After Earth: A Perfect Beast (14 page)

Waiting to see what they were up to, Frank held his fire and made sure the others did the same. But he kept his sights fixed on the ships all the same.

“Raige?” It was Wilkins’s voice.

“Right here, Commander.”

“What’s our sitch?”

“They’re descending. Slowly. No sign of hostile intent. Yet.” Frank watched for the slightest movement along the vessels’ surfaces. “Where did they come from? And why didn’t we catch them before this?”

“We’re trying to figure that out now,” said Wilkins.

Suddenly, a set of bay doors opened beneath one of the vessels and dropped something—something long and gray and featureless. A moment later, the thing hit the ground—and broke open, releasing its contents.

An animal, as far as Frank could tell. An animal, the likes of which he had never seen before, crawling from the debris. He didn’t get it.

Animals falling from the sky …?

Then the other ships started dropping the same kind of long, gray objects. And wherever the things smashed into the surface, they discharged the same kind of animal.

Frank swore to himself. “You seeing this, Commander?”

“I am,” said Wilkins, “and I don’t like it.”

The objects came down in quick succession, like hail, destroying themselves in one impact after another. Then the hail stopped—just like that—and the alien vessels began ascending, as if their job was done. Frank
and his fliers couldn’t follow them—they weren’t built for higher altitudes. Besides, their priority was what the vessels had discharged.

“What are those things?” Wilkins asked.

“Damned if I know,” Frank said.

He caught a glimpse of fish belly-pale hides, blue-gray streaks, heavy-duty claws, huge maws full of sharp teeth. The creatures hesitated a moment, then charged in the direction of Nova City, one after the other.

“They’re not goodwill ambassadors,” Wilkins concluded.

But Frank already had decided that for himself. “Take them out,” he ordered the other pilots, and went after what he couldn’t help seeing as a herd. He didn’t need his autotargeting function, especially with the beasts clustered so closely together, but he used it anyway. As soon as he had one of the creatures in his sights, he fired.

His pulsers scorched the air with a silver-blue fusion-burst stream that obscured its target with the ferocity of its assault.
Direct hit
, he thought, consulting his instruments. One down, a bunch to go.

Then he realized that the creature he’d hit hadn’t been killed by the pulser stream. Hell, it had hardly slowed down.

He fired again, his stream one of many plunging into the midst of the beasts. And again his target seemed barely fazed by it.

All around him, his fellow pilots were getting the same results. They were bringing the lightning and had nothing to show for it.

What the hell …?

“Orders?” asked Harl Jones, his voice full of frustration.

“Keep firing!” Frank growled. What else could they do?

Especially with an innocent Nova City looming ahead in the lap of the red-clay mountains, its outermost precincts visible now with the naked eye.

On a series of holographic sections floating in front of her console, Wilkins watched the swarm of red blips representing the unidentified creatures traversing the landscape between the crash site and the outskirts of Nova City.

They were three kilometers from the colony and closing. And none of the blasts Raige and his fliers were raining down on the beasts seemed to have any effect on them.

Wilkins touched one of the pads on her console. “Commander Arroyo,” she said, addressing the officer she had placed in charge of the city’s F.E.N.I.X. defenses just months earlier, “I want you to take those things out.”

“Acknowledged,” said Arroyo. “Targets acquired. Firing.”

On Wilkins’s screens, the city’s F.E.N.I.X. projectiles leaped from powerful cannons sunk deep into the natural crevices in the mountains. This was the tech that had stopped the only other invaders Nova Prime had ever faced. Stopped them cold.

For a moment, Wilkins allowed herself to believe that the projectiles would do the same thing to the beasts. She pictured the F.E.N.I.X. pods hitting their targets, latching on to them, penetrating them with shape-changing projections. And in fact, that was what they did whenever they smashed into their targets.

But the beasts weren’t airborne craft. They seemed to
have the finely honed sensory apparatuses and the reflexes to spot and elude the projectiles. Despite Wilkins’s hopes, the F.E.N.I.X. pods never hit a single target. The creatures just kept coming.

And then it was too late. They were too close to the city for the cannons to unleash additional projectiles. Too close to it—and then
inside
it.

