After Earth: A Perfect Beast (34 page)

Where was he going? Lyla wondered as the Holy One
came closer and closer still, so close that she could see the red blotches on his face that the cameras never picked up. As far as she knew, the Primus had remained locked up in his Citadel ever since the Ursa’s arrival. What was so important that it had drawn him out into the streets, escort or no escort?

She was so busy thinking about it that she barely noticed the shadow that passed over her, blotting out the sunlight for a fraction of a second. But she didn’t miss the descent of something big and pale just behind the Primus, something that decidedly didn’t belong there in the heat of a lazy late afternoon.

An Ursa
, Lyla thought, her heart climbing into her throat.

The creature was immense, wide enough to fill the street from one wall to the other. Rather than a finished organism, it looked like something that had been forcibly turned inside out, all ghostly white flesh and blue-gray smart metal. Any one of its four long, angular limbs was powerful enough to tear her apart if the news accounts were the least bit accurate.

But the most hideous part of the thing, the part that sent chills up and down the rungs of Lyla’s spine, was its face—because strictly speaking, it didn’t have any. In its place yawned a black hole, and in the center of that hole a maw full of sharp black teeth chittered like an army of hungry wet insects.

My God
, she thought.
My God my God my God …

She had never imagined anything like it, not even in her worst nightmares. She was paralyzed by the sight of the thing, rooted in place.

But the Primus wasn’t rooted at all. He and his entourage came charging toward her, their robes aflutter, all of them except for two of the Rangers who had been part of the Holy One’s escort. Except that for whatever reason, the Ursa wasn’t interested in the Rangers. It came bounding past them, ignoring their barrage of silver-blue pulser bursts, intent instead on the Primus and the rest of his group.

“Move!” Bolt yelled, and shoved her behind him.

Lyla began to run.

It didn’t seem right for her to abandon him. He was risking his life to save hers, and she knew from Conner’s accounts that his pulser wasn’t going to help him.

Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw Bolt train his weapon on the Ursa and fire. His fusion burst struck the creature head-on with enough force to collapse a wall. But it didn’t stop the monster. All it did was slow it down for a moment.

Putting its head down, it came charging at them with renewed fury: Lyla, the Primus, his augurs, and his remaining Rangers. In another heartbeat it would be on top of them.

Lyla ran for all she was worth. But she had barely taken three strides before she felt a hand on her shoulder.
Not Bolt’s—it can’t be. Then who?

She felt the hand clutch at her, pull her back, and then, joined by a second hand, throw her to the ground. She barely caught a glimpse of the person the hands belonged to, but she saw enough to know that she had been betrayed.

Since she had been a little girl, she had believed in God and believed almost as much in His emissary the Primus. But it was the Primus who had dragged her down from behind, his eyes wide with fear, his mouth gaping as he gasped for breath.

It was the Primus
.

Lyla was almost trampled as the others went by. But she was still able to get to her feet and run after them.

It didn’t matter. She knew that. The Ursa would get to her first. That had to have been the Primus’s thought all along: to give the creature what it wanted so that it would leave the rest of them alone.

Behind her, the Ursa was getting closer. She could hear the scratching of its claws on the ground, the gnashing of its teeth, the rumbling in its throat. It bounded awkwardly, but with its long limbs it was faster than she was.

Lyla had seen the news coverage of the Ursa’s victims. It never zoomed in on the details, never gave too precise a picture of the remains. But there was always blood—blood everywhere—painting the ground and the walls of nearby buildings and everything else in sight.

And soon it would be
her
blood.

It was hard to believe, hard to wrap her mind around the idea as she ran. But the thing behind her was real. Its hunger was real. And her death? In a minute, maybe less, that would be real, too.

As she sprinted, her breath burning in her throat, she saw the Primus ahead of her. He had bought his life with hers. The Holy One, the voice of heaven on Nova Prime, had sacrificed her so that he could live.

It was a bitter thought.

