“You mean like … what? House calls?”
“That’s exactly right,” Theresa replied. “They seem reluctant to come to us, so I thought we should go to them. And at first the Primus agreed to it. He declared it to be an excellent idea. And then, shortly afterward, he suddenly canceled the program. The ostensible reason was that he had decided it was simply too dangerous out there for us.”
“Yeah, well,” said Marta, who was not the least bit surprised, “I never thought I’d say this, but the Primus is one hundred percent right.”
“Still,” Hāturi said, “Augur Raige’s idea is a good one. But with the Primus missing, there’s no one to approve it. And therefore no augur to carry it out.”
“All right,” said Marta, who was still feeling as if she had walked into the middle of a play. She sensed that she was supposed to have some sort of function here, but she couldn’t imagine what it was. “But I’m still uncertain what bearing this has on me.”
“It’s about faith,” Flint told her.
“I thought you were a man of science,” Marta said.
“There are all manners of faith, Ranger. I have faith in our ability to survive and overcome. I have faith that through our science and in our force of arms we will triumph. Many, though, need something more than that. They feel they have to place their faith in something greater than themselves. And frankly, anything that will keep the people calm and confident in the proposition that we will conquer these monsters rather than giving up and sliding into total anarchy—”
“Which simply makes our job harder,” put in the commander.
Flint continued, “—is the kind of faith we need to triumph over our current circumstances. That, Ranger, is where we’d like you to come in.”
“Meaning—?”
“The augurs need guidance,” Theresa said. “They are on the whole decent and caring individuals. And they excel at doing what they are told. But without strong leadership, they find themselves uncertain and afraid.”
“So you take control,” Marta told Theresa.
The augur shook her head firmly. “I am one of them. They will not respond to me, nor will they obey my commands, in the way that we would want them to.”
“That, Ranger,” Hāturi explained, “is why we need you. I am giving you the field promotion of Commander, effective immediately. Your assignment is to work with Augur Raige here to implement the door-to-door visitation plan she developed. You will oversee the augurs and coordinate their activities with a squad of Rangers who will escort them.”
“And when the Primus surfaces?”
“As he will,” Theresa said with unflinching faith in him despite everything.
“I will have a chat with him at that time,” Hāturi said. “We’re walking a delicate line, Commander,” he continued, putting a delicate emphasis on Marta’s new title. “The last thing we need is for the Primus’s lack of faith to go public. You understand?”
“You mean you’re worried that if people have seen that the Primus himself has lost faith, it may seem pointless for anyone else to maintain theirs.”
“Exactly right, Commander,” said Hāturi. “The only question is: Are you up for this endeavor?”
Marta remembered how recently it had been that she’d felt nothing but contempt for the Primus. Now she actually felt sorry for him. “Am I being given a choice, General?”
“Not really, no.”
“Then I’m up for it.”
The general snapped off a salute, and she returned it even though it was with the wrong hand. “And General …” she said.
“Yes, Commander?”
“Thank you,” she said in a voice both formal and sincere, “for giving me a purpose again.”
“We all have a purpose, Commander. Every so often, though, we lose sight of it. So just consider this a vision adjustment.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
Conner sat in the same chair from which he had watched his aunt Bonita die under the talons of an Ursa and watched Lyla do the same thing.
He wanted to turn away. He wanted to scream, hit something, cry. But he didn’t. He sat there and watched the satellite feed.
It didn’t show him everything, but it showed him enough. When he had seen as much as the footage would reveal, he knew who had killed Lyla.
It was Gash.
The monster that had destroyed his aunt after her pulser blast had left it with a livid scar over its mouth. The killing thing that had taken the life of Meredith Wilkins as she tried to test Conner’s theory, along with the lives of too many other Novans to count.
But Gash’s story had grown bigger than the thing itself.
People talked about its ferocity in whispers to keep from scaring their children. Those who prayed asked God that some other Ursa kill them, just not the one with the scar. They even speculated that the other Ursa were scared of Gash, giving it a wide berth so it wouldn’t rip them apart, too.
And now the thing had claimed Lyla.
When Conner had accepted Hāturi’s offer to serve as the de facto Prime Commander, he had given up the right to pursue personal quests. He would honor that agreement, at least until the colony had turned back the Ursa threat.
Then, if Gash was still alive at that point, Conner would find it and destroy it. Not as part of a squad, either. He would do it with his own two hands.
Cecilia Ruiz was as close to giving up as she’d ever been.
Even with having restocked at the lost mining colony and even with careful rationing, her water supply was getting dangerously low. She knew she was becoming dehydrated, but there was very little she could do about it. At least second sun was setting, with the stars creeping up on the horizon.
She’d heard so much about constellations back on Earth. The ancients had gazed up at the stars and seen all manner of things: a warrior with a belt, an archer, and an assortment of animals both real and imaginary.
The array of stars she gazed upon now were not remotely the stars her ancestors had gazed upon. And no one on Nova Prime had the time or the patience to look to the skies and draw imaginary pictures on them. The stars were simply stars and nothing beyond that.
