After Earth, Page 2

  But it doesn’t.

  Instead, the Ursa lands clear of the cutlass. It is a moment that Senshi wasn’t expecting, and she tries to bring the cutlass back around so that she can slice into the beast’s body.

  Whether she is too slow or the creature too fast is something that Kitai would never know for sure. All he is certain of is that the Ursa lashes out with its clawed foot, striking out at his sister. Its claws catch her right shoulder, and she cries out in pain, stumbling backward beyond the creature’s reach.

  Or at least that is her intention. Her backpedaling is too slow, her movements clearly impaired by pain.

  Kitai still cannot see the monster clearly, hidden as it is behind the cloth between the rooms. But he can hear. Oh, God, can he hear. He can hear as Senshi tries to thrust forward with the cutlass, and he can hear as the cutlass is struck from her hand, landing noisily on the ground. He can get a brief glimpse of her shadow as she tries to move toward it and can hear the triumphant howl of the Ursa as it intercepts her.

  Another claw lashes out, and the sound of flesh, his sister’s flesh, being torn from her body is so deep and so loud that Kitai wants to do nothing but scream in terror. And he hears Senshi’s high-pitched shriek of agony. Kitai can briefly see an image of her clutching at some point of her upper body, wherever it is exactly that the Ursa has struck her. Then, suddenly, just like that, she goes down, and that is when Kitai realizes that the Ursa has knocked her feet out from under her.

  It lunges forward then, the Ursa does, and it lets out a deafening roar that mingles with Senshi’s terrified shriek.

  In the distance Kitai can hear rushing feet, the shouts of Rangers. He tells himself that they’re going to be in time, that they’re going to rescue Senshi. Everything is going to be just fine, and years from now they will laugh at this time when Senshi almost died squaring off against an Ursa to protect her kid brother.

  It is at that moment that Kitai wants to leap out from his enclosure and go up against the Ursa. He heard Senshi’s cutlass fall away, and he can see that it is lying not all that far away. All he has to do is emerge from his enclosure and grab it, and he can attack the Ursa himself. He is completely positive that he can take the creature out. He can attack, thrust forward with the cutlass, and strike the monster where it’s not expecting any sort of attack.

  He can do it. He can take the creature on. He can defeat it. All this he knows with absolute certainty.

  Instead he does nothing. He lies paralyzed within the enclosure, and hot tears roll down his face. Kitai cannot move. He is terrified.

  Then there is a final crunching noise, and he can actually hear Senshi. She doesn’t sound like a Ranger at all. Instead she sounds like nothing but a terrified young girl, and a single word passes through her lips.

  “Dad,” she says softly.

  And it’s not because he’s just entered to save her.

  Kitai knows that his father is nowhere nearby, that he’s on a “mission,” wherever that meant. Maybe Senshi is saying “Dad” because she is seeing him in her own mind, or maybe she’s apologizing because she has somehow let him down. Or maybe she’s just scared.

  Then there is more crunching and a final gasp from Senshi, and just like that, she is gone and Kitai is alone in the world.

  The Ursa grabs Senshi’s unmoving body with its teeth and lifts it up to within range of the nearest window. Senshi’s shredded form is thrust into view, and Kitai can hear Novans screaming in the distance.

  The Novans are as fearful as Kitai, perhaps even more so. Kitai can hear their footfalls as they run, can hear the growling and derisive snort from the triumphant Ursa. Then it drops Senshi’s corpse right before Kitai’s eyes.

  Senshi’s body lies on the floor, her face turned in Kitai’s general direction. He sees her stare at him in what appears to be accusation, and he wants to turn away from her. Instead, all he can do is continue to look at her, his eyes wide and horrified, for what seems like a long, long time. Finally, he manages to look away, but even then he feels as if he’s abandoning her somehow.

  The Ursa leaps out of the room then to go search for other prey. Kitai lies there within the cabinet, no longer staring at Senshi but instead deeply into the narrow wall that constitutes the makeshift shelter Senshi has shoved him into.

  It takes nearly an hour for the Rangers to find him. It’s nobody’s fault in particular, except perhaps Senshi’s, for she had told him to stay there until a Ranger showed up. And that didn’t happen until the Rangers who arrived had done everything they could to try to bring Senshi back. Only then did they entertain the off chance that someone else in the apartment might have managed to survive.

  Until then, Kitai had had to remain there silent and immobile, his tears drying on his face.

  It is not until Kitai’s mother’s arms are wrapped securely around him that he finally starts crying again. He keeps saying the same thing over and over: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He blames himself for what has happened, but no matter how much he says it, his mother refuses to accept his apology—because she is certain that she might well have had two children die this night.

  Oddly, knowing that doesn’t make Kitai feel any better.

  1000 AE

  United Ranger Corps Training Camp

  i

  The alarm jolted Kitai awake.

  He sat up, gasping for breath. He had been dreaming, but he didn’t remember the dream. He had a vague notion that it had something to do with his sister, but he couldn’t be sure.

  It probably had to do with her. Most of his nightmares did.

