After Earth (35 page)

He nodded.

“All you see is the noble sacrifice, and all I see is a dead woman, cut down before her life could really develop. You’ve already lost one arm, and it nearly killed me. I just don’t want to lose the rest of you.”

“You won’t, Mom,” he swore.

He walked over and hugged her.

“I want you to be proud of me,” he said.

“Always,” she replied. They stood in each other’s arms for a few silent moments.

“If that is what you wish, then I will not stop you,” she told him at last. “Shower first, United Rangers second.”

He knew that Phase 1 testing was a grueling mix of physical activity and mental recall. There were two dozen others testing that cycle, and he was determined to top them all. He had barely any body fat and was pure muscle, able to dead lift over 114 kilos—impressive for an eighteen-year-old—and that was without any enhancement to the prosthetic arm. He omitted its existence on the entrance forms and never mentioned it to the others. The synthetic skin was perfectly blended to match his natural skin tone, and he stayed in a T-shirt whenever possible. Being a Kincaid meant he knew the regulations by heart, and among them was the archaic prohibition against Rangers having prosthetic limbs. Nope, he was going to do this evenly matched against the others.

Well, maybe not that evenly matched. Being a Ranger was in his blood. He proudly carried over seven hundred years of Kincaid dedication to service.

He outran the men, outclimbed the women, and sparred them both into submission.

Stepping into the dreaded booth, he was able to recite facts and details way beyond what the artificial intelligence was asking him. He also finished in what he imagined to be record time.

There was nothing stopping him from being approved for Phase 2 testing.

That night, there was a knock on the door of the family’s home. Anderson’s younger sister, Kayla, ran to answer it
while he was reading. All he heard were hushed voices and some sort of commotion that caught his attention.

Clicking off his reader, a barefoot Anderson padded through the fabric curtains into the main room. Standing in the middle of his home was Commander Rafe Velan, the man in charge of training and testing the cadets. The tall, broad man had a close-cropped head of graying hair and a weathered face. Anderson’s mind was reeling; he had never heard of such a personal visit being made. What on Nova was happening?

“Commander!” he said, snapping to attention despite wearing a light shirt and baggy trousers. His sister imitated his stance, stifling a giggle.

Velan, a stern look in his eyes, twitched his mouth a moment before saying, “At ease … kids.”

Anderson exhaled while trying to remain at least somewhat presentable; Kayla fell into a chair.

“Are your parents at home?” Velan asked.

“Dad’s out getting something for dinner, and Mom’s at her office, as usual,” Kayla said.

“I see. May I speak with you alone, Cadet Kincaid?”

“Kay, get lost,” Anderson said, looking intently at his sister.

She made a face at him, smiled sweetly at Velan, and skipped out of the room. The commander, meanwhile, looked around the room, clearly uncomfortable. That got Anderson concerned. Something was wrong if the commander himself was in his house. How he wished his mother were there.

“Sir, may I get you a drink?”

“Thank you, no,” Velan said before swallowing hard. “I will get right to the point. You
cannot
be a Ranger.”

Anderson blinked once, then twice.

Kayla peeked through the bottom of a curtain, trying to eavesdrop, but he glared at her and she vanished back behind the curtain. He hadn’t imagined something so blunt and definitive. Now it was his turn to swallow and collect himself, trying to control the roiling emotions he felt.

“Sir, may this candidate inquire as to why?”

“At ease, Anderson,” Velan said emphatically. “You’re not in the program, and we know each other. In looking over your application for admission, the computer sent up a red flag. And I believe you know why.”

Anderson stared at the commander, trying to hold in the warring emotions deep in his chest. His dreams were about to become bitter ashes.

When he didn’t reply, Velan continued: “You lied, son. Had I seen the application, I would have remembered your accident and prosthetic arm and pulled it from consideration. You know the rules, I believe.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” he said weakly.

Velan nodded at that. “You knew about the prohibition, but you applied anyway and tried to sneak by. You were dishonest. Is a Ranger dishonest, Cadet?”

“No, sir!”

“Why lie, then?”