Wilkins felt a pit open in her stomach. “Cease fire,” she snapped.

“Ceasing,” Arroyo said, sounding every bit as frustrated, every bit as horrified as the Prime Commander.

Wilkins forced herself to think, and when she did, it made a grim kind of sense that their F.E.N.I.X. tech wouldn’t be able to stop the creatures. If it was the Skrel, if they had come back after all those years, would they have done so if they couldn’t beat the colony’s defenses? Would they have bothered if they couldn’t defeat the F.E.N.I.X. projectiles humanity had thrown against them hundreds of years earlier?

Wilkins consulted her instruments. There were … what? Two dozen, three dozen of the creatures? And they were inside Nova City, where they could destroy at will. Because she had gotten a glimpse of one or two of the things, and she was very certain that they were there on Nova Prime to destroy every human being in their path.

“Prime Commander?” It was Frank’s voice. “We’re pursuing the creatures as best we can. But it’s hard to get a read on them with all the buildings in the way. People, too. And even when we hit them—”

“Acknowledged,” Wilkins said. “Do your best, Frank.”

She still didn’t know how the alien vessels had gotten through their satellite grid, but she would find out. And she had to get a squad out to the alien craft. There might be answers on it.

But Wilkins’s main concern was stopping the creatures. If Raige’s fliers couldn’t stop them, her only other option was to meet them on the ground.
In the streets
.

And she didn’t much like that approach, either. Ground
forces would have the same pulsers the fliers had. Their only advantage would be that they were closer to the monsters and could hit them with more force.

But that would also mean the monsters were close to
them
. She cursed under her breath. “Elias!”

Her colleague was at her elbow in an instant. “Prime Commander?”

“Look at the buggers’ entry points into the grid. We need squads set up to intercept them. Make sure they communicate with the fliers in case we spot some of the creatures from above.”

“Acknowledged,” Hātu
r
i said, already on his way.

Within moments he was at the deployment screen, assigning Rangers on the basis of their proximity to the new posts. A moment later, Bonita joined him.

They began clustering their personnel in teams of six, seven, or eight, led by the highest-ranking Ranger available in each area. Wilkins was pleased about how smoothly they appeared to come together. It was that kind of teamwork that might mean the difference between life and death.

Rangers in New Earth City were forming squads as well. The reports she was receiving from Commander Bartlett told her as much. But as far as she could tell, none of the creatures had headed that way.
Why should they?
Nova City was much closer, a much more convenient hunting ground.

Just then, a message came in from Bartlett. It was reflected on one of her screens.
Should I send reinforcements?

“Not necessary,” she replied, depending on her software to translate the words into text. “At least not yet.”

Another of Wilkins’s floating screens showed her a report from Commander Lennon. He and his cadets were taking to the streets as well, but not to fight the invaders. Their job was civilian control.

Because as it stood now, every human being in the city had to be considered a target.

*   *   *

Ken Pham looked stunned when Vander Meer said he intended to go on with the day’s broadcast. “You understand we’ve been invaded, right?”

“And now we need to reassure people,” Vander Meer said. He was deadly serious.

The news bulletin to which he had woken—the one that spoke of the alien vessel—had sent a thrill of fear through him. Then he saw the advantage in reporting on this historic event. All his journalistic instincts firing at once, he skipped half his morning routine and rushed for the studio while the rest of the family headed for a shelter. They had begged him to stay with them, of course.

But he couldn’t. Immortality awaited.

Vander Meer had studied journalism, though his detractors had often suggested otherwise. He recognized that the great shapers of opinion in the past had been the ones who had covered events like this one. There was Murrow during World War II and McCracken during the departure from Earth, and now it was
his
time.

“I have to keep them informed,” he added. “In touch with what’s going on.”

“Don’t you think the Rangers are doing that?” asked Pham. “Why are you so fired up to be on the air?”

“I need to play my role, be part of history,” he started to reply, and realized how pompous he sounded, even to himself. “I can’t just hide in a bunker, Ken.”

His producer let out a sigh. “Me, either, I guess.” He began warming up his control panel.

