After Earth

i

Kitai could not recall the last time he’d been to the Rangers’ main hangar bay. It was the largest single structure in Nova Prime, cut deep into the mountain where the city stood. Ships of all sizes would tear out of there at seemingly random times. Sometimes they were at the command of the Rangers. Other times ships were flown out at the command of the Savant’s science guild. Even the Primus, who was the head of the religious guild, had need for various ships, and whatever anyone required could be found at the main hangar bay.

Everywhere Kitai looked, he felt nothing but a relentless sense of wonder. At the moment, he was engaged in watching a transport ship being fueled. He wondered if it was the vessel his father and he were scheduled to take. He was mildly chagrined to admit even to himself that he hadn’t the slightest clue why the ship was heading out to a colony world. But his father had said that was where they had to go, and if that was his dad’s opinion, well, then, that was that.

Kitai was finding it difficult to believe the many swings his opinions of his father had gone through in the last twenty hours. First he’d been terrified of him. Then he’d become angry. And now he was grateful that his dad was taking him along on this adventure. So grateful, in fact, that he resisted asking what was going on. The fact that his father had thought of him at all, for whatever reason, was more than enough for him.

He had, though, taken it upon himself to see if he could get information out of his mother. But she had simply smiled in her enigmatic way and said softly, “If your dad wants to bring you along, then I suggest you go.” That had been her entire opinion on the topic. Kitai hated to admit it, but that actually sounded pretty reasonable.

He glanced across the hangar to where he knew his parents were. He was astounded to see that they were embracing. The teen smiled in joyous amazement at that. It was no secret to him that his parents did not get along especially well, and it filled him with nothing but happiness to see them displaying genuine affection for each other.

Were the two of them managing to work things out? It was impossible for Kitai to know for certain, of course. Perhaps he would be able to ask his father at some point during this outing.

That was when Kitai noticed something that looked extremely unusual. It immediately snagged his attention.

Something was being loaded into the aft cargo ramp of a ship called the Hesper. The thing was big: about two meters tall and almost three meters long. It was a loading pod of some sort, organically grown in such a way that it looked like an oversized boulder.

“What is that…?” he whispered.

“Guess you’ll find out.”

The voice that had spoken to him captivated him so thoroughly that he nearly jumped into the air. Clutching his chest, he let out a long sigh, and then he saw that it was Rayna. She smiled and waved to him. She was in her Ranger uniform, and he noticed that she had a cutlass strapped to her back.

Rayna had made it.

Eager to turn the topic away from the strange pod that had startled him so thoroughly, he nodded toward her weapon. “Congrats,” he said.

“Hmmm. Oh. This.” She chucked a thumb toward the weapon on her back and shrugged. “Yeah, it’s no big deal. You’ll be next. Guaranteed.”

“Whatever.”

“Hey, you have no reason to complain,” she objected. “I admit it: I’m jealous.”

“’Cause I get to do Lightstream travel?”

“Hell no. Not that. I’m jealous because you get to travel with your dad. He’s hot.”

“Riiiiight,” Kitai said with repressed amusement.

ii

Cypher watched from a few yards away as Kitai studied the transport ship. He hated to admit it, but he found his son’s attitude amusing. The general tried to remember the days when he’d first witnessed such modern-day miracles as spaceships and wondered whether he’d had the same degree of obvious enthusiasm. He couldn’t recall himself being in that state of mind.

Lieutenant Alvarez approached. “Good morning, General,” she said briskly, and then added, “Ma’am,” to accommodate the fact that Faia was standing there as well. Then she shifted her attention back to Cypher. “Your ship had maintenance issues. We’ve got you on the Hesper, sir. Runway two-seven. It’s only a class-B Ranger and cargo transport, but if you give me another hour…”

It didn’t matter in the slightest to Cypher. One ship was pretty much like any other, and so he gave it no thought. “That will be fine, Lieutenant.”

Alvarez smiled at that. “Yes, sir. Just between you and me, the boys on board are pretty excited to rub elbows with the OG. I’ll see you on board, sir.” She saluted, and Cypher briskly saluted back. Alvarez then headed off to make sure the ship was ready.

Faia looked at Cypher with curiosity. “OG?”

“The Original Ghost.”

