After Earth: A Perfect Beast (22 page)

A short time later, after Vander Meer had eaten and drunk without tasting what he was eating and drinking, he applied his makeup. Then he went to sit in his familiar spot in front of the camera. Pham took the controls.

Vander Meer saw him switch on a fail-safe app that would cut off the signal immediately if the commentator said something he didn’t think advisable. Vander Meer smiled. In his estimation, Pham wouldn’t need to do any such thing.

The red light went on, telling Vander Meer it was time for him to speak.

He didn’t sit in one spot, though. He wanted to convey the magnitude of the problem, and so he got up and paced for a moment. Pham, as astute as ever, widened the angle and swiveled the camera to capture his movements.

Finally, Vander Meer turned to the camera and spoke.
“My friends,” he said, “I want to thank you for taking time from your own worries and concerns to express your sympathies regarding my loss. Of course, the tragedy that befell my family is no different from what so many of you have experienced. I am still hurt and grieving. But just as there is no time to bury the dead, there is no time to mourn them. We need to focus on the immediate danger.

“I have seen the savagery of the Ursa firsthand. They are killing machines, make no mistake. They elude our best efforts to find and track them. They withstand our pulsers for the most part. They need little rest, if any.

“So we sit huddled in our homes and shelters, and starve, and watch as our families are destroyed. We cower like scared children, worrying about the monster under the bed. Meanwhile, the Ursa run free.

“But they can be defeated—and we are the ones who can defeat them. Now, I do not have the magic bullet, the solution to our woes. But we are a people that found the wherewithal to build arks and escape a toxic world. We are the people that time and again devised ways out of dilemmas that seemed certain to crush the spirit.

“Sometimes we need inspiration.

“Clearly the Rangers are in over their heads. They need our help.

“Sometimes we need motivation.

“Let me motivate you, my friends.

“I will post an award of a million credits, which is everything I have left in the world. To claim it, all you need do is be the first to bring me an Ursa corpse. No, not even an entire corpse—just its head. Bring it here to the studio, prove you killed the monster to which it belonged, and the reward is yours.

“There are nearly three dozen Ursa stalking our city, so there is plenty of opportunity. But you don’t need to kill them all. Just one.
One
.

“I will remain camped here at the studio, awaiting the person who comes in first to claim his or her prize. Good hunting, my friends.”

And the red light went off, Pham knowing him well enough to time it just right.

Vander Meer sat down, exhausted. Apparently, he still had a way to go before he got his strength back. But he had had enough to deliver his message.

Pham toggled off the camera and the lighting, jaw agape.

“Do you think anyone heard me?” Vander Meer asked.

Pham nodded. “I’m sure of it. And those who didn’t hear you firsthand will get wind of what you said soon enough.”

Vander Meer closed his eyes. The monsters would pay. His family would be avenged.

Lyla had never listened to Trey Vander Meer’s broadcasts, and she was even less inclined to do so now that she was so focused on turning her research into the kind of weapon the Savant had asked for. But thanks to the banter of her colleagues over the Savant’s comm channels, she was aware that the broadcasts were continuing unabated.

The Prime Commander had considered shutting the commentator down for morale reasons, apparently, but had opted not to do so. Vander Meer was too resourceful, his broadcasts too well known. If his broadcasts suddenly vanished, as critical of the Rangers as they had been, it would prompt the citizenry to think that he was making valid points that the Rangers were afraid to have out there.

So Vander Meer, despite the annoyance of a number of people in the Rangers organization, was being allowed to speak. From what Lyla’s colleagues were saying, the commentator believed that the Rangers were overwhelmed. He talked of how the situation was rapidly descending into every man for himself. He talked of
how he was going to continue to provide a bounty for every Ursa head brought to him because he, Vander Meer, was the only one capable of getting Novans to stand up and do what the Rangers couldn’t do.

Lyla studiously ignored the controversy. She had work to do.

But as Cecilia Ruiz sat in her small home and looked at the last remains of the vegetables she’d managed to salvage from her misbegotten adventure with the black marketer, she heard Vander Meer’s words.

And she started
listening
.

