After Earth: A Perfect Beast

by Peter David Michael Jan Friedman Robert Greenberger

  “How kind of you to join us,” says the Warlord with a sneer. “We reached the outer rim of the Holy World’s solar system some time ago. We were beginning to worry about you. After all, the strain of extended flight is not for everyone.”

  “Your consideration is appreciated,” replies the Minister, who cannot resist adding, “even if your presence here is suspect.”

  And suddenly the Warlord’s mind rips into the Minister’s with volcanic force.

  It is an insane breach of Krezateen protocol. Although nest brothers such as the Minister and the Chancellor communicate with each other routinely, if another is going to engage in telepathic conversation, it is absolutely mandatory that a preliminary probe be made, permission be acquired.

  Warlord Knahs does not bother with such niceties. Instead, the sheer force of his personality hammers the Minister, so much so that he staggers. He becomes instantly aware that the link is three-way: The Chancellor is hearing it as well.

  My presence here is entirely your responsibility. Ever since the presentation of your monstrosity to the assemblage, my bravery has been questioned. You have undermined my honor, and I will retrieve it. And when these creatures fail—as they inevitably will—then you will all see what a true Warlord can do.

  “Warlord, we are ready to block the feed of their security satellites.”

  The Warlord’s first officer reports as stoically as he can, but the excitement in his voice is readily apparent, almost as palpable as it was when their vessel sighted the Holy World’s system in the first place.

  He has obviously never been on a pilgrimage, either, thinks the Minister.

  The Warlord releases them from the hammerlock of his mental hold. Then he says out loud, “Good. Let’s get this over with.”

  The technology required for obscuring their arrival from the Vermin is simple, mostly because the Vermin’s technology is so hopelessly primitive. It is in the power of the Krezateen—with their eight fully armed vessels—to simply blow the Vermin’s satellites out of space, but that would trigger alarms. This way, it will take the Vermin time to realize that something is wrong—something other than natural signal interference such as solar radiation. The Krezateen will have all the time they require.

  For a moment, all is silent in the command center. Then the first officer says, “Satellite feeds are blocked.”

  Knahs raises his arm in a gesture of disgust. “Take us in, then.”

  A cheer goes up among the Krezateen, for they know they have taken the first step in the elimination of the beings that have befouled their Holy World. Soon they will enter Zantenor’s atmosphere and discharge their lethal cargo, as will all the other vessels in their fleet.

  The High Minister cannot resist taking a dig at his old rival. “You seem less than enthused, Warlord. A great day dawns for the future of the Krezateen—a day in which we take back our Holy World.”

  “Animals are taking actions meant for warriors,” the Warlord tells him. “We shall witness their efficacy.”

  “Yes, we will,” says the High Minister. “And perhaps by the end of this endeavor, it will be you, Warlord, who will come to have more respect for what science can accomplish.”

  “Do all that you wish with your brains,” says the Warlord with studied indifference, “while I stick with my arms, and we shall discover who is ultimately triumphant.”

  Yes. Yes, we will, the High Minister thinks to himself, but not anywhere near the telepathic range of the Warlord.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Vander Meer couldn’t have been happier about the way his shows had gone lately. But his happiness was punctured as soon as he walked into his house and felt the sting of his daughter Elena’s greeting.

  “Too far, Pop,” she snapped angrily, reading something from her tablet rather than looking up at him. “Way too far.”

  “Good afternoon to you, too,” he said, smiling sweetly despite the rebuke. “And in what exactly did I go too far?”

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Elena said.

  She criticized him a lot these days. Even more than her brother Michael, and in a more unrelentingly confrontational way.

  “Whoa,” said Vander Meer, patting the air. “If you’ve got something on your mind, let’s talk about it.”

  “That’s the problem,” Elena told him. “You talk. You don’t listen.”

  Vander Meer sighed.

  He and Elena disagreed on just about everything these days. And she was only thirteen. What was it going to be like when she got older?

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m listening. In fact, I’m all ears.”

  It was a joke she used to enjoy. “You’re not all ears,” she would say. “You’ve got arms and legs and a nose and a mouth …” and then she would break into giggles.

  Not this time. And maybe never again, he reflected, feeling a pang of loss. His baby was growing up.

  “You’re treating the Prime Commander like a criminal,” Elena said in an accusatory tone.

  Finally, she looked up at him. Blond and blue-eyed, she was nothing short of adorable, and years of dancing had left her well toned. He despaired that the boys were already noticing her.

  “Am I?” he asked.

  “Yes. She’s just trying to do the right thing, and you’re killing her for it. All for the sake of your ratings.”

  Thirteen and already wise in the ways of a wicked world, Vander Meer thought. Why couldn’t kids hang on to their innocence anymore?

  “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll reconsider the way I treat the Prime Commander. No promises, but I’ll give it some thought. All right?”

  That seemed to pacify her. A little, at any rate.

  Just then, Vander Meer spotted something on her right middle finger: a new ring, one he tried to identify but couldn’t.

  “Where’d that come from?” he asked his daughter.

  “Class. I told you.”

  “No, the ring,” he said, pointing.