“The prosthetic is a
part
of me,” Anderson began. “I have lived with it for over half my life, and it doesn’t make me any less fit for being a Ranger.”

“Our regulations have a prohibition against Rangers having any prosthetic devices that may malfunction in the field, compromising the Ranger’s welfare and the safety of the Rangers around him,” Velan said, practically reciting the manual.

“Has it happened to anyone before?”

“Not that I know of,” Velan admitted, and if he could not think of an incident, it probably never had happened. Velan was a legend at the academy, a battle-tested man who was a walking, talking rule book. “But the rules were written a long time ago.”

“Then with respect, sir, considering the advances of prosthetics, maybe it’s time for those rules to be reviewed and revised.”

“A good point and one that will be taken under consideration. But meanwhile, the prohibition remains on the books, and it therefore excludes you. Right now, the larger issue is you being deceitful, which I cannot tolerate
within the corps. I have to say, Anderson, I am disappointed you would lie. It dishonors yourself and your family name.”

“The arm has never once let me down, just like I won’t let the Rangers down. You can’t discriminate against me—it wasn’t my fault, and it’s not all I am. Let me prove it.”

“You hid the truth from the Rangers, and it sounds like you’re hiding it from yourself, too,” Velan gently said. That seemed to end the discussion, and Anderson knew he was not going to win the argument.

“Does my mother know?” he asked.

“I felt I owed it to you to tell you first,” he said, sounding genuinely sorry. “Would you like me to discuss this with her?”

“No … thank you, sir,” Anderson said. “I can tell her of my own failing.”

“You didn’t fail,” Velan said. “This has nothing to do with your ratings and everything to do with you hiding a disqualifying factor about yourself. Truthfully, you shouldn’t have even been allowed to try out in the first place. The thinking was that if you proved to be simply not up to the demands of the position, this would all be moot. The fact that I had to come out here just to have this discussion at all is your victory, not failure. Your scores were incredibly impressive. Then again, I would expect no less of Atlas’s relative.”

The future that Anderson had spent more than a decade working toward had suddenly vanished, and now that reality was sinking in. It hurt in a way his shoulder and missing arm never did. The pain was a psychic one, coursing from brain to heart and back again. Now all he wanted to do was scream at Velan, but he suspected that would be an irreparable mistake.

“I think I’d better go, Anderson,” Velan said, beginning to turn. “If you want me to speak with your parents, just call my office. I wish it were otherwise, since I know you would be an asset. Good night.”

With a voice that was as dead as his career, Anderson Kincaid said, “Good night … sir.”

It was a few days later, when the pain of the rejection had faded to a dull ache within his heart, that Anderson truly sat down to examine his options. He was powerfully built, and it appeared that only the Rangers had the limitation on prosthetics. Scanning the feeds, he considered various opportunities, but many were for labor and offered no real sense of a career. He most definitely didn’t want to be a laborer or an athlete (for fear someone would also be whispering “fraud” at every competition) or provide personal security for the elite.

Then he spotted a position with the Nova Prime Civilian Defense Corps. They were looking for qualified candidates for civilian patrols.

Kincaid did a quick scan of the agency and realized it was sanctioned civil defense. He hadn’t previously noticed or concerned himself with any other options, blinded as he was by dreams of the Rangers. Now, though, the NPCDC looked like a perfect fit.

“A Kincaid, eh?” the slightly overweight desk officer said. “Haven’t had one of those yet. Why us and not the Rangers?”

Anderson had anticipated the question, although he didn’t like discussing it. Just seeing the artificial arm and hand should have been clue enough. But then again, not everyone paid attention to details.

“My left arm is a prosthetic,” he said in a flat tone.

“Lemme see,” the man said, extending a beefy hand.

Anderson complied, meeting the hand with his own. The man rolled up the sleeve a bit and examined the detail work, which simulated skin, arm hair, and even fingerprints to match the other hand. He whistled.

“That’s the new K-class arm,” the man said.

Kincaid blinked in mild surprise that the man knew that and flexed the fingers for him, suddenly swelling with pride, since the man clearly wasn’t patronizing him.

“Works great, the best one yet,” Anderson agreed. “You have any problem with prosthetics?”

