After Earth (46 page)

“I thought the whole point of my being a Ghost—”

“You ghosted,” said Tolentino. “I know.
Once
. But
neither one of us is a hundred percent sure you can do it again. Right?”

He clenched his teeth, refusing to give Tolentino the satisfaction of a reply.

Her eyes narrowed. “I asked you a question, Ranger.”

Crap
. “Right.”

“And until we know for sure that you can do the things the rest of us can’t, let’s focus on teaching you to do the things we
can
—like staying alive, and making sure the others in your squad do the same.”

Cade resented the remark. Was it his job to worry about his squad mates or to kill the construct?

“And by the way,” Tolentino added, “when you made a fool of yourself climbing up to get your cutlass back? Your squad mates weren’t laughing with you. They were laughing
at
you.”

That stung. No doubt, she had meant it to. Cade wanted to hurt her back but he couldn’t—not if he wanted to stay out of jail.

“Got it?” Tolentino asked.

He nodded coldly. “Got it.”

“Got it,
what
?”

“Got it,
ma’am
.”

“You’d better,” she said. “Because I’m not clearing you for field duty until you do.”

If Cade’s first day was bad, his second was worse.

Tolentino put him through one grueling drill after another, matching him up against his squad mates singly and in pairs. His speed and agility were second to nobody’s, so he didn’t have a problem keeping up physically. But when it came to things like strategy and teamwork, it was clear he had a lot to learn.

Even to him.

In one exercise, Tolentino drew a circle in the dirt with her cutlass. Then her Rangers had to stand inside
it and, using their own cutlasses as quarterstaffs, knock their opponents out of the circle. They were given padding for their heads, ankles, and hands, but not enough to keep a solid whack from drawing blood.

In round 1, Cade beat a fair-haired woman named Bentzen, sweeping her legs out from under her. In round 2, he drove the end of his cutlass into the chest of a guy named Zabaldo.

That put him in the final round. He would face Kayembe, a monster of a man with a weightlifter’s chest and thighs the size of Cade’s torso. Kayembe had reached the final by besting Tolentino in the second round, so he wasn’t just big—he was crafty.

Kayembe smiled when Cade stepped into the circle against him. “Looks like you and me, Ghost Man.”

“Figure that out all by yourself?” Cade asked.

His opponent’s smile faded. “I was going to go easy on you. Now …” His voice trailed off suggestively.

“Don’t do me any favors.”

“Commander
Velan
did you the favor,” Kayembe said. “It’s up to me to show him how wrong he was.”

“Assuming you
can
,” said Cade.

If he hadn’t backed down in the back alleys of Nova City, he wasn’t going to do so for the likes of Kayembe. Not even if he
was
one of the biggest human beings he had ever seen.

Tolentino held her hand up between them. “Ready?”

Cade and his adversary said “Ready” at the same time.

“Go,” Tolentino said, dropping her hand.

Kayembe began by striking at Cade’s feet.
Not a bad approach
, Cade had to concede. Even if he kept himself from falling, he would be off balance when he came down.

Unless, of course, Cade had paid attention when Kayembe had tried the same opening gambit on Nava, on whom it had worked. Anticipating it, Cade jumped high enough to avoid the stroke but not as high as Kayembe might have expected.

Then he planted the end of his cutlass in the ground and, using the weapon like a vaulting pole, kicked Kayembe in the face.

The big man staggered, but not far enough to step out of the circle—which was why Cade bent, thrust his cutlass between Kayembe’s legs, and pushed. Already off balance, Cade’s adversary couldn’t stay upright. He toppled like a tree, raising a cloud of dust where he landed.

But he didn’t stay down for long. In a heartbeat, he was back up, reaching for Cade’s throat. It took Nava and two other members of the squad to hold Kayembe back, and it looked like even that wouldn’t be enough until Tolentino intervened.

“Atten-shun!” she snapped.

The squad straightened, though Kayembe still glared at Cade as if he wanted to kill him.

Tolentino eyed Cade, then Kayembe, then Cade again. “Kayembe,” she said, “do I need to remind you of the punishment for Rangers who go after their squad mates?”

