After Earth

by Peter David

  Cade had thought Nava was nice-looking from the moment he met her. But now that he saw her with the stars in her eyes, she looked absolutely beautiful. And her scar only made her more so, somehow.

  Before he knew it, she was leaning closer to him, bringing her mouth up to meet his.

  “Don’t,” he said suddenly, surprising himself. Am I crazy? A pretty girl is trying to kiss me and I’m turning her down?

  Still, he couldn’t do it. Nava thought he was going to be a Ranger for the long haul, and he wasn’t. In no time at all he would be free of the Corps, doing what he did best—working the black market.

  She was the one person in his life who had stood up for him. He wasn’t going to let her get hurt.

  “Why not?” Nava asked. “No one’s looking.”

  “Because we’re Rangers,” he said, lying through his teeth.

  “And Rangers can’t have love affairs?” She made a face. “Is that a rule or something? Because if it is, I’ve never heard of it.”

  “I don’t know if it’s a rule, but it’s still a lousy idea.” His mind raced. “What if we wind up fighting an Ursa side by side? How are you going to survive if you’re worrying about me? How am I going to survive if I’m worrying about you?”

  “I’d be worrying about you anyway. You’re a member of my squad.”

  “I mean me in particular. There are a million things to think about out there. You don’t want to add one more.”

  Nava shrugged. “Then I’ll ask for a transfer to another squad.”

  “Squads work together sometimes. They get mixed and matched. We can’t take that chance.”

  “You don’t think this is stupid?” she asked. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

  Cade could see only part of her face, but she looked like she was in pain. “This is hard enough,” he said. “Don’t make it harder.”

  Nava eyed him a moment longer. Then she said, “All right,” with only a faint note of bitterness in her voice and moved farther down the walkway. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  It wasn’t. But he wasn’t going to put Nava in a position to hurt herself. Anyone else, but not her.

  As the days passed, Cade became more and more certain that he had done the right thing back on the walkway.

  Nava didn’t speak to him much, but that was all right. She was better off this way.

  It occurred to him that they could get together after he left the Rangers, but he didn’t think she would want that. She was a Ranger. He was going back to the black market. Not exactly a match made in heaven, was it?

  Meanwhile, something funny happened. The less Cade gave a crap about impressing Tolentino and the others, the better he seemed to do his job, at least in everyone else’s minds. And the more he did that job, the more easily he was accepted.

  Even by Kayembe. At least a little bit.

  Go figure, Cade thought.

  Then, the day before Cade’s charges were supposed to be dropped, he and his teammates got the news from Tolentino: They would be engaging in an Ursa hunt, Cade’s first. To his surprise, he was excited about it. But then he would have a chance to ghost again.

  Or fall flat on his face.

  But at least he would know.

  They were dispatched by mag-lev transport to Old Town, the original settlement from which Nova City had grown. Old Town, as Cade remembered it, was a place full of narrow streets and alleys, any of which might afford an Ursa a place to hide.

  When he got there, he saw that the streets were even narrower than he had recalled. It wasn’t a plus from a strategic point of view. Rangers had always done better when they had a chance to surround the beasts.

  Still, Tolentino put half of them on one side of the street and half on the other. They stopped at each intersection, knowing that any Ursa they encountered probably would be camouflaged but might betray its presence with a set of tracks in the soft red dirt underfoot. When they didn’t see anything, they moved on.

  Suddenly the monster appeared—out of nowhere, it seemed—a sinewy six-legged mass of pale flesh and blue-gray smart metal with a huge black maw and razor-sharp talons.

  Tolentino called out an order that sent Kayembe and Bentzen at the thing from different sides. Cade could see that the Ursa was confused—so much so that it didn’t know which of them to imprint on first.

  Then it made a choice—and it was Kayembe. It took a swipe at him with one of its paws and nearly got him, but he managed to scramble backward in time. Seeing that the creature had picked its prey, the other Rangers knew they had to distract it or see Kayembe sliced to ribbons.

