to talk with him?” Theresa offered.

  “Not necessary,” Frank said, maybe a little too q
uickly.

  And they sat there, together in some ways yet so far apart in others.

  INTERLUDE

  The High Minister awakens and is—to some degree—surprised. When he had settled into his sleep pod for his embarkation on this great adventure, he had considered the possibility that he might never awaken from his forced slumber.

  Warlord Knahs, as far as the High Minister was concerned, was perfectly capable of sabotaging the sleep chambers of him, his nest brother … indeed, just about anyone who posed a threat to his ambitions, whatever they might be.

  Yet here is the Minister, hale and hearty. And he senses the stirring of his nest brother as well a short distance away.

  The sleep pod seeps open. Mist wafts from it, and the Minister is jolted as he feels the warm air from the ship’s atmosphere mixing with the cold in every part of his body. He stretches, shivers, and then braces himself as he emerges from the pod. He extends one clawed foot, then another, and carefully eases his full weight onto them. His knees buckle, and he almost spills onto the floor but catches himself at the last moment, clinging to the pod to keep himself upright.

  There is a loud thud close to him. He turns and—as much as he hates to admit it—is somewhat amused as he perceives his nest brother sprawled flat on the deck. Apparently the High Chancellor’s reflexes are a bit slower than the Minister’s.

  “You are smirking,” says the Chancellor in a foul temper.

  “It is not my fault if you do not appreciate the amusement of it.”

  The Chancellor’s only response is a grunt.

  As soon as the two of them are secure and on their feet once more, they check on the welfare of the scientific crew, who are adapting to their emergence from their years-long coma. They then head down to the command center. Neither of them is surprised to perceive that the Warlord and his followers are already hard at work.

  The Minister knows this for what it is: a pompous effort to appear indispensable. Of course, the ship is fully automated. There is nothing that either the Warlord or his people are going to bring to the vessel’s operation. Yet they busy themselves like walking redundancies, making sure every system is operating as it should.