Peter David - After Earth

Just then, a middle-aged man of Asian descent entered the room, followed by a different nurse with a rolling cart. Atop it was a readout of Anderson’s vital signs that the man consulted before looking at the boy.

“My name is Dr. Zeong, Anderson. How do you feel?”

“What about my arm?” he asked, ignoring the question. “Mama’s the best doctor on Nova Prime. Can’t you put it back on?”

“The arm was too badly damaged at the base for successful grafting,” the doctor explained in a low voice. “I’m sorry, son, but it couldn’t be saved.”

There was some talk about prosthetics, which he knew meant a fake arm, and that didn’t interest him. As he lay back in the bed, he tried to recall what had happened. He remembered the sandpit, then the siren. And he remembered the Ranger who ran toward him.

“Mama,” Anderson said, breaking the silence. “What happened to the Ranger who saved me?”

She sighed heavily and kissed his forehead. “She died doing her duty to protect you.”

He nodded at that and thought a lot about the Rangers as the adults chattered among themselves about things he couldn’t follow or care about.

Year after year, Anderson grew up, training himself to qualify for the Rangers. Every few years, as his body continued to grow and develop, he would visit the hospital, where a new arm had to be attached. There were weeks of clumsiness as he adjusted to each new prosthetic; this usually was accompanied by some depression and frustration as the simplest tasks proved difficult.

Never once did Anderson think his arm was “fake”; that was a little boy’s way of thinking. As he matured, he treated the arm as a real limb. Thanks to the smart fabric technology woven into the synthetic skin, it actually tanned in the sunlight, even freckling to match the rest of his body.

As Anderson grew, he studied the history of the Rangers and his family’s lengthy connection to them. His family could trace its proud Ranger heritage to at least 306 AE, when Carlos Kincaid became the first Kincaid to be named Prime Commander. He pestered his cousin Lucius for information about what it was like and what was required and never tired of hearing stories of the family’s Ranger-related exploits. Despite the tarnished reputation of his grandfather, Nathan Kincaid—considered the worst Prime Commander in history—Anderson wrote several school reports addressing the man’s notorious tenure as Prime Commander.

He also learned more about the Kincaid family’s lengthy rivalry with the Raige family. It stunned him to hear the genuine hatred in his family members’ voices as they recounted how the Raiges had stymied the Kincaids’ progress time and again. For every achievement his family had, such as developing the cutlasses, the Raiges seemed to trump it. He didn’t know any Raige in school, and they remained an abstract concept to him with the exception of Cypher Raige. The Ranger had been his cousin Atlas’s close friend despite the familial animosity, and Anderson had met Cypher a few times. The tall, stern, quiet man was the epitome of what it meant to be a Ranger. But more than that, he was a legend. The year Anderson lost his arm, Cypher Raige managed to do something they called ghosting—becoming invisible to the Ursa. It enabled him to become the first to kill the creature single-handedly. It sounded like the stuff of myth, but Atlas and his mother had assured him it had happened. Cypher himself never wanted to talk about it, disliking being the focus of attention.

Growing up meant overcoming the replacement arm’s limitations. He constantly adjusted it to match the strength and dexterity of his right arm so that he could play sports and function without an unfair advantage. Working with weights and other equipment, he honed his muscles and improved his endurance. He learned how to box and shoot, how to ride, and how to fence. The teen was guided by his father to balance the physical with the mental, which meant not neglecting his studies. Though not at the top of his class, he was proud of his accomplishments.

At night, Norah arrived home from her work and tended to her son. Even though his body was exhausted and his mind weary, he would absorb her lectures on the philosophies of Nova Prime and its people. Although the Kincaids had a deep connection to the Rangers, several served as the Savant and as such were in charge of the scientific community of Nova Prime. Currently, their aunt Liliandra led the planet’s religious order as the Primus. Their family served the planet in whatever honorable way possible. When those lectures occurred, he reminded her time and again that it was all well and good, but he was determined to qualify for the Rangers. Testing began as early as age thirteen, but he wanted to make sure he nailed the admissions the first time out. She nodded encouragingly and continued her lectures as he fell asleep.

Maybe it was her medical training and her concern for the sanctity of life, which was constantly at risk, but she didn’t necessarily encourage him in his pursuit. She did, though, know he had been focused on this path as a form of atonement or honoring the dead, and she couldn’t argue with that.

Then came the afternoon the eighteen-year-old appeared at Norah’s offices in a sweat-drenched shirt, a towel wrapped around his neck. Maybe it was the glistening sweat, but it appeared to her that Anderson was glowing.

“I’m ready,” he told her.

“For a shower, I would think,” she replied tartly, sniffing at him in disapproval.

“Fine. But after the shower, I’m going to go sign up,” he announced.

She said carefully, “Is this truly what you want?”

“Mom, it’s all I’ve been thinking about since the attack,” he said in a tone that indicated this was old territory. His mother pressed the point.

“Yes, and it has been good to stay focused so you can heal and get strong. But now that you are fit, you have so many other options. There are other ways to serve the people.”

“I already heard Aunt Liliandra and how wonderful the augury is,” the teen said. “I don’t care.”

“Show some respect for your aunt and the faith,” his mother said. “I don’t know where I’d be without it. I prayed and prayed you’d survive that awful attack.”

“I did, Mom. I did because a Ranger risked her life for mine. Aren’t you always telling us to give back? This is me, giving back.”

“You could explore medicine or other fields,” she said. He had heard it all before and knew she was just trying to get him to at least consider other careers. But after so many years being focused on the Rangers, nothing else felt quite right. “You really have your mind made up?”

He nodded.

“All you see is the noble sacrifice, and all I see is a dead woman, cut down before her life could really develop. You’ve already lost one arm, and it nearly killed me. I just don’t want to lose the rest of you.”

“You won’t, Mom,” he swore.

He walked over and hugged her.

“I want you to be proud of me,” he said.

“Always,” she replied. They stood in each other’s arms for a few silent moments.

“If that is what you wish, then I will not stop you,” she told him at last. “Shower first, United Rangers second.”

He knew that Phase 1 testing was a grueling mix of physical activity and mental recall. There were two dozen others testing that cycle, and he was determined to top them all. He had barely any body fat and was pure muscle, able to dead lift over 114 kilos—impressive for an eighteen-year-old—and that was without any enhancement to the prosthetic arm. He omitted its existence on the entrance forms and never mentioned it to the others. The synthetic skin was perfectly blended to match his natural skin tone, and he stayed in a T-shirt whenever possible. Being a Kincaid meant he knew the regulations by heart, and among them was the archaic prohibition against Rangers having prosthetic limbs. Nope, he was going to do this evenly matched against the others.