Peter David - After Earth

“She’s alive!” Cade growled. “She’s got to be!”

Then he saw Bentzen shoot Tolentino a glance and shake her head. Cade’s throat closed with grief. Tears squeezed out of his eyes.

“No!” he screamed, his voice cracking. “No!”

But he couldn’t deny it enough to make Nava breathe, to make her live again, to make her open her eyes. Nobody could.

Cade didn’t sleep that night. He kept thinking about Nava lying there in the street in Old Town, her face covered with blood. Her eyes—those beautiful eyes—closed forever.

Because of him .

He had finally begun to drowse off when he felt someone shaking him. It was Tolentino.

“Commander Velan wants to speak with you,” she said.

Velan? Cade got out of his bunk and pulled on his uniform, all the while wondering what the commander wanted with him.

First sun was just creeping over the horizon when Cade entered Velan’s office. Velan’s adjutant waved him in.

“Bellamy,” Velan, said as Cade entered. “Close the door.”

Cade did as he was told. Then he stood at attention.

“You’re probably wondering why I called you here,” Velan said. “The answer’s a simple one. I wanted to know when you’re planning to leave.”

Cade swallowed. “Sir?”

“We’re not idiots, Bellamy. There’s a leak every now and then, which is what allowed your friend Andropov to find out when the charges against you would be dropped. But we’ve got informants as well, which is why we were able to arrest Andropov last night—and, incidentally, find out what he had told you.

“Mind you, it wasn’t a secret that we’d be dropping the charges. I would have told you that myself if you’d asked me.” Velan sat back in his chair. “You’re a free man, Bellamy. There’s no prison sentence hanging over your head. You can go.”

Then he turned away to examine the graphics on a holographic display at his side, as if Cade no longer existed. Because in the commander’s world, he didn’t.

I’ve got what I wanted , Cade thought. So why was he still standing there? Why wasn’t he halfway out the door?

“I want to stay, sir,” he said, the words sounding like they were coming out of someone else’s mouth.

“Stay?” Velan echoed, something like annoyance in his voice. He cast a sideways glance at Cade. “What makes you think that’s still an option?”

“Why… wouldn’t it be, sir?”

“Leaving aside the question of what you planned to do and whom you planned to do it with, I have to look at how you performed as a Ranger. According to your company leader, you’re not particularly suited to what we expect in the Corps. Self-reliance may be a positive trait when you’re running illegal goods on the black market, but we prefer our Rangers to work together, as a team.”

“But… you said you needed Ghosts .…”

“We do, in the worst way. But only if they can work within the Ranger framework—which you, apparently, can’t do. I’m not placing the blame for this on you, Bellamy. If anything, it was my mistake trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.”

And he returned his attention to the hologram.

Cade had been dismissed. But he wasn’t leaving. After a while, Velan noticed that. “Is there something else?”

“There is, sir. I’d like to remain a Ranger.”

The commander shook his head. “I’m afraid the decision’s already been made.”

“I’ve got unfinished business with the Ursa, sir.” Cade felt a surge of resentment. “You don’t want me to be a Ranger? Fine. I’ll go out and hunt them on my own.”

“That’s against the law.”

“The law never stopped me before, sir.”

A muscle rippled in Velan’s jaw. “Why so adamant about staying, Bellamy? You couldn’t stand being a Ranger, according to Andropov.”

“I’ve changed my mind, sir. Nava Ericcson… She died while I was thinking about me . About what I could do.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Bellamy. Ericcson’s death wasn’t your fault.”

“But I could have prevented it. She stood up for me, sir. Trusted me.” Cade’s throat began to ache. “You don’t find trust everywhere. You don’t find people who care about you. That’s a gift—like my knack for surviving, like my being able to ghost. A gift . And when someone gives you one of those, you don’t give it back. Not if you’ve got half a brain, you don’t.”

“And you think you’ve got half a brain?” Velan asked him.

Cade straightened. “I do now, sir.”

Velan looked at him for a long time. Then he sighed. “It’s against my better judgment, but I’ll let you try it again—with a different squad. Understand, it’ll be a whole new start.”

Cade nodded. “Thank you, sir. You won’t regret it.”

“But this is it , Bellamy. If you can’t hack it this time, you’re done. You understand?”

“I do, sir.”

Velan eyed him a moment longer. Then he said, “Dismissed.”

Cade left the office. Then he crossed the compound in the direction of the barracks, determined not to screw up a second time.

Cade’s new squad didn’t contain a single veteran except for his company leader, a lean, bearded man named Gwynn. No one else had more than a couple of months of Ranger service under his or her belt.

They were reminders of how helpless he had felt as he watched Nava die. How completely and utterly helpless. For all his ghosting ability, he hadn’t been able to do a thing to save her. He had been so concerned with leaving the Rangers, he ended up losing the one person he cared about.

And yet there he was again, facing the possibility of a terrible loss. People were depending on him, putting their lives in his hands. And as far as he could tell, not one of them had faced a live Ursa before.

Cade trained with them as he had trained with Nava’s squad. No—even harder. But he didn’t learn their names.

After all, there was a Nava among them. He didn’t know which of them it would be, but the odds were good that one of them would die under the claws of an Ursa. And what would it be like for him to see that—to see another human being get torn apart because he couldn’t kill the monster soon enough?

Cade remembered something his mother had told him just before she passed away. Insanity, she had said, quoting someone from way back, maybe even somebody from Earth, was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

So maybe he was insane. But he was going to do everything in his power to keep what happened to Nava from happening again. His mother’s death hadn’t affected anyone but him, but Nava’s death would be different. It would mean something.

Cade didn’t demand perfection just from himself. He demanded it of his teammates as well. He hounded them without respite, without consideration for the way they felt about him. He kept after them even when Gwynn didn’t seem inclined to do so.

Clearly, they didn’t like it. A few of them barked back at him. One guy in particular, a big red-haired guy almost the size of Kayembe, looked ready to go after him after Cade chewed him out on the far side of the ravine.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” the guy demanded.

When Cade didn’t answer, the guy took a swing at him. Cade ducked and planted his fist in the guy’s belly. And when the guy doubled over, Cade cut him down with a blow to the side of the head.

Gwynn could have disciplined him, but he didn’t say a thing. He just called out the names of the Rangers who would be negotiating the ravine course a second time, as if nothing had happened.

Then came the squad’s first training exercise with the mechanical Ursa, out on the streets built in the desert. Everyone followed Gwynn’s orders, but it wasn’t Gwynn they kept glancing at to see if they were doing everything right. It was Cade.