“Oh, right. Of course. How could I forget?”

He watched her warily, uncertain of whether his wife was kidding him. He noticed a look clouding her expression. Something close to doubt.

“It’ll be fine,” he said with a confidence he did not truly feel but firmly believed he had to display. If she wanted her husband to spend time with their son, that was what he was going to do even if not all of it made a whole lot of sense. He would speak with Kitai, and he would try to understand this remarkably sensitive boy he and his wife had brought into the world. Even if it killed him. Or Kitai. Or the both of them.

Suddenly there was a loud, nearly deafening bang behind them.

Instantly Cypher grabbed Faia’s wrist and twisted so quickly that she barely knew what had happened. All she knew was that one moment she was facing Cypher, and the next he had pulled her behind him to provide her bodily protection. His cutlass was already in his hand, and he was making sure that Faia remained behind him while he determined where the threat had originated.

That answer came less than two seconds later. There was a worker on an overhead gantry making some minor revisions, and his wrench had slipped out of his hand. It had clattered to the floor only a few feet away from Cypher and Faia, and that was the noise to which he was reacting.

Cypher scowled at the worker, who called down, “Sorry!” Cypher, annoyed, made an irritated noise and then reached down for the fallen tool and tossed it back up without giving it further attention.

Cypher then looked back to Faia, about to ask her whether she was okay. He saw, however, that she was smiling up at him. She looked pleased and flattered, and it was only belatedly that Cypher realized the truth: She was flattered that he had automatically moved to shield her from perceived danger.

He released her then, muttering, “Sorry,” since he actually felt a bit embarrassed to be seen acting in such a protective manner, especially when it wasn’t necessary. Faia, for her part, reached up and removed the scarf she was wearing. To Cypher’s surprise, she was wearing the necklace he had brought her the previous evening. It sparkled against her skin, and Cypher couldn’t help smiling at the symbol it presented. It seemed to him that at least on the surface, he was going to be getting a second chance with his wife.

Assuming, of course, that everything went well with Kitai.

That brought Cypher back to worrying about his son. Because the truth was that he still had no truly clear idea how to discuss anything with the boy. Kitai was like a mystery to him and always had been. Cypher hugged his wife, enjoying the nearness, but his mind was still on Kitai. If his marriage depended on fixing his relationship with Kitai, this nearness he was feeling with Faia and the possible rebuilding of their relationship might be a complete fantasy.

He looked in Kitai’s direction and saw to his surprise that the boy was engaged in conversation with a female Ranger. He nodded in their direction and said to Faia, “Who’s that grown-up hitting on our kid?”

“Now, now,” she said. “Go easy on him.” Then, in a softer tone, she said, “Go make some good memories together. Come on.” Not permitting him any opportunity to respond, she slid an arm around him and walked with him toward Rayna and Kitai. She dropped Cypher off with his son and his female Ranger friend. “Rayna. Good to see you again.”

“You too, Mrs. Raige. Uhm,” and Rayna inclined her head toward the control tower. “So… I’ll watch you take off from the tower, okay?”

Rayna promptly headed off. Faia watched the way Kitai was regarding her and smiled inwardly. She reached over to him then and gave him a strong motherly hug. As she did so, she said in a low voice to Kitai, “Take it easy on your father. He’s a little rusty.”

She could see by Kitai’s expression that he had no idea what she was talking about. The perfection he ascribed to his father was tremendously amusing. Sometimes it served as a benefit, other times a flaw. She realized it was anybody’s guess how it would turn out this time. “You understand what I’m saying, son?”

Clearly he did not, but he nodded. Then, with a final look at his mother and also Rayna’s retreating figure, he started to head off after Cypher.

Before Cypher and Kitai could make it to the ship, they were both stopped in their tracks by an extremely loud voice from a ramp way overhead: “Stand me up!”

All hands approaching the vessel turned their attention to the speaker. It was a Ranger veteran, a man in a mag-lev chair being taken to a medical transport ship. The chair was hovering above the ground. There were two attendants with the man, one on either side of the chair, and they were looking at him in confusion.

“General Raige,” said the Ranger, “I was on the plateau. You saved me and four others. And I just came from seeing my baby girl’s face for the first time.” Upon realizing that the attendants had not heard his command, he repeated it with greater force than before. “Stand me up.”