Then Lyla had no more time to think, no more time even to breathe, because the Ursa was almost on top of her.
Conner
, she thought, wishing she could see him one last time.
Conner
 …

The world filled with the Ursa’s roar.
My God
, she thought.

My God my God my God …

Gash perceives, in the same way it always does, a smell thing in front of it. Another female, of a certainty. And for a moment—just a moment—it considers skipping over her
.

Gash has no idea why that thought comes to it. It is counterintuitive
.

Gash must kill
.

Gash must destroy
.

And yet, as it advances on her, it cannot help but notice an oddity about her
.

She has stopped moving. She is lying there, waiting for …

… what?

Her end? Her demise?

Gash senses bodily functions from her, yet she is not resisting in the least.

Gash crouches over her, its claws at the ready
.

And still she does not respond
.

Gash stops. It does not look down at her, for it has no eyes. Yet there is something about her that draws Gash’s attention
.

At first the smell thing does not seem to be aware that Gash is simply standing there, regarding her with what amounts to curiosity. Then, very slowly, she looks up. Does she realize that Gash has not yet attacked her, that it is simply studying her, trying to discern more about her?

And then she speaks to Gash
.

It is the first time Gash has ever heard one of the smell things speak. Scream, shriek, howl … these Gash knows. But the simple spoken voice is different somehow. Gash can’t say exactly how, but it is different
.

“Please,” the smell thing says, her voice barely above a whisper. “Make it quick.”

Gash doesn’t know what the sounds are supposed to mean, but it does not have a lot of patience. It has had enough
.

Gash’s mouth lowers, envelops the smell thing’s head, and clamps down. The smell thing shudders and stops moving
.

Interesting,
Gash thinks. But that is all it is: a brief moment of interest
.

Gash consumes the smell thing’s body, or most of it. Then it leaves the remains there and moves on. After all, Gash has other smell things to kill
.

The Primus, Leonard Rostropovich, disappeared from his apartment that night.

He opened a secret door in his bedroom and followed an equally secret staircase down into the bowels of the
Citadel, where food and drink awaited him. And he hid there because he could not bring himself to do anything else.

The Primus knew what his duties were at this critical time in the life of his people. He knew what his flock expected of him, what it needed from him.

But he couldn’t face another human being. Not now. Not after he had flung that girl to the ground, and felt the crunch of her bones as if they were his own, and seen the spray of her blood, and heard the wet chomping sound the creature made as it fed.

Even now, his stomach churned at the thought. Why had God let him feel and see and hear that? Hadn’t he always sought to serve Him? Hadn’t he always done his best to be God’s voice on Nova Prime?

Why had God brought him so close to death, so very close?

He would not even have considered exposing himself to danger if he were not doing heaven’s work. He had been on his way to present Conner Raige with a Writ of Objection, a legal document that enabled any leader of the tripartite government to temporarily disqualify a colleague if that colleague was patently unsuitable, and to the Primus no one was less suitable than Raige.

Unfortunately, such a writ could not be delivered electronically. It could only be handed to Raige in person. And the Primus was about to do that very thing, in God’s name, when he and his entourage were attacked.

But why would his deity do such a thing to him? He couldn’t get the question out of his head. Why would God place him in so terrible a position?

There was only one answer: God had abandoned the colony. Not through any fault of the Primus, of course. But it was clear to him now that that was what had happened.

God has abandoned us. Abandoned
me.

So what else could he do but hide? He was only a
man, after all, and men were frail. Especially in the face of something as hideous and powerful as the Ursa.

Once again, despite himself, he saw the creature tear the young woman apart. Unable to stand the sight, he closed his eyes and jammed his fists against them.

“So very frail,” he moaned.

Conner sat at Meredith Wilkins’s desk with his head in his hands.

He had received any number of condolences in the aftermath of Lyla’s death.

Of course, none of the people expressing them knew how Conner felt about her. All they knew was that he had worked closely with her on the cutlass project.

