After Earth: A Perfect Beast (8 page)

“Come on,” he said. “You know how long it’s been since the Skrel showed up here?”

That was when Conner figured out what they were talking about. It was like listening to Vander Meer all over again.

“I don’t know,” Gold said.

Lucas laughed. “Well, I know. It’s been over three hundred years. That’s before your great-great-great-grandfather was born. And not a sign of them, not even
a comm bleep. You seriously think we’ll ever see those buggers again?”

Gold shrugged his bony shoulders. “We might.”

“We might also grow wings and fly to a moon. But we won’t. We’ve seen the last of the Skrel—you can bet your last credit on it.”

Finally, Conner couldn’t take it anymore. “You sound like Vander Meer,” he called out, his voice ringing throughout the barracks.

In its wake, there was silence. Then Lucas turned to him and said, “What?”

“You heard me,” Conner said.

Lucas walked over, his boot heels clacking on the barracks’ wooden floor, until he was looking down at Conner. “First of all,” he said, “I wasn’t talking to you. Second, I don’t appreciate being compared to a muckraker like Vander Meer.”

Conner looked up. “Then don’t spout the kind of garbage Vander Meer spouts. That talk about not seeing the Skrel for hundreds of years—what is that? You think we’re safe here? You think Nova Prime doesn’t need the Rangers anymore?”

Lucas bent down, planted his hands on his knees, and smiled an oily smile. “I’ll tell you what, Raige. When I want your input, I’ll ask for it. Till then, shut your mouth.”

Conner felt his face grow hot as he returned Lucas’s scrutiny. “Or what?”

“Or I’ll shut it for you. Understand?”

Suddenly Conner was on his feet, a clump of Lucas’s uniform in each fist, shoving the other cadet backward step by step. Lucas slammed into the bunk behind him—hard. Then he recovered and shoved Conner back.

“You want a piece of me?” Lucas snarled between clenched teeth. “Any time, Raige! Any time and any place!”

“How about here and now?” Conner asked.

Before he knew it, Lucas had accepted his invitation
by taking a swing at him. Conner was ready for it. He knew it was coming. But Lucas was so fast, he still got in a glancing blow to Conner’s jaw. It stunned him for a moment. But it was just one shot. Conner wasn’t going to go down so easy.

As Lucas tried to follow his first punch with another one, Conner ducked out of harm’s way. Then he hit Lucas with an uppercut that snapped his head back. Stunned, Lucas couldn’t avoid Conner’s next blow or the one after that. Lucas reeled backward, looking helpless. Conner went after him, all his frustration and self-doubt coming to a boil.

Maybe he wasn’t the best Ranger candidate who had ever come down the road. Maybe he wasn’t what everybody had expected from a Raige. Maybe he’d find he wasn’t even Ranger material. But he was better than Lucas Kincaid and his stupid traitorous remarks, and he was going to prove it once and for all. One more punch would do it.

But as Conner threw it, his target disappeared. Without an impact to stop Conner’s momentum, it carried him forward, leaving him defenseless against the left hook that hit him in the side of the head and sent him staggering or the right hand that rattled his jaw, flooding his mouth with the metallic taste of blood. He got his hands up and retreated a couple of steps and would have retreated one more if he hadn’t felt a bunk behind him. Almost too late, he saw Lucas go for him with another right.

He twisted to avoid it and then got in a shot underneath Lucas’s eye. It seemed to blind Lucas for a moment, which was all the opening Conner needed. Putting everything he had behind his next punch, he sent Lucas sprawling. Before Lucas could get up, Conner was on top of him, pinning him to the floor with his knees.

He pulled his fist back, aiming to end the fight then and there. But before he could do so, he felt someone clamp on to his wrist.

Who?!
he thought. Which one of his fellow cadets?

But it wasn’t a cadet, he realized. It was Tariq Lennon, the swarthy, square-jawed officer in charge of cadet training.

“Atten-shun!” someone bellowed.

As one, the cadets stiffened to attention, hands at their sides. Conner and Lucas, still facing each other, dropped their fists and did the same.

Without a word, he looked the combatants up and down. There was quite a bit of blood on them, and he didn’t seem to miss any of it.