Conner could have sat in the barracks with the other cadets and listened to another of Trey Vander Meer’s diatribes, but he couldn’t stomach the idea. Before, Vander Meer had angered him. Now, with his call for ordinary citizens to fight the Ursa, Vander Meer had gone from despicable to dangerous.

Unfortunately, Conner couldn’t do anything about him. Apparently, no one could.

In his downtime—the first he had gotten in days—he chose not to remain with his fellow cadets but rather to see his aunt Bonita one last time.

He couldn’t speak with her again. He couldn’t hug her. But thanks to the footage taken by one of the colony’s satellites, which tracked every Ranger maneuver visible from orbit on a line of sight, he could sit in a room in the command center and watch her die.

It wasn’t easy. But it was
her
. It was what she had done in her last moments of life. So Conner watched and did so gratefully.

He wasn’t expecting to get anything useful out of it. Not even remotely. Therefore, it came as a surprise
when he realized that his aunt had done something he wouldn’t have thought possible.

Despite the creatures’ acute sense of smell, she had snuck up on one of them. She had gotten close enough without its noticing to hit it point-blank with a pulser blast and leave a gash across the creature’s hide just above its gaping black hole of a mouth.

More important, the Ursa had faltered. For four or five seconds it had been stunned. And if it hadn’t fallen on Aunt Bonita, driving her to the ground with its weight, she might have pressed her advantage.

But she couldn’t do that because she was pinned. Given time to recover, the beast had risen up and killed her.

Conner sat back in his chair, his mind racing. His aunt had knocked the Ursa out. He had seen it even if the Rangers who had served under her hadn’t noticed. She had
stunned it
.

He recalled what he had done in the war game, how he had taken advantage of Lucas Kincaid’s aggressiveness to sneak up behind him. That was what his aunt had done with the Ursa.

At least, that was how it had looked to him.

Maybe he was completely and utterly mistaken. Maybe he was just a cadet jumping to conclusions, which was what people would certainly say. But there was a way to find out.

Three weeks of this. Or is it four? God, how much longer can this go on?

Torrance Raige felt as if he were going out of his mind. His wife was gone. All around Nova City and its outlands, Rangers were falling under the relentless assaults of the Ursa. The entirety of Nova Prime was slipping into the kind of despair he never could have imagined.

Where is it going to stop?

His injuries had healed, and he had been put back out into the field, part of a search-and-destroy team that consisted of ten Rangers. With that many of them operating in such close proximity, the major concern was getting in one another’s way, so they had to remain ultra-aware of the location of each teammate. It was of particular consequence since the Ursa had a terrifying habit of appearing out of nowhere, often in the middle of a crowd. In a way, they were representative of humanity’s existence on Nova Prime in microcosm. One minute everything was fine; the next, the Skrel showed up and all hell had broken loose.

You’re drifting. Stay focused
.

They were making their way through a rugged, mountainous area. No one had ever bothered to name it, which was odd since humans had a tendency to slap names on practically every damned thing. There wasn’t an ounce of green anywhere on it, just brown scrub here and there. It alternated between twisting paths—sometimes
so narrow that people had to walk single file—and plateaus and cliffs. To make matters worse, it was studded with caves. It was effectively a sandblasted maze of brown rock filled with countless twisting curves and holes where an Ursa could be lying in wait.

Why were they there? Because, contrary to what they had thought, a couple of Ursa had gone that way. They didn’t know why, but now they were sure of it. And they wanted to know why. The fear—and it was a
huge
fear—was that they might be up there breeding. Maybe some of the Ursa were specifically designed for that, the Savant’s people were speculating.

Or maybe something else. They just needed to know. And if Torrance’s mission was a success, they would.

He heard the sound of a Ranger skimmer, a large, boxy aerial vehicle, roaring overhead, scanning the general area and giving an eyes-in-the-air aid to the forces on the ground. Their report crackled over the comm unit of every Ranger in the area. “No sign of the bastards.”

“Doesn’t mean we lower our guard,” came Marta’s reply. She was about ten yards back, and Torrance could hear the determination in her voice. She had recovered from her injuries just as he had and had reclaimed her place as a Ranger in the field.