  Zabaldo was the first to take a serious hack at the Ursa. Nava followed suit. Cade caught himself watching her every move and forced his eyes to avert. Focus, he reprimanded himself.

  With each Ranger attack, the monster whirled and roared, but it didn’t go after its tormentor. Having imprinted on Kayembe, it wouldn’t go after anyone else until it had ripped the big man apart.

  Cade knew he was leaving. He didn’t have to risk his life to save Kayembe’s. But if he hung back, he might never know if he could ghost again as he had done in the warehouse.

  Was it worth sacrificing himself to find out? Hell no. But he wouldn’t have to. All he had to do was keep his cutlass at the ready. If it looked to him like the Ursa was going to attack him, he could defend himself.

  Was there a risk? Sure. But Cade was a gambler. He liked the idea of a little risk. All he had to do was get between Kayembe and the creature, where it would perceive him as an obstacle if it perceived him at all—and remove him as only an Ursa could.

  Here goes, he thought, allowing the others to continue the fight as he sprinted past Kayembe and took a position behind him. That was where Tolentino had told him to go in an encounter. “Behind whoever the Ursa imprints on,” she had said.

  This Ursa was noticeably bigger than the creature Cade had encountered back in the warehouse. Bigger and faster.

  He remembered the way that other Ursa had gone by him as if he weren’t there. At the time, he hadn’t even realized what was going on. But this time he knew exactly.

  But what if what had happened in the warehouse was a fluke? What if it was only that first Ursa he could hide from and no others?

  Then Kayembe won’t be the only casualty today.

  As the big man retreated past Cade, the Ursa followed. And Cade stood there, counting on the luck that had always seen him through, no matter how tough the situation.

  The creature opened its maw and shrieked. Cade could see its teeth, a jagged circle of death. He could smell its breath, rank with the shreds of its last human meal.

  He waited until he was sure it would try to rake him with its claws or spew its venom at him. And then he waited some more. But the Ursa didn’t go after him.

  At the last possible moment, he threw himself out of harm’s way, and the thing went past him.

  I’m invisible to it! he thought. I’m goddamned invisible!

  But Kayembe was still at risk. Nava and Bentzen closed with the Ursa to try to slow it down and give Kayembe a chance. But there was only one guy who could save the big man, and that was Cade.

  The Ghost.

  He didn’t owe Kayembe a thing. But he owed himself something. He owed himself the look on his teammates’ faces when they saw what he could do, and maybe regretted the way they had treated him.

  He still wasn’t an expert with his cutlass, but he was good enough. The Ursa had two soft spots. One was underneath, a big target but difficult to reach. The other was on its back.

  With that in mind, Cade configured his cutlass into a spear, got a running start, and leaped onto the beast’s back. Then, before it could shake him off, he drove the point of his weapon into the Ursa’s soft spot.

  Or at least what he thought was its soft spot.

  It was hard to aim with the thing moving so quickly beneath him, and hard to know whether he had hit the right spot. But his luck held. The spear didn’t hit
a piece of smart metal.

  It dug in a good half meter, as far as he could have hoped.

  Then the Ursa shook him off.

  But it didn’t matter. By the time Cade stopped rolling, he could see that the creature had begun to stagger, his cutlass sticking up out of its back like a toothpick in a big ugly hors d’oeuvre.

  Fall, he thought.

  It fell. And shuddered. And then stopped moving altogether.

  Cade grinned as he got to his feet. And he continued to grin as he climbed up onto the Ursa and pulled his cutlass out of it. It came loose with a soft, slithering sound.

  He wiped the cutlass clean on the Ursa’s dark, gloopy hide. Then he climbed down and returned the weapon to its cylindrical, undifferentiated shape.

  Luck is on my side again, he thought. He could do anything he wanted. He could bait an Ursa, for God’s sake, and get away unscathed.

  Cade stood over the monster and pounded himself on the chest with his fist. Who’s the man now?