“Well, now,” he said at last, “here’s something interesting. I thought I heard a commotion in here. But when I walk over to check it out, there’s no commotion at all. Just you two standing here, looking at each other like the best of buddies.

“Which would be fine, except you’re
not
the best of buddies. So I find myself wondering what kind of comradely impulse made Cadet Kincaid here feel compelled to pay Cadet Raige a visit.”

“Nothing, sir,” Conner said.

“Just passing by, sir,” said Lucas.

Lennon smiled. “Just passing by. Of course. No problem?”

Kincaid glared at Conner. “None, sir.”

“No problem at all, sir,” Conner said.

“I see,” said Lennon. “And yet you two seem to have pounded each other half to death. So there must be a problem.” He turned to Conner. “Cadet Raige?”

Conner couldn’t fail to answer a question directed right at him. He thrust his chin at Kincaid. “The cadet here was repeating that Vander Meer crap about the colony investing too much in the Rangers.”

“Really,” Lennon said. He looked at Kincaid. “Is this true?”

The muscles fluttered in Kincaid’s jaw. “It is, sir.”

Lennon turned to Conner again. “Well, Cadet Raige, it just so happens
I
agree with Trey Vander Meer, too.”

What?!
thought Conner, feeling as if the world had been pulled out from under him. Lennon was a commanding
officer in the Rangers. How could he side with that loudmouth on the radio?

“I don’t see how,” he said.

He hadn’t meant to say it. It just came out.

“I beg your pardon?” Lennon said, moving closer to Conner until their noses were almost touching.

Conner had a choice. He could take back what he had said and pacify his commanding officer. That would be the wise choice; no question about it. Or he could go the other way, which was the path he found himself taking.

“What I said, sir,” he replied evenly, “was that I don’t see how.”

Lennon’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You don’t see how I could agree with Trey Vander Meer?”

Conner steeled himself. “Yes, sir.”

“And why is that?”

There was no going back now. “Because he’s the enemy of everything the Rangers stand for, sir.”

“The Rangers,” Lennon said, “don’t have any enemies in this colony, Cadet Raige. We’re all in this together. The sooner you get that through your head, the better.”

Conner bit his lip. He knew how dumb it would be to disagree with Lennon, how abysmally stupid. He did it anyway.

“Sir,” he said, “the Rangers do have enemies, people who would like to see the Corps whittled down to nothing because they believe it doesn’t serve a purpose anymore. And Trey Vander Meer is one of them.”

Lennon’s eyes widened. “That’s your opinion? Because I’m pretty sure cadets haven’t earned the
right
to have opinions. You’re a cadet, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” Conner answered.

“You haven’t been promoted without my knowing it?”

“No, sir.”

“But you do want to be promoted someday, don’t you? Before you’re too old to pick up a real pulser?”

“I do, sir.”

“Then you’ll keep your
opinions
to yourself. Do you
understand? Or do I need to be Trey Vander Meer to get your attention?”

“Yes, sir,” Conner said. “No, sir.”

Lennon glared at him a moment longer, a reminder of who was in charge. Then he turned and left Conner and Lucas standing there.

It was clear to Conner that Lucas wanted to go at it again, maybe as much as Conner himself did. But after what Lennon had said, that wasn’t going to happen.

With a curl of his lip, Lucas walked away. A bunch of cadets went with him. After all, Lucas—unlike Conner—had been a model cadet from the time he had arrived in the barracks; that was why he’d been named leader of Red Squad. People gravitated toward a leader.

The only cadet who came over to Conner was Blodge. “Nice going,” he said, apparently without irony.

“Nice?” Conner echoed. He sat down and let his head fall into his bloody-knuckled hands. “I’m such an idiot.”

“No,” Blodge said, sitting down beside him, “you’re not. You stood up for what you believed.”

“To my commanding officer!”

“Maybe he’ll respect you for it.”

Conner shook his head. “Did you see the look on his face? That wasn’t respect. Anger, maybe. Disgust. But definitely not respect.”

“Listen,” Blodge said, “whatever it was, he’ll forget about it. He didn’t get to be the officer in charge of cadets by holding grudges against them.”

Conner glanced at him. “How do you know that?”

Blodge reddened. “I just … I mean … all right, I don’t. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? He would have to be an evenhanded guy for him to rise that high in the Rangers.”

