After Earth: A Perfect Beast

by Peter David Michael Jan Friedman Robert Greenberger

  “Actually,” Flint said, “there is. Just this morning, my man Rambaldi finished his analysis. The report was sent to Commander Hāturi, but I suppose I can share it with you. Especially the good news—there’s no evidence in the creature of reproductive organs.”

  That was encouraging. Critical, in fact. They were having a hard time dealing with the Ursa as it was. If the creatures had the ability to reproduce …

  “Which,” the Savant continued, “supports our suspicion that the Skrel designed the Ursa as opposed to plucking them out of nature.”

  “Designed them to destroy us,” Conner said for the Primus’s benefit.

  “Exactly,” said the Savant.

  The Primus dismissed the implications with a flip of his hand. “That doesn’t change my theological position on the matter. What does it matter if the Ursa are naturally occurring creatures or laboratory creations? They are here for a reason. And their fate, and ours, will be determined by One greater than either of us.”

  “My mom mentioned an old saying once,” Conner said. “ ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ ”

  The Primus held up a finger as if he were teaching a class. “When He is inclined to do so.”

  Conner gave up on that front and turned back to the Savant. “What else did your people find out?”

  “Well, there’s support for your theory about a directional blind spot in the creature’s ability to smell. It’s not that the Ursa can’t smell anything behind it. It’s that all things being equal, its brain recognizes the smells in front of it much more strongly than those in back. The smells in front drown out the others, as it were.”

  Good to know, Conner thought. “Maybe we can refine our approach, produce stronger smells …”

  “Except, as you discovered, the Ursa don’t rely solely on their sense of smell. So it’s not that simple.”

  “Nothing is,” the Primus said. “There are mysteries within mysteries.”

  “And it’s up to us to solve them,” Connor told him.

  “But Rambaldi’s most interesting finding,” said Flint, ignoring the Primus now, “is that the Ursa’s hide is reinforced with metal alloy. Not a surgical insertion, as you might expect, but an integral part of the creature’s physiology, as much so as its teeth or its talons. We’re calling it smart metal.”

  That was interesting, Conner thought.

  “Which,” the Savant continued, “is why pulsers haven’t had much effect on the Ursa. The smart metal protects them.”

  “But we’ve killed Ursa with our pulsers,” Conner pointed out. “Two of them now.”

  The Savant shrugged. “A function of the prolonged nature of your attack. You poured on so much firepower that you eventually damaged some of the creature’s organs. But it’s only possible to do that if you’ve stunned the creature to begin with, and from what I understand, that’s not so easy to do.”

  True, Conner thought. Even when his squads were successful, the death toll was horrific. “You have something else in mind?”

  “Nothing specific. But ideally, it would be something intrusive. Something that can find one of the spots in the Ursa’s anatomy unprotected by the smart metal and take advantage of it.”

  Conner recalled something. “You and Prime Commander Wilkins discussed weapons development—it was in her notes.”

  “You’ve been reading Wilkins’s notes?” the Primus said. He shook his head disapprovingly.

  “That’s right,” said Flint, responding to Conner’s comment rather than the Primus’s. “I had my deputy, Leslie Vincenzo, task our people to come up with something more effective than pulsers. Unfortunately, they haven’t had much success.” A pause. “One approach seemed promising for a while, but it ultimately proved untenable.”

  “What was that?” Conner asked.

  The Savant described it to him and told him as well why it couldn’t work. “Not a trivial flaw, as you can imagine. Maybe with more time,” he said. “A lot more time …”

  “Well,” said the Primus, “good luck with that.” He rose and straightened his robes. “I’ll be in the Citadel if you need me.”

  Conner was disgusted, even angered by the man’s haughtiness. But it wasn’t his job to reform the Primus. His job was to save lives.

  “I’d like to look at your engineers’ weapon concepts,” he told the Savant. “Especially the one you described.”

  The Savant’s expression hardened a bit. After all, Conner was intruding on his territory. But Flint didn’t chastise him.

