Peter David - After Earth

He doesn’t feel anything .

And in the fiery stillness of the desert, under a perfect blue dome of sky, he waits. For what?

For something that might not appear. After all, he can’t control his life, not even the last bit left to him. Even as he searches for it in the great, dark expanse, he knows he may be denied it.

The sky turns black. The stars come out. He falls over on his side, too weak to sit up. But somehow, he finds the strength to right himself.

Then he sees something off in the distance.

A tiny figure, limned in starlight. A feminine one in a white lab coat. It’s an odd garment to wear in the desert.

As the figure gets closer, he recognizes the blond hair. It tosses in the breeze, obscuring the figure’s face. But only for a moment.

Then he sees it clearly and knows it’s her .

Again he falls over on his side, and the ground is cool under his cheek. But this time he can’t push himself up no matter how hard he tries.

“It’s all right,” she says, her voice as soft as the wind. She sits down beside him. “Don’t get up on my account.”

“I didn’t know if you would come,” he says.

“Yes, you did. I told you I wouldn’t abandon you.”

He realizes that she’s right. He knew. He knew all along.

She looks up at the stars. A tiny piece of their light is reflected in her eyes. “It’s beautiful here.”

“Is it?” he asks.

“I guess you’ll have to take my word for it.”

She puts her hand over his. It’s warm with life, much warmer than his hand. There was a time when he would have loved that touch, or so he believes.

“How long can you stay?” he asks.

“As long as you need me,” she says.

Jon waits for her to look away, as his training has taught him.

She never does.

Cade Bellamy had it all planned out.

His men—Andropov’s, really—were posted throughout his warehouse as well as outside it, their pulsers set on an only slightly less than lethal level of force. His supply of stolen electronic components—also Andropov’s—had been extricated from ample stacks of legitimate goods and piled in the center of the floor for inspection. And his client, a manufacturer of vintage ground vehicles who loved the idea of paying less for parts, was due to arrive in a matter of minutes.

All set .

This was the first deal Cade had set up entirely on his own. But if all went well, it wouldn’t be the last. After all, Cade had his sights set on a black market operation of his own someday—one that would be even bigger than Andropov’s.

That was how the world worked, wasn’t it? You take care of yourself . He had learned that the day his mother died. You take care of yourself .

“All over but the accounting, eh?” said a voice behind him.

Cade looked back over his shoulder at the man to whom he owed most of the credits he had ever made. Andropov’s features were thick, blunt, as if someone had started to make his face out of putty and lost interest before he got around to finishing it. Andropov’s eyes, which were light colored, seemed alive only because the rest of his face looked so dead.

But he had been good to his protégé. Damned good . And his protégé, in exchange, had made him a pile of credits.

“The accounting is my favorite part,” Cade said.

“How well I know that,” Andropov said. “No doubt you’ve decided how you’ll spend your cut?”

“I think I’ll get me a new skipjack,” Cade said. He stroked his day’s worth of beard as he pictured it. “The latest model. Bright red. Hell, make that a fleet of skipjacks, one for each day of the week.”

“After this,” Andropov said, looking around the warehouse, “you’ll have earned a fleet of skipjacks.” He consulted his wrist chronometer. “You’re sure your client will be on time?”

“I’d bet my life on it,” Cade said.

Then he heard the shout from outside: “Rangers!”

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to him. After all, he had gone a long time without the Rangers catching him. Five years .

People who made their living on the black market generally figured they would last a year, maybe a year and a half, before the authorities caught up with them. Two years was almost unheard of—and Cade had lasted five .

So even though he had known the odds were stacked against him, he had begun to feel like he would never get caught, like his luck would never run out.

And now it had.

Cade would have reached for his hip pulser if it had just been a rival busting in on him. But the Rangers? There was no point. Not when they had those cutlasses in their hands. As good as he was with a pulser, he was no match for those things. They’d slice and dice him before he got a decent shot off.

So he followed plan B: He ran.

Not out of the warehouse, because Cade was sure the Rangers had blocked all the street exits. They were known for that. Instead, he resorted to a way out they didn’t know about: the trapdoor under a container in the corner that looked as heavy as all the others but was in fact completely and utterly empty.

Andropov, who was closer to it, was already moving the container aside. Even better , Cade thought.

Using the other containers for cover, Cade took two quick steps and dived full out across the room. He heard more shouting: the Rangers reacting to his attempt to escape. But none of them had a clear look at him or he would already have been pinned by someone’s cutlass.

He hit the floor, rolled, and dived again. Still nothing. I’m going to make it , he thought.

Another voice inside him, unbidden, said: Of course you are. You’re Cade Bellamy .

As he landed on the floor again, skidding forward on his belly, he saw that Andropov had already lifted the trapdoor and was slipping into the tunnel beneath it. But before Cade could join his mentor, Andropov closed the door.

Cade cursed—but not because he was disappointed in Andropov. Had their positions been reversed, Cade would have done the same thing, no question about it.

Scrambling over to the door, he tried to yank it open. But it wouldn’t budge. Andropov’s locked it from below—so the Rangers can’t follow him . Again, it was no less than what Cade would have expected.

He looked around for another option. He wasn’t going to let the Rangers catch him. No way . Another escape route would present itself somehow. He just had to be ready for it.

What he wasn’t ready for was for the wall beside him to implode .

The impact sent pieces of wall flying at him. Most of the pieces missed, but one caught him square in the temple.

Everything went red for a moment. A long moment. Then Cade’s vision started to clear, and he saw what had happened to the wall.

An Ursa had crashed into the warehouse like a transport cruising at full speed. The genetically engineered creatures were created by the Skrel, a hostile alien species. After a failed attempt to eradicate mankind centuries earlier, the Skrel introduced the human hunter-killers to Nova Prime in order to cleanse the planet of all human life.

He caught a glimpse of the thing’s black hole of a mouth, its alien weave of pale flesh and gray smart metal, its cruel curved talons. Then it was on top of one of the Rangers, pinning him to the ground, spewing globules of black venom on him. The Ranger screamed as the venom ate through his uniform and into his chest. A second later he stopped screaming, twitched a couple of times, and lay still, his insides hissing away.