She wondered if it was a case of something trivial and childlike being left behind in the inevitable march toward adulthood for the human race or if something truly wondrous had been tossed onto the scrap heap as if it were useless when it was in fact a testimony to humankind’s boundless imagination.
Finally she decided that such musings were above her level of philosophy.
In any case, it wasn’t visions among the stars that occupied her mind. It was a vision of Xander: the hurt look on his face, the expression that said he was never going to see her again. Perhaps there had been even more to it than that.
All I’ve done is underscore his sense of helplessness, she thought. How could I not have realized it? He’s sitting at home right now believing that if only he’d been a better husband, a better provider, I wouldn’t be out here risking my life. The guilt that I’ve dropped on him must be driving him insane.
What have I done to him? To my family? All because I thought I could solve our problems in one stroke.
“That’s it,” she said. They were the first words she had spoken in a while, and now as she looked out on the red plains before her, she was startled by how gravelly her voice sounded. It was a sign of just how parched she was. “That’s it,” she said again with a pronounced croak. “I’m going home. Enough is—”
That was when her naviband crackled to life. The stern voice of a Ranger dispatcher—she didn’t know which one it was, but it didn’t matter—advised that there was an Ursa sighting in the Cray farming colony. Apparently, unlike other colonies, Cray had actually set up a lookout in a high tower that they thought was safely above an Ursa’s perception range. And the lookout had spotted something he believed was one of the creatures.
He had sent out word without a moment’s hesitation. All the farmers in the Cray colony—about
ten or so, plus their families—had been advised to seek immediate shelter and await the arrival of a Ranger squad.
Excitement rising within her, Cecilia checked the distance to the Cray colony on her electronic map. She couldn’t believe it. She was ten minutes away from it.
Ten minutes away from finding an Ursa.
Ten minutes away from the confrontation she’d been seeking for days now, after it was beginning to seem to her as if the Ursa had somehow conspired to find shelter any time she was in the area.
Ten minutes away from death …?
She shoved the notion clean away and set off at a rapid trot. She was on foot, and the Rangers no doubt would have high-speed vehicles. They’d be able to cover in no time the area that she’d needed days to traverse.
But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.
This was her chance. And she had picked up some items at the mining colony that she prayed would be just what she needed to finish the damned thing off. All thoughts of Xander’s words and her children’s needs were forgotten. She cared about one thing and one thing only:
Do the job.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Cecilia approached the Cray farming colony from around the back of one of the barns. She smelled something foul wafting from one of them and peered carefully between the folds of smart fabric that composed the sides. There were red splotches on the cloth, which she knew instantly were blood. Within the barn itself, aside from various tools, was a cow. Farmers cherished their cows and did their damnedest to breed them, because growing them from the DNA samples that had been on the vessels that had carried them to Nova Prime was always a hit-and-miss operation, even after all this time. Natural breeding was far preferable.
This cow had been gutted. Worst of all, the poor thing was still breathing. How it was possible Cecilia couldn’t even imagine.
She used one of her daggers to cut aside the smart fabric, insinuated herself into the barn, and put the barrel of her pulser against the poor animal’s head. It looked at her with its saucerlike eyes, and there seemed to be a flash of gratitude in them. Then she squeezed the trigger once, hoping that the fact that she had jammed it against its head would muffle the shot. She certainly didn’t need to alert the Ursa to her presence. The cow shuddered once, and then it was gone.
She crossed the barn, trying to determine the stealthiest way to approach the thing.
That plan went right out the window when she heard the unmistakable roar of an Ursa, accompanied by the terrified screams of several people, including what sounded like a young girl.
With no thought of her own safety, with no thought of anything save what needed to be done, Cecilia charged out of the limited shelter of the barn and slapped on a pair of infrared goggles so that the darkness wouldn’t impede her. Then, while still running, she unslung her pack and started fishing in it for the items she had taken from the warehouse back at the mining colony. She saw the Ursa from behind, maybe a hundred yards away. It was smaller than the one she had encountered what seemed like an eternity ago, but it was still large enough to swallow her in one gulp.
The monster had torn up what appeared to be a trapdoor sunk into the ground. She realized immediately that it was an old bomb shelter, constructed to withstand Skrel aerial assaults. But it could not withstand the close-up attack of the Ursa. The creature was reaching down into the shelter with one of its claws, trying to extract the people within like a child trying to pull fruit filling from the middle of a pastry.
Cecilia brought up her pulser and started firing. Her hand was shaking, but it didn’t matter because the Ursa was more than enough of a target. Pulse blasts ricocheted from all over it.
The thing whirled to face her and bellowed in anger. It didn’t look at all as if she was managing to hurt it, but she definitely had gotten its attention.
Cecilia stopped and did the only thing she could think of: She roared back at it. The Ursa actually seemed taken aback by her response. It paused for a moment, processing it.
Then it charged, its claws spitting up pieces of dirt as it came at her.
There was no further time to rummage in the bag. In desperation, she dumped everything out and saw, rolling around her feet, two blast charges she’d gotten from the mining colony. Each one consisted of a small block of explosives with a timer attached. The miners used them to clear away stubborn sections of underground caves, but Cecilia had a different use in mind. She also yanked out the machete, shoving it into her belt.