“That’s not necessary, Ranger,” Cypher told him.

The Ranger ignored the words of his commander. Instead, in an even louder voice, he shouted, “Damn it, stand me up!”

The attendants had been the targets of all the shouting they were going to endure. They nodded to one another and, moving as one, helped the Ranger out of his chair. All of the support was on them, because the Ranger himself had none to provide. His heavily bandaged leg buckled; the other was missing completely. Standing up was a complete impossibility, yet through sheer willpower alone he managed to persuade his aides to get him on his feet. Once he was sufficiently erect, he raised his trembling hand and broke off a salute.

Cypher Raige immediately snapped to attention and saluted back. Kitai felt pure wonder there as he watched this random Ranger forcing others to bring him to his feet so that he could offer proper reverence. Kitai couldn’t help wondering what it felt like to have Cypher look at you as an equal, not some academy washout.

Cypher then dropped his salute and walked over to the Ranger. The man’s eyes were filled with tears, as overjoyed as he was to see the great Cypher Raige coming right up to him. Cypher whispered in his ear, calming him, and then gestured for the assistants to stand aside. He gripped the Ranger firmly, one hand holding each of the man’s arms, and eased him into the chair. Then Cypher stepped back and tossed off a final salute. The Ranger returned it and then muttered to his escorts, “Okay. We can go now.”

Kitai watched as the soldier was led to his medical transport. Then he hastened to catch up to his father. As they approached the ship together, he whispered to Cypher, “What did you say to him?”

“What he needed to hear.”

He turned away from his son then and walked briskly toward what Kitai was now certain was their vessel.

It was, Kitai realized belatedly, the same vessel he’d seen them pushing the large pod into. He wondered briefly if perhaps the pod was the entire reason they were heading toward another world. Or was it simply a secondary mission? Perhaps even something as simple as an addition to a zoo collection? He didn’t know for sure what any of this was about.

What he did know was that his father wasn’t exactly in a state of mind to be particularly helpful in explaining things.

Well, that was nothing new.

iii

The seats that lined the passenger bay of the Hesper were relatively simple and unadorned. They stretched up one side of the corridor, allowing sufficient space on the other side for people to walk past. There were crisscrossed straps attached to every seat so that people could buckle and seat themselves.

There was an observation port in the wall opposite Kitai through which he could see Nova Prime dwindling to a small dot rather than the planet where he had dwelled his entire life. Within moments it would disappear into nothing and become simply another small bit of matter in the sky field behind him.

Cypher Raige was in the adjacent seat. He was paying no attention to Kitai at all. Instead he was scanning through what appeared to be a dossier on his smart fabric. He was paging through the holographic document slowly, one page at a time. Kitai had always been told that his father had an eidetic memory, and now he was seeing what appeared to be proof of that. Cypher seemed to be studying each page until he had it committed to memory and then turning to the next.

“I’m reading Moby Dick.” The remark about Kitai’s latest reading undertaking simply popped out of his mouth with no serious thought given to what he was actually saying.

“Your mother told me,” Cypher said. He barely glanced at his son when he said it, continuing to go through the dossier one page at a time. Then he stopped, as if realizing that simply informing Kitai of his mother’s knowledge was somehow an insufficient response. He lowered the dossier for a moment and said, “That’s great.” Or at least he tried to say it. Unfortunately, it sounded like a halfhearted attempt to avoid coming across as indifferent.

Before he could continue his less than sterling response, there was a low, sharp whistle from the intercom. The pilot’s voice crackled over it, announcing the travel time remaining before they would arrive at Iphitos.

It was a general announcement intended for everyone on the vessel, but Cypher seemed to take it as addressed to him and him alone. The overhead lights were dimming, and instead of continuing the conversation about an ancient whale, Cypher said brusquely, “I’m gonna grab some rack. Recommend you do the same.”

Before Kitai could say anything to the contrary, Cypher’s head dropped back and his eyes closed. He was asleep in less than a minute. Kitai attempted to copy his father’s behavior, but it didn’t work. Long minutes passed, and Kitai simply sat there, eyes wide open, his brain working furiously. Sleep was simply not an option for him. Perhaps his father was accustomed enough to spaceflight that he could treat it like something to be endured rather than to be excited about. But Kitai simply didn’t have that ability. He was so stoked by the fact that he was traveling through space that all he could do, even in the dimness of the corridor, was sit there with his eyes wide open in endless fascination with the vehicle in which he was riding.