  Elena blushed. “It’s a Claddagh ring.”

  “A what?”

  “It’s ancient Irish. A symbol of … lasting friendship.” The blush deepened.

  “Where’d you get it?” he asked.

  “From a friend.”

  “What friend might that be?”

  His daughter hesitated, twisting the ring around her finger. Thrilled that he’d managed to change the subject, Vander Meer didn’t rush her. Finally, she got out one word—one name.

  “Derrick.”

  “Have I met this Derrick?”

  “Pop, he’s been in my classes since we were five,” she said, clearly exasperated.

  “Which one is he? The blond one?”

  “That’s Pavel.”

  “The redhead?”

  “Eric? Or Clive?”

  “I guess neither. Okay, so who or what is this Derrick?”

  “He’s the black-haired guy who always sits near me in class because our names fall one after the other.”

  “Derrick …?”

  “Ungar.”

  “Derrick Ungar. Do I know his parents?”

  “No, but they know you. And like me, they don’t approve of the way you’re attacking our leaders. They say you’re disrespecting the system.”

  Here we go again, thought Vander Meer.

  “The system is hypocritical,” he said, patiently and not for the first time. His distaste for the colony’s judges was another hallmark of his show, one that he hadn’t revisited in a while. “It’s difficult to give it less respect than it deserves.”

  “That’s not what Derrick’s parents say. They say the system is as good as the people who run it.”

  “Elena, sweet pea, it’s never that cut-and-dried. There are shades of gray, nuances that need to be explored.”

  “Don’t you mean exploited?” Michael asked as he walked into the room.

  “Ganging up on your father?” Vander Meer asked his son.

  “Just joining the conversation,” the boy said. “
I thought you were in a listening mood.”

  “Apparently I’m not the only one.”

  “I heard you talking from the other room,” Michael said. “It was hard not to.”

  “So,” Vander Meer said, trying to change the subject again, “what’s your take on Elena and this Derrick?”

  The boy glanced at his sister. “Ungar’s okay, I guess. He can’t throw worth a damn, but he’s good at defense.”

  “Michael …!” Elena whined.

  “I’m kidding.” He turned to his father again. “Besides, I’m not letting Dad off the hook so easily.”

  “You just push too hard,” Elena told her father.

  “That’s right,” Michael said. “You need to ease up.”

  Vander Meer had to chuckle. It was the first time he’d experienced the singular delight of his son actually telling him what to do.

  “I’ll have you know,” he said, “that people love me. What makes you right and them wrong?”

  “You and the Primus have them so stirred up, they can’t think for themselves,” said Michael.

  “When did you become a sociologist?” Vander Meer asked.

  The good news was he had smart kids. The bad news was he had smart kids. They were formulating interesting and thoughtful arguments, but they were irritating him as well. Pride and anger fought for control of his tongue.

  “I’m not,” Michael said. “But I don’t have to be to see what you’re up to.”

  “That’s right,” Elena agreed.

  Suddenly, Vander Meer had a yen to take a walk.

  Conner sat in the command center’s satellite data room, a surprisingly small enclosure with thirty or so large holographic screens, each one displaying information fed by one of the colony’s vast orbital array of signal receivers. He could hear his father saying, “Every cadet has to stand satellite duty some time or another.”

  He could still see the look on Frank Raige’s face outside the command center, and it still stung to hear his dad say what he’d said, though not quite as much as when it first happened. But Conner was still determined not to say anything out of line.

  Not to say anything at all if he could help it.

  He read the last line of data on one screen, then moved on to the next one in the methodical sequence recommended to him by the bleary-eyed female engineer who had sat in his seat the night before.

  Conner could hear his mother, too, adding, “You’ve got to pay your dues.”

  His parents had made those remarks in a restaurant the day before he entered cadet training, at a special dinner in his honor attended by his aunt Bonita and his uncle Torrance. But Conner hadn’t understood why they felt compelled to mention satellite duty when there were so many other aspects of his training they could have brought up.

  Only a few minutes into his shift, he understood.

  There were thirty screens, after all. He probably could have glanced at each of them and been done with it. Certainly, no one would have known. But Conner wasn’t like that. If Lennon had given him a job, he was going to do it.

  Especially if Trey Vander Meer had pressured the Prime Commander into shifting the primary responsibility for monitoring satellite data to the Savant’s engineers. The Rangers would take only one two-hour shift a day now: this one.

  All the more reason for Conner to pay the utmost attention every minute of his shift. If the Rangers were going to get only one peek at the data each day, it was more important than ever that that peek be a thorough one.

  Not that he was surprised that none of the screens he had studied had anything alarming on them. The colony would have need of the Rangers one day, but he didn’t necessarily think today would be that day.

  Fortunately, the system was a simple one to understand. Each satellite had a set of dimensions programmed into it that approximated the size of the Skrel craft from the aliens’ first attack five hundred years earlier. If an object entering the atmosphere of Nova Prime came anywhere near those dimensions, the satellite would transmit an alarm to Ranger facilities throughout the colony.

  If the object was smaller, the satellite in question would simply record the passage of the object and add the data to its logs. Anything that size would burn up in the atmosphere, anyway.

