After Earth

by Peter David

  And there it was, unmistakable. The security chief wasn’t screwing around anymore. He was putting it right out there: You think you’re on your dad’s level? Let’s see what you’ve got.

  Without hesitation, Kitai stepped defiantly over the red line surrounding the pod. If the security chief was startled by his audacity, he didn’t show it. Instead his voice dropped to just above a whisper. “Most guys freeze—that’s your cerebral cortex looking for an answer it doesn’t have. Your blood is filling with adrenaline right now, whether you know it or not. Your heart’s beating faster. It’s getting a little harder to breathe … Your neurobiological system is telling you to run, but your knees are too weak to move, and it’s too late, anyway—the pores on your skin have already opened up, secreting an imperceptible amount of pheromones into the air. And all you can think about is when it’s going to kill you.”

  Kitai was standing centimeters from the pod, his eyes wide. There still wasn’t any response from within, and he was beginning to wonder whether the Rangers had been screwing with him the entire time. Maybe there was nothing especially dangerous in the pod after all. He did not notice that even the Rangers looked surprised that his proximity wasn’t eliciting a violent reaction from within.

  Or maybe I’m ghosting. Maybe this is what it feels like. I’m actually doing it. Ghosting, just like my—

  That was when the pod exploded with violent sounds and movement. The tension wires wrapped around the thing were suddenly strained by whatever the hell was smashing the pod from the inside. Despite the wires, the thing shook so violently that it seemed as if the creature within was going to tear it apart and come leaping straight out …

  … at him.

  Kitai had just enough time to see a flash of the monster’s pale skin slamming up against the side of the pod, and then he leaped backward, letting out a very un-ghostlike scream of terror. However, his yelp of surprise was easily drowned out by the thunderous shriek of the beast within.

  It was a noise Kitai had heard before. It had overwhelmed him years before when the monster tore apart his beloved sister while Kitai hid in the shelter she’d thrown together for him.

  He lay against the wall behind him, gasping for air, desperately trying to shove his mental images of his sister’s death back into the more remote sections of his brain.

  The Rangers, of course, didn’t know. All they knew was that he was the son of the Original Ghost, and he was now pressed flat against the wall, trembling with fear. Naturally they responded in the only way that seemed appropriate. They laughed collectively. The security chief called out, “He sees you, kid!”

  And suddenly, just like that, the security chief was on his feet. Not only that, but his hand had snapped into a solid salute. The other Rangers were doing the exact same thing.

  Their reaction made it painfully obvious to Kitai exactly what was happening and who was standing behind him. Only one person could have prompted that kind of reaction.

  “Kitai,” came the sharp voice of Cypher Raige from right behind him. “Back in your seat now.” Without waiting for a response or an explanation, neither of which would have done much to calm him, he continued, “Rangers, go to Red Con 1.”

  The security chief blinked in surprise. Obviously he’d been expecting Cypher to rip into them for screwing around with his son. Putting them on an alert had probably never occurred to him. But he responded crisply, calling out, “Secure all cargo!”

  His crew obeyed instantly. They were confident about the security of the Ursa, but there were other objects being transported as well, which required double-checking to make sure they weren’t going anywhere.

  Kitai had moved in silence when he’d traveled from his seat to the cargo hold. The way back required no quiet at all; he barreled as fast as he could to his seat. Before he could buckle in, Cypher was already behind him and saying briskly, “Under your seat there’s a lifesuit. Put it on, now.”

  Kitai did as he was instructed. Even as he did so, however, he looked up questioningly and said, “What’s going on?”

  Cypher was clearly in no mood to respond. All he did was snap, “Full harness!”

  “Yes, sir,” Kitai replied. Whatever was transpiring around them, there was clearly no time to engage in conversation about it. His father clearly had greater problems on his mind than answering his son’s questions, and for once Kitai totally understood.

