After Earth: A Perfect Beast (51 page)

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 … happen?”

“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.

“You ghosted! You just entered a whole new level of—” Hopkins stopped, seeing the look on her face. “Mal, what’s wrong?”

She wiped the moisture from her eyes and said softly, “The first thing I thought was, ‘
Wait’ll I tell Jan.
’ ”

When Mallory began her day as part of a squad hunting for an Ursa, she never would have thought she’d end it in the office of the Savant.

She’d never had an encounter with the Savant before. As head of the Science Guild, he was simply not someone she’d ever cross paths with.

But because of the unexpected manifestation of Mallory’s ability to ghost, Colonel Green had brought her straight to the science hall, where she could be subjected to a battery of tests. They gave her a psychological third degree far more comprehensive than anything she’d ever endured. They asked her hundreds of questions; they showed her screens with random blots of blackness and asked her what she saw (her insistent reply of “random blots of blackness” seemed to impress nobody). They drew blood, had her urinate into a container. They did everything short of shove probes up her ass, and she worried that if they didn’t like the results of their tests, that would be next.

And when it was all over—she hoped—Colonel Green had ordered her to wait in the Savant’s office. She dutifully did as she was told. Despite Hopkins’s certainty that she would face no disciplinary action even though she had disobeyed orders, she had still braced herself for the worst when Terelli returned with her to Ranger HQ. But Green had been waiting there for the both of them; Terelli, it turned out, had sent word on ahead. Mallory had received the equivalent of a disciplinary
slap on the wrist, and Green had taken over from there.

Mallory had spent the entire day adjusting to what had happened, and yet her mind was still racing. She paced the office, right up until the door opened and the Savant entered. The Savant was remarkably tall, with sparse hair and sunken cheeks. He also had the most piercingly blue eyes that Mallory had ever seen. She’d never considered what perpetual inquisitiveness would look like, but decided it was probably what she was looking at now.

She snapped to attention the moment the Savant came in. Right behind him was Colonel Green.

“Take a seat, Ranger.” The Savant gestured to a chair facing his wide desk.

Mallory remained precisely where she was.

“She’s too well trained,” Colonel Green informed the Savant. “There’s a superior officer in the room. She won’t sit unless I give her leave to do so.”

“Well, then I would appreciate it if you did, because I’m sufficiently old-fashioned that I won’t sit while there’s a lady standing.”

A twitch of a smile crossed Green’s face. “I think the lieutenant might take exception to being described as ‘a lady.’ ” When McGuiness didn’t rise to the bait, merely stood there and awaited orders, Green said, “At ease, Lieutenant. Take a chair.”

She did as he instructed. Her back remained rigid and her hands were flat upon her lap. She waited expectantly.

“So how are you doing, Lieutenant?” said the Savant conversationally, as if they were sitting down for coffee.

“I’ve been poked and prodded within an inch of my life, sir,” she said, making no attempt to mask her impatience. “So with all respect, rather than how I’m doing, I would prefer to know what, if anything, this intrusiveness has revealed.”

“Very well,” said the Savant. He had taken a seat and leaned forward on his desk, his fingers interlaced.
“To be honest, I initially believed that the explanation for your sudden fearlessness and your clear ability to ghost—anecdotal, to be sure, but confirmed by reliable witnesses—was psychologically based. That the loss of your husband—”

“Caused me to snap? To become suicidal? To not care about my own welfare?”

“Something like that.”

That was exactly the conclusion she had feared. It would be one short step from such a diagnosis to being declared mentally unstable. No one wanted to have his or her life depend upon a Ranger who didn’t care whether she lived or died, or might actually be courting death. If it stuck, she might be put on indefinite leave. Or, even worse, handed a desk job, which would be akin to dying as far as she was concerned. “Sir”—her response was addressed to Green, not the Savant—“I assure you, I am not remotely—”

Green silenced her with a sharp gesture. “Let the man finish, Lieutenant.”

Her mouth remained open for a moment and then snapped shut with a click.

“However,” the Savant continued as if she had never interrupted, “I’m reasonably sure, based upon the psych eval we’ve done here today, that that is not the case. Especially considering that another explanation has presented itself. You see, we’ve discovered that there’ve been some fundamental, metabolic changes in both your pituitary gland and your hypothalamus. Consequently, it’s created the chemical equivalent of a modified DPD …” When he saw her blank expression, he said, “Depersonalization Disorder. At its extreme, DPD makes sufferers feel as if they are moving through a sort of waking dream. The mind feels disconnected from the world around it. In your case, thanks to the chemical imbalance, when faced with a life-threatening situation—”