Birthright: After Earth (2 page)

“No,” said Green. “It looked a lot worse than it was; the bone caught most of it. You may have a slight limp for a bit, but nothing permanent. You got off lucky.”

She smiled mirthlessly. “My husband’s dead, sir. I don’t get to feel lucky.”

“Mallory—”

“You’re right, though. Feels fine. I won’t need any time off.”

Green stood up, took the sheet firmly, and draped it back over her to cover her. She looked up at him, blinking owlishly, clearly having no idea why he’d done that. “Mallory, this isn’t a request. You
will
take time off.”

“So I can do what? Lie around? Think about …” Her voice caught ever so slightly, but she managed to pull herself together at the last moment. “Think about what happened? Think about Jan dying, not in battle facing a foe like any Ranger would want,
but because of some stupid booby trap planted in the sand? The hell with that and, with all respect, Colonel, the hell with you. I should be out doing my job. And once the docs here sign off on my leg being one hundred percent—which they will, because they did too good a job to say otherwise—I want to go back out in the field.”

“You need some time to—”

“I need. To do. My job.” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “Sir … inaction is not an option. If you relieve me of my duties, I’ll simply go out on patrol by myself.”

“We’ll take your cutlass away.” The cutlass was the Ranger weapon of choice. A five-foot staff that could morph its shape into a variety of cutting weapons, designed for close-quarters combat … and particularly effective against Ursa at close range.

“Then I’ll get my hands on a pulser. And if you take that from me, I’ll get a kitchen knife. I will go out, Colonel, and I will do my job, even if I don’t have it anymore. Because if I just sit around and dwell on Jan, I will go out of my mind.”

“I’m not entirely sure you’re not out of your mind already, Mallory.”

“Is there anything I’ve said, anything I’ve done, that would indicate a break with reality?”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure you’re in touch with your emotions right now.”

“I don’t need emotions; I need my work. And I’m going to go out and do it. The only question is whether I’m going to do it on my own or in the company of my fellow Rangers.”

Green looked at her steadily. No words passed between them for some time.

“A full psych evaluation,” he said finally. “I don’t need some suicidal asshole out on patrol, endangering the others in her squad because she doesn’t feel like living anymore.”

“Is that what you think?” She sounded surprised.

“I’m honestly not sure what to think right now. For all I know, you want to be with your husband and you figure that facing danger—”

“My husband’s dead, Colonel.” For the first time she sounded harsh, even annoyed. “I’ve never been much for religion. Or God. I don’t believe for a moment that Jan’s off on a puffy cloud somewhere waiting for me to join him. Dead is dead and there’s nothing after it. Life is for the living and I have every intention of continuing to live for as long as possible. And what I have to live for is my work. Don’t …” Her voice caught briefly, betraying for a heartbeat the roiling emotions she was dealing with. “Don’t take that away from me. Janus and my job are my life, and he’s gone and if you take me away from my duties, I really will have nothing. And the nothing will swallow me whole. Do you understand, Colonel?”

“I …” Slowly he nodded. “I think I do.”

“Give me all the eval you want. Have me run through the cadet training ground if you want. I’ll give you all the proof you need that I’m fit. All right?”

“We’ll see” was all he said.

She was on patrol twenty-four hours later.

The next two months were mind-numbingly boring for Mallory.

Some delivery routes bringing supplies to outlying areas that were supposedly along dangerous paths. And nothing happened.

Responding to skirmishes or brawls or arguments and being tasked with keeping the peace. And they weren’t even exciting brawls. The moment the Rangers showed up, everyone involved decided that it was smarter to shake hands and get along rather than
deal with the Rangers dispensing their unique brand of hands-on justice. Certainly no one was enthused about the prospect of the Rangers hauling them before a local magistrate.

One easily solved situation after another. That was what Mallory was faced with, and she was beginning to fear that she would go out of her mind.

It wasn’t conspiratorial. Sometimes Rangers went through lax periods. Typically they embraced such times as welcome breaks, with the knowledge that all too soon, something catastrophic would happen to disrupt the temporary peace.