  Cypher didn’t wait around to see if his son obeyed. He headed off down the corridor in the general direction of the cockpit. Kitai suspected that was where Cypher was going to wind up, and he already felt a bit better. There was no one he wanted overseeing things more than his father. With Cypher Raige in charge, no matter what was coming up, they would all be able to get past it.

  iv

  The pilot and navigator at the controls in the cockpit nodded when Cypher made his entrance. “Good evening, General,” said the pilot, a tall and powerful man named Lewis. “Care to take the controls? Feel her out?”

  There was no doubt in Cypher’s mind that that was in fact the last thing Lewis wanted. Technically Cypher could indeed take control; he was the ranking officer present. But that wasn’t going to do anyone any good. “Appreciate the offer, Captain. But it’s been a while since I sat in that chair.”

  Lewis and the navigator, a longtime veteran named Bellman, both chuckled.

  Cypher’s tone then became steely calm. “What’s the last known position of the closest asteroid storm?”

  “We’ve plotted well around those storms, sir. Nothing to worry about,” Lewis assured him.

  Cypher spoke with total respect in his voice, but the order inherent in it was clear: “I’d like you to check again, Captain.”

  The pilot clearly didn’t quite understand why he was being asked to recheck, but it wasn’t his job to understand orders. Just obey them. He ran their immediate vicinity through the data banks. “Category 4 asteroid formation, two thousand km to starboard at plus-four-five declination. Bearing one-two-seven mark four.”

  “That’s headed in our direction,” Cypher said. There was not a trace of nervousness in his voice. He was simply trying to anticipate anything that could go wrong.

  “Yes, sir,” Bellman acknowledged. “But at that distance—”

  “I detected graviton vibrations in the ship’s hull,” Cypher said. “A cat 4 storm’s large enough to generate its own gravitational field, correct?”

  “Yes, sir. But … you detected?” Bellman was staring at him in confusion. “How?”

  The fact was that Cypher had felt it. A gentle vibration that had actually awakened him from his slumber. No one else would have noticed it, and even if anyone had, he would have given it no thought at all. A vibrating hull. So what? It was probably nothing.

  Even Cypher thought that he might well be overreacting. In fact, he was certain that a straight answer to the navigator’s question would garner nothing save puzzled looks and assurances that he was getting worked up over nothing. Having no desire to deal with any of that, he kept his reasons to himself. Instead, all he said was, “Graviton buildup could be a precursor to mass expansion. That storm could be on us in minutes.”

  “Sir,” said Lewis, “if I may … Mass expansion is one in a million.”

  “Then let’s just say I don’t like those odds.”

  The pilot and navigator exchanged confused looks. But if that was how Cypher felt, it was their job to make sure that his worries were attended to.

  Long moments passed, and then slowly the image of a huge, swirling storm pattern began to take shape on the screen. “Not loving those odds, either,” Bellman said as the storm began to swirl even more widely.

  “If we try to navigate out, the pull of our own graviton wake could set the thing off,” Cypher said. “Just hold course … and let’s hope I’m wrong.”

  The storm seemed to be holding its own course as the men kept their eyes on the cockpit readouts. Lewis, doing his best to keep everything stable, asked Cypher w
ith forced casualness, “Just out of interest, sir … how often are you wrong?”

  Without so much as cracking a smile, Cypher replied, “My wife would give an interesting answer to that question.”

  A long, excruciating silence followed. Only the digital chirping of the computers in the cockpit could be heard. Beyond the forward observation port there was only a star-pricked expanse of space.

  Studying his instrumentation closely, the navigator called out, “Graviton count’s decreasing. Eight hundred parts per million … Six hundred and fifty …”

  Upon hearing that, the pilot exhaled in relief. With the graviton count diminishing, whatever danger they might have been in was sliding away. “Well, sir,” he began to say, “there’s a first time for every—”

  That was when the asteroids, which hadn’t even been factored into the calculations until that split second, made their presence known.

