After Earth: A Perfect Beast

by Peter David Michael Jan Friedman Robert Greenberger

  Conner hadn’t thought of that.

  “But now that you’re here,” said Wilkins, “why don’t you tell me what you did and why you did it. And don’t worry; I’m not going to make you file a formal battle plan.”

  He nodded. “Thank you, ma’am. As far as what I did … it was the same thing my aunt did just before she died.”

  Wilkins leaned forward. “Your aunt …?”

  “I went over the satellite-to-ground footage,” Conner explained. “I know you’ve got other people doing that, but I had a reason to go over this particular footage more carefully. After all, it was the last time anyone saw my aunt alive.”

  The Prime Commander nodded. “And you found something?”

  “I did, ma’am. I noticed how close my aunt was able to get to the Ursa.”

  “It was feeding, as I recall.”

  “That’s true. But what if that wasn’t the reason? What if the creatures have a blind spot directly behind them—a blind spot in their sense of smell? We’ve been giving them credit for an extraordinary sensory range despite the fact that they’re eyeless. But what if they don’t have the kind of range we’ve assumed?”

  “A blind spot,” she echoed.

  “Everyone’s got one,” said Conner. “Lucas Kincaid did in that war game. That’s how I was able to get behind him. After I saw my aunt’s footage, I figured the Ursa had one, too.”

  “So you went out and tested that theory?” Wilkins said, a note of disapproval in her voice.

  “It was on my mind,” he admitted. “But to be honest, I didn’t think I’d get the chance to test it. And then I did. And at that point, I had no alternative but to check it out.”

  “Why didn’t you discuss it with me first?”

  “Because you wouldn’t have assigned me to a squad. You would have let someone else risk his or her life to see if I was right. And I didn’t want to be responsible for someone else getting killed.”

  “Noble,” said Wilkins. “But dumb. Someone more experienced would have had a better chance of making it work. But be that as it may, you’ve provided us with a valuable insight. Except …”

  “Ma’am?” said Conner.

  “I’m not ready to bless it until we’ve had a chance to test it in different circumstances.”

  “I’ve already tested it,” he insisted.

  “Understand,” said Wilkins, “that I’ve got responsibility for the entire Corps. If I send out every squad we’ve got and we’ve misinterpreted the data, that’s it. The Skrel and their monsters will have won. So I need to test it one more time.”

  Conner bit his lip. “No problem. I can take a squad out as soon as—”

  “You?” said Wilkins.

  He hadn’t thought about it. It had just come out. “I just want to be part of the squad,” he said more reasonably.

  The Prime Commander shook her head. “No. This has got to be a squad of veterans, Cadet Raige. I’m not risking a cadet. Especially one that’s hobbled the way you are.”

  Conner felt a surge of disappointment. “But ma’am—”

  “Look,” said Wilkins, “you’ve made what I hope will be a huge contribution to the defense of this colony. But this mission is going to be one of the most important we’ve ever carried out. I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t assemble a team of the most experienced Rangers we have—and that includes me.”

  “With all due respect,” he said, “experience is great. But it’s not a matter of how much experience. It’s a matter of what kind. I was the one who caught on to the Ursa’s weakness, ma’am. I know what it takes to capitalize on it.”

  “So do I,” said Wilkins, “now that you’ve shared your observations with me.” She got up, came around her desk, and put her hands on Conner’s shoulders. “Relax, cadet. When we come back with a dead Ursa in tow, you’re the one who’s going to get the credit.”

  Credit? “It’s not about that,” he blurted, feeling the heat rise in his face. “Not at all. I—”

  Wilkins held a hand up. “Sorry. Bad choice of words—I’ve been doing that a lot lately. I didn’t mean to imply that that was the first thing on your mind. But you will get the credit. Hell, you’ll deserve it.”

  On that note, she showed him the door. Conner noted a spring in her step that hadn’t been there when he walked in.

  “Smile,” said the Prime Commander. “If your theory pans out, you’ll have done this colony a great service. Now get some rest. We may need you again before this is all over.”

  He was bitterly disappointed, but he had pleaded his case as hard as he could. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

  “You’re welcome, Cadet. Carry on.”

  As he left Wilkins’s office, he couldn’t help feeling good about what he had done but also bad in that, in his estimate at least, he could have done so much more.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Conner was surprised when he answered his vid tablet and saw who was trying to contact him. Of all people, it was his father.

  “Morning, Cadet,” said Frank Raige.

  They hadn’t spoken in such a long time, Conner didn’t know how to respond. He still felt the sting of what his father had said to him that day outside the command center.

  “I said, ‘Morning, Cadet.’ ”

  “Morning, sir.”

  “Listen, I’ve only got a minute while Smitty replaces a mag coil. But I got a call from Meredith Wilkins. She tells me you killed an Ursa.”

  Conner felt a flush of pride. “Not just me, sir. I was part of a squad.”

  His father’s brow creased. “You calling the Prime Commander a liar, Cadet?”

  Conner was caught off guard by the question. He was about to protest until his father cracked a smile and Conner realized he was joking. It felt good to see him joke. It had been a long time.

