Wilkins was reviewing telemetry in the command center when she overheard Hāturi speaking to someone over a voice line. He didn’t sound happy. In fact, he sounded positively grim.
Who? was the question that came to mind. Not What? Field casualties had become as common as sand fleas, as common as skipjacks on the western flats. These days, the only question was Who?
As she moved closer to Hāturi to find out more, he cast a glance in her direction. His eyes were red and wet. It shook Wilkins to see him that way, to see Hāturi, a rock of a man, caught in the grip of such emotion.
The Prime Commander waited until Hāturi had ended his conversation. Then she asked the question.
His voice was husky with mourning. “It’s Commander Raige, ma’am.”
It felt like a physical blow. Wilkins grabbed the back of her chair to steady herself. After all, she was the one who had sent Bonita into battle despite her injury. She was the one who had put her friend in harm’s way.
But she’d had no choice. Bonita was a good Ranger. She had been needed in the field. And she’d asked, for heaven’s sake. She’d asked.
Hāturi gave her the rest of the report. Danuta had died as well. But most of the people they were trying to save had reached a shelter. Their mission had been a success, as much as any mission could be a success these days.
The Ursa had claimed four civilian casualties. It was still alive, still seeking prey. Hardly a surprise.
Wilkins absorbed the news. As it spread from Ranger to Ranger, a hush descended over the command center.
“Get me Torrance Raige,” she told Hāturi. “I’ll be in my office.”
She knew Torrance was in an infirmary, recovering from the injuries he had sustained the other day. The damage wasn’t bad. He’d be sidelined for a week. But Wilkins had a feeling he’d want back into the field sooner than that when he heard what she had to tell him.
Conner was just getting ready to go out on another food-gathering detail when Wilkins appeared at the entrance to his barracks.
What’s she doing here? the cadet wondered. The Prime Commander didn’t just show up in the barracks unannounced. Something was up.
Wilkins didn’t say anything. She just scanned the barracks, obviously looking for something—or someone. As Conner watched, he wondered who it was. He was still wondering when the Prime Commander’s eyes found him …
And stopped.
Conner felt his throat constrict. The look in Wilkins’s eyes … it was the same one she’d had when she’d told Chen about his mother the day before. Even before Wilkins crossed the room and took hold of his shoulder, he knew what she was going to tell him. He just didn’t know which member of his family she would name.
“Ma’am?” he said, trying hard not to let his voice crack.
“I have bad news, son. Your aunt Bonita …”
Wilkins didn’t have to say any more. “Yes, ma’am. I understand. Thank you, ma’am.”
Wilkins looked at him a moment longer, her brow creasing. She looked as if she wanted to say something else, but she didn’t. She just smiled sadly, turned, and left Conner standing there.
With his grief.
Lyla Kincaid considered the device she had made in her lab a month earlier. An eternity ago, or so it seemed. After all, that was before the Ursa had landed on Nova Prime. The device was tiny, half the size of her fingernail. She tossed it in the air and caught it. Light, too. It was also durable, made of materials that were built to last.
And it helped people hear when nothing else would.
The scientists of Nova Prime had made remarkable strides in medicine since the Arrival hundreds of years earlier. For instance, back on Earth, people had had to put up with hearing impairments, some of them congenital, some the result of injury, and some inflicted by disease.
Not anymore. In most cases, the causes of the impairments had been eliminated. In the rest, the Savant’s engineers had invented devices to address the problem. That was where Lyla’s work came in.
The device she held in her hand was designed to be surgically implanted in the inner ear, where it would effectively take the place of an eardrum. Without it, certain individuals would be unable to hear. With it, they could hear perfectly.
Like Pietro. A good thing by all accounts.
But there was nothing revolutionary about it. Nothing revolutionary at all. It just works a little better than the model before it, which worked a little better than the model before that, and so on. But the Savant had asked Lyla—like all her fellow engineers—to come up with a tactical application.
“A tactical application,” she repeated to herself, and laughed at the idea.
Were the Ursa vulnerable to certain sounds the way human beings were? Did the creatures even hear in the first place? Despite the best efforts of those who had observed the beasts, there was no conclusive evidence either way.
Lyla frowned at her device. It was nothing like Jack Kincaid’s concept for the F.E.N.I.X. projectile system he had introduced hundreds of years earlier. A projectile that used magnetic fields to transform itself into a number of different shapes, one after the other. Now, that was an innovation.
Yet the concept originally was shot down by the Savant of that era, who, ironically enough, happened to be a Kincaid as well. In fact, Bree Kincaid, a brilliant woman in her own right, was the very first Savant. Like everyone else at the time, Bree had grown up with fusion-burst tech. She had come to depend on it. When it didn’t work against the Skrel, her first thought was to find a way to improve it, not to chuck it out the window in favor of something new and untested.