Kayembe’s mouth twisted. “No, ma’am.”

“Good.” Her gaze hardened. “Not that I entirely blame you. I distinctly said no one was to strike an opponent other than with a cutlass. Did you hear me say that, Zabaldo?”

“Yes, ma’am,” came the reply.

“How about you, Ericcson?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Nava.

“And yet Bellamy seems to have missed that instruction. Pity. It’s costing him the championship of our little tournament—and a couple of hours of his free time this afternoon, which he’ll spend doing everyone’s laundry.”

Cade was going to protest. After all, the Ursa didn’t play by the rules.
Why should I?

But in the end, he thought better of it. He wasn’t going to change Tolentino’s mind, so what was the point?

*   *   *

Later on, Cade had the mess hall all to himself. But then, no one else had spent a couple of hours doing his squad’s laundry.

He was just lifting the first bite to his mouth when he heard someone come in. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he saw that it was Nava.

“Mind if I join you?” she asked.

“Hope you like the smell of laundry detergent,” he said, glad for the company though he wouldn’t have admitted it.

Nava sat down across the table from him. “Very inventive, what you did this morning.”

Cade shrugged. “Tolentino didn’t seem to think so.”

“She
did
say no body-to-body contact.”

“That’s not the way it works in the real world.” He gestured expansively, including the entire mess hall. “Only in
this
one.”

“But
this
is where you’re training. And if we maim each other here, there won’t be anybody left to protect the colony.”

“I come from a different place, that’s all. You said it yourself. I didn’t aspire to be a Ranger all my life.”

Nava nodded. “I heard you were involved with the black market.”

“I had to be involved with something. I had to
survive
.”

“What about your family? They thought that was all right?”

“I didn’t have a family. My mother died when I was five. My father … I never had the pleasure.”

Nava’s expression softened. “How did you live?”

“After Mom’s death, I started running errands. Guys would pay me to take messages back and forth for them. They figured the Rangers wouldn’t arrest a kid. As I got older, they gave me more to do. Things just evolved from there.”

“Must have been rough.”

“I didn’t look at it that way. I mean, I had nothing to compare it to. I figured everybody had to look out for themselves, not just me.”

“No one gave you a hand?
Ever?
” Nava sounded incredulous.

“People offered me help now and then, sure, but they always had an angle. They were really trying to help themselves. And if I trusted them, if I did the things they suggested … let’s just say I wouldn’t have lasted very long.”

“You’re a Ranger now. You can put that behind you.”

Cade shook his head. “It’s not that easy. I’m not used to trusting people, doing what they say just because they’ve got an officer’s insignia on their shoulder.”

“So following orders isn’t your strong suit.”

He chuckled. “Like you didn’t come to that conclusion on your own.”

“People change, Cade.”

“Not everybody.”

She put her hand on top of his, but only for a moment. “We need you too much—need your talent too much—for me to let you talk that way. You’re a gift. And we’ll do whatever we can to hang on to it.”

He looked Nava in the eye. As much as he wanted to trust her, he couldn’t help wondering if she had an angle, too. “Nobody’s ever called me a gift before.”

Nava smiled. “There’s a first time for everything.”

On Cade’s fifth day of training, he ran afoul of his pal Kayembe again. It wasn’t as if he
intended
to tick the guy off. It just happened.

Their squad was up in the San Francisco mountain range on maneuvers. After all, Ursa liked to hole up in remote places sometimes, especially the mountainous kind. And when they did, it was up to the Rangers to flush them out.

Cade and Kayembe were paired off, searching a high canyon, moving from strong sunlight to shadow and back again. They were supposed to rendezvous with the rest of their squad at a specified point.

Unless they found something. But they wouldn’t. It was just a maneuver. A hike, really. Just so they would know their places in case they
did
have to hunt down an Ursa someday.

Kayembe didn’t talk. Not to Cade at least. If the big man had been paired with someone else, it would have been different. But he had nothing to say to Cade.

After twenty kliks or so, Cade noticed something shiny in the wall of the canyon. Squinting at it, he saw that it was a plaque.
Out here? In the mountains?

