Peter David - After Earth

Faia frowned when he said that. “Last mission?”

“Yeah. You see… after it’s completed, I’m announcing my retirement.”

“Retirement?”

“That’s it,” Cypher said with a nod. “It’s that time.”

“No, it is most definitely not that time.”

He blinked in astonishment. He’d forgotten that she often surprised him, and then he was surprised when she did it again.

He looked deeply into her eyes. “I want my family back. I want you back.”

He reached into the inside of his jacket and pulled out a necklace. It was not one of the items of jewelry that were fashioned by Nova Prime artists. No, this was unquestionably antique jewelry from Earth. It was not only incredibly rare, it was also symbolic. Or at least as far as Cypher was concerned, it was.

But Faia simply stared at it. She allowed a small smile to acknowledge its significance and his good intentions, but otherwise she seemed indifferent to it. She stood stiffly as he attached the necklace around her slender throat and then nodded in the direction of Kitai’s bedroom down the hallway. “That boy in there is trying to find you,” she said. “He is… a feeling boy, he’s an intuitive boy, and I… Moby Dick .”

He stared at her in confusion. “What? What about it?”

“He watched you read that book with Senshi his entire life. He’s reading that book now. He’s reaching for you…”

“Well, how was I supposed to know that?”

“You didn’t. You couldn’t. Because you couldn’t ask even something as simple as, ‘So how are things going?’ Cypher… don’t get me wrong. I respect everything that you’ve done. But you have a son in there that you do not know. He is drowning. He thinks it’s his fault, what happened to Senshi. He doesn’t need a commanding officer. He needs a father.”

Cypher spoke to her, his voice distant, as if he were speaking from another place and time. “We fight monsters. And before that, we learn how to fight them. And before that, we dream about fighting them. That is who we are, and it is my responsibility to instill that into that boy.”

“Oh, look,” Faia said drily. “The general’s back.”

“You’re damn right he is.”

She spoke without heat. There was no anger in her voice. Just sadness. “Let me make a prediction. When the general is old and no longer looks like his statue, the father is going to realize this is the exact moment he lost his son.”

His face frozen in annoyance, he stood, turned, and walked out. As he did so, Faia glanced at her reflection on a screen, studying the necklace. Its cold stones shimmered like distant stars.

iv

Kitai was dressed in a sleeveless shirt and a pair of blue shorts. His uniform, the clothing that he valued above all else, was lying crumpled on the bed. Anyone could have taken a single glance at it and known that it had not been removed with any manner of care. He had simply ripped it off himself and thrown it onto the bed. When he was ready to go to sleep, he was fully prepared to just kick the damned thing off the bed and let it lie on the floor all night.

Then he heard a quick stepping of feet and looked up. Cypher was standing in the doorway, staring at him. His face was immobile, as if he had a hundred thoughts battering around in there and still hadn’t decided what would be the best way to approach his son.

What was he going to discuss with Kitai? Was he going to shout at him about his failure? Was he going to unleash the true despot he had hiding inside him? Was he—

“Pack your bags,” Cypher said. “You’re coming with me to Iphitos. We depart at second sun.”

Kitai blinked in confusion. Whatever it was that he had expected his father to say to him, this was most definitely not it.

But why? Why would he bring me to Iphitos? Is he planning on just leaving me there? What the—?

With that pronouncement, Cypher turned away and headed down the hallway without a word. That had been a command more than an invitation.

Kitai, alone again, did the only thing he could: pack.

Kitai could not recall the last time he’d been to the Rangers’ main hangar bay. It was the largest single structure in Nova Prime, cut deep into the mountain where the city stood. Ships of all sizes would tear out of there at seemingly random times. Sometimes they were at the command of the Rangers. Other times ships were flown out at the command of the Savant’s science guild. Even the Primus, who was the head of the religious guild, had need for various ships, and whatever anyone required could be found at the main hangar bay.

Everywhere Kitai looked, he felt nothing but a relentless sense of wonder. At the moment, he was engaged in watching a transport ship being fueled. He wondered if it was the vessel his father and he were scheduled to take. He was mildly chagrined to admit even to himself that he hadn’t the slightest clue why the ship was heading out to a colony world. But his father had said that was where they had to go, and if that was his dad’s opinion, well, then, that was that.

Kitai was finding it difficult to believe the many swings his opinions of his father had gone through in the last twenty hours. First he’d been terrified of him. Then he’d become angry. And now he was grateful that his dad was taking him along on this adventure. So grateful, in fact, that he resisted asking what was going on. The fact that his father had thought of him at all, for whatever reason, was more than enough for him.

He had, though, taken it upon himself to see if he could get information out of his mother. But she had simply smiled in her enigmatic way and said softly, “If your dad wants to bring you along, then I suggest you go.” That had been her entire opinion on the topic. Kitai hated to admit it, but that actually sounded pretty reasonable.

He glanced across the hangar to where he knew his parents were. He was astounded to see that they were embracing. The teen smiled in joyous amazement at that. It was no secret to him that his parents did not get along especially well, and it filled him with nothing but happiness to see them displaying genuine affection for each other.

Were the two of them managing to work things out? It was impossible for Kitai to know for certain, of course. Perhaps he would be able to ask his father at some point during this outing.

That was when Kitai noticed something that looked extremely unusual. It immediately snagged his attention.

Something was being loaded into the aft cargo ramp of a ship called the Hesper . The thing was big: about two meters tall and almost three meters long. It was a loading pod of some sort, organically grown in such a way that it looked like an oversized boulder.

“What is that…?” he whispered.

“Guess you’ll find out.”

The voice that had spoken to him captivated him so thoroughly that he nearly jumped into the air. Clutching his chest, he let out a long sigh, and then he saw that it was Rayna. She smiled and waved to him. She was in her Ranger uniform, and he noticed that she had a cutlass strapped to her back.

Rayna had made it.

Eager to turn the topic away from the strange pod that had startled him so thoroughly, he nodded toward her weapon. “Congrats,” he said.

“Hmmm. Oh. This.” She chucked a thumb toward the weapon on her back and shrugged. “Yeah, it’s no big deal. You’ll be next. Guaranteed.”

“Whatever.”

“Hey, you have no reason to complain,” she objected. “I admit it: I’m jealous.”

“’Cause I get to do Lightstream travel?”

“Hell no. Not that. I’m jealous because you get to travel with your dad. He’s hot.”