Free After Earth: A Perfect Beast by Peter David Michael Jan Friedman Robert Greenberger Page B

Commander didn’t give away her feelings. Sometimes that was a good thing. At the moment, Frank had a feeling she was calling about Conner again; it could only be bad. After all, Wilkins had already said that Conner had turned the corner. The news couldn’t get any better than that.
    But it could get worse. “What is it?” he asked more abruptly than he had intended.
    “I’m calling about Conner. I wish it was good news, but it’s not.”
    Frank’s heart sank in his chest. “What happened?”
    “He got into a fight with Lucas Kincaid. They’d had words before, but this time it blossomed into a knock-down-drag-out.Or rather, it would have been if Tariq Lennon hadn’t broken it up.”
    Frank saw Rebecca come into the room, a smile on her face. It vanished as soon as she looked at him.
    “I don’t suppose there’s any chance Kincaid started it?” he asked. It was as close as he would let himself come to giving his son the benefit of the doubt.
    “Not from what Lennon said. Apparently, Conner accused Kincaid of parroting Trey Vander Meer.” Wilkins sighed. “Can’t say I blame him for being sensitive to Vander Meer’s vitriol.”
    Frank couldn’t, either. Vander Meer’s unrelenting criticism of the Rangers had him on edge as well.
    “But that’s no excuse for fighting with his fellow cadet,” he said. “Especially a Kincaid.”
    The Raiges and the Kincaids had been rivals since before humanity had landed on Nova Prime. Sometimes that had brought out the best in both families. Other times it had brought out the worst. When that happened, it created cracks in the Corps. But this was no time to let those cracks turn into schisms. The Rangers had to present a united front if they were going to weather the storm of public opinion sweeping across the colony.
    “Do you want me to talk to him?” Wilkins asked.
    Frank considered it for a moment but
only
for a moment. “Nobody ever became a good Ranger by receiving special treatment. He’s going to have to figure things out on his own.”
    “That’s my take on it as well. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.”
    “Thanks for calling,” he said.
    “Sure thing, Frank.”
    Only after he put the phone down did Rebecca say, “What?”
    “You’re not going to like it,” he said.

CHAPTER FIVE
    “So you’re okay?” asked Lyla Kincaid.
    Her brother nodded on the other end of the vid connection, his face looking like he’d volunteered it for pulser practice three days in a row. “I’m fine.”
    “Was it really Conner Raige? Didn’t you two used to be friends?”
    He shot her a dark glance. “
Used
to be.”
    “Right. But not anymore, I guess.”
    “Not anymore.”
    “So what did you fight about?”
    He shrugged. “Nothing.”
    “Makes sense,” Lyla said. “Good thing it wasn’t about something. Who knows what would have happened then.”
    What a creep
, she thought. Were she and Lucas really related? It was hard to believe sometimes.
    Despite her concerned-sister questions, he’d said nothing at all. And unless she prompted him, he wouldn’t ask a thing about
her
work. No “How’s it going?” No “Any progress?” No indication that he even
knew
what she was working on. The only work he cared about was his own. That was the way it had been since the day he became a cadet. No, even before that.
    My training
. How often had she heard that phrase? As if no one else could make a valuable contribution to civilization. As if the only people who had ever done anything worthwhile in the entire history of Nova Prime were the damned Rangers.
    Well, the Savant’s corps of engineers had made some pretty sizable contributions, too. Not that she needed her brother to start reeling them off. It would just have been good if once—
once
—he could have said, “How’s that hearing device going? Are you having any luck? Or are you pouring your heart and soul into it just for the hell of it?”
    “Well,” she said, “take care of