Of course, there was another reason Bree Kincaid took the conservative approach. The office of Savant was so new that the people still didn’t know what to make of it. One wrong move, Bree had noted in her journal—which had become required reading for engineers ever since—and the colony might have decided to get rid of the Savant. That would have been a blow to scientific progress from which the people might never have recovered.
To avoid such a disaster, Bree had decided to build methodically on what had come before and in that way gain the colony’s trust. The last thing she wanted to do was make the people think they had entrusted the office of Savant to a rebel.
So she tossed her cousin Jack’s idea on the trash heap. It was only after the Rangers had gotten hold of a Skrel vessel and determined the nature of its shielding, which could withstand fusion-burst blasts no matter how much the colonists amped them up, that the Savant gave in to her cousin and allowed him to try out his F.E.N.I.X. system.
From the beginning, it worked like a charm. One by one, the Skrel ships were destroyed. And from then on, Jack Kincaid’s F.E.N.I.X. system became the preferred defense option on Nova Prime.
But now they had a problem that they’d never had before, and neither F.E.N.I.X. nor fusion burst was proving useful in stopping the Ursa. The Savant, unlike Bree Kincaid before her, had asked them to look for answers in a wide variety of research projects. That was to his credit, Lyla thought.
She didn’t think the project she was working on would be very helpful. However, she had a feeling that something else might. It wouldn’t hurt to pursue that option as well—to take the idea just starting to take shape in her head and see where it might lead her.
After all, you never know.
Trey Vander Meer sat in the shelter on Buckingham Street with Yang, a Ranger with a smooth scalp and cheekbones so prominent that they looked like they could cut glass.
“You don’t have to leave?” the commentator asked.
Yang shook his head slowly from side to side. “I’m here as long as you need me.”
“That’s kind of you,” Vander Meer said. “Very kind.”
His brain felt sluggish as he tried to process what had happened earlier that day. He had walked out the door a proud husband and father. Now he was bereft of his family, alone in the world. The Rangers had responded. They had saved his neighbors and—he thought, though he wasn’t sure—hurt the creature that killed his family.
But where were the Rangers when he needed them? When the beast was tearing … was grinding—
He couldn’t go on, not even in the deepest recesses of his mind. He had to stop and gather himself.
“Are you all right?” Yang asked.
Vander Meer nodded. “Fine. Thank you.”
Yang was a good man. But neither he nor the other Rangers had been there when Vander Meer needed them.
I should have stayed, said a voice in Vander Meer’s head. I should have argued with Natasha a little longer. I should have stayed and talked to Michael before I walked out the door.
A series of missed moments, time he would never recover.
Were they even having funerals for the victims? He couldn’t recall. Suddenly, he remembered that Pham was waiting for him. Waiting … at the studio. Yes. But Pham would understand. He always understood.
I’ll take some time off, Vander Meer thought. It’s only reasonable.
After all, he had lost everything dear to him. And what had the Rangers done to help him, vaunted defenders of the colony that they were? He kept coming back to that, kept thinking that if the Rangers had only done their jobs, he would still have a family around him.
It isn’t my fault that they’re gone, he thought. It’s the Rangers’.
That was the real problem, wasn’t it? The Rangers had failed the citizens they were supposed to protect. He wouldn’t forget that.
Not ever.
Torrance Raige hadn’t taken the news about his wife very well. The only way he could deal with it was to get back in the field. Knowing him as well as she did, Prime Commander Wilkins had approved the idea. But there were fields, and there were fields.
I should be out there. I’m a trained Ranger, dammit. What am I doing here defending a supply depot when there are more important things to be attended to? This is insane. It’s madness.
Bonita. Oh, God, Bonita …
Torrance used his uniform sleeve to wipe away the sweat beading on his forehead. Get your head out of your ass and into the game.
Back to basics. Back to basics.
One of the first things the Rangers were taught as part of their training was that when matters seemed to be spiraling out of control, the wise thing to do was to take a knee and focus one’s energies. It had been a long while since Torrance had done so, but he could not recall the last time he’d been faced with a situation quite like this one.
He went down to one knee.
Focus on your surroundings. Root yourself in this present moment.
The smart fabric that lined the walls of the supply depot fluttered in the stiff breeze coming in from the north. The structure was ringed by a squad of Rangers, a number of whom, like Torrance, had been injured in the field. Since the medics had judged that their assorted injuries would slow them down in battle against the Ursa, an inconvenience that could easily prove fatal, they had been given duties that probably would prove less of a threat to their lives.
Torrance’s wound was still throbbing; the synthoheal that the medics had spread on it had been only partly successful, for the wound was still red and swollen and was beginning to feel hot to the touch (or at least it seemed hot to Torrance). The medics had sternly informed him that if he felt faint, he was to report back to the medicenter immediately.