  It was like being witness to a star going supernova. One instant the space in front of them was empty, and the next instant a massive wave of asteroid fragments was expanding in their direction. The icy chunks of rock were coming in so fast that there was no time for Lewis or Bellman to react. All they were able to do was cry out in shock as the asteroid field engulfed them, hitting them like a freight train. The ship shook violently as the rock storm pounded them, creating the kind of turbulence that moments before would have seemed unimaginable.

  Cypher grabbed an overhead handhold to stay on his feet as Lewis wrestled with the control yoke. “Turn into it! Match bearing!” Cypher shouted, and the pilot did his best to obey.

  But it was doing no good. The cockpit instruments went completely haywire, multiple alarms sounding as the ship tilted wildly out of control. Sizable asteroids continued to pummel the ship. The cockpit computer snapped on and announced, “Caution, critical hull damage. Caution, main power failure.” It spoke in a simple, flat, even mildly pleasant monotone, as if the total catastrophe it was announcing were really nothing to get all that worked up about.

  The tail of the ship suddenly was struck by a violent force. It swung the entire vessel around and continued to spin it several times. Lewis managed to slow the whirl eventually, but then he called out, “She’s a dead stick! Engines one and two are off-line! We’re losing her!”

  At no time during the entire struggle did Cypher so much as blink. Instead he remained calm, certain, stern. If the pilot and navigator had ever wondered why Cypher was the Prime Commander, that answered the question. He stepped forward, placed a hand on the pilot’s shoulder, and said, “Can you travel us out of here?”

  Lewis turned his frightened gaze to Cypher. “Where?”

  “The anchorage on Lycia. It’s the closest.”

  On hearing that suggestion, the navigator reacted so negatively that it sounded as if his head was about to explode. “Negative, sir! We cannot wormhole travel in the middle of this!”

  Cypher knew that technically speaking, the navigator was absolutely correct. Generating a miniature wormhole was a tricky enough endeavor under even the best of circumstances, and these were certainly not the best. But he saw no other option and suspected that if he’d taken the time to push Bellman on the topic, Bellman wouldn’t have seen any other way out as well. He simply ordered, “Do it,” just as another mammoth asteroid slammed into them, hitting them square.

  That was all the incentive Bellman required. Hurriedly he started entering the coordinates online.

  For a heartbeat, Cypher was taken out of the current situation. He imagined his son, wearing the lifesuit by now, strapped securely into his seat, terrified over what was happening. Cypher had no idea why Kitai had been screwing around with an Ursa, nor did he care. All he cared about was that his son was very likely horrified by what was going on and he couldn’t be there to try to talk him down. And there was nothing he could do about it right now.

  He could only watch with an escalating sense of dread as the navigator worked with barely functioning equipment to accomplish what he’d been ordered to do. After what seemed an eternity, he called above the ruckus, “Coordinates for anchorage at Lycia locked in, but no confirmation signal, sir.”

  Cypher saw only one option. “Travel us now.”

  “Sir, without confirmation …”

  He didn’t want to hear it. “That’s an order!” he shouted as he pulled out the extra jump seat from a compartment in the floor. He buckled the double strap harness over his shoulder as the pilot threw open the protective cover of a control lever. Lewis placed both hands on it as the ship listed toward another asteroid.

  “We’re hot!” Bellman shouted. “Go, go!”

  There was yet another violent strike by an asteroid as Lewis slammed the emergency lever forward. Dark space began to grow outside as the wormhole generation began. Some asteroids that had been heading toward the ship were abruptly pulled away into the darkness, yanked clear of the vessel as the dark of space continued to widen all around it.

  Then the wormhole snapped fully into existence, and the ship was slammed forward. Cypher had just managed to finish fastening his straps when he suddenly was shoved backward into his chair. He saw the pilot and navigator similarly being slapped around by the forces of space and time that converged on the vessel simultaneously.

  Cypher glanced at the chronometer on his wrist. It had stopped dead. Then, for a few moments, it ran backward before it abruptly hammered forward again at five times the speed. Then they were in complete and utter blackness. It was as if all the light around them were being dragged forcibly into the wormhole along with them.