The creature came straight at her, roaring again, its mouth wide open. The timer usually was set to something along the lines of twenty minutes to make sure everyone had time to get clear. Cecilia had no such luxury; she set it to five seconds and threw it straight at the creature’s open maw.
Her shaking hand betrayed her. The blast charge glanced off the Ursa’s open mouth and struck the ground directly in front of it.
An instant later, it exploded—just as the Ursa passed over it.
The blast sent the creature spiraling through the air, carried by the force of the detonation. It hit the ground about ten feet away, landing heavily, and lay there for a moment looking stunned.
The force of the blast had knocked Cecilia off her feet as well. She tried to stand up and cried out in pain. She’d been twisted around by the impact of the landing and had managed to torque her knee. It was hardly a life-threatening injury unless her inability to move quickly enabled the Ursa to leap on her and dispatch her easily.
The explosion must have been heard by the farmers because a moment later they opened the trapdoor and came pouring out of the shelter. When they saw the Ursa lying there, they recognized their opportunity. With a collective shout of defiance the farmers charged the beast, waving pitchforks, scythes, and anything else with a point or a sharp edge that could serve as a weapon.
“No, wait!” Cecilia shouted. She grabbed the second blast charge and looped the rope around her shoulder. “It’s only stunned! Be careful—!”
They didn’t attend to her words, possibly because they didn’t hear them since they were so busy shouting imprecations at the Ursa. But by the time they got near it, the creature had recovered and was on its feet, turning to face them.
Cecilia limped frantically in their direction. The pain was so severe that tears welled involuntarily in her eyes. “Encircle it!” she yelled. “Come at it from all sides! Strike and fall back!”
Now they heard her, or at least they chose that moment to pay attention to her. A dozen of them were surrounding the monster, taking turns stabbing and thrusting with their makeshift weapons and then jumping back whenever the Ursa turned its attention to them.
It was an effective tactic for a short time, but then the Ursa lashed out with its claw and slashed open the chest of a man wielding a pitchfork. Cecilia heard a woman cry out his name in a way that indicated that she was his wife. Now she’s his widow, Cecilia thought grimly as the man fell backward, dead before he hit the ground.
“You son of a bitch!” the widow screeched, and came at the Ursa with a sickle. The Ursa bit down on and through her weapon-wielding arm, and she shrieked as the limb was bitten off with a sound like a drawer slamming shut. Blood fountained from the truncated arm, and the woman collapsed in shock. The Ursa spit out the sickle and the arm that was still gripping it.
Cecilia, limping wildly, started firing again. She was desperately worried that her erratic aim would cause her to strike some of the farmers. She needn’t have been concerned; the farmers were doing their best to get the hell out of the Ursa’s way.
Attracted by the bursts of pulser energy, the monster zeroed in on Cecilia and charged again. At that moment, providentially, Cecilia’s knee gave out, and as she collapsed, the Ursa overshot her. For a second the creature’s underbelly was directly above her.
Without realizing she was doing it, she shoved the machete up into its gut. Fusion-burst pulses might have ricocheted off it, but the serrated blade penetrated the Ursa’s hide.
The creature let out a howl of fury, and that was when Cecilia heard a chorus of angry shouting. The farmers were attacking once again, battering the Ursa from all directions with their tools. The humanity of Nova Prime, harkening to its most basic instincts, looked like its prehistoric ancestors attempting to take down a mammoth with nothing but spears.
Cecilia, still lying beneath the creature, saw her opening. She thumbed the second blast charge to life and blindly set the timer. She didn’t know whether she’d set it to detonate in seconds or hours and was unable to check because there was no room to do so. Instead, she did the only thing she could: She thrust the blast charge up into the Ursa’s gut.
The Ursa bellowed so fearsomely that Cecilia’s mammoth-hunting ancestors could have heard it. Then the beast bounded away from Cecilia, the source of its discomfort.
The farmers pursued the Ursa but only until it whirled to face them, at which point they fell back in pure terror. Then the monster locked onto Cecilia once more. Baring its double row of jagged teeth, it advanced on her. Her pulser was once again in her hand.
“Go to hell,” she snarled between bloodied lips, and fired. As the pulse blast struck the charge in the creature’s gut, it detonated.
The blast lifted the Ursa several feet into the air and landed it on its side. But it still wasn’t dead. Its belly was a mess of black gore, but it still had the strength to roar at the farmers and struggle to its feet.
But the farmers weren’t going to let it go far. Using their tools, they stabbed at it and hacked at it and pummeled it until the thing collapsed. Even then it snapped at a farmer, nearly taking his leg off, and so they kept stabbing and hacking and pummeling until the Ursa stopped moving.
It took a long time.
A young girl knelt next to Cecilia, who was still lying there, pain turning her leg into an appendage that was good for nothing except keeping her boot on. “That’s some gun!” she said in admiration, apparently under the impression that the pulser was responsible for the Ursa being blown apart.
After Earth: A Perfect Beast Page 28