After Earth: A Perfect Beast by Peter David Michael Jan Friedman Robert Greenberger Read Free Book Online

and dig a hole—not with the Reds just a few minutes behind them. But there were holes that had been dug long before the exercise started if one knew where to look.
    And Conner knew.
    After all, he had been obsessed with the planet’s animal life since he was a little kid. If it ran, crawled, climbed, flew, or swam, he had long ago become an expert on it. And what kind of expert wouldn’t have known that kangaroo rats dig deep, far-ranging burrows underground?
    Back on Earth, before the ships took off with genetic samples of every creature that could be collected, kangaroo rats had been small—about a foot long, including the tail. But on Nova Prime, with the help of geneticists, they were bigger and stronger. Conner was grateful for the change. Without it, he might never have been able to find a burrow when he needed one. After collapsing it with a few stabs of a fallen branch, he had concealed himself with a few heaping handfuls of dirt and debris while the other Greens continued to retreat.
    There was a tense moment when Lucas’s cadetsmarched through, their eyes trained ahead when they would have done much better at that point if they had looked down. One of them came within a meter of Conner, nearly stepping on his hand.
    Then they were gone, and he was free to go after them one at a time. With a little luck, he had thought at the time, he could get a few of them before they caught on to what he was doing. As it turned out, he had
more
than a little luck.
    He had enough to even the odds before Lucas or any of the other Reds realized what he was doing. And by that time, it was too late for them. Their opponents doubled back suddenly, surprising them, and Conner continued to harass them from behind.
    But to break it down on paper, move by move? It wouldn’t have any meaning. After all, it wasn’t the
moves
that had won the day for the Greens. It was the way they were executed.
    How do you chart that?
Conner thought. If anything, it was Lucas’s strategy the Prime Commander should have asked for. Now, that was something Conner could chart—and wouldn’t mind doing so now that he had managed to find a way around it. He sat back in his chair and massaged the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
    In a few hours, his fellow cadets would be enjoying a day off. Blodge had said he was going to spend it hiking in the mountains, with his girlfriend, no doubt. Gold had signed up to go hang gliding. Mphalele had tickets for a concert in Chen Valley …
    Conner stopped that train of thought. Only officers made up battle plans. If Wilkins had asked what she’d asked, she must have thought Conner was officer material. He wondered what his uncle Torrance would say to that. He wondered what his aunt Bonita would say. And his father …
    Frank Raige had never told his son he had to become a Ranger. But the day Conner had signed up, he had seen his father smile as he’d never smiled before. Hisfather had never said he was proud because that wasn’t his way.
    But he
had
been proud.
    In the days and weeks that followed, Conner hadn’t given his father or anyone else a lot to be proud about. He’d shown up at the wrong places at the wrong times. He’d overslept a morning drill. He’d even gotten into a fight with another cadet over something so trivial that he couldn’t remember what it was.
    So if Conner had to sacrifice a little sleep or forgo a day off, he would do that. He would do whatever it took to make his family proud of him. Even if it didn’t make the least bit of sense to him.
    With a sigh, he started typing.
If I don’t stop to eat anything
, he thought,
I might be finished by noon, after all
.

CHAPTER THREE
    Trey Vander Meer cleared his throat and signaled to his engineer. Then he spoke, basking in the sound of his honey-smooth voice as it filled the broadcast studio.
    “Hello, Nova Prime. This is Trey Vander Meer, looking out for your interests when no one else will. Today’s conversation is