But she said nothing to anyone about it. She didn”t want anyone reading too much into her state of mind. It was bad enough that, for the first several weeks of being out in the field, it seemed as if everyone was acting as tentatively around her as possible. Even the simple act of making jokes was quickly hushed whenever she was nearby because everyone was obsessed with watching out for her feelings.

Finally she had confronted the whole of her squadron and told them point-blank, “If you people don’t stop treating me as if I’m made out of porcelain, I’m going to put a pounding on the lot of you.” That had taken care of the immediate problem, at least somewhat.

It still didn’t change the fact that every time Mallory was pushed into a seemingly dangerous situation, it proved frustratingly routine. So when initial reports were delivered that an Ursa had set up shop in the Aldrin Forest, Mallory wasn’t expecting much. There was always the possibility that there was no Ursa there at all, but instead some other, smaller creature had taken up residence. It was hard to believe that anything else on Nova Prime could remotely be mistaken for an Ursa, but Colonel Green had supposed that anything was possible.

Consequently, Mallory was part of several eight-man squads that were moving through the Aldrin Forest, looking for some sign of an Ursa.
Jan would have loved this
, she thought. He had lived for moments like this, for the thrill of the hunt. She had never quite understood why it was that he’d never been able
to completely avoid detection by an Ursa: to “ghost,” as this accomplishment was referred to. Only someone who was utterly fearless was able to perform that particular feat, and Janus had been as fearless as anyone she had ever known.

The worst thing was that the forest seemed to be determined to put her off guard. The smell of the greenery was pure and pungent. When Janus had been courting her, they’d enjoyed taking walks in places just like this. The pleasant aroma was enough to trigger recollections of her time with him—

“Sector clear” came a report over her comm unit from another squadron. That was the third one stating with utter conviction that there were no Ursa around; not that it necessarily meant anything. The damned things were capable of hiding in plain sight.

“Stay frosty, people,” came the brisk command of Captain Terelli, the leader of her particular squad. “It might still be right in our backyard.”

They confirmed with a brisk series of “Copy that.” Mallory was gripping her cutlass firmly, the bladed weapon secure in her grasp. She swished it back and forth experimentally. She was breathing shallowly. The longer this hunt went on, the more she could sense her heart pounding away. She kept herself icily calm through sheer willpower. It had only been recently that the other Rangers had stopped treating her as if she were liable to shatter from a harsh word. She wasn’t about to do anything that prompted any of them to return to worrying about—

A faint snap of a branch nearby was the only warning any of them had that an Ursa was in their midst. And then there it was, the monster revealing its presence accompanied by an ear-shattering roar.

Ursa didn’t simply attack; they liked to play with their food. This Ursa roared, then vanished, and as the Rangers whirled to face it the creature suddenly reappeared outside their circle. It leaped upon the nearest Ranger, a new guy, Harrison, who barely had time to react. And the reaction was a scream as the Ursa whipped around a clawed paw and sliced through Harrison’s jugular with surgical precision. Harrison went down,
blood jetting from his ruined throat.

The Rangers started to move to surround the Ursa. “Stay in formation!” called Terelli. “Hopkins, flank right, maneuver nine-seven—”

Mallory wasn’t listening. She was hearing the words, but it was as if they were being addressed to someone else entirely. Someone who gave a damn about maneuvers and training and the signals and orders that Terelli was calling out. Someone who was, in short, not her.

Words were irrelevant to her. All that mattered was what she was seeing. Yes, Ursa had not killed Janus. But their makers sure as hell had. If it hadn’t been for the Skrel, the Ursa would never have arrived on Nova Prime. And the Skrel had also dropped the mine or unexploded shell or whatever it had been that had blown Janus to pieces.

She stared at the Ursa, saw the direct link between the creature’s presence and the alien bastards who had been responsible for her husband’s death. And then, without the slightest hesitation, she advanced on the Ursa.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard Terelli ordering her to stay back, to remain in formation, to do what she had been trained to do.

I’m trained to kill these things. And that’s what I’m going to do
.

“Hey!”
she bellowed.
“You ugly son of a bitch! Here! Over here!”