But she had recovered
more
, it seemed to him. “You going to be okay?” Marta asked, still worried about how the death of Bonita had affected him.

Torrance glanced at her and just for a moment allowed the frustration and gnawing sense of dread he’d been feeling in the past weeks to show through. “Are any of us?”

“Yes,” she said with the certainty in her voice that always lifted him. “Yes, we’re going to be okay. The Skrel tried to wipe us out ages ago, and we survived. And we will survive again. Because they keep underestimating us. They think we’re nothing but ants for them to stomp on, and sooner or later they’re going to get the message.”

“And if, upon getting that message, they simply decide to destroy the world entirely?”

“If they were going to, they would have done so by now,” Marta said firmly. “There’s something here they want.”

“Then why don’t they just tell us what it is?”

“Because they can’t communicate with us, or maybe they feel they shouldn’t have to. They just figure we’ll leave. But they’ve misjudged us.”

“Sector 11 clear!” crackled the voice of Freeman, one of their fellow Rangers. They had broken up the area they were exploring into sectors, going through them methodically one by one to ensure that there were no Ursa hidden there.

“Sector 9 clear,” came Swan’s report.

There was silence then over their comm units. Marta drew closer and said into hers, “Sector 10, report in.”

Marta and Torrance stared at each other nervously as she got no response.
They
were in sector 10.

Torrance immediately spoke into his unit, “Norris? You there? Status report.” The longer the silence continued, the more worrisome matters became. “Norris! Dammit, report!”

Marta started tapping into the naviband she wore on her forearm. A light flashed back. “I’ve got his location.” Quickly she relayed it back to the other Rangers in the vicinity, and then they sprinted forward.

Torrance heard the rest of the squadron pounding up behind them. At least he had people covering his back. He had his pulser drawn, ready for anything they might encounter.

What do you mean, “anything”? There’s only one thing we have to worry about encountering, and damned if you can ever really be ready for that.
His lower jaw tightened.
Except I can be. I’m Torrance Raige, dammit, and there hasn’t been a thing in the history of humanity—including the loss of the Earth itself—that my family hasn’t been able to handle. And that’s not about to change now
.

The narrow path opened out onto a plateau. “He’s just ahead,” said Marta. Her voice was steady, but there was a slight edge to it.

“Nobody move,” Torrance said sharply. “Because I’m not seeing him.” His gaze swept over the area in front of them, and indeed there was no sign of Norris. There didn’t seem to—

Then he spotted it. At the far end of the plateau, he saw Norris’s hand.

Just
Norris’s hand, lying at the base of a couple of rocks. His naviband was flashing red, indicating that it was still functioning.

No way. No way in hell did the Ursa plant that here to lure us. Impossible. It … My God, it must have swallowed Norris whole. Almost whole. I can see it now, the serration ending just above the wrist. It just scooped him up, swallowed him, and, as Norris tried to climb out, clamped its jaws shut. Any screams would have been muffled
.

All this went through Torrance’s mind in a second. His gaze swept the plateau. There was nothing there. The Ursa was gone.

No—it’s here
, he thought. He heard its growl, chilling him to the bone.

“It’s here!” he called out.

A moment later the monster bounded into view. It seemed to hesitate for a moment, apparently trying to decide who to attack first.

“Fire!” Torrance yelled.

Pulser blasts rained down on the Ursa, but they weren’t seriously hurting it. They were, at most, annoying the crap out of it.
No surprise there
.

Suddenly he saw, to his horror, that Marta was advancing, trying to get closer. Hoping, no doubt, that a closer shot would have a greater impact.

“Fall back, Ranger!”
Torrance shouted.
“Fall back!”
He never stopped firing as he grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her away from the creature.

The Ursa’s head snapped around. Its nonexistent eyes settled on him. It roared. It charged.

In an effort to draw it off from the others, Torrance ran along the edge of the plateau, all the while continuing to fire. The Ursa’s head swiveled to track him, turning it away from the rest of the Rangers. They converged on it as one, pouring on a barrage from all directions. The Ursa felt the concentrated firepower and, still facing Torrance, roared in pain.