After Earth: A Perfect Beast Read Online Free PDF

wasn’t going to say anything that could be considered a taunt of Red Squad. But a private little grin? He could certainly be permitted that.
    Just then, Conner heard someone whisper something. He couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was a familiar one. Opening his eyes and turning in the direction of the whisper, he saw two of his Green teammates. One was a guy named Augustover. The other was a woman named Ditkowsky.
    They were frowning at him. Just for a moment, of course. Then they went about their business.
    Not that he hadn’t seen them shoot him disapproving looks before. And it wasn’t just Augustover and Ditkowsky who had done so. At one time or another, a lot of other cadets had done the same thing.
    Conner didn’t get it.
    If one of
them
had turned around a war game and transformed defeat into victory, he would have patted that cadet on the back and congratulated the hell out of him. He would have sung his praises. But no one was congratulating Conner.
    He sighed and allowed himself to fall back against his mattress.
What the hell …?
He had understood the attitude of the other cadets when he first arrived, especially after he screwed up not just one time but a couple. His dad had told him that new cadets were treated like garbage, that they had to prove themselves before they got any respect.
    But what he had done that morning in the desert should have made up for the screwups. It should have more than made up for them.
    So why are they still giving me the stink eye?
he wondered.
    He had the answer, and it was a bitter one, before he had even finished asking himself the question:
Because I’m a Raige, even more so here than in the rest of the colony. Because no matter how hard I try to be a Ranger, no matter what I accomplish, nothing will ever be good enough
.
    The hell with them, then
, he thought.
The hell with all of them
. He would do what he had to do on his own, without their approval.
    As he thought that, he heard a murmur run through the barracks. Curious, Conner picked up his head and saw the tall, gray-haired figure of Prime Commander Wilkins negotiating a path through the barracks.
    Suddenly, every cadet in the place was standing at attention, Conner among them. He wanted to sneak a peek at Wilkins’s expression, maybe get a sense of what she was doing there, but he couldn’t. He had to look straight ahead.
    There were a few moments when all he could hear were the clacks of Wilkins’s heels on the hardwoodfloor beneath them. Then the Prime Commander said, “At ease.”
    Conner relaxed and turned his head. Unfortunately, Wilkins’s iron features didn’t give much away. But then, that was always the case.
    “I just spent several hours watching you cadets compete out there,” she said. “You deserve feedback and you deserve it now, while everything that happened is fresh in your minds.”
    Conner wouldn’t have minded getting that feedback later, after he had gotten some rest, and he was sure his fellow cadets felt the same way. But no one said so. After all, it was the Prime Commander.
    “In some ways,” Wilkins said, “you acquitted yourselves well. But not in
all
ways. All three teams made costly mistakes. In the context of a war game, you have a chance to learn from those mistakes and make improvements. But when you’ve completed your training and become Rangers—and as you know, that won’t be the outcome for everybody in this barracks—you won’t have the luxury of making mistakes. Because if you screw up as a Ranger, you’ll pay with your life or the lives of your squad mates.”
    She looked around the barracks. “Keep that in mind as you prepare for the next round of the war games, which will commence exactly one week from today.”
    The cadets were absolutely silent in the wake of the announcement, but Conner could hear their groans in his head nonetheless. They weren’t supposed to have engaged in war games again for six months. A week between games wasn’t much