Hell, even Conner didn’t know how he felt about her. He just wished to heaven he had had the chance to find out.

Lyla …

Lucas hadn’t said a word since his sister was killed.
Not a syllable to anyone
. But he was taking out his grief on Ursa after Ursa in patrol after patrol after patrol.

“Sir,” said Dolpa, the adjutant who had worked for Wilkins and now worked for him, “I have someone to see you. An augur.”

Conner looked up and gathered himself. He had made a promise to Hātu
r
i to lead. He couldn’t renege on that promise now no matter how he felt.

“See the augur in.”

Conner didn’t know why such a person would ask to see him. To comfort him, maybe? It would be a comfort, he thought, to know the Primus would be more cooperative with his initiative.

As he thought that, the augur walked into his office. But it wasn’t just
any
augur. It was his aunt Theresa.

She took a seat opposite him. “Before you ask, nephew,
I’m not here on personal business.” She sighed. “The Primus has disappeared.”

It took a moment for the words and their import to sink in. “Disappeared,” Conner echoed.

“Yes. He doesn’t answer my calls or, for that matter, anyone else’s. And his apartment is empty.”

Perfect timing
, Conner thought.
As if I didn’t have enough on my hands
.

Then he stopped himself. It was his job to see to the welfare of the colony’s citizens, and the Primus was no less a citizen than anyone else. No sense complaining about the problem, even to himself.

“Where was the Primus last seen?” Conner asked.

“In the Citadel, by some of us augurs. But that was yesterday. No one has spotted or heard from him since.”

Conner nodded. “All right. I’ll send out an alert. If anyone catches so much as a glimpse of him, it’ll be reported.”

“I was hoping you could send out a search detail,” Aunt Theresa said.

“I wish I had that luxury,” Conner told her, “but I don’t. We have too few boots on the ground as it is. I can’t redeploy them for a search detail regardless of who it’s for.”

Theresa looked disappointed, but she didn’t argue with him. “Very well. We’ll pray for the Primus’s safe return to us. Heaven forbid that anything has happened to him.”

Conner couldn’t join her in that invocation. But out of respect for her, he didn’t say so.

There were eight of them. Three—Blodge, Ditkowsky, and Augustover—had remained with Conner. Four others—Lucas, Gold, Erdmann, and Cheng—had come around the block and were advancing from the other direction.

And between the two groups, thunder erupting from
its throat, or what passed for a throat in its alien anatomy, was an Ursa.

It was massive, powerful-looking, and utterly unaware of how important the next few minutes of its life would be. Because if Conner and the rest of his squad took it down, it would mean that Lyla’s cutlasses had made the difference humanity needed. And if the monster prevailed, it would mean that their last, best hope had been dashed.

The Ursa swung its head back and forth as if it were trying to decide which morsels of flesh and blood and bone to go after first. But it didn’t look daunted. Why should it? Everywhere it turned, there was prey.

“All right,” Conner said into his comm gear, “just like we practiced it. Cheng, Erdmann, Gold, Ditkowsky—deploy hooks. Everybody else is showing blades. On my—”

Suddenly Lucas interrupted him with an urgent yell: “Raige, behind you!”

Conner looked back over his shoulder, wondering what could have made Lucas cry out that way—and saw the last thing he wanted to see. A second Ursa was lumbering toward them from the other end of the street, its open maw saying loud and clear that it was glad to see so much meat in one place even if there was a chance it might have to share some of it.

Damn
, Conner thought, his mind racing.
That changes everything
. In less than a heartbeat, the encounter had gone from a controlled experiment—albeit a potentially deadly one—to a free-for-all.

He had only a hot instant to review their options. One was to split up the team and fight both Ursa at once, but he didn’t like that idea. Even with cutlasses, it would be hard for four Rangers to take down one of the monsters. Their other option was to keep the second Ursa busy while the majority of the team went after the first one.

Conner liked that idea a lot better.