Eventually the only thing left in the section was the sleeping sounds of the other Rangers. Kitai sat there long enough to convince himself that slumber was not going to be coming his way anytime soon. If that was to be the case, what possible advantage could be gained by just sitting there in the darkness?

Softly, softly—because he was positive that his father could hear anything and everything—Kitai unbuckled the belt that was restraining him. He gradually eased it off his chest and rose. The only thing that could be heard was the low hum of the ship and the gentle snoring of some of the sleeping Rangers. They all had their cutlasses with them, tucked across their chests or laps. If Kitai had even been thinking about trying to take one of them, he wouldn’t have gotten away with it.

Instead he crept down the aisle, bypassing everyone as he made his way to the aft cargo hold. He figured that if that pod he’d spotted earlier was going to be kept anywhere, that was where it would be. But at the far end of the hallway he saw a large sign over the exit door that spelled out the parameters of where he could travel in a fairly explicit fashion: RESTRICTED AREA. DO NOT ENTER. HAZARDOUS CARGO.

The sign deterred him for exactly five seconds, time enough to look behind him and confirm that all the Rangers were still sound asleep. Then he darted under the sign and headed into the cargo hold.

In front of him was a small flight of metal stairs that led into the belly of the ship. The area was dark and creepy, and the only thing he could hear was the distant hum of the ship’s engines. At the end of the narrow walkway a heavy mesh fabric was drawn, obscuring what lay behind it.

Kitai took a deep breath to steady the pounding of his heart and then released it slowly to calm himself. Then, ever so gingerly, he made his way toward the fabric. Finally, when he was within a meter or so of it, he tentatively reached out and gripped it. He remained that way for a few seconds and, when it garnered no reaction, pulled it aside a few centimeters and peeked beyond it.

Glancing through revealed only the ship’s cavernous, dark, and mysterious cargo hold. The pod was definitely in there, but all he could get was glimpses of it. Nothing much beyond that.

He started to enter the hold area—that was when something reached out from the darkness and grabbed his arm. Kitai let out a startled gasp and tried to pull away, but he had no luck. Instead, the face of a gruff military officer shoved itself at him. Maintaining a hold on Kitai’s arm, the man snarled practically into his face. “Can you read?”

Kitai said nothing, mostly because his throat had frozen up, removing any possibility of his producing any useful words.

The security chief looked to be in his mid-fifties. His face was round, the top of his head covered in a shock of red buzz-cut hair. “I said, can you read? There’s a sign back there. Says ‘AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.’ Why didn’t you read that?”

Kitai took an unusual step: He didn’t answer the question. There was no point in responding to it, because it wasn’t going to end well for him. He’d seen a sign, had ignored it, and had gotten caught. The only shot he had was to move past it and into something more pertinent to him.

“What’s in there?” he said, pointing toward the pod.

“He wants to know what’s in there!”

It seemed strange to Kitai that the security chief was talking to him in that manner, and then he realized that he was not in fact the addressee. Instead, there were several Rangers seated around a small table off to the side. They had a game in progress. Kitai, it appeared, was simply something else for them to play with.

One of the men said, “Might wanna go easy on him, Sarge. That’s the Prime Commander’s son right there.”

This was clearly something unexpected and unknown to the security chief. He looked at Kitai as if seeing him for the first time. “You’re Raige’s kid?”

This provided Kitai with the bit of a lead that he required under the circumstances. They could do whatever they wanted with some random kid, but Cypher Raige’s son was going to get special treatment, and they all knew it. Kitai even puffed out his chest slightly to give additional heft to his presence, and this time, when he said once more, “What’s in there?” it carried more weight and conviction. Or at least he imagined it did.

Indeed, the sergeant’s entire attitude toward Kitai appeared to change in a manner that benefited Kitai’s interests. He dropped his voice to barely above a whisper like a carnival barker with something to hide. “You wanna see?” he asked conspiratorially.

“Yeah, I wanna see.”

“Okay, then. All ya had to do was ask.”

