After Earth: A Perfect Beast

by Peter David Michael Jan Friedman Robert Greenberger

  Gash crouches over her, its claws at the ready.

  And still she does not respond.

  Gash stops. It does not look down at her, for it has no eyes. Yet there is something about her that draws Gash’s attention.

  At first the smell thing does not seem to be aware that Gash is simply standing there, regarding her with what amounts to curiosity. Then, very slowly, she looks up. Does she realize that Gash has not yet attacked her, that it is simply studying her, trying to discern more about her?

  And then she speaks to Gash.

  It is the first time Gash has ever heard one of the smell things speak. Scream, shriek, howl … these Gash knows. But the simple spoken voice is different somehow. Gash can’t say exactly how, but it is different.

  “Please,” the smell thing says, her voice barely above a whisper. “Make it quick.”

  Gash doesn’t know what the sounds are supposed to mean, but it does not have a lot of patience. It has had enough.

  Gash’s mouth lowers, envelops the smell thing’s head, and clamps down. The smell thing shudders and stops moving.

  Interesting, Gash thinks. But that is all it is: a brief moment of interest.

  Gash consumes the smell thing’s body, or most of it. Then it leaves the remains there and moves on. After all, Gash has other smell things to kill.

  The Primus, Leonard Rostropovich, disappeared from his apartment that night.

  He opened a secret door in his bedroom and followed an equally secret staircase down into the bowels of the Citadel, where food and drink awaited him. And he hid there because he could not bring himself to do anything else.

  The Primus knew what his duties were at this critical time in the life of his people. He knew what his flock expected of him, what it needed from him.

  But he couldn’t face another human being. Not now. Not after he had flung that girl to the ground, and felt the crunch of her bones as if they were his own, and seen the spray of her blood, and heard the wet chomping sound the creature made as it fed.

  Even now, his stomach churned at the thought. Why had God let him feel and see and hear that? Hadn’t he always sought to serve Him? Hadn’t he always done his best to be God’s voice on Nova Prime?

  Why had God brought him so close to death, so very close?

  He would not even have considered exposing himself to danger if he were not doing heaven’s work. He had been on his way to present Conner Raige with a Writ of Objection, a legal document that enabled any leader of the tripartite government to temporarily disqualify a colleague if that colleague was patently unsuitable, and to the Primus no one was less suitable than Raige.

  Unfortunately, such a writ could not be delivered electronically. It could only be handed to Raige in person. And the Primus was about to do that very thing, in God’s name, when he and his entourage were attacked.

  But why would his deity do such a thing to him? He couldn’t get the question out of his head. Why would God place him in so terrible a position?

  There was only one answer: God had abandoned the colony. Not through any fault of the Primus, of course. But it was clear to him now that that was what had happened.

  God has abandoned us. Abandoned me.

  So what else could he do but hide? He was only a man, after all, and men were frail. Especially in the face of something as hideous and powerful as the Ursa.

  Once again, despite himself, he saw the creature tear the young woman apart. Unable to stand the sight, he closed his eyes and jammed his fists against them.

  “So very frail,” he moaned.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Conner sat at Meredith Wilkins’s desk with his head in his hands.

  He had received any number of condolences in the aftermath of Lyla’s death.

  Of course, none of the people expressing them knew how Conner felt about her. All they knew was that he had worked closely with her on the cutlass project.

  Hell, even Conner didn’t know how he felt about her. He just wished to heaven he had had the chance to find out.

  Lyla …

  Lucas hadn’t said a word since his sister was killed. Not a syllable to anyone. But he was taking out his grief on Ursa after Ursa in patrol after patrol after patrol.

  “Sir,” said Dolpa, the adjutant who had worked for Wilkins and now worked for him, “I have someone to see you. An augur.”

  Conner looked up and gathered himself. He had made a promise to Hāturi to lead. He couldn’t renege on that promise now no matter how he felt.

  “See the augur in.”