Torrance would be damned if he would do something like that. He was going to be out here fighting the Ursa until the last shreds of life had fled his body.
Shut out the distractions. Pain is of no use to you. You know the injury is there. Ignore it.
He shut down the discomfort the wound was giving him. It wasn’t all that difficult, really. Just part of the training. Pain was never insurmountable. It was simply something else to be dealt with. Torrance gathered all the anguish he felt from his wound, isolated a section of his brain where he could place it, as if in a lockbox, and then sealed it off. When it was contained, he was aware of nothing beyond a faint, dull ache instead of a steady stabbing sensation.
He reached out with his finely honed senses but couldn’t perceive anything that posed a threat, most notably the Ursa. It was, however, disconcerting to know that the damned things could practically be breathing down the necks of the Rangers on duty and they wouldn’t know it until it was too late.
“Taking a knee?”
He didn’t even bother to open his eyes and look to his right. He was fully aware that Marta Lemov was standing a few feet away. Marta had joined up with the Corps the exact same time Torrance had. They’d come up through the ranks together and often had wound up teamed on various squadrons. At one point they had even had an ill-advised and short-lived liaison (before he’d hooked up with Bonita) that they still occasionally kidded each other about.
Marta was tall and lanky and had received any amount of teasing about her “manly” hands and feet. Her head was bandaged, but she didn’t seem the least bit bothered by it.
“The old ways work because they’re tried and true,” Torrance said.
“That’s certainly circular reasoning.”
“Shut up,” Torrance said dismissively before adding, “You okay?” He indicated the bandaged head with a tilt of his chin.
“This?” Marta pointed at the bandage. “It’s nothing. The medics made some noises about concussion, but …” She waved it off dismissively.
“You’re out of your mind. You should be in for observation.”
“I should be in? Torrance”—all the sarcasm and irony was gone—“Torrance, my God, your wife is barely a couple of days gone and you’re back out here.”
“You suggesting I should abandon my people in a time of need? You have me confused with someone who doesn’t give a damn.”
“I’m not even going to try to argue with you about this.”
“Wise move,” he said.
The half dozen other Rangers were paying little to no attention to the conversation between Torrance and Marta. They were far too busy surveying the surrounding area, searching for any sign, any warning of a possible threat. They had sustained varying degrees of injury, but to a man they were dealing with the pain and shunting it aside much as Torrance had.
“Hey!” came a shout. Several men were approaching. Torrance recognized them by sight if not by name. One of them was a technician; two more were farmers. The technician, for no reason other than that perhaps he was the most articulate, appeared to be the spokesman. “Hey!” he said again. It did not appear to be a jaunty greeting.
Nevertheless, Torrance, as the senior Ranger on station, provided a cheery “hey” right back at him. Keep this calm. He clearly has something on his mind. Let’s hear it. Perhaps, whatever it is, it won’t be any sort of issue that could—
“Step aside. We want access to the supplies.”
So much for that hope.
“I’d love to, but everything’s being meticulously rationed,” Torrance said patiently. “The Ursa are tearing through everything, causing random destruction. So what we have left, we have to carefully—”
“You think you’re telling me anything new, Ranger?” Torrance wasn’t thrilled with the way he was saying that word, Ranger. As if it were an epithet. The technician pointed at the two farmers. “My friends here were telling me how one of those things came tearing through his farmland. His farmland.”
“The farmland is shared by all—”
“Shut up,” the technician snapped, so angrily that Torrance immediately realized he had erred. Focusing on the philosophy of joint ownership, of shared need, had been the wrong angle to take. He should have been reacting instead to the fact that the farmer probably had been scared witless and was damned lucky to be alive.
Meanwhile, the technician was still ranting. “Thank God that these men’s fathers and their fathers’ fathers had the initiative to build their own bomb shelters after the first Skrel attacks! No Rangers helped them do that; no, sir. And so when the Ursa attacked, they had somewhere to take refuge and hide so those creatures couldn’t sniff them out.”
Torrance noticed that the technician was wobbling slightly. It was clear to him now what had been happening. The three men had gotten to talking while having drinks together somewhere—tossing back a few in the face of impending disaster—and a session of mutual frustration had morphed into a call for action, even if it was misguided action.
“These men have paid more than their fair share into a system that’s completely breaking down! They had to save their own lives because you damned Rangers were nowhere around, and now they can’t feed their own families from the fruits of their labors while you people get to decide how much or how little is being handed out to others!”
Torrance kept his voice level and did his best to try to sound sympathetic. “Gentlemen … I understand what you’re going through …”
“Do you?” said one of the farmers challengingly.