  “No, sir,” he said. “I wouldn’t do that, sir.”

  “Glad to hear it. Conner …” Silence for a moment. “I’m hoping what you figured out about the Ursa will make a difference. But Torrance is gone, and Bonita is gone, and … well, you can never tell who’s going to make it back from a mission and who’s not. So I want you to know”—his voice cracked as Conner had never heard it crack before—“what I said at the command center that day, I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t seen something in you, something that’s just beginning to show. You know, I’ve always talked so much about family tradition, you probably wondered if you could ever live up to it. Let me let you in on a secret, son—you don’t have to become a Raige. You’ve always been one.”

  Conner felt his throat constrict.

  “You’re a fine, fine Ranger,” said his dad, “and I am as proud of you as I can be. Always remember that.”

  Conner nodded. There were tears standing in his eyes, but he didn’t wipe them away. “Thanks, Dad.”

  Someone off camera said something, and Conner’s father glanced that way. Then he turned back to Conner and smiled. “Good luck, son.”

  “Rangers make their own luck,” said Conner. It was something Frank Raige used to say a lot when Conner was growing up. Rangers make their own luck.

  “I’ve heard that, now that you mention it. See you soon, son.”

  “You bet, Dad.”

  And his father’s image winked out.

  Trey Vander Meer sat in the studio, in Pham’s office, and watched the news feeds on a bank of holographic screens. All over Nova City, people were rising up against the Ursa, even if it was only with farm implements in their hands. His offer of a bounty had gotten some traction, just as he had hoped it would.

  Ordinary citizens were doing the job the Rangers already would have completed if they were anywhere near as prepared as they should have been. The people, who had always been the strength of the colony, had taken up the fight with their own hands. When they did that, there was no monster, from their own world or any other, that could stand against them.

  Vander Meer scratched his face. He hadn’t shaved in a while; he didn�
��t really know how long. Maybe I’ll grow a beard, he thought. Natasha always kids me about my b—

  He stopped. Natasha …

  He would shave. It was just a matter of finding the proper tool. Maybe I’ll ask Pham to bring a shaver with him tomorrow. Or the next day. No hurry, really.

  The people were on the job. It was just a matter of time before they erased the Ursa from the face of the planet. Just a matter of time …

  The air had become positively stale as Cecilia Ruiz sat there on the edge of Nova City’s outlands. She’d been walking for two days and thus far had encountered nothing untoward. But at least she wasn’t feeling overtaxed. Her body hadn’t betrayed her; she was in as good shape as she had been nine years ago. Not bad for having had two kids, she thought proudly.

  She was armed with two pieces of electronic equipment that she prayed would give her the edge she needed in tracking down an Ursa.

  First was her old naviband.

  Technically, she should not have had it. It was a piece of equipment that was supposed to be turned in when one left the Corps. But Cecilia had had a long-standing and very positive relationship with the quartermaster, and so when he had asked for the return of her band, which performed the function of communications as well as navigation, she had just given him a look of carefully crafted chagrin and told him that tragically, she’d lost it. He’d simply studied her, his face deadpan, and then said, “If it turns up, bring it back.”

  If he had wanted, he could have used the band’s tracking function to find it. But out of kindness he hadn’t.

  Cecilia hadn’t done anything inappropriate with it since then. It was just that every so often she liked to find a nice private spot, turn on the link, and listen to the cross chat of various Rangers. It made her feel ever so slightly as if she still belonged, even if she could only listen in from afar and live vicariously through the Rangers’ communications.

  The second piece of equipment was an electronic map. It was displayed on a small pad, and she was using it as a point of configuration to see if there was any rhyme or reason to the manner in which the Ursa were making their presence known. Thus far, she had been unable to find any kind of pattern. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or frustrated by this. The frustration would stem from the fact that the random nature of their movements made it impossible to determine where they might strike next. But it was something of a relief because it meant that the monsters weren’t intelligent enough to form a coherent plan of attack. Animals that could strategize were certainly the last thing anyone needed.

  Cecilia studied the glowing dots that indicated all the places the Ursa had struck recently. She noticed that there was one area, about fifty kliks north of her current location, that seemed to be without any sort of reported Ursa sighting. “Seems as good a place as any to look around,” she muttered, and so north it was.

  She continued to run through her head what she had discerned about the creatures during her one brief encounter with one. Its behavior didn’t make sense to her. It had had her dead to rights, attacking her from behind. She’d been oblivious to its presence. But it had gone right past her and attacked the gunman.

  Why?

  Well, there were only two explanations. The first was that it actually had discerned the shooter as the greater threat. He had a weapon in his hand while she was weaponless, and so from a strategic point of view, it made sense to incapacitate him before her. The second explanation was that it simply hadn’t seen her. What better reason to bypass her than if it didn’t know she was there?

  No eyes. The fact that it has no eyes must be the clue. Perhaps it’s telepathic somehow. Or maybe it has some sort of built-in radar. Or it could be that it’s able to detect heat signatures and it’s following those. It could even be something as simple as smell: that our scents draw it to us. If only I knew which of those it was, I might be able to exploit it as a weakness and defeat it.