  All he said was, “Suit yourself.”

  Lyla had tried to forget about Conner Raige.

  After all, Lucas had told her the guy was a hothead and a know-it-all and hadn’t been very popular with his fellow cadets for a long time as a result. And he had brawled with her brother in the barracks.

  And she hadn’t expected him to be little Conner Raige.

  Then, weeks later, Lucas had changed his tune. Suddenly Conner was a leader of men, a brilliant tactician, a guy the other cadets wanted to follow, Lucas among them. In fact, the whole colony had pinned its hopes on Conner lately.

  Lucas wasn’t the type to give out a lot of praise. If he was endorsing Conner, the cadet must have become everything Lyla had heard about him.

  But that day at the cageball court he had been just another cadet. When had he changed? When had he become this wunderkind who could kill Ursa and live to tell about it?

  She would have a chance to find out for herself. After all, Conner was scheduled to arrive at her lab in a minute or so.

  Lyla looked around. She had cleaned up her coffee cups and food wrappers and wiped all the counters clean. Why? He’s just Lucas’s little pal. It’s not as if I have to impress him or anything.

  And her invention had hit a wall. It was flawed, unusable. So Conner wasn’t going to be hanging out very long. But—

  Her thought was interrupted by a knock on her door. She crossed the lab and opened it.

  It was Conner. And he had changed, all right.

  She couldn’t put her finger on how. He wasn’t any taller. He hadn’t put on any weight. Did he look more like his dad? Maybe. Or maybe it was just the way he carried himself, as if he’d been in charge not just for a few days but for a long time.

  “I heard you were working on a weapon,” Conner said, smiling despite what had to be a lot of pressure on him these days. “A hand-to-hand version of our F.E.N.I.X. projectiles if I’m not mistaken.”

  He was not going to mention that embarrassing moment at the cageball court, she thought. Good.

  “That’s right,” Lyla said. “Come on in.” She indicated the stool she had set up for him. “You can sit there.”

  As he took the seat, she activated the holographic array. A moment later, a mock-up of the slender silvery device was hanging in the air in front of Conner.

  “What do you call it?” he asked.

  “A cutlass.”

  Conner glanced at her. “Like what the pirates used back on Earth?”

  She returned the look. “How did you … I mean, yes.”

  “I liked pirate stories, too,” he said. “What does it do?”

  She showed him.

  “Nice,” he said. He got up to walk around the hologram. “I mean really nice. I’ve never seen anything like it. And it cuts through anything?”

  “Almost anything. But it’s got to be in its blade formation. Then it’s just a single molecule thick at the forward edge.”

  He nodded approvingly.

  “Just one problem,” Lyla said. “It blows up.”

  “Yeah. The Savant mentioned that.”

  “Every time you hit the scythe function.”

  Conner continued to study the holographic cutlass. “But only then, right?”

  “Right. But if you hit it by accident—”

  “As you say, it’s a problem. But Rangers are trained to do a lot of difficult things. I don’t see why we couldn’t avoid a particular function.”

  �
��Even in the heat of battle?”

  He nodded, throwing her another smile. “Even then.”

  Lyla was surprised. The guy didn’t seem like a hothead or a know-it-all—not even a little. In fact, he seemed respectful of her expertise and her hard work, and he hadn’t said or done a thing to suggest that he wasn’t in control of his emotions.

  Then again, Lucas had his own agenda sometimes.

  “If I told you I wanted this,” Conner asked, “how long would it take to make a hundred of them? Working models?”

  She hadn’t even considered the possibility. “I don’t know. A week? Two?”

  “Lives depend on it,” he reminded her.

  “I’ll get them to you as quickly as I can.”

  “Thanks,” he said. He looked her in the eye. “This could be really important. I’ve got a feeling about it.”

  It took her a moment to look away, to return to her control panel and deactivate the holographic display. The cutlass vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Conner said, “if I come by from time to time. Check up on you … I mean, on your progress.”