“Yes, I do. The Rangers weren’t there for you. We’re stretched thinner than we’ve ever been before and …” And we have no idea how to fight these things. “… and we can’t be everywhere, as much as we’d like to be. But the fact is that we have an order to our society. A way we do things. Don’t you see that the Ursa were sent here by the Skrel not just to kill us but to shred the fabric of our society? The rationing system has to be carefully maintained. Our way of doing things has to be maintained. Because if that doesn’t happen—”
“Look out!” came the startled cry from Marta, but it was too late for Torrance to react.
When the rock bounced off the side of his head, he was caught completely off guard. It hadn’t come from the technician or the two farmers facing him. While he’d been distracted by the three of them, others had been approaching from the side. No one had spotted them because they’d all been distracted by what Torrance had been saying to the technician.
The rock had hit him just above the right temple. Dazed, he went down to one knee, just as he had a few minutes earlier.
“Get the food!” shouted the technician, a defiant rallying cry, and there were more shouts from the other direction as well.
Everything was coming unraveled too quickly for Torrance to follow. He couldn’t tell if this had all been some sort of masterful game plan—the technician and farmers had been an advance guard to draw their attention so that others could sneak up and get into position—or if everything had just unfolded spontaneously and Torrance had had the lousy luck to be at the eye of a rapidly approaching hurricane. Except there was nothing remotely peaceful about this particular eye.
The technician tried to shove past even as the world spun around Torrance. He was suddenly blind in one eye and didn’t understand the reason for it until he realized in a distant manner that blood was pouring into that eye from a cut in his head. The technician swung a kick at Torrance for good measure as he went past, but that was a mistake, as Torrance’s training and reflexes kicked in.
He caught the technician’s leg in a perfectly executed cross block, guided the force of the attack past him, and shoved hard. The overbalanced technician lost his footing and came down on the ground with his legs in a split. He screamed in pain. With any luck, thought Torrance, the bastard ripped a muscle in his crotch. Torrance swung a roundhouse that caught the technician squarely in the face, and the man fell over without another sound.
Marta and the other Rangers were tightening their circle, but Torrance could see the hesitation in their eyes. The Rangers had been trained throughout their existence for one mission: to preserve humanity. Not to battle against it. To use force of arms against their own people was counterintuitive, especially in a situation such as this one.
These people weren’t lawbreakers. They were desperate, frightened, just trying to survive. How much easier would it be to just get the hell out of their way?
The blood was now pouring from the wound in Torrance’s forehead and didn’t seem to show the slightest inclination to slow down. He tried to wipe his eye clear as he shouted, “Stop them!”
The Rangers formed ranks and battled back, but only hand to hand. To a man, they would not use potentially lethal force against their fellow human beings. This restraint on their part didn’t make the Rangers any less formidable. But for every Novan one of the Rangers managed to take down, two or three more took his place.
Apparently word had spread with the speed of light that there was a massive assault at this supply depot. People were coming from everywhere, and not a single one of them was showing up to fight on the side of the Rangers.
Worst of all, Torrance had to think that this wasn’t an isolated incident. Panic and desperation weren’t going to remain confined to this one particular depot. If this kept up, the Skrel weren’t going to have to do much more than sit back and wait for humanity to tear itself to pieces.
People were converging from all sides. Torrance fought back, his hands moving so quickly that they were little more than blurs. Someone came in at him fast. He recognized his attacker: the curator of the local history museum. He could talk for hours about such items in his collection as an actual vintage copy of Moby-Dick, a first edition acquired by Forever Books in the year 2032 AD. The sweetest, gentlest man anyone could hope to meet. And there was murder in his eyes.
“Weapons!” Torrance shouted, because there was no choice. “Half power!”
The Rangers unholstered their pulsers and opened fire.
The barrage of silver-blue blasts ripped into the attacking citizenry. The impact was akin to being struck in the chest by a bag full of rocks. People were knocked off their feet, crying out in pain, and for a few moments it seemed as if the Rangers were going to stem the tide.
But then the attackers rallied, redoubling their efforts. Wholly unintentionally, the people toward the front of the mob wound up being human shields, absorbing the brunt of the pulsers’ punishment and then slamming forward into the Rangers. Torrance and the others continued to fire into the crowd. Had their pulsers been at full power, the entire area would have been stacked high with corpses.
But they treated their panicked brethren with mercy and thus paid for it.
“Hold ranks! Hold ranks!” Torrance shouted, and then his wound started bleeding again, even more profusely. He was completely blinded, and before he could clear his vision, he was borne to the ground. He fired unseeing into the crowd, and then his pulser was kicked away. Instinctively he threw his arms around his head to protect himself. Someone drove a kick into his stomach, and he gasped. Then his world began to blacken, and he realized it wasn’t just from the blood in his eyes.
Bonita … damn … I’d have been safer hunting the Ursa.
And then he was out.