Peter David - After Earth

Once again, her body told her what she feared to know.

Hunter was here for Jennipher .

She rushed forward and walked into the first room on the left to find a mess. Jennipher, still linked to various monitors, was on the floor, covered in blood and other fluids. She arched her back as a contraction convulsed her body.

She was alive!

Labor meant the baby was also still alive and ready to enter the world. Part of Vanessa wished the baby would stay in the womb, where it would be safe and warm, protected and loved.

The baby, though, had other ideas and was coming. As Vanessa moved toward the feet, she could see the baby’s shape, well into the birth canal.

“Jennipher, it’s Vanessa! Talk to me!”

Jennipher didn’t respond. At best, she was unconscious. At worst, the Ursa had gotten to her and she was dying.

A Ranger’s field training did not include anything about delivering babies, and so Vanessa had to go with whatever she had learned from her mother, Paige. Looking about frantically, she spotted some blankets and what looked like the remains of a towel. They would have to do.

“Hey, you!” she shouted at the first Ranger looming awkwardly in the doorway. “Go find me clean blankets or cloths or something sterile.”

At the man behind him she shouted, “And you, go find a doctor or a nurse or both. Now!”

She turned her attention to Jennipher, who was having another contraction already. They were coming fast, which meant the birth, already in progress, could not be delayed. Carefully, she spread the blanket under Jennipher’s head, then took the cleanest towel to try to rub her hands clean of blood and gore.

“Push, Jennipher,” she called. There was no response. Without the mother intentionally pushing, the birth was going to be more complicated.

“Come on, baby; come to your aunt Vanessa,” she cooed, regardless of how silly she sounded to herself. “Keep pushing, Jennipher. If you can hear me at all, keep pushing and let’s get your son into the world.”

There has to be a doctor nearby. Where is he?

A shrill sound alerted her to a new problem. She glanced over her shoulder, and her eyes went wide as she saw the mother’s respiration rate and blood pressure dropping with every beep. Jennipher was dying.

A secondary system monitoring the baby also had shifted from green to red, indicating that the baby was now in distress.

Without proper medical training she had no choice but to try to save the baby any way possible. Her head swiveled around the small, blood-spattered room to try to see where there might be tools. Panic was welling up within her as the enormity of the situation was becoming evident. Hunter dead. Jennipher dead. The Ursa dead. She’d be damned if the baby joined the list.

Just then, a hand reached over her shoulder and gave her a blade. She looked up and saw one of the remaining Rangers, a woman she didn’t know. Vanessa nodded and took a deep breath.

“There’s a holographic display over the bed. Turn it on,” she commanded.

The other Ranger complied, and then Vanessa called out, “Display cesarian section protocols.” Obediently, the hologram appeared over her sister-in-law’s body and step by step showed Vanessa where to cut and how to deliver the baby. The first Ranger returned with a meter’s worth of towels and blankets. The female Ranger grabbed a few and went to work, assisting Vanessa.

No one said a word, and so the only sounds were from the displays and the gentle, slightly accented voice of the computer.

With every centimeter, Vanessa kept waiting for a doctor or nurse to walk in and take over. Instead, she had to keep raising her eyes to follow the holographic tutorial. This was no way to bring new life into the world, but she continued as cautiously as she could. It felt horribly disrespectful to be slicing into her sister-in-law and then reaching into the body, but really, what choice did she have? Her nephew needed to be saved, and she’d be damned if she’d fail again.

There! The baby could be safely lifted upward, the umbilical cord trailing back into the womb. The tiny figure was covered in white and blue and red stuff she couldn’t name, but it had yet to cry. Hell, if it were her, she’d be wailing the moment she felt the cool air.

A fresh pair of shears was placed in her hand, and she cut the cord and then wrapped the baby tight. Peering into the tiny face, Vanessa willed it to breathe, to cry, to show some sign of life. One eye opened, unfocused, and then the other. The mouth parted, and first there was a gasp of air and then a whimper. The whimper repeated and turned into the cry she expected.

Fresh tears obscured her vision, and the other Ranger carefully took the baby from her and brought it to the nearby diagnostic monitor.

The baby was born: an orphan in a world still at war.

General Gustav Hawkins was looking forward to retirement. He had done his service to the Rangers and was ready to go fishing with his grandchildren. He last saw action over a decade before, earning him a promotion and the post of overseeing the Rangers in the twin city. He was capable and maintained readiness, taking pride in exceeding his recruitment numbers every year. When he woke up that morning, he found himself dreading putting on his uniform and traveling from New Earth City across the desert to Nova Prime City.

That morning, for the first time in memory, Nova Prime was absent leadership.

The minute Hawkins heard PC Hunter Raige was killed, he knew that the job was his if he wanted it, and deep down he knew he didn’t want it. If offered, he’d have little choice but to accept so he strode into the great hall for the emergency session with one mission in mind: Find someone else to take the post.

What he didn’t anticipate was the total vacuum that awaited him, with all three world leaders now dead. Instead of meeting with Primus Ione Kincaid and Savant Sinead O’Brien, he was seated opposite the Primus’s second in command, Crucible Maria Pryor, and the Savant’s number two, Tribune Suraj Gurang. They looked as bewildered and lost as he felt and clearly were not prepared for the meeting. He couldn’t blame them; they were younger and less experienced and were still mourning their superiors.

The Crucible opened the meeting with a prayer and a short memorial to the Primus, then took her seat and gazed at the tabletop. Hawkins at least had had the foresight to have his own number two prepare a rough agenda.

Gurang, thirtyish, with dark hair and brooding eyes, had been working as the Savant’s Tribune for two years, and Hawkins recalled seeing his name on numerous reports. He had been a physicist, working on improvements to the cutlass, and so he showed sympathy for the Rangers’ needs. That was a good thing.

Crucible Pryor, though, was also nearing retirement and was clearly there to serve the Primus, not succeed her.

With Hunter dead, that left Vanessa, but she had been a Ranger for just eight years. Was that enough to elevate her to such a role? He barely knew the woman, having met her only at a handful of functions. Still, she had a reputation, including that of killing the Ursa that had murdered her brother and then delivering her nephew. Pretty gutsy in Hawkins’s estimation, but that was during a crisis. What about during peacetime? Of course, the lack of leadership was a different sort of crisis, so maybe this was her time after all.

“Nature abhors a vacuum,” Gurang said, causing Hawkins to inwardly wince at the reminder, “and our own committee is reviewing suitable candidates to replace our Savant.”

“No obvious candidates? She was running that place for nearly thirty years, so somebody had to pop up,” Hawkins said.