  Conner didn’t know why such a person would ask to see him. To comfort him, maybe? It would be a comfort, he thought, to know the Primus would be more cooperative with his initiative.

  As he thought that, the augur walked into his office. But it wasn’t just any augur. It was his aunt Theresa.

  She took a seat opposite him. “Before you ask, nephew, I’m not here on personal business.” She sighed. “The Primus has disappeared.”

  It took a moment for the words and their import to sink in. “Disappeared,” Conner echoed.

  “Yes. He doesn’t answer my calls or, for that matter, anyone else’s. And his apartment is empty.”

  Perfect timing, Conner thought. As if I didn’t have enough on my hands.

  Then he stopped himself. It was his job to see to the welfare of the colony’s citizens, and the Primus was no less a citizen than anyone else. No sense complaining about the problem, even to himself.

  “Where was the Primus last seen?” Conner asked.

  “In the Citadel, by some of us augurs. But that was yesterday. No one has spotted or heard from him since.”

  Conner nodded. “All right. I’ll send out an alert. If anyone catches so much as a glimpse of him, it’ll be reported.”

  “I was hoping you could send out a search detail,” Aunt Theresa said.

  “I wish I had that luxury,” Conner told her, “but I don’t. We have too few boots on the ground as it is. I can’t redeploy them for a search detail regardless of who it’s for.”

  Theresa looked disappointed, but she didn’t argue with him. “Very well. We’ll pray for the Primus’s safe return to us. Heaven forbid that anything has happened to him.”

  Conner couldn’t join her in that invocation. But out of respect for her, he didn’t say so.

  There were eight of them. Three—Blodge, Ditkowsky, and Augustover—had remained with Conner. Four others—Lucas, Gold, Erdmann, and Cheng—had come around the block and were advancing from the other direction.

  And between the two groups, thunder erupting from its throat, or what passed for a throat in its alien anatomy, was an Ursa.

  It was massive, powerful-looking, and utterly unaware of how important the next few minutes of its life would be. Because if Conner and the rest of his squad took it down, it would mean that Lyla’s cutlasses had made the difference humanity needed. And if the monster prevailed, it would mean that their last, best hope had been dashed.

  The Ursa swung its head back and forth as if it were trying to decide which morsels of flesh and blood and bone to go after first. But it didn’t look daunted. Why should it? Everywhere it turned, there was prey.

  “All right,” Conner said into his comm gear, “just like we practiced it. Cheng, Erdmann, Gold, Ditkowsky—deploy hooks. Everybody else is showing blades. On my—”

  Suddenly Lucas interrupted him with an urgent yell: “Raige, behind you!”

  Conner looked back over his shoulder, wondering what could have made Lucas cry out that way—and saw the last thing he wanted to see. A second Ursa was lumbering toward them from the other end of the street, its open maw saying loud and clear that it was glad to see so much meat in one place even if there was a chance it might have to share some of it.

  Damn, Conner thought, his mind racing. That changes everything. In less than a heartbeat, the encounter had gone from a controlled experiment—albeit a potentially deadly one—to a free-for-all.

&nbs
p; He had only a hot instant to review their options. One was to split up the team and fight both Ursa at once, but he didn’t like that idea. Even with cutlasses, it would be hard for four Rangers to take down one of the monsters. Their other option was to keep the second Ursa busy while the majority of the team went after the first one.

  Conner liked that idea a lot better.

  But whoever was asked to keep the second one at bay would be taking a huge risk. He couldn’t ask anyone in his charge to face that kind of jeopardy.

  That was why he would take on that assignment himself.

  “Everybody,” he barked into his comm gear, “we’ve got two targets now. Lucas is going to lead the assault on Target One, our original objective. I’m going to engage Target Two, slow it down.”

  “Not without help,” said Blodge, loyal as ever.

  “That’s an order,” Conner insisted.

  Then the time for talk was past because Target Two was bearing down on them, gathering speed as it came. Conner pelted forward a half dozen steps to meet it before it reached the rest of the squad.

