Peter David - After Earth

Kitai was just about to respond when a female voice interrupted them: “I heard they captured an Ursa.”

Both Kitai’s and Bo’s heads snapped around in response to that. The speaker had been Rayna. On the face of it, Rayna seemed an even less likely Ranger than Kitai considering that she was half a head shorter than he. But Rayna was extremely intelligent and a formidable hand-to-hand combatant. Bo had great respect for her, and so did Kitai. When she suddenly announced that an Ursa had been captured, naturally that was going to get immediate attention.

Killing Ursa was not an uncommon situation on Nova Prime. It wasn’t an easy undertaking by any means, but it had happened enough times. Capturing one alive, however, was definitely unusual. A number of other cadets had overheard Rayna’s pronouncement, and they approached her to hear what she had to say.

There were numerous cries of “No way!” and “You’re kidding!” and “Are you sure?”

Rayna simply nodded her head, her arms folded. “Absolutely,” she said. “Heard it reported over the naviband.” She tapped the communications device strapped to her wrist. “You guys should pay attention to these things.”

“Who?” Kitai asked. “Who captured it?”

“Who do you think? The Ghosts,” she said.

Kitai nodded, feeling slightly foolish. Any cadet worth his salt knew that when an Ursa was sighted, at least one Ghost was always called upon to dispatch it.

Rayna continued: “And they’re going to move it to someplace they can study it.”

“Ghosts. You mean like Kit’s dad?” said Bo.

“Maybe him. Or somebody like him. It was out in the jungle somewhere. Your dad out in the jungle somewhere, Kitai?” Rayna asked.

Abruptly a silence descended over them. They collectively waited for Kitai to respond.

It was as if the utterly confident, overly aggressive Kitai Raige had vanished altogether. Instead, for a few moments, he just looked flat-out uncertain about anything and everything. Then he cleared his throat and in a manner that seemed far too faked to be anything legitimate said with an air of forced offhandedness, “Not sure. I know he’s coming home tomorrow. I’ll ask him then.”

“What’s that like?” asked one of the Rangers.

Kitai stared at him in confusion. “What’s what like?”

“You know! Having the Original Ghost as your father!”

“It’s great,” Kitai replied. “He’s a great guy. It’s all great.”

The cadets glanced at one another, and several snickered. Before the question could be pushed any further, one of the RIs emerged from the nearby makeshift headquarters that had been thrown together. “Tomorrow, eleven hundred hours at Ranger headquarters. You will be given the results then.” That was his entire pronouncement on the subject. He turned on his heel and walked away.

Kitai took the opportunity to get the hell out of there. Rayna even called after him, but he ignored her. The Ranger cadet who previously couldn’t get enough of talking about such subjects as himself now seemed extremely dedicated to the notion of putting as much distance between himself and his fellow cadets as possible.

Bo didn’t know whether to find that amusing or just sad.

Kitai stretched out on the hammock in his bedroom that evening, slowly turning the pages of his book.

His. Book.

It was something of a rarity, this novel of his. Printed in the twenty-first century, long before the Earth was abandoned, it was an ancient story about a man obsessed with a whale named Moby Dick. Not very many of the books had been made, and this rare copy had floated from hand to hand over the centuries, working its way into the Raige family via Senshi, where it had remained ever since. Kitai had been fortunate enough to get his hands on it.

He had been reading it over the last few nights. It hadn’t been an easy endeavor. Someone had said to him that by the time he was finished with the novel, he would know far more about hunting whales than he would ever need to know. About a third of the way through the book, he’d come to the conclusion that that assessment was an accurate one.

He heard his mother’s feet approaching his room. She sounded like she was trudging, which didn’t surprise Kitai in the least. At least he’d been done with his day before the afternoon was over. His mother’s getting home fairly early was something of a rarity.

Moments later his mother appeared, and she looked utterly worn out. She had dust on her coat. Her exhaustion was reflected in her eyes, but she visibly pushed it aside so that she could speak to her son. “Hey there, honey. Sorry I’m late. Do you need—”

“Something to eat?” He shook his head. “Nah. Ate already. You okay?”

“A lot of spikes today,” she said by way of explanation. “We had a lot of orographic uplifts.” She paused and then said with mild challenge, “What are orographic uplifts?”

Kitai was ready simply because not being ready wasn’t an option. “The vertical forcing of air by terrain features like mountains.”

She nodded approvingly. “Good. One day when you’re done running around and hitting things, you’ll take over the turbine research division for me.”

He smiled humorlessly at that. “Sure, Mom.”

She returned the smile because they both knew she wasn’t serious. For Kitai, his career as a Ranger was a given. Only the specifics of how long were still up in the air. “How’d the test go?”

“I’ll find out tomorrow.” He kept up a deadpan expression for as long as he could, but then a smile crawled across his face that he was unable to hold back.

His mother couldn’t help seeing it. “Looks to me like you’re confident about how you did.”

“It’s just… it’ll be great when I tell the general I got into the Ranger program on Senshi’s birthday. That’ll be great, right?”

“Not everyone gets into the Ranger program on their first try.”

“Yeah, but those guys are bums,” Kitai said dismissively.

She smiled at that. “Yes,” she said with soft assurance. “He’ll be happy.” Then she noticed the book in his hand. “When did you start reading that?”

“I’m trying to get done before the general gets home.”

Kitai nodded, sure that if he were a newly named Ranger, that alone would be enough to prompt his father to hang around, at least for a while. He tapped the book. “There are lines underlined. Does that mean the general and Senshi liked these parts?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe I should memorize one. Do you think he’d like that?”

“I think he’ll like the fact that you’re reading the book.”

“Are we doing a cake?” he suddenly said, shifting subjects.

“We’re not doing a cake. We’ll just be together.” After a moment’s silence, she slapped her legs, causing a bit of dirt to rise up. “I’m going to wash off all this dust. I’ve been on the ridge all day.”

“Mom…?”

She’d been about to stand, but something in his voice caught her. She focused her attention on him. It took him a few moments to find the words, and even then she didn’t fully understand at first.

“What was it like when Dad became the first? How did he do it?”

“The first?” Initially she stared at him without comprehension. But then she understood. “Oh. You mean the—”

“The first Ghost, yeah. How did he do it? I’ve tried looking it up, and I haven’t found anything. It’s all just… vague.”

“How vague?”

He licked his lips, collecting his thoughts. “Well… it’s just that everyone knows that the Ursa don’t have any eyes. That they find us through sense of smell. And what they smell is our fear. It’s how they work. They track us through fear. They hunt us through fear. Everything is fear with them. And the Rangers go out there and do everything they can to control their fear, but it’s almost impossible.