It did make sense. But that didn’t mean it was true.

Conner sighed. He finally had made some headway with Wilkins. He finally had begun to distinguish himself the way a Raige would be expected to. And now … this.

“Thanks for trying to cheer me up,” he told his friend.
Even if it’s not working very well
.

“Hey,” said Blodge, “what are friends for?”

As he crossed the barracks to return to his bunk, Conner heard a roll of laughter. He traced it to Lucas and a half dozen cadets who’d gathered around him.

They’re laughing at
me, Conner thought.

The funny thing—the
really
funny thing—was that he and Lucas had been friends at one time. In fact, when they were five or six, they were best friends—even pricked their fingers so they could become blood brothers. No one had told them that the Raiges and the Kincaids hadn’t traditionally gotten along. Not even Conner’s dad, who was otherwise big on history lessons. No one had said, “Hey, Conner, stay away from that kid. His ancestors have been our rivals for the last six hundred years.”

So Conner looked for Lucas whenever he went to the playground near his house, and Lucas looked for him, and they shared many an adventure together in the jumble of red rocks nearby. More often than not, they pretended that they had crash-landed on an alien world and had to survive in its hostile environment until help came.

They played cageball. They played football. They decided that Conner was better at one and Lucas at the other, though Conner couldn’t remember anymore who was better at what. Then, like a lot of kids, they drifted apart. Conner wasn’t even sure when it happened. He just found himself playing with new friends and saw that Lucas was doing the same, and before Conner knew it they were like strangers.

Those who knew them in those days assumed their family histories finally had come between them. But that wasn’t the reason Conner and Lucas stopped being pals. In fact, Conner hadn’t even known about their families’ rivalry at the time.

Anyway, when Conner was eleven, Lucas and his family moved to a house on the other side of the colony,
and Conner didn’t see much of him after that. Or, given the way kids’ faces change as they mature, maybe he had seen Lucas after all and didn’t know it. He didn’t even recognize Lucas on their first day of cadet training, not until the roll was called and Lucas’s name came up. At that point, Conner wasn’t harboring any ill will toward Lucas. Just a certain curiosity.

But ill will had entered the equation pretty quickly. And Conner couldn’t imagine it going away anytime soon.

Contrary to what people liked to say, Frank Raige wasn’t always on duty. Sometimes he was lounging, watching a replay of the scholastic football championship from the night before.

Not that he was as rabid a fan as his sister-in-law Bonita. She was what he called “off the charts.” But like anyone else, he sometimes liked to just relax.

He was just watching the first half of the game come to a close when the comm unit beeped. He answered the way he always did, on the job or off: “Raige.”

“It’s Meredith,” said the voice on the other end.

Even in her most casual moments, the Prime Commander didn’t give away her feelings. Sometimes that was a good thing. At the moment, Frank had a feeling she was calling about Conner again; it could only be bad. After all, Wilkins had already said that Conner had turned the corner. The news couldn’t get any better than that.

But it could get worse. “What is it?” he asked more abruptly than he had intended.

“I’m calling about Conner. I wish it was good news, but it’s not.”

Frank’s heart sank in his chest. “What happened?”

“He got into a fight with Lucas Kincaid. They’d had words before, but this time it blossomed into a knock-down-drag-out.
Or rather, it would have been if Tariq Lennon hadn’t broken it up.”

Frank saw Rebecca come into the room, a smile on her face. It vanished as soon as she looked at him.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance Kincaid started it?” he asked. It was as close as he would let himself come to giving his son the benefit of the doubt.

“Not from what Lennon said. Apparently, Conner accused Kincaid of parroting Trey Vander Meer.” Wilkins sighed. “Can’t say I blame him for being sensitive to Vander Meer’s vitriol.”

Frank couldn’t, either. Vander Meer’s unrelenting criticism of the Rangers had him on edge as well.

“But that’s no excuse for fighting with his fellow cadet,” he said. “Especially a Kincaid.”

The Raiges and the Kincaids had been rivals since before humanity had landed on Nova Prime. Sometimes that had brought out the best in both families. Other times it had brought out the worst. When that happened, it created cracks in the Corps. But this was no time to let those cracks turn into schisms. The Rangers had to present a united front if they were going to weather the storm of public opinion sweeping across the colony.