  Having watched hours of bloody combat footage, none of which ended happily, he knew the Ursa would try to pounce on him. It was a successful tactic when its prey was running away, which almost invariably had been the case. But Conner knew better than to run away.

  He slowed down for just a fraction of a second to make the monster think he was going to retreat. Then he ran at it even faster so that when the Ursa sprang, he was able to dive in below it, twist his body around until he was facing upward, and take a rip out of its belly.

  He had hoped that the damage would be enough to disable the creature, maybe even kill it. But it only made the Ursa more ferocious.

  No sooner did it land on the ground with nothing to show for its attack than it whirled and launched itself at Conner a second time.

  And a second time he sprinted forward to dive underneath the thing. Except this time when he twisted and used his cutlass to cut a furrow in the Ursa’s underside, the wound he made was deeper, deep enough to release a spray of thick black ichor.

  I hit something important, Conner thought as he got his feet beneath him. An artery or its equivalent.

  But he knew better than to become overconfident. The Ursa was still moving, still baring its teeth at him, still every bit as deadly as before.

  But it no longer seemed as eager to spring at him. It was advancing on him slowly instead, its shoulders and haunches close to the ground, as if it had learned the error of its ways.

  Conner had no choice but to back off, matching the Ursa’s pace. Switching to a pike, which offered him more length, he poked at the creature. It roared and tossed its head but didn’t stop padding toward him.

  Suddenly it reached out and swiped at him with one of its paws. Conner saw that he had miscalculated, allowed the thing to get too close. To keep from getting raked by the Ursa’s talons, he had to fling his arms up and backpedal like crazy.

  As it was, the thing sliced the front of his uniform to ribbons and came within a hair of shredding his chest as well.

  Still, he would have been all right if the road behind him hadn’t been so full of debris. As he retreated, his eyes fixed squarely on the Ursa, he felt his heel catch on something heavy. Before he knew it, he was going down, sprawling unceremoniously on his back.

  The Ursa didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the fact.

  Conner hugged the cutlass to him, careful not to stab himself with its pike, and rolled as hard as he could to the left. A fraction of a second later the Ursa’s paw came down in the place he had vacated, ripping up the ground.

  Scrambling to his feet, Conner went quarterstaff. Then he held his cutlass up in both hands to ward off the Ursa’s next blow, because he knew there would be a next blow. The cutlass took the full impact of the creature’s attack, exactly as it was designed to do.

  But unlike his weapon, Conner wasn’t made of super-strong metal alloys. As much as he hated to admit it, he was only human. When the Ursa’s paw hit his quarterstaff, it ripped it out of his hands.

  Leaving him completely and utterly defenseless. The monster seemed to know it, too. With renewed fury, it flung itself at him.

  Conner managed to dodge its rush and watch it crash into the wall behind him. Without respite, the Ursa attacked again. And again Conner threw himself out of the way.

  But as he got to his feet, he knew he was a dead man. The Ursa was too fast, too strong, and Conner’s muscles were burning, his breath coming in huge searing gasps.

  He wasn’t going to win this fight. All he could do was prolong the inevitable.

  As he thought that, the Ursa rounded on him and opened its maw, and out of it came a great and terrible rumbling. It seemed to be saying, You thought you could stand against me? You’re meat, nothing more. You’re what I rend with my talons and grind between my teeth.

  Conner bit down on his fear. The Ursa might kill him, it might tear him apart, but it wasn’t going to make him beg for mercy—not even in the privacy of his own mind.

  Suddenly, the Ursa lowered its head and charged him. Conner braced himself, ready to try to throw himself out of harm’s way one more time if he could.

  But before the monster could reach him, something happened—something long and bright, glinting in the light of the suns and burying itself in the back of the Ursa’s neck.

  Forgetting about Conner, the creature spun and looked for the source of its pain. Conner looked, too, and found it in the form of an empty-handed Raul Blodgett. Nor was he alone. Six other Rangers were trailing behind him, their cutlasses held aloft, the black blood of a dead Ursa spattered across their uniforms.