  And the irony was that he hadn’t broken a single rule. He had done exactly what Tolentino had asked him to do.

  But even as he congratulated himself on his victory, he saw that his fellow Rangers were gathering farther down the street. Why? he wondered. The Ursa is over here.

  Then he saw that someone was lying on the ground, and he ran over to join them. Not Kayembe, he thought. The thing never caught up to Kayembe; Cade had seen to that.

  Then who …?

  He didn’t see her until he had joined the knot of Rangers, didn’t see that it was Nava stretched out on the ground. She was lying face up, eyes closed, one arm twisted behind her back. Caught by the dying Ursa’s flailing claws.

  No …

  Cade’s knees got weak. His cutlass fell from his fingers. He pushed his way past the others and dropped to his knees beside her.

  “Nava?” he moaned.

  There was blood on her face. Lots of blood. He grabbed her shoulder and shook her. “Nava!”

  Somebody pulled him back, but he slipped free and fell to Nava’s side again. Bentzen ran a mag-scan the length of her body.

  “She’s alive!” Cade growled. “She’s got to be!”

  Then he saw Bentzen shoot Tolentino a glance and shake her head. Cade’s throat closed with grief. Tears squeezed out of his eyes.

  “No!” he screamed, his voice cracking. “No!”

  But he couldn’t deny it enough to make Nava breathe, to make her live again, to make her open her eyes. Nobody could.

  Cade didn’t sleep that night. He kept thinking about Nava lying there in the street in Old Town, her face covered with blood. Her eyes—those beautiful eyes—closed forever.

  Because of him.

  He had finally begun to drowse off when he felt someone shaking him. It was Tolentino.

  “Commander Velan wants to speak with you,” she said.

  Velan? Cade got out of his bunk and pulled on his uniform, all the while wondering what the commander wanted with him.

  First sun was just creeping over the horizon when Cade entered Velan’s office. Velan’s adjutant waved him in.

  “Bellamy,” Velan, said as Cade entered. “Close the door.”

  Cade did as he was told. Then he stood at attention.

  “You’re probably wondering why I called you here,” Velan said. “The answer’s a simple one. I wanted to know when you’re planning to leave.”

  Cade swallowed. “Sir?”

  “We’re not idiots, Bellamy. There’s a leak every now and then, which is what allowed your friend Andropov to find out when the charges against you would be dropped. But we’ve got informants as well, which is why we were able to arrest Andropov last night—and, incidentally, find out what he had told you.

  “Mind you, it wasn’t a secret that we’d be dropping the charges. I would have told you that myself if you’d asked me.” Velan sat back in his chair. “You’re a free man, Bellamy. There’s no prison sentence hanging over your head. You can go.”

  Then he turned away to examine the graphics on a holographic display at his side, as if Cade no longer existed. Because in the commander’s world, he didn’t.

  I’ve got what I wanted, Cade thought. So why was he still standing there? Why wasn’t he halfway out the door?

  “I want to stay, sir,” he said, the words sounding like they were coming out of someone else’s mouth.

  “Stay?” Velan echoed, something like annoyance in his voice. He cast a sideways glance at Cade. “What makes you think that’s still an option?”

  “Why … wouldn’t it be, sir?”

  “Leaving aside the question of what you planned to do and whom you planned to do it with, I have to look at how you performed as a Ranger. According to your company leader, you’re not particularly suited to what we expect in the Corps. Self-reliance may be a positive trait when you’re running illegal goods on the black market, but we prefer our Rangers to work together, as a team.”

  “But … you said you needed Ghosts.…”

  “We do, in the worst way. But only if they can work within the Ranger framework—which you, apparently, can’t do. I’m not placing the blame for this on you, Bellamy. If anything, it was my mistake trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.”

  And he returned his attention to the hologram.

  Cade had been dismissed. But he wasn’t leaving. After a while, Velan noticed that. “Is there something else?”

  “There is, sir. I’d like to remain a Ranger.”