  Is he hitting on me? Lyla wondered. No. Can’t be. He’s just being diligent. “Of course.”

  “Good. I think this will work out.” And with another smile—a shy one, she thought, as crazy as that sounded—he left.

  As the door closed behind Conner, Lyla took a deep breath. She was excited that he had thought enough of her cutlass to put it into production. If it turned out to be the weapon the Rangers needed, that would make her proud—damned proud.

  But she couldn’t help thinking about Conner himself. She hadn’t been nervous in the least, just as she hadn’t been nervous around him when she saw him at the cageball court. But she had been … She looked for a word. Aware of him?

  Connected?

  Is it just because I don’t get many visitors? No, it was more than that. There was a connection between them.

  And she was sure he had felt it, too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Conner had visited Lyla Kincaid as he had promised, daily in fact.

  He kept telling himself that he was going only to see how the cutlasses were coming along. In reality, he knew it was more than that.

  That day at the cageball court … he had felt something for her. Then he had realized that she was Lucas’s sister and that she was uncomfortable with the idea of even speaking with him, and he had done his best to put her out of his mind. If he hadn’t seen her again, he might have succeeded.

  But he had seen her—had been forced to see her because her cutlass meant so much to the defense of the colony in his estimation. And at that point, there was no denying his feelings.

  He had thought about following through on them and rejected the idea. They were at war with a dangerous enemy. He had too much responsibility to be pursuing a romance with Lyla. And she had too much responsibility to be pursuing a romance with him—even assuming she was tempted to do so.

  Then came the day when the cutlasses were supposed to be ready. Conner didn’t go to Lyla’s lab that day. He went to the factory where Lyla was overseeing the production run.

  He found her hunched over a monitor in the factory’s back office, her hair drawn back into a poorly fastened ponytail. She looked tired, as if she hadn’t gotten enough sleep.

  “Lyla?” he said. Then a little louder: “Lyla?”

  She sat up abruptly. “What—?”

  “Are they ready?” Conner asked as gently as he could, though he was barely able to contain his eagerness.

  “Did I say they’d be ready?” Lyla asked him, straightening out her hair.

  “Actually,” he said, “you did.”

  “Then they’re ready.”

  She walked out of the office and across the factory floor. Then she opened a drawer and with both hands removed something from it.

  A cutlass, he thought.

  The weapon glinted in the light of the overhead fixtures, a grooved silver cylinder almost the length of Conner’s arm. It looked bigger than he remembered, both longer and thicker. Or was it his imagination?

  “Here you go,” said Lyla, handing it to him. “Hot off the assembly line.”

  “Did you make any changes in it?” he asked.

  “Not one,” she assured him.

  Conner took the cutlass from her and felt his trepidation melt away. It wasn’t heavy at all. It was light, well balanced. In fact, it felt as if he had been born with it in his hand.

  “Nice job,” he said.

  She shrugged. “We did our best. When are you planning on field-testing it?”

  Conner frowned. Part of him wanted to find an Ursa then and there. But it wouldn’t be fair to his cadets to send them out with the cutlasses until they’d had some time to get used to them.

  “Day after tomorrow,” he decided.

  “Will they be ready by then?” Lyla asked, her brow crinkled with concern.

  “They’ll have to be. Of course, I’ll have to be ready first.”

  “So you can show them how it’s used. And how to avoid that pesky scythe function.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, then,” said Lyla, “let me show you.”

  She held out her hand, and he laid the cutlass in it. Then she slid her hands along its length and tapped it once. Instantly, the cutlass grew a blade on either side. Then she did the same thing, except with two taps, and the blades transformed into spears.

  “Okay,” Conner said. He came around behind her and put his hands alongside hers on the central cylinder of the cutlass. “Now do it with me.”

  Standing with her back to him inside the circle of his arms, Lyla took his hands and slid them apart. “Now tap here,” she said, “with the middle finger of your left hand. Just once.”

  He tapped. The blades re-formed.