“Not in the slightest,” the man said. “Bill McGirk. Fill this out, and once you pass the physical, you’re in. And you’ll look better in the uniform than I will.”

McGirk was a man of his word, and within days, Anderson Kincaid was being shown the pulsers used by the NPCDC, which were not regularly carried but cached in case of emergency. Most of the work involved patrolling public spaces, looking for mischief, petty theft, and other troubles the Rangers didn’t have to focus on. They were first responders to medical emergencies, and so he needed a week of paramedic training, which he had an aptitude for despite ignoring his mother’s lessons through the years.

He enjoyed the long shifts and felt a sense of purpose as he walked the streets of Nova Prime City. McGirk was right about one other thing: He looked damn good in uniform, its sheer fabric diffusing heat and wicking away sweat, keeping him comfortable.

Anderson also liked patrolling with Virginia Marquez, a petite woman near his age. She was pretty and sassy and easy to get along with. They would walk the streets together, and bit by bit he was getting to know the neighborhoods in the sectors, picking up the vibes each area gave off. In many ways, it was like he was a newcomer, experiencing the city for the first time. There were the areas where the technicians worked, the smell of the animal herders and farmers with their own ripe odors, the manufacturers who always had recyclables littering the edges of their buildings.

“What’s the strangest call you’ve had?” Kincaid asked her the fourth week they were patrolling together. It was morning, and as the suns climbed the sky, the
heat rose and the city woke up. There was a quiet followed by the growing sounds of the people getting ready to work or play. There was always the smell of freshly baked goods, and he learned early on when to be near the bakeries so that bakers would toss them hot rolls—their way of saying good morning.

Marquez, her long hair knotted in an elaborate style with various wooden pieces holding it in place, thought about it for a while. “It might have been the time I was called for a domestic disturbance. Neighbors called just before dawn, claiming there was a horrible fight going on next door and they heard things breaking. I got there with my partner, Cotto, and we knocked once to be polite before we kicked in the door.”

She fell silent, munching on the roll.

“Well?”

“There was no fighting. They were making love. A lot of it, apparently.”

Kincaid nodded and grinned at her. “Learn anything?”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” she teased, and quickened her pace.

“You miss your arm?”

Marquez settled onto the bench next to him, shoving the beer stein in his direction, letting some of the foamy head spill onto the worn table. They had knocked off work a little early and met others at their favorite bar to toast Anderson’s first year in the service.

“I was so young when it happened, I think about it more than actually miss it. At night, sometimes, I think I can still feel it, still flex my real muscles and point with my fingers. I was told the sense of the phantom limb would fade with time, and I guess it has, but I don’t stop thinking about it.”

“But you should be thinking about the path it set you on,” Lars Svensen said. He was a five-year vet with blond
hair, blue eyes, and pecs the women swooned over. As a result, he made certain to wear his uniform shirt open beyond what regulations allowed for; not that anyone complained. “You could have been a Ranger.”

“Yeah, you could have been a Ranger and flown over all this planet or trained until you were ready to cry,” Kelly Alpuente added. “I mean, really, what do they do when not fighting Skrel and Ursa? They train to fight Skrel and Ursa.”

“And when was the last time you saw a Skrel ship?” Marquez asked.

“It’s been a while,” Anderson admitted.

“And when was the last significant Ursa attack?”

“Nine fifty-one AE. The Skrel deposited a hundred on the ground; the Rangers took out eighty-eight of them,” he mechanically replied.

“You’re on my trivia team,” Alpuente said with a smile. “I might have gotten the year right but not the rest.”

“It’s that Ranger prep,” Marquez said. “You really wanted to be one of them, didn’t you?”

He merely said yes and drank his beer. He was happy with the corps and had made some valued friends. The last years had been good ones, and he was pleased with the work. They were happy with him. It all should have been good and this should be a joyous celebration, but like his phantom limb, being a Ranger still felt like a phantom career, the reality versus this substitute.

Kincaid threw himself into the conversation, drank one beer too many, and let Alpuente take him home for the night, unaware of the longing look Marquez shot him.