  The commander shook his head. “I’m afraid the decision’s already been made.”

  “I’ve got unfinished business with the Ursa, sir.” Cade felt a surge of resentment. “You don’t want me to be a Ranger? Fine. I’ll go out and hunt them on my own.”

  “That’s against the law.”

  “The law never stopped me before, sir.”

  A muscle rippled in Velan’s jaw. “Why so adamant about staying, Bellamy? You couldn’t stand being a Ranger, according to Andropov.”

  “I’ve changed my mind, sir. Nava Ericcson … She died while I was thinking about me. About what I could do.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Bellamy. Ericcson’s death wasn’t your fault.”

  “But I could have prevented it. She stood up for me, sir. Trusted me.” Cade’s throat began to ache. “You don’t find trust everywhere. You don’t find people who care about you. That’s a gift—like my knack for surviving, like my being able to ghost. A gift. And when someone gives you one of those, you don’t give it back. Not if you’ve got half a brain, you don’t.”

  “And you think you’ve got half a brain?” Velan asked him.

  Cade straightened. “I do now, sir.”

  Velan looked at him for a long time. Then he sighed. “It’s against my better judgment, but I’ll let you try it again—with a different squad. Understand, it’ll be a whole new start.”

  Cade nodded. “Thank you, sir. You won’t regret it.”

  “But this is it, Bellamy. If you can’t hack it this time, you’re done. You understand?”

  “I do, sir.”

  Velan eyed him a moment longer. Then he said, “Dismissed.”

  Cade left the office. Then he crossed the compound in the direction of the barracks, determined not to screw up a second time.

  * * *

  Cade’s new squad didn’t contain a single veteran except for his company leader, a lean, bearded man named Gwynn. No one else had more than a couple of months of Ranger service under his or her belt.

  They were reminders of how helpless he had felt as he watched Nava die. How completely and utterly helpless. For all his ghosting ability, he hadn’t been able to do a thing to save her. He had been so concerned with leaving the Rangers, he ended up losing the one person he cared about.

  And yet there he was again, facing the possibility of a terrible loss. People were depending on him, putting their lives in his hands. And as far as he could tell, not one of them had faced a live Ursa before.
r />   Cade trained with them as he had trained with Nava’s squad. No—even harder. But he didn’t learn their names.

  After all, there was a Nava among them. He didn’t know which of them it would be, but the odds were good that one of them would die under the claws of an Ursa. And what would it be like for him to see that—to see another human being get torn apart because he couldn’t kill the monster soon enough?

  Cade remembered something his mother had told him just before she passed away. Insanity, she had said, quoting someone from way back, maybe even somebody from Earth, was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

  So maybe he was insane. But he was going to do everything in his power to keep what happened to Nava from happening again. His mother’s death hadn’t affected anyone but him, but Nava’s death would be different. It would mean something.

  Cade didn’t demand perfection just from himself. He demanded it of his teammates as well. He hounded them without respite, without consideration for the way they felt about him. He kept after them even when Gwynn didn’t seem inclined to do so.

  Clearly, they didn’t like it. A few of them barked back at him. One guy in particular, a big red-haired guy almost the size of Kayembe, looked ready to go after him after Cade chewed him out on the far side of the ravine.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” the guy demanded.

  When Cade didn’t answer, the guy took a swing at him. Cade ducked and planted his fist in the guy’s belly. And when the guy doubled over, Cade cut him down with a blow to the side of the head.

  Gwynn could have disciplined him, but he didn’t say a thing. He just called out the names of the Rangers who would be negotiating the ravine course a second time, as if nothing had happened.

  Then came the squad’s first training exercise with the mechanical Ursa, out on the streets built in the desert. Everyone followed Gwynn’s orders, but it wasn’t Gwynn they kept glancing at to see if they were doing everything right. It was Cade.

  And he was fine with that.

  He wanted them to know he was watching. He wanted them to know they couldn’t get away with anything less than their best.