After Earth (3 page)

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.

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.

Fine. Be that way
. Kitai tried not to let his irritation get the better of him. Sure, the other cadets might not have been at all interested in offering him kudos for his achievement. But certainly the Ranger officers who were watching from a remote distance would have made note of it. They, at least, would understand: It wasn’t enough that Kitai simply passed the course and was designated a Ranger. He had to be the best, and they undoubtedly knew why.

So what if the other cadets were unwilling to care about that?
He
cared. The Rangers who were judging him would care, too. In the end, that was all he really needed to worry about.

Once the Ranger cadets had a few minutes to gather themselves and recuperate from the run, the Ranger Instructors—RIs, as they were called—gathered them and marched them to a canyon about a mile away. Kitai noticed that a number of the Ranger cadets were chatting with one another intermittently. No one, however, seemed the least bit interested in chatting with
him
.

Okay, fine. That’s how they want to play it? That’s how we’ll play it
.

As they approached the canyon, Kitai could spot RIs at the top. They had small, multiple layered devices in front of them that were giving individual readouts on each of the Rangers. Kitai knew exactly what they were
for. They tracked fear levels, because the Rangers were about to be attacked there, down in the twists and turns of the canyon below. The readouts would provide exact details of their reactions, an overall score that would be called the fear prospectus.

Fear was the thing over which Rangers were supposed to triumph. Fear was the weakness that could wind up getting a Ranger killed. And they all knew why.

It was because the Ursa were sensitive to fear in their prey. They could smell it.

Over the last few hundred years the Skrel had put a half dozen or so different generations of Ursa up against humanity, and the most recent incarnations of the creatures had been the most formidable that humans had ever faced. Six-legged monsters they were, with huge maws full of teeth, not to mention the ability to blend in so perfectly with their backgrounds that they were practically invisible.