Peter David: After Earth

Cade and Kayembe were paired off, searching a high canyon, moving from strong sunlight to shadow and back again. They were supposed to rendezvous with the rest of their squad at a specified point.

Unless they found something. But they wouldn’t. It was just a maneuver. A hike, really. Just so they would know their places in case they did have to hunt down an Ursa someday.

Kayembe didn’t talk. Not to Cade at least. If the big man had been paired with someone else, it would have been different. But he had nothing to say to Cade.

After twenty kliks or so, Cade noticed something shiny in the wall of the canyon. Squinting at it, he saw that it was a plaque. Out here? In the mountains?

He moved closer to get a better look at it, stood there, and shaded his eyes. “In commemoration of Conner Raige’s victory over the Ursa known as Gash,” it said.

“Who’s Conner Raige?” he asked Kayembe.

The big man glanced at him, narrow-eyed. “Prime Commander. Long time ago. Let’s move.”

But Cade wasn’t ready yet. He looked around at the red-clay mountains, trying to imagine somebody—some Raige —slashing away at an Ursa in the narrow confines of the canyon.

“I said let’s move ,” Kayembe insisted.

Cade ignored his partner. After all, this was Ranger stuff. Ranger history . Maybe if he knew more about it, more about Conner Raige, he could figure out what he himself was missing.

“Must have been a big deal,” he thought out loud, “if the guy got himself a plaque for killing a—”

Suddenly, Cade noticed a point of bright red light on the chest of Kayembe’s uniform. At the same time, the big man cursed and pointed to Cade. Following the gesture, Cade realized there was a point of red light on his chest as well.

“What the hell…?” he said.

Kayembe spit out a curse, his eyes full of anger. “We’ve been tagged, you idiot.”

“Tagged?” Cade asked.

He had no idea what his partner was talking about. But Kayembe’s expression told him it wasn’t good.

It was Tolentino who had tagged them, it turned out—with a laser beam from a vantage point higher up the mountain. Rangers weren’t supposed to stop and read plaques, apparently.

“You lose focus, you die,” Tolentino told Cade and Kayembe afterward, when the squad had reassembled. “How does it feel being dead, gentlemen?”

The penalty? A two-hour run in the desert the next morning. Full packs, no stopping, not even for a drink. Cade wasn’t happy about it. Kayembe was even less so.

When they got back to the barracks, the others were waiting for them, smiles on their faces and taunts on their tongues. They seemed to think it was funny. Despite all the pain he had been in that morning, Cade might have found some humor in the situation as well.

But Kayembe felt otherwise. Pointing a long, thick finger at Cade, he growled, “I don’t care if you can ghost. I’d rather have somebody else —anybody else—watching my back than a screw-up like you.”

Cade could feel the others’ eyes on him. They didn’t say anything, but they didn’t have to. They felt the same way Kayembe did.

A screw-up .

It hurt—more than Cade wanted to admit, even to himself. After all, he wanted to show them he could be a Ranger, too. But he wasn’t going to say anything in his defense.

Why should he? They had all had it in for him from the beginning. Even Tolentino.

I’m a screw-up? he thought, glaring back at Kayembe. Well, screw you.

But he didn’t say it out loud—not when he had so much to lose. He just kept his mouth shut and walked out.

It was raining when Cade got to the place on D’Agostino Road.

He stood across the street from it, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, his collar turned up against the weather. He could see an orange light through the dirty windows, feel the beat of music in his bones if he concentrated hard enough.

The place was called Regina’s. No one knew why. If it had been owned by a woman named Regina at one time, she had faded from memory long ago.

Cade remembered the first time he’d been inside. He had been twelve. He had walked in with guys he worked for, guys who were regulars in the place. Nobody questioned his being there, not even when he ordered a drink he clearly couldn’t handle or when they had to throw him on a cot in the back because he’d passed out.

He thought he heard a peal of laughter across the street, muted by walls and distance. It didn’t take much for people to laugh in Regina’s, he recalled. Pretty much anything got them going.

Of course, it could have changed since he’d been there last. But he doubted it. It had been only a few weeks—the night before the Rangers arrested him, in fact.

Cade knew everybody in Regina’s, knew every face. He’d had good times with them. He wanted to have those times again.

But he hadn’t made the trip just to join the party. He had received a request on his personal comm unit from an unidentified friend. Except he knew from the choice of words who the friend was. The only thing he didn’t know was why that friend had asked Cade to meet him at Regina’s.

But he would find out soon enough.

Regina’s was exactly how Cade remembered it—loud and crowded, redolent with alcohol and sweat, and something sweet he had never been able to identify. He found Andropov sitting at a table in the back, flanked by a couple of his men. New ones, of course, to replace the ones Andropov had lost in the raid on the warehouse.

“I’m pleased you could make it, my friend,” Andropov said. He got up and extended his hand, which was large and meaty.

Cade clasped it. “I wish I could say it was easy. The Rangers are everywhere.” And though Velan hadn’t given Cade any formal restrictions, he might not have taken kindly to the idea of Cade visiting one of his old haunts.

He sat down opposite his mentor. Andropov looked the same. But then he had gotten away that day in the warehouse. He hadn’t been running in the desert with a full pack on his back.

“Drink?” asked Andropov.

Cade shook his head. “No thanks.” The last thing he wanted to do was return to his barracks with liquor on his breath.

Andropov grunted. “You’re not holding it against me, I hope, that I escaped the Rangers without you?”

Cade shook his head. “Not at all. It was every man for himself.”

“I’m glad you understand.”

“You said you had something to discuss with me.”

Andropov nodded. “So I do. Something that I discovered. Because, as you know, I have contacts in the courts.”

Cade knew, all right. When he was a boy, he had delivered things to people. One of them had been a court clerk.

“It’s good news,” Andropov continued. He put his elbows on the table and learned forward. “A week from now, the charges against you will all have been dropped.”

Dropped? Cade thought.

“You look surprised,” said Andropov. “Me, too. I figured you would have to prove yourself as a Ranger first. But your superiors appear to be a trusting lot. They began petitioning the court to clear your record the day you joined them.”

Dropped , Cade repeated inwardly.

“So you don’t have to stay with them,” Andropov told him. “You can leave a week from now, free and clear. Which brings me to my proposal…”

Andropov described a shipment for which he needed a customer. But Cade wasn’t listening to the details. All he could think about was that he could leave the Rangers in a week, and how sweet that would be.

“What do you think?” Andropov asked.

“I’m in,” Cade told him. After all, he would need some credits when he got out.