  The second thing every cadet had to know was that a given satellite monitored only a section of the atmosphere, with very little overlap between satellites. Therefore, a meteorite that was observed by one satellite probably wouldn’t be observed by another, and in no case would it be observed by more than two satellites.

  Simple, Conner mused.

  But whoever was on monitor duty wasn’t supposed to wait for an alarm. He or she was supposed to be alert for anything. Otherwise, why involve a human being in the process at all?

  So Conner did his job, tedious as it was.

  It wasn’t until he came to the twenty-sixth screen that he noticed something unusual. Or, at least, something he thought was unusual: The screen didn’t show anything entering the atmosphere of Nova Prime. Of course, that was a good thing. But it seemed strange for the screen not to have recorded anything, not even a little debris. He made a note of it in his report file, then moved on to the next screen and discovered that one didn’t have any entry data, either. Well, he thought, that’s a coincidence.

  The twenty-eighth screen had a record of some debris, as did the one after it and the one after that. But not screens 26 and 27. Just for the heck of it, Conner checked the data from the previous shift. Both screens showed small amounts of debris entering the atmosphere over time. But not now. He ran a diagnostic on screens 26 and 27. They were working perfectly in all respects, just not showing any entry objects.

  Conner sat back in his chair and massaged his chin. It was probably nothing, but just for the heck of it he went back to see when those screens had last shown any debris.

  He leaned forward.

  Seventeen minutes and twenty-two seconds before the end of the previous shift, both screens had stopped showing any incoming material. Seventeen minutes and twenty-two seconds exactly.

  Before that, both of them had registered small amounts of debris. Then, at exactly the same time, they had stopped. And neither of them had shown anything since that time.

  Can’t be, Conner thought.

  He ran another diagnostic just to make sure he hadn’t screwed up the first one. It didn’t turn up any problems. The screens were fine.

  I’ve got to tell Lennon, Conner thought.

  No, said a voice inside him. Remember what you told Dad? You were going to keep your mouth shut.

  So much for that promise.

  Conner lingered at the console only long enough to log out, his fingers flying over the command pads. Then he was out of his seat and heading for the door.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Conner had been watching Lennon go over the satellite data on his data pad for the last five minutes. It hadn’t been easy for the cadet to remain quiet, but he wanted Lennon to be able to concentrate, to appreciate the potential magnitude of the threat. Unfortunately, Lennon was the guy he had mouthed off to not so long before. But Conner had known he would have to face him eventually.

  Besides, he had no choice in the matter. If he was right about the data, there wasn’t any time to waste.

  Finally, Lennon looked up. “So you think … what?” he asked of Conner. “That we’re being invaded by someone?”

  He said it as if it were a joke. As if the colony had never before been attacked by a species from another planet.

  “I don’t know, sir,” Conner said, “but something’s going on. That much is obvious.”

  Lennon smiled. “It’s not obvious to me, Cadet. I’ll grant you that the data deserves further study. But let’s not forget that these data receivers malfunction from time to time.”

  “I ran a diagnostic, sir.”

  “The diagnostics malfunction, too,” Lennon said. “Trust me; I’ve seen them do it on a dozen different occasions.”

&n
bsp; “Sir, it still warrants a—”

  “An all-points alert? Let me tell you something, Cadet.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “There are people out there who have put us under a microscope, and those people are just waiting for us to do something stupid. Because as soon as we do, they’re going to point to it and say, ‘You see? Those Rangers are a bunch of Chicken Littles crying that the sky is falling. We can do fine without them.’

  “Now, it may be that those satellites stopped receiving data for some nefarious reason. But my gut is telling me that it’s nothing of the sort—that in fact, it’s nothing more than a harmless coincidence. Worthy of investigation? Sure. But if we panic and declare a state of emergency and we’re wrong—that could be the end of the Rangers. And I’ll be damned if I’m the guy that brings that end about.”

  “But sir,” Conner said, “what good are the Rangers if we can’t do the job we’re supposed to do?”

  “That’s a good question,” Lennon said. “Here’s another one: What will this colony do without the Rangers when a real danger rears its head?”

  But what if this is a real danger?

  That was what Conner was going to ask. It was right there on the tip of his tongue. But in the end he held back. He could see by Lennon’s expression that it wasn’t going to do him any good.

  “Thanks for your vigilance, Cadet,” Lennon said. “You’re dismissed.”

  It took all of Conner’s willpower to say, “Yes, sir,” and return to his post.

  Frank Raige was just taking his flier up for a routine bounce when his comm board lit up and he heard an urgent voice over his intercom: “Something’s falling out of the sky! No—there’s more of them—eight altogether! Forty thousand cubits apiece, best I can make it out! Doesn’t look like anything we’ve ever seen before! Repeat—”

  Frank didn’t need to hear any more. Harl Jones had as much airtime as Frank did. If he was sounding the alarm, it wasn’t for nothing.

  But … falling out of the sky? Eight of them? It had been hundreds of years since anyone had had cause to say that. For all the Rangers’ talk about invaders, no one really expected to get a report like that.