If Kitai had been giving any real thought to the situation, that might have tipped him off. But he was so curious that he completely ignored any cautions and advanced slowly toward the pod.

The security chief followed right behind him as Kitai drew closer. “So are you gonna tell me what’s—”

“It’s an Ursa.”

Kitai stopped moving so abruptly that the security chief actually bumped into him. “An Ursa?” Kitai said cautiously.

“Yup.”

“A dead one?”

“Nope.”

That was when he remembered Rayna discussing how some Rangers had managed to capture an Ursa alive. At that point Kitai completely ceased moving forward. This was it. This was the Ursa the Rangers had captured. This was the closest he had been to one since… since Senshi.

“How… how did… where…?” He made several different attempts to ask questions, and none of them quite worked.

The sergeant didn’t display the slightest hint of amusement. Instead he spoke with the same fear that filled every molecule of Kitai’s body. “This is one of three we caught. We’re keeping all three on Iphitos, away from the civilian population. This one we call Viper. This one’s the biggest and meanest.” He paused and then said conspiratorially, “You want to see if you can ghost?”

The challenge promptly caught the interest of the men who were grouped around the table. Cards forgotten, they focused their attention on Kitai, who didn’t notice. He was busy looking in fascination at the pod, which was motionless.

Clearly intending to assuage Kitai’s concerns, the security chief went on, assuring him, “The pod is biostructural organic armor. She’s strapped and suspended in a gel inside there.” He pointed to a red line that circled the pod. “All you need to do is step over that red line around the pod. The gel doesn’t allow smells at certain distances, but at that distance it can smell you.”

Kitai eyed the red line surrounding the pod. There were no footprints on or near it. No one had come that close to the creature. That meant one thing beyond question: They were taking no chances with the monster.

“You’re not scared, are you?”

Without giving his response any thought at all, Kitai immediately declared, “I’m not scared of anything.”

It seemed that the Rangers indeed took him at his word. In a declaration of “Uhh rahh!” the Rangers tossed off a verbal salute to him, congratulating him on his bravery.

“Even if it imprints on you, you don’t need to worry. She ain’t getting out.”

That froze Kitai for a moment. The concept of an Ursa imprinting on him was certainly daunting. Imprinting was one of an Ursa’s major weapons. Once it imprinted on a person—fully locked onto their DNA essence—that individual became the Ursa’s new target. The Ursa would proceed to attack its potential victim for… well, forever. Kitai wasn’t entirely sure how thrilled he was about becoming the creature’s number one priority chew toy, especially for that length of time.

But he pushed those concerns aside the best he could. He was being challenged by a group of Rangers; he couldn’t just walk away from it as if it meant nothing. Or, even worse, openly display his fear. They’d roast him for that. He’d be a joke. He’d be the gutless son of the Original Ghost and an embarrassment to the Raige family legacy.

All he did was simply nod in acknowledgment of the situation.

The security chief promptly called out, “Ladies and gentlemen, the son of the OG is going to try to ghost. Place your bets!”

To Kitai’s annoyance, they actually started throwing down money. He couldn’t help noticing that there weren’t any bets placed on his ability to pull it off. I’ll show them, he thought in grim annoyance.

Slowly Kitai made his way to the rear of the organic pod. For the first time he was close enough to see that in the shell-like exterior of the pod, there were holes so that one could see in. But there didn’t appear to be an Ursa or anything else inside. “I don’t see anything,” he said cautiously.

“Active camouflage,” the security chief replied. “Photosensitive skin cells change color and texture to match its surroundings. It uncamouflages so it can frighten you. So you release more pheromones—they’re crafty bastards.”

It truly was insidious. Ursa required fear to find their targets, and so their method of attack was calculated to elicit as much fear as possible. Being virtually invisible allowed them to appear abruptly and terrify the crap out of their intended victims.

Kitai moved closer to the pod. He stopped a mere few centimeters away from crossing the red line.

The security chief wasn’t making it any easier for him. “Ghosting is when you don’t have a trace of fear in you. Good luck doing that. To ghost one must be so free from fear that you become invisible to the Ursa. Fear is territorial in your heart. It refuses to share space with any other virtues. You must force fear from your heart and replace it with any other virtue. It could be love or happiness or faith, but the virtue is specific to the individual and comes from the deepest part of that person.