  The problem was that she didn’t have a lot of latitude for experimentation. She could come at the Ursa with an attack designed to target a weakness that it might or might not have. Judging by the creature’s track record, she wouldn’t get a second chance.

  Cecilia continued to negotiate terrain that at certain points was jagged and challenging. One would have thought the Northern Plains, which she was currently making her way across, would have been nice and flat. Not so: There were plenty of ups and downs and several places where the land was so uneven that she nearly fell. That could well have been catastrophic. If she’d injured her ankle, she would have been alone and vulnerable in the middle of nowhere. It was an unsettling realization.

  Maybe if you’d given this any damn thought ahead of time, you’d have had the brains to remain at home. Was Xander right? Is this all about me and nothing to do with trying to help my family?

  She tried to push those concerns away, but they dogged her as she continued her trek.

  The suns continued their circuit across the sky. At the hottest point of the day, she found shelter inside an empty cave, but not before she took the precaution of firing in a few pulser shots to make sure there was nothing hiding within it. Only then did she crawl in and remain there until the heat was less blistering. The entire time she remained at the ready, sitting toward the mouth of the cave with her pulser resting on her lap.

  She speculated about how wonderful it would be if an Ursa went slinking past below while she was sitting in the mouth of the cave. She’d be able to send a steady stream of pulse blasts at the monster before it even knew what had hit it. With luck, a lot more than the Rangers in the city had had, she would be able to kill the thing without putting herself at risk.

  Without any luck, it looks up, sees me, and I’m dead.

  Cecilia was becoming frustrated with herself. This was not the attitude a Ranger displayed in contemplation of battle. This was the sort of negative thinking that got one killed.

  She pulled her binoculars from her pack and surveyed the area. As she panned across the uneven terrain, she suddenly swung the binoculars back and zoomed in on something she hadn’t noticed before. It appeared to be a mining colony. She vaguely remembered hearing about such an endeavor out here but couldn’t recall much in the way of details beyond that.

  Cecilia decided to head in that direction, which seemed as good an idea as any. Perhaps they would be able to tell her something. Perhaps they’d seen something.

  Perhaps they’re all dead.

  She growled angrily at herself. Again! Again with the negative thinking. Stop it. Not everything is a worst-case scenario.

  Mentally scolding herself the entire way, she set out for the colony.

  Back in the days before humankind left Earth, there was a city called Newcastle in the middle of a big coal-producing region in a country called England. Newcastle needed lots of things, but coal wasn’t one of them, and so when people wanted to describe an utterly useless activity, they said it was like bringing coals to Newcastle.

  That was how Frank Raige felt as he plied the air over Nova City in his flier and, in fact, how he had felt every day since the Skrel ship had crashed outside Nova City and unleashed its plague on humanity.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t have the option of doing anything else.

  He had suggested to the Prime Commander more than once that he would be more useful leading ground patrols, but she wouldn’t go for his suggestion. She had insisted that he was doing his fellow citizens a service by looking out for Ursa in the streets and that he was saving lives by continuing to fly. But it sure didn’t feel like he was saving lives.

  What it felt like was gratitude on Wilkins’s part for the good turn his father had done for her. That had been Frank’s theory until she told him she was going to let Conner go on a mission.

  Until then, the boy had taken part in civilian evacs and little else. But a ground mission was serious business, and if Wilkins would let Conner go on one, she wasn’t operating out of gratitude to the Raige family after all. Maybe, he h
ad to allow, she really believed that Frank’s flying over the city was accomplishing something.

  An opinion he didn’t share. “Coals to Newcastle,” he grumbled.

  He would have gone on grumbling except for what he saw on a rooftop coming up on his right. Banking and slowing down as much as he could without losing altitude, he peered over the side of his flier and spotted a bunch of kids—six or seven of them; it was hard to tell—waving their arms at him as if they, too, wanted to take flight.

  What the hell were kids doing outside when there were Ursa roaming the streets? It wouldn’t be any big deal for one of the creatures to bound up onto the roof and make short work of the youngsters.

  But he couldn’t yell at them from where he was. He would have to contact Hāturi and get some orders relayed to the nearest ground patrol.

  Frank already had opened a channel to Hāturi’s office when he saw the reason the kids were up on the rooftop. An Ursa was slinking alongside a building with a human body in its maw. And as Frank flew past, he could see that a wall of the building had been broken in. Instantly, he reconstructed what had happened. The Ursa had gotten into the place, and one or more of the adults had tried to stop it while the kids escaped to the roof.

  It didn’t matter if he was right. All that mattered was that the Ursa was following the half dozen kids and that before long it would consume them as it already had begun to consume the adult.

  Unless Frank did something about it.

  Banking sharply, he came back at the creature with his flier’s pulsers spitting silver-blue destruction. It didn’t stop the Ursa. It got its attention.

  That had been Frank’s purpose all along. The Ursa tossed its head and roared at him and maybe would have gone after him if he hadn’t been out of reach. As it was, it resumed its pursuit of the kids.