After Earth

After Earth

By Robert Greenberger

(The official prequel novel of the epic film After Earth)

Conner and his fellow cadets stood on either side of the shelter doors, covering the street with their pulser rifles, while a steady flow of their fellow citizens filed into the sanctuary.

“Easy,” said the Ranger in charge of their squad, a thickset woman named Eckersley. “No need to trample anybody. We're here to protect you.”

But Conner had heard the reports. The creatures couldn't be stopped with just a fusion burst. Hell, o one knew if they could be stopped at all.

Skrel, he thought.

It was hard to believe, even for the guy who had gotten the first whiff of them. But the squad of engineers dispatched by the Savant to inspect the wreckage of the alien ship confirmed it. They found the same insignia on the side of the vessel that their ancestors had seen on the Skrel ships that had descended on the colony hundreds of years earlier.

Smaller, yes. Harder to identify from a distance. But definitely the same insignia.

The Skrel were back. Except this time they weren't attacking with ships. They had gone a different route.

Conner had heard stories...

No, he thought, driving them from his head. There was no time for speculation, no time for fear. There was only the task at hand.

Beer-garden. Manhattan. Photo by Elena.

He was a Ranger, and he had a job to do.

Wilkins saw Häturi enter her command headquarters with an older man, a fellow with a thick head of gray hair pushed back from a broad forehead. He wore a white lab coat with the Savant's emblem sewn on the right breast.

“Commander Wilkins,” Häturi said, “this is Jean-Pierre Rambaldi, on loan from the Savant. He's zoologist.”

“At your service, Commander,” Rambaldi said in a cultured voice.

Wilkins couldn't help glancing at the holographic screens around her, all of them showing her Rangers in action. Some were chasing the beasts; some were tending to the wounded. Some were covering the dead with fabric. The death count was rising way too quickly. She needed to know more about the enemy, and from what the Savant had told her, Rambaldi was their best bet in that regard. “So,” Wilkins said, “what do you know about the beasts so far?”

“Keep in mind,” said Rambaldi, “that I've only seen as much as you have, Prime Commander. I've not had the chance to examine one of the creatures first-hand. I would need a corpse to obtain more definitive answers.”

“I get that,” Wilkins said. “Tell me what you know.”

Rambaldi nodded. “First of all, they're sightless.”

Wilkins was surprised. They had done what they'd done without eyes? “How do you know?”

“We've yet to identify sight organs, you see, would have to be in plain sight in order to be useful. And none are.”

It made sense. “So how do they track us?”

“They seem to be driven primarily by sense of smell. Certainly not the first species we've encountered that depends heavily on the olfactory sense. But don't assume that their sense of smell, or any other sense, works the way ours does. These are alien creatures. Even that which seems familiar about them may be wildly unfamiliar.”