“You get all that, cadet?” said the security chief. His voice was sardonic as he added, “Your dad wrote that helpful tidbit.”

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 with 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.

Kitai had put the lifesuit on as he’d been instructed and also had donned an oxygen mask handed to him by a Ranger passing by. But none of that made any difference. It was obvious that the ship was badly injured and spiraling downward toward… what?

He twisted in his chair to get a glimpse out the observation port and perhaps see what they were heading for, but things were moving too quickly. He saw pieces of debris flying off the ship, bounding away into the unlit darkness, and felt a new swell of terror. As near as he could determine, they were heading toward nothing. They were just a spiraling cloud of debris with only complete destruction awaiting them.

Kitai saw that Rangers were endeavoring to reinforce the bulkhead area, whose warning lights were flashing above them. They passed the equipment back and forth effectively and moved with great precision.

I’m not doing any good sitting here. Chances are, I won’t do any good on my feet, either. But at least I’ll feel as if I’m contributing.

He began to unbuckle the straps that restrained him, and that was when he saw Cypher heading toward him, lurching violently from side to side as he went. Cypher paused only to take a mask a Ranger shoved at him so that he could be as safe as Kitai was. Kitai, however, already had unbuckled his strap and was halfway out of his seat.

Cypher didn’t hesitate; he slammed Kitai back down into the seat. Kitai let out a startled grunt into his oxygen mask but quickly recovered himself. His father was back. That was all that mattered.

Suddenly there was a noise that sounded like a thousand bones breaking at once. The sound was so catastrophic that it drowned out all other noises. What is that? Kitai wondered.

Cypher froze for a long moment, looking around to try to see whence the noise had originated. Then he shook it off and refocused his attention on Kitai. He helped Kitai relock his belt and harness and pull them in tightly. Once he was satisfied that Kitai wasn’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon, Cypher placed his own oxygen mask on his face.

Then Cypher and Kitai’s eyes locked, and Cypher very slowly, very carefully, worked on restoring his son to a clear frame of mind. His face only inches away from Kitai, Cypher began breathing very steadily and very slowly. To try to get Kitai’s breathing even, he raised and then lowered his hand with simple, quiet steadiness. Kitai copied him in the breathing manner, and felt the exercise was starting to calm him. Another five or ten seconds and Kitai was positive that everything was going to be just fine.

Everything seemed to happen all at once.

One moment Cypher was right there in front of Kitai, urging him to breathe steadily, and the next moment he was gone. Just gone. Cypher was lifted up off his feet and propelled down the hallway and slammed into the far corner of the main cabin like a rag doll.

Kitai, his mouth covered by his mask, screamed as the winds howled around Cypher, banging him around mercilessly against the end of the corridor. Kitai realized for a moment, to his shock, that his father was actually holding on to something embedded in a wall, some extended rod, as the wind smashed against him. Then, a second later, it tore Cypher away from his grip and sent him hurtling out of Kitai’s sight.

Kitai was tempted to unbuckle and go after him, but he realized that he would be a goner if he did. Despite the fact that it went against his instinct, Kitai stayed right where he was, continuing to scream for his father even as the ship shuddered from one end to the other.

He heard something tearing away and realized that the ship had snapped in half. In half. The entire cargo section had broken off and fallen away from the vessel.

Kitai considered what that meant. My God, they’re dead.

He wanted his father back so that he could tell him and then realized Cypher Raige was probably dead as well. The way the wind had smashed him against the corridor, there seemed little to no chance that he possibly could have survived. At this moment Cypher Raige was a pounded mess of flesh, and Kitai probably was not going to last when they hit the ground, and poor Faia, his mother, was back on Nova Prime doing her job or perhaps relaxing at home or even sleeping, thinking that she was going to have her son and husband back within a few days.

But she wouldn’t.

Kitai fought to remain conscious, but he was losing the ability to do so. The G-force rippling across his face proved to be too much. His eyes rolled slowly back and shut. One moment he was there, and the next darkness reached out for him. He hesitated only for an instant and then embraced the darkness, welcoming its hold on him. I’m coming, Dad; I’m coming. Those were his last conscious thoughts, and then he slumped into nothingness.

He never heard the ship crash.