  Kitai flopped back down onto his bed and lay there despite the howling of his alarm. Long moments passed as it continued to shout at him. Finally he reached over and slapped it, hard. The alarm’s cry finally ceased, allowing him a few more moments in bed. Another person might have been tempted to roll over and return to sleep, but that wasn’t Kitai Raige. All he had needed was the jolt to wakefulness; after that, he was good to go.

  Kitai finally sat up, rubbing at his face. He managed to bring himself to glance outside and begin to get a feel for what the day was going to be like. This was his day, after all, and he needed to have some idea of what the weather was going to be like. Of course, bright skies or pouring rain, it made no difference. Today was the day, and if he was going to have to do his stuff in soggy ground, well, that was the way it was going to be.

  It didn’t mean he was looking forward to it, though, and when he looked outside and saw that the day promised to be decent, he gave a silent “thank you” to the powers that be. He couldn’t be absolutely sure since it was still dark outside, but from what he could see, it looked promising enough.

  For just a moment he allowed himself to drift back to his dream. His recollections were vague at best, but he was reasonably sure that he’d been dreaming that awful day from five years ago when he had hidden from danger while his beloved sister was torn to shreds.

  The notion that he had done so—that he had relived the deep guilt that still festered within him—was one of the hardest things for him to handle. Yet he dreamed of it with a frequency that was almost sickening. He did his best to brush away all recollection of it, yet that never seemed to work for very long.

  Part of him occasionally toyed with the notion of going to see a psychiatrist, but every time he thought seriously about it, he ultimately rejected the idea. It would not go over well with his father. Members of the Raige family simply had no truck with people whose job it was to muck around with the human mind.

  “You are who you are,” his father had said when Kitai had very subtly (he thought) brought up the topic of psychiatrists in the first place, “and you live with the hand that you were dealt.” That had been pretty much that.

  The thirteen-year-old Kitai rolled out of bed and stretched. Waking was not something he did the way other people did. There was a procedure. First came a series of isometric stretching exercises. Then he dropped to the ground and did a hundred
push-ups, which were followed by a hundred jumping jacks counted off in brisk fashion. He then crossed his room to the chinning bar he had installed back when he was eleven and did as many pull-ups as he could manage: twenty this morning.

  Not bad. Not great, but not bad. Perhaps he was simply saving himself for his time out on the field this morning.

  Yes, that made a vast amount of sense. He knew what he was facing this morning and how important it was going to be. His father was going to be home this evening, eagerly expecting the news they all wanted to hear. It was Kitai’s job to make sure the news would be good news.

  “Kitai!” It was the voice of his mother, Faia, calling to him from downstairs. “You up yet?”

  “Yeah. Why are you?”

  “Made you breakfast. Thought you could use some this morning.”

  He was surprised that she was taking the time. Her hours at the turbine factory were long, and mornings were the only time she ever had to catch up on her sleep. She usually wasn’t even awake before Kitai was out the door; that she had rousted herself this morning was sweet of her.

  “Okay, be down in a few minutes.” It was only after that that he realized he might want to say something along the lines of “Thank you.” But he decided that it would come out as weak and indecisive, and so he simply nodded to remind himself to offer thanks after he went downstairs.

  He took an actual shower this morning. Water had been in short supply recently, and although they weren’t at drought levels yet, people were being conscientious about water usage these days. If nothing else, there was a bit more of a general aroma from people. It wasn’t that big a deal. Once you decided to ignore the smells of other people’s bodies, you more or less made yourself used to it. However, with all the running around he was going to be doing, getting off to a fresh start wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

  As he showered, he took the opportunity to check out his body. Tall and slender he was, catching up to his father in height. His skin was dark, his head was triangular, and his hair was cut down to standard Ranger length, which was one step above a buzz cut. He flexed his biceps as the shower water poured over him. The muscles were solid, compact. He did a few aerobic movements in the shower, then ran through a self-defense sequence before he was satisfied.

  Minutes later he had toweled himself off and dressed in his two-tone gray and white Ranger cadet uniform. It lacked the decorations that were common to the full Ranger uniform, which of course made sense. How could one work toward being a full Ranger if one already had the accoutrements?

  He trotted downstairs to find that Faia had made him two eggs, scrambled, plus a scattering of local fruits. His mother smiled when she saw him come downstairs. She was still wearing her nightgown with a robe draped over it. For all Kitai knew, she was going to go back to bed after he was off and grab another hour’s sleep.

  “Thought you might like this for a change,” she said with a smile. “It’s a step up from protein bars, I figure.” That was true enough. Typically he grabbed a single bar for breakfast and launched himself into his day’s activities. This was unusual.

  “Thanks,” he said. “For getting up and making it, I mean. Uh … thanks.”

  “You can stop thanking me, Kitai. It’s all fine.”

  He nodded and started plowing into the eggs. They were pretty damned good. He could taste the flavor of cheese intermixed with the eggs; she’d obviously put some in. “Good,” he said as he chowed down. “Really good.”

  “Excellent.” His mother sat across from him, her fingers interlaced. She was smiling at him, but there was something about that smile that seemed to be … missing. That was it. It was missing … something.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “Hmmm?”