He moved closer to get a better look at it, stood there, and shaded his eyes. “In commemoration of Conner Raige’s victory over the Ursa known as Gash,” it said.

“Who’s Conner Raige?” he asked Kayembe.

The big man glanced at him, narrow-eyed. “Prime Commander. Long time ago. Let’s move.”

But Cade wasn’t ready yet. He looked around at the red-clay mountains, trying to imagine somebody—some
Raige
—slashing away at an Ursa in the narrow confines of the canyon.

“I said let’s
move
,” Kayembe insisted.

Cade ignored his partner. After all, this was Ranger stuff. Ranger
history
. Maybe if he knew more about it, more about Conner Raige, he could figure out what he himself was missing.

“Must have been a big deal,” he thought out loud, “if the guy got himself a plaque for killing a—”

Suddenly, Cade noticed a point of bright red light on the chest of Kayembe’s uniform. At the same time, the big man cursed and pointed to Cade. Following the gesture, Cade realized there was a point of red light on his chest as well.

“What the hell …?” he said.

Kayembe spit out a curse, his eyes full of anger. “We’ve been tagged, you idiot.”

“Tagged?” Cade asked.

He had no idea what his partner was talking about. But Kayembe’s expression told him it wasn’t good.

It was Tolentino who had tagged them, it turned out—with a laser beam from a vantage point higher up the mountain. Rangers weren’t supposed to stop and read plaques, apparently.

“You lose focus, you die,” Tolentino told Cade and Kayembe afterward, when the squad had reassembled. “How does it feel being dead, gentlemen?”

The penalty? A two-hour run in the desert the next morning. Full packs, no stopping, not even for a drink. Cade wasn’t happy about it. Kayembe was even less so.

When they got back to the barracks, the others were waiting for them, smiles on their faces and taunts on their tongues. They seemed to think it was funny. Despite all the pain he had been in that morning, Cade might have found some humor in the situation as well.

But Kayembe felt otherwise. Pointing a long, thick finger at Cade, he growled, “I don’t
care
if you can ghost. I’d rather have somebody else
—anybody
else—watching my back than a screw-up like you.”

Cade could feel the others’ eyes on him. They didn’t say anything, but they didn’t have to. They felt the same way Kayembe did.

A screw-up
.

It hurt—more than Cade wanted to admit, even to himself. After all, he wanted to show them he could be a Ranger, too. But he wasn’t going to say anything in his defense.

Why should he? They had all had it in for him from the beginning. Even Tolentino.

I’m a screw-up?
he thought, glaring back at Kayembe.
Well, screw
you.

But he didn’t say it out loud—not when he had so much to lose. He just kept his mouth shut and walked out.

It was raining when Cade got to the place on D’Agostino Road.

He stood across the street from it, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, his collar turned up against the weather. He could see an orange light through the dirty windows, feel the beat of music in his bones if he concentrated hard enough.

The place was called Regina’s. No one knew why. If it had been owned by a woman named Regina at one time, she had faded from memory long ago.

Cade remembered the first time he’d been inside. He had been twelve. He had walked in with guys he worked for, guys who were regulars in the place. Nobody questioned his being there, not even when he ordered a drink he clearly couldn’t handle or when they had to throw him on a cot in the back because he’d passed out.

He thought he heard a peal of laughter across the street, muted by walls and distance. It didn’t take much for people to laugh in Regina’s, he recalled. Pretty much anything got them going.

Of course, it could have changed since he’d been there last. But he doubted it. It had been only a few weeks—the night before the Rangers arrested him, in fact.

Cade knew everybody in Regina’s, knew every face. He’d had good times with them. He wanted to have those times again.

But he hadn’t made the trip just to join the party. He had received a request on his personal comm unit from an unidentified friend. Except he knew from the choice of words who the friend was. The only thing he didn’t know was why that friend had asked Cade to meet him at Regina’s.

But he would find out soon enough.

Regina’s was exactly how Cade remembered it—loud and crowded, redolent with alcohol and sweat, and something sweet he had never been able to identify. He found Andropov sitting at a table in the back, flanked by a couple of his men. New ones, of course, to replace the ones Andropov had lost in the raid on the warehouse.