The Ursa’s head snapped around. Ursa didn’t have eyes, but they could hear perfectly well, and her furious shout had snared its attention.

Mallory advanced on it and wasn’t even aware that she was doing so.

Time seemed to slow down. The world was a blur, punctuated by mental snapshots of the other Rangers. Their eyes were wide with shock, their mouths open. Some of them seemed in the midst of forming the syllables of her name.

She ignored them. Nothing mattered except the Ursa, and she closed the distance so abruptly that she was unaware of how much time, if any, had actually passed.

Everything in the Ursa’s posture indicated complete bewilderment. It looked in
the general direction from which Mallory had shouted, and then she stepped to the side. She didn’t speak. The time for words was over.

The Ursa’s eyeless head didn’t follow her. It snarled angrily, certain an enemy was approaching, and then it lashed out with its claws, missing Mallory by a good two feet.

The full truth of what she was doing did not dawn on her. All she thought was that the Ursa was confused, and she was going to take full advantage of it.

Others started to move in, but Terelli spread her arms wide, her hands out and flat, indicating that the other Rangers should maintain their positions. Clearly she wanted to see what would happen.

Mallory slowly continued to move, looking for the ideal position. She held her breath, as much from necessity as anything else considering how foul this particular Ursa smelled. It took several tentative steps in the direction she’d been moving, snapped at the air, and suddenly started to “look” toward Hopkins. It was picking up on the fear that Hopkins was unable to control, which was attracting the beast like a beacon.

She made her move before the Ursa could fully lock onto Hopkins or, for that matter, anyone else. She swept in with her cutlass and swung it in an arc. It sliced across the creature’s side. Had the Ursa remained stationary, she might well have been able to gut it. Instead it moved ever so slightly, perhaps still trying to locate its attacker, and so her cutlass blade glanced off its rib cage. It was still enough to cause the creature significant pain.

“Oh, you don’t like that, huh?”
she shouted, tossing aside her earlier resolve to remain silent, and barreled forward. It whipped around to face her, and for a moment she seemed a goner. Then, in a maneuver that would still be discussed years later, Mallory dropped to the ground and slid forward, one leg extended, like a baseball player sliding into second base. The slide took her right under the Ursa as it slammed its feet down; she actually glided between the creature’s legs. The rough ground tore at her uniform, but she
never slowed. As the momentum of her slide carried her past, she sliced hard with the cutlass and came within a hairbreadth of disemboweling the creature. As it was, it left a gash so deep that the thick, foul liquid that served as the Ursa’s blood gushed out by what appeared to be the gallon.

The Ursa let out a roar so violent, so ferocious, that two of the Rangers would later complain of hearing loss. As it reared back, Mallory was on her feet once more, and for all that the Ursa reacted to her, she might as well have been invisible.

That was when the Ursa made the decision that it had had enough.

It leaped to the side. Ranger Tomlinson lunged to the right to get clear of the monster, readying his cutlass to take a whack at it. The Ursa didn’t give him a chance. Instead it sped right past, making a wheezing, grunting noise that indicated every step it took was a strain. Seconds later it went camo, effectively disappearing into the brush. Its invisibility wasn’t another trick; instead they could hear the brush and trees being knocked aside, the sounds of the Ursa retreating into the distance.

And once it was gone, it left only deathly silence in its wake.

It was Hopkins who was first to break that silence. “Did what I think just happened … happened?”

“What happened is that we just lost a man,” said Terelli, nodding toward the fallen Harrison. “Let’s get him home and bury our honored dead. You: McGuiness.”

“Sir, yes sir,” said Mallory stiffly.

“Come with me.”

She nodded and then glanced at Hopkins. “Nice working with you,” she said in a low voice as she prepared to follow Terelli to what she was sure would be a court-martial.

“Are you an idiot?” said Hopkins in a low voice. “You just ghosted. It’s like having the keys to the kingdom.”

“I … 
what
did I do?” The full weight of the last few minutes fell upon her. All
she had been doing up to now was mentally beating herself up that the creature had escaped. The means she had employed to attack the monster, and its clear inability to perceive her, had not registered on her.