  “Slide again and tap twice—right here.”

  He let her slide his hands again. Hers were slender and cool to the touch. Conner liked the way they felt on his. Liked it a lot, in fact.

  “And the scythe function?” he asked.

  He felt Lyla’s arms, her shoulders, her back, pressing gently against his chest. He smelled her hair, remarkably fragrant considering she had spent the night working in the factory.

  They didn’t get to the scythe function. At least not yet. Instead, Lyla turned in his arms and looked up at him, looked into his eyes. Hers were light-colored, open, vulnerable.

  The next thing he knew, he was kissing her. Her lips were pressing against his, and they were soft and warm and yielding, and he was kissing her as he had imagined he would do someday.

  He hadn’t planned it, hadn’t intended it. In fact, he had resolved to keep their relationship strictly professional until the Ursa were gone, however long that took. But in that single confusing moment, with her eyes pulling him in, he had been helpless to resist.

  “Conner,” she said in little more than a whisper.

  “I know,” he said. And he pulled her even closer. They stood there for a long time, Conner holding the cutlass in one hand and Lyla in the other.

  Finally she said, “If we stop the Ursa—”

  He smiled. “When we stop them. You’ve got to think positively.”

  She smiled back. “I’ll remember that.”

  And he would remember her smile, he told himself, until the time came when he could do something about it.

  Despite the way it might look to the public, Elias Hāturi had done the right thing in turning over the reins to Conner Raige. He was as sure of it as he had ever been about anything in his life.

  Especially since it left Hāturi free to do what he did best. Under Meredith Wilkins, he had been the guy who was everywhere, the guy who got things done. Now he could be that guy again.

  He was just putting together a squad to respond to an Ursa sighting in the Outlands when he heard a knock on the door. “Come in,” he said.

  He wasn’t sure who he was expe
cting to see, but it certainly wasn’t the Primus. Yet that was just who walked in. Out of respect, Hāturi got to his feet.

  The Primus smiled the way he did on public occasions. If he looked that way when he addressed his congregation, Hāturi wasn’t aware of it; he wasn’t a religious man and never had been.

  Nor had he ever regretted that fact less than in the time since the Primus had taken Vander Meer’s side in the commentator’s attacks on the Rangers.

  “No need to stand on my account,” the Primus said, his voice full of gentleness. “All I need is a moment of your time.”

  “Of course,” said Hāturi, trying his best to be civil. “What can I do for you?”

  The Primus wagged a finger at him the way somebody might wag a finger at an unruly child. “You can take command of the Rangers, that’s what you can do.”

  Ah, Hāturi thought. “With all due respect, why would I do that?”

  “Because with all the casualties we have suffered in our struggles with the Ursa, you are the highest-ranking Ranger left to us. Not the overly ambitious, full-of-himself cadet who stands in charge now but you. It’s not Conner Raige’s place to make decisions when it comes to the defense of our beloved colony—it’s yours.”

  Hāturi chuckled. “I’m sorry, Primus, but I made the only decision I had to. And I didn’t do it lightly, if that’s what you’re thinking. I brought to bear every bit of experience I had under my belt, every bit of wisdom I’d ever learned from any Ranger I’d ever served under. It all pointed in one direction and one direction only, which is why I gave Conner Raige my full support.”

  The Primus shook his head disapprovingly. “Do you know what you’re doing, my son? You’re making a mockery of the position of Prime Commander and every courageous, dedicated soul who has ever held it.”

  “Maybe so,” Hāturi allowed. “But I’d be mocking them even more if I were to claim the job knowing I’m not the best man for it.”

  “You’re too modest by far. You have the respect of the other Rangers. I know you do; I took the trouble to ask around.”

  In other words, Hāturi reflected, he’d been poking around where he didn’t belong. “Now, that was kind of you, Primus, especially when you’ve got your hands full keeping up the people’s morale. I’d hate for somebody to do something desperate because his spiritual leader was polling Rangers instead of providing comfort.”