  The dead Ursa in question was stretched across the street behind them, motionless, nothing more than a pale lump of alien flesh.

  But the live Ursa, the one Blodge had wounded with his cutlass, was starting after him. Conner couldn’t let that happen.

  “Hey!” he yelled, picking up a chunk of debris and flinging it at the creature. “I’m still here!”

  The debris hit the Ursa in the back of its head. Enraged, it turned on Conner again. He started to fall back, wondering if he had paid for Blodge’s life with his own.

  Then another silver shaft hit the monster and stuck in its back. And when it whirled, a third one lodged in its face, just above its maw.

  The creature writhed and rolled and swiped at the third shaft but couldn’t get it out. In the meantime, Conner’s squad went blade and started hacking at the Ursa from behind.

  The Ursa roared, turned, and snapped at its tormentors. But they weren’t there anymore. They had spread out on either side of the thing and were wreaking havoc on it.

  Little by little, the Ursa succumbed. First it crashed to its knees. Then it dropped its head. By the time Lucas drove his blade into its neck, it was all but done.

  As the monster breathed its last, Conner looked into the faces of his squad. He saw pride there and hope. They’d done what they’d set out to do.

  Now others could do the same.

  Marta Lemov experimentally moved her new wheelchair back and forth. Her one good hand rested on the small switch that maneuvered the wheelchair, and she used it as deftly as she could. Nevertheless, she still kept miscalculating and banging into walls in her small room. Marta was impatient under the best of circumstances, and these were hardly the best.

  She heard a knock at the door and with a sigh of frustration turned to see Theresa standing there.

  “I should have known,” Marta said, thumping the wheelchair with her fist. “When I woke up and this thing was just sitting here, I should have known you were responsible for it.”

  “I see you got into it all by yourself. You could have asked for help, you know.”

  “I prefer doing things on my own.”

  “That’s the difference between us, I suppose. You never ask for help, and as an augur I do nothing but ask for it.”

  “Yeah? And who did you ask for help w
ith this thing?”

  “Him.” Theresa chucked a thumb toward the door. “Or, more accurately, them.”

  Marta glanced with only mild interest toward the door, but when two men entered, she actually gasped in surprise.

  One was Donovan Flint, the Savant. He nodded toward the wheelchair and said calmly, “Don’t let the learning curve deter you, Ranger. You’ll get the hang of it in no time.”

  What had he done, build the chair himself? But Marta figured she could ask that question later. At the moment, her attention was focused on the man next to Flint. Her reflex to stand to attention was so ingrained that she automatically tried to get up out of the chair. “General Hāturi,” she said. Then she quickly corrected herself. “I mean Prime Commander Hāturi.”

  “Let’s stick with Commander,” said Hāturi. “And please, sit back down. We don’t need you injuring yourself even further.”

  Marta did as she was instructed. Hāturi seemed slightly amused. “You seem surprised to see me, Ranger.”

  “With all respect, sir, I’m a grunt. But you … I mean, after the death of Prime Commander Wilkins, you’ve had so much dumped on you. I just figured that you had far more important things to do than visit me.”

  “Nothing’s more important than my people. And Savant Flint feels the same way. That’s why he put this chair together for you.”

  So he did build it.

  “Thanks,” she told Flint. “But—”

  “But why did we bother?” Hāturi asked. He glanced at Flint, who nodded in confirmation of something Marta could only guess at. “Well, as it turns out, we can use your help.”

  “My help?” It was hard for Marta not to laugh. “Commander, I’m in a wheelchair. A fine wheelchair,” she acknowledged in Flint’s direction, “but a wheelchair nevertheless.”

  “Yes. And you’re going to need it to get around,” said Hāturi.

  “Around where?”

  There was momentary silence as if the three of them hadn’t decided who was going to broach the subject. It was Theresa who finally took a step forward and said, “I proposed to the Primus that the augury embark on a program where we bring comfort and reassurance directly to the people of Nova City.”