  Kitai, was the only thing that went through Cypher’s head at that moment. Kitai, Kitai—

  And then they were out of it, just like that.

  One moment they had been surrounded by the blackest and most featureless space that Cypher had ever seen, and then they were out of it.

  But they were hardly out of trouble.

  Cypher saw pieces of the ship hurtling past them in different directions. They had sustained all sorts of damage, and he hadn’t the faintest idea if they were going to survive long enough to reach Lycia. Hell, for all he knew, they weren’t anywhere near Lycia.

  The pilot was apparently ahead of him. He struggled with the controls while the navigator scanned readouts that were continuing to fluctuate. “Can’t get a star fix!” he shouted. “We are way off the grid.”

  “I still got nothing here,” the pilot agreed. He struggled with the stick but could not get a proper response from the ship’s guidance systems.

  “Caution, life support failure,” offered the cockpit computer with the same apparent indifference it had displayed before.

  The navigator checked the specifics of what the computer was talking about. “Cabin pressure dropping,” he agreed moments later. “Heavy damage to outer hull. Breach possible in middle cabin!”

  The pilot had no interest in hearing about the bad shape the ship was in. He already knew that. What he needed to know now was what to do about it. “Find me something I can land on!”

  Quickly the navigator combed immediate space, hoping against hope that there was something close enough to put down on. Seconds later, he managed to pull up a blue-green world on the holographic imager.

  “I got something! Bearing three-four-zero by nine-five, range eighty-six thousand. Looks like a C class—nitrogen, oxygen, argon. Can’t get a volumetric—”

  At that moment, a wholly unknown voice recording sounded inside the cockpit. Apparently they had managed to trip some manner of space buoy that had been left there to issue an advisory against any vessels that were even considering landing on the blue-green world.

  The advisory sounded throughout the cabin: “Warning. This planet has been declared unfit for human habitation. Placed under class 1 quarantine by the Interplanetary Authority. Under penalty of law, do not attempt to land.”

  The ship had turned just enough in its approach that Cypher was able to make out the world’s details for the first time. The
advisory buoy continued its warning; it obviously had been designed to keep doing so until the ship had turned around or was so far gone that any caution was hopeless. Cypher’s eyes widened as more details of their likely target presented themselves. For a moment he thought he recognized it, but then he dismissed the notion as crazy.

  Then he looked again and realized that it wasn’t only not crazy, it was in fact damned likely.

  “It’s not possible …” he whispered.

  “Repeat, do not attempt to land,” the computer voice sounded.

  “Shut up!” the navigator shouted as he, too, recognized where they were heading. Bellman then turned to Lewis and Cypher. “The computer might have defaulted back to a known demarcation point …”

  At that moment Cypher didn’t give a damn why it had happened. All he knew was that it had to unhappen immediately. “Can you travel us again?”

  “Negative, sir!” Lewis shouted as the ship bucked furiously all around him. “We either land there or we break apart out here.”

  There was absolutely no choice being provided them. His voice even, Cypher said, “Set her down,” even as he unbuckled his jump seat and moved back toward the main cabin.

  From behind him, the pilot was calling out, “Mayday, mayday, this is Hesper-Two-Niner-Niner heavy in distress! We took sustained damage from an asteroid storm and are going down with bingo power! Request immediate rescue, repeat, request immediate rescue!”

  The radio provided nothing but static in response.

  v

  The main cabin was shaking so violently that Kitai was convinced the entire ship was going to break apart around him. He didn’t know which was more terrifying: the sensation that the ship was about to blow apart or the fact that his father was nowhere around.

  Part of him wanted to condemn his father for being somewhere other than next to his son, but he quickly dismissed any such notion. If the ship was in danger of falling apart, there was only one place his dad was going to be, needed to be: in the heart of it, trying to prevent it from happening.