  “Wrong. Something’s wrong.” He hadn’t slowed his eating. Bits of egg were falling out the edges of his mouth.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “Something is,” he insisted. He lay down the utensil and looked at her with concern. “What’s going on?”

  She hesitated and then shrugged. “I just want you to do your best today. I know it’s important and all that. So just … you know … your best. That’s all you should be worried about.”

  “I’m not worried,” Kitai said.

  “Honey, I’m your mom.” She reached out and placed a hand atop his. “You can admit—”

  “There’s nothing to admit. I’m going to do this. I’m going to go out there today on the course and finish on top on every subject, and by the time I see you this evening, I’m going to be a Ranger. That’s all.” He hesitated and looked at her warily. “You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”

  “What? No! No, of course not.” She laughed slightly. “Why would you think that?”

  Because you’re afraid I’ll become just like Dad.

  “No reason,” he said. “No reason at all.”

  “Well, that’s good. I wouldn’t want you to do anything other than your best.”

  “That’s no problem,” Kitai said confidently. “And I’ll make you proud.”

  Her hand was still on his. She squeezed it tightly and said with a smile, “You already make me proud.”

  They were meant to be comforting words. Instead, for no reason that he could come up with, they made him nervous.

  ii

  The suns beat down on the thirty-two Ranger cadets—twenty males, twelve females—as they pounded across the course that would determine their futures. The terrain was red and rocky, with peaks that seemed to stretch so high that they scraped the sky.

  Kitai was somewhere in the middle of the crowd, and his positioning was helping to drive home some of the disadvantages he had to face simply because of his physical condition. For starters, despite the solidity of his body, he was still at least a head shorter than most of the other candidates.

  Consequently, as the group moved across the rugged terrain, he had to take two steps to keep up with every single step of the others. He worked on maintaining a steady inhaling and exhaling rhythm, but it was definitely not easy. He was supposed to keep a consistent pace, but instead he was practically sprinting to keep up.

  A huge river cut through the stunning red mountain range. Both suns were high in the sky, beating down on the planet’s surface. Kitai remembered reading some old science texts from Earth—back when there was an Earth—that swore that life-providing planets could not possibly exist in a two-star system, that any planets would be crushed between the gravity wells of the competing suns. He wondered what those scientists, dead for a thousand years, would have said about Nova Prime.

  Don’t let your mind drift. Pay attention to what’s going on around you.

  Kitai splashed through the river, sending water spraying, as did the others. However, the river also aided him in his positioning in the crowd. Others slowed down for whatever reason, and Kitai was able to take that opportunity to speed if not into the lead, then at least considerably closer than he had been before. When he hit the land on the other side, he was actually able to advance so that only a couple of the others were now ahead of him.

  But he knew that a couple was not enough. When they reached the end of the trail, he had to be first. It was the tradition of the Raige family. Not second, not third—nothing but first would do.

  The course of the race took them past a growing station. It was a huge open-fabric structure that shielded the crops from the weather. It allowed moisture to reach the plants but protected them from some of the more threatening weather. The station seemed to spread forever, although he knew that it was actually only a few hundred hectares.

  Kitai felt his second wind kicking in and worked to shove his progress into high gear. He saw that Bo was leading the pack and started working to move his legs even faster despite the fact that Bo was built like a large tree. Bo was sixteen years old, farther along than Kitai in every regard: bigger, smarter, faster. But he was also breathing a bit more raggedly than Kitai was. Obviously, the stress
of the run was starting to wear him down, and that was spectacular as far as Kitai was concerned.

  There was a sudden drop in the terrain directly in front of them. Bo cut to the left to avoid it, and that gave Kitai the opportunity he needed. Rather than cut around the drop, he picked up speed and leaped directly over it. The trick was going to be sticking the landing, and that Kitai was able to do with style. He hit the downsloping ground ahead of him, stumbled only slightly, and then kept going. One leap and just like that, he was finally in the lead.

  Bo, now behind him, called out to him, “This isn’t a race, cadet!”

  Kitai didn’t care what Bo had to say on the subject. It hadn’t been a race until Bo was behind him. And now that Kitai had grabbed the lead, he had absolutely no intention of allowing it to slip from his grasp.

  Instead of heeding Bo’s advice, Kitai stepped it up. His arms pumped, and his legs scissored with greater speed than he had displayed before. Slowly but steadily, he left the rest of the pack behind, separating himself from the leader and those in close proximity to the leader by a good ten or twenty meters.

  The finish line was a kilometer ahead, but it might as well have been directly in front of him. He never slowed down for a moment, his feet flying across the terrain. One moment it was in front of him, and then it was behind. Kitai clapped his hands joyously in self-congratulation and then turned and faced the rest of the Ranger cadets, prepared to receive their congratulations as well.

  Instead, one by one and then a few at a time, they jogged past him. The triumph he felt in crossing the finish line first was somewhat defeated by the fact that no one seemed the least bit willing to acknowledge it. Sure, granted, no one had actually been timing how long it took the Ranger cadets to cover the distance, but still, would it kill them to acknowledge his personal triumph?

  Apparently so. Bo barely afforded him a glance, and then it was just a rolling of his eyes and a slow shake of his head, as if Kitai’s accomplishment meant nothing.