Vander Meer smiled. “I know. You’d rather be reading under a tree.”

“Is that too much to ask?” Pham touched one last screen. “All warmed up and ready.”

Vander Meer automatically looked down to make sure he was presentable. His navy blue and gray suit—the next outfit in his rotation—seemed fine, pressed and
clean. He glanced up, saw the live light blink to life, and began.

“My friends,” he said, aware of the importance of each word, “the attack is real. We are all in danger. But we have practiced for just this occurrence, haven’t we? All you have to do is find shelter and then look after yourself and your loved ones.

“My sources inform me that there are just a few dozen of these creatures and that the Rangers vastly outnumber them. They are overhead in their fliers, blasting the monsters to pieces. They’re in the streets, hunting the monsters down. I assure you, we will prevail.

“One has to wonder, though, about the timing of such an attack. Just as Prime Commander Meredith Wilkins began to dismantle the Rangers, here comes a threat to our very existence. Now, my friends, I am not suggesting in the slightest that Wilkins conjured up a threat to scare us and, in doing so, to protect the Rangers’ position in our society. But it does all seem rather … how shall I put it?
Convenient?
”

Pham looked horrified at the suggestion that Wilkins had somehow arranged the attack as a way to protect her job. But his horror was short-lived, because messages were starting to pour in from listeners.

Vander Meer nodded approvingly. “While you are staying safe,” he continued, “I will try to find answers for you. In fact, I will be broadcasting on a regular basis so you can remain informed as to what is
really
happening out there.

“This is Trey Vander Meer, back as soon as I have more news.”

As soon as the signal ended, Pham shot out from behind his console. “Are you nuts? Do you intend to go out into the streets now and interview one of the beasts? Maybe stop a Ranger on patrol and ask him about Wilkins?”

Vander Meer ignored the questions and picked some lint off his pants. “What was the response?”

Pham blinked and checked his board. “They think
you’re on to something. Metrics show seventy-three percent believe you’re asking the right questions.”

“Excellent. Well, then, maybe I should check in with the Prime Commander and see what
she
has to say.”

“You go over there, she’s as likely to lock you up as anything else,” said Pham.

Wilkins was still reading screens and responding when she noticed Bonita standing next to her. “Commander?” she said.

“I should be out there,” Bonita said.

Wilkins grunted as she watched the alien creatures fan out from their points of entry into the grid. “With an injury that almost killed you once.”

“I’ve got a clean bill of health,” Bonita insisted. “And the Rangers are going to do a better job if they have another experienced officer out there.”

Wilkins couldn’t argue that Bonita was one of the best squad leaders she had ever seen, or that she had tested off the scales in tactics, or that they needed people in the streets who knew what they were doing.

Of course, she wanted to protect Bonita, a friend as well as a colleague. But under the circumstances, she had to grant the woman’s request. Anything else would be a dereliction of her duty to the colony.

“All right,” Wilkins said. “Against my better judgment.”

She already had put Bonita’s husband, Torrance, in charge of a squad. She hated the idea of having two members of one family on the line like that. But that was the job they had chosen in life.

“Yes, ma’am,” Bonita said, her eyes bright. She was eager to get back into the thick of things. But she would also keep her head about her. Wilkins was sure of that.

“You won’t regret it,” Bonita assured her. And she left the room without another word.

Wilkins frowned. Letting Bonita join the patrols hadn’t been an easy decision. But she had a feeling she’d have to make harder ones before the day was through.

Frank Raige wished he could drop another pulser barrage on the creatures as they rampaged through the streets of Nova City.

But it didn’t make sense. The creatures already had taken everything his fliers could dish out and barely even slowed down. The only ones Frank would be hurting with a fusion-burst barrage would be his fellow human beings.

The same human beings who were taking shelter as fast as they could, having been warned by the city’s civilian defense system. But Frank could see from his vantage point that his fellow Novans weren’t responding quickly enough. Despite the drills the Rangers had conducted periodically, few people seemed to know where to go or how to get there. Too many of them were milling in the streets, unaware of how close the alien monsters were or how quickly they would be upon them.