Peter David - After Earth

That’s better , he thought.

Taking a deep breath, he exited the torn end of the ship into a rocky ravine. A moment later, the hatch door closed behind him. As he jumped down to the ground, he saw more Rangers—dead like all the others—hanging from the straps of their seats. Kitai sighed. He thought he had seen the last of the corpses. The sight of so much death made his heart pound again.

“Kitai,” his father’s voice said, “take a knee.”

Kitai knelt as he was told.

“I want you to take your time,” said his father. “Acclimate yourself to the environment. Root yourself in this present moment. Tell me any- and everything. No matter how inconsequential it may seem. Everything you see, hear, smell, how you feel. Over.”

Kitai could see daylight above, past the walls of the ravine. He was breathing heavily. “My body feels heavier.”

“Very good,” Cypher said. “The gravitational pull on this planet is slightly different than at home.”

Beat by beat, Kitai grew calm. He appraised the distance to the top of the ravine walls. “It’s about sixty meters to the top.”

“Okay,” Cypher said. “Get going.”

“Roger,” Kitai said.

Cautiously, Kitai began to climb, paying close attention to each placement of his hand or foot. This wasn’t any different from standard rock-climbing walls back home, he realized, and he had climbed those rocks a thousand times.

It wasn’t long before he reached the top. As he found purchase for his left hand, he felt something tickle. His right. When he looked to see what it was, he found a huge multicolored tarantula sitting on his hand.

“Aahhhhh!” he yelled, unable to control himself, and flung the creature from his hand. But in doing so, he lost his balance and slid a meter down the side of the ravine before catching himself. He looked down and shook his head. It could have been worse.

“What happened?” his father asked over their communication link.

Kitai took a deep breath and regained his grip. “You didn’t see that? I thought—”

“What’s your SitRep? Your vitals spiked. I say again—what is your situation report? What happened?”

“No change,” Kitai said, a little embarrassed. “I slipped. I’m good to go.” Then, to make it sound plausible: “There’s condensation on the stones. I’m fine.”

That seemed to appease Cypher. In any case, he didn’t demand any more information. Kitai continued his ascent until he reached the top of the ravine. Even before he pulled himself out, he saw the glorious confusion of colors in the eastern sky. Purple, orange, fuchsia. He had never seen anything like it. Back on Nova Prime, there were sunsets, but they were mainly crimson and gold. These colors were new to him.

Mesmerized by them, he emerged onto what appeared to be an elevated plateau. He shaded his eyes. This sun was bigger than the ones he could see from the surface of his homeworld. Was there another one right behind it? Or was it on its own?

Funny… he had studied Earth but couldn’t remember something as simple as how many moons it had. Then again, he would have considered that a pretty useless piece of information. When would he ever get a chance to use it?

Yeah , he thought. When?

All around him, plants and animals were waking up. He could hear the melodic morning calls of eagles majestically soaring overhead. Off in the distance, maybe a kilometer away, hundreds of buffalo roamed the plain. Well, they resembled the buffalo back home, but these seemed larger, bulkier in front. So much life. Kitai wasn’t used to it. Back on Nova Prime, he had grown up in the desert. This was noisy, full of smells, full of shapes and colors he had never imagined. The spectacle took his breath away.

Abruptly, Cypher’s voice came through Kitai’s naviband: “There’s an escarpment where two Earth continents collided. Looks like it could be a waterfall. It’s at about forty-five kilometers. We’ll call that our midway checkpoint.”

Kitai absorbed the information. Back on Nova Prime, forty-five kilometers wasn’t so much. A day’s run for the colony’s best long-distance athletes.

“There’s no way you can return after that point,” Cypher advised him soberly. “We’ll assess rations and reevaluate when you get there. But let’s break it into sections.”

A moment later, Kitai’s naviband produced a new hologram, one that his father must have generated. It was a map with an icon for Kitai and a large grouping of trees to the north of him. As Kitai watched, a line appeared and connected him to the trees.

“First leg,” Cypher said, “is twenty kilometers to the mouth of the north forest. Let’s take it easy. Set chronometer for 180 minutes. Over.”

“One hundred eighty minutes?” Kitai said. “That’s not right. I can do 10K in fifty minutes. You’ll see.”

Kitai began a light jog. That was all it would take, after all.

“I might even do it in under forty minutes,” he said. “Over.”

He listened for a response from his father, but he didn’t get one. Concerned, Kitai slowed down.

“Dad?” he said. “Do you copy? Over.”

Still no response. Kitai came to a stop.

“Dad, do you read me? Over.”

Nothing but the sighing of the wind.

“Dad, do you copy? Are you there?” Kitai asked, panic setting in. After all, Cypher had been in bad shape. What if one of his organs had given out?

Damn , Kitai thought, and ran back toward the ship. He hoped desperately that his father was still alive when he got there.

“Dad,” he said, “I’m coming back!”

“No need,” came the almost casual response through Kitai’s naviband. “You just go ahead.”

Kitai stopped in his tracks. “Huh?” He didn’t get it.

“Seems to me that you’re in charge of this mission. And in my limited military experience, when two people are in command, everybody dies. So I will defer to your leadership, cadet.”

“Dad,” said Kitai, “I was just saying—”

“What is my name?” Cypher barked unexpectedly over the comm link.

Kitai was confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“What is my name?” Cypher demanded.

Kitai swallowed. “General Cypher Raige.”

“And who am I?”

“Prime Commander of the United Ranger Corps.”

“You’re goddamned right! And from this second forward, you will refer to me as sir, Commander, or General! You will follow my every command without question or hesitation. Am I crystal clear, cadet?”

Kitai’s head was spinning. His father had never been this angry with him before. Without thinking about it, he came to attention.

“Sir, yes, sir!” he snapped.

A moment of silence—but only a moment. Then Cypher said, “Now at H plus 180 I need you at that forest. Set your chronometer.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” Kitai responded.

He could hear his father speaking in the cockpit—but not to him. Evidently, he was speaking to the cockpit recorder.

“General Cypher Raige. Beginning probe search to confirm Ursa is not released.”

Kitai waited.

“You may proceed,” the general said.

Kitai set his chronometer and began to walk with no idea of what dangers—if any—lay ahead.

vii

Cypher was pleased with the way his son had responded. He had commanded many men in combat, and he knew that they needed different things from their superiors at different times. Just then, Kitai needed a firm hand, and Cypher gave it to him.

But he couldn’t just send his son off across unknown territory. He had to give the kid some help. With that thought in mind, he deployed a probe-cluster projectile.

If he had been outside the ship, he would have seen it shoot straight up, out of the ravine and into the sky. He would have seen it rise higher and higher, as it was rising on his monitor, and then—once it reached the requisite altitude—explode. But not in a self-destructive explosion. It would be an explosion that produced dozens of separate probes and sent them flying vast distances from one another.