After Earth: A Perfect Beast Read Online Free PDF Page B

at all. It was almost nothing.
    He couldn’t remember any other cadet class having that kind of burden placed on it.
So why us?
    He wondered if it had anything to do with the criticisms he had heard were being leveled against the Rangers lately. Not from anyone in particular, but an undercurrent of them. The other cadets had noticed. And if
they
had noticed, it was a good bet that Wilkins had, too.
    If the Rangers were under fire, Wilkins might be thinking, they had to be more careful than ever not to make mistakes. Hence the new round of games so soon after the last one.
    “Any questions?” asked the Prime Commander. There weren’t any. “Then you’re dismissed.”
    Everyone went about his or her business. In most cases, that meant hitting their bunks again. Certainly it did in Conner’s case. But he had barely gotten comfortable before he saw that Wilkins hadn’t left the barracks. In fact, she was standing right over him, eyeing him without expression.
    “Cadet Raige,” she said, “you are not dismissed. Walk with me.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” said Conner, swinging his legs out of bed. He got up to follow Wilkins, the eyes of the other cadets on him.
What the hell have I done wrong now?
he thought.

CHAPTER TWO
    The Rangers’ ruddy sandstone command center, which housed the Prime Commander’s office, looked like just another piece of the desert landscape. It was in the middle of the Ranger compound, past the other cadet barracks, the mess hall, and the armory.
    Wilkins didn’t say a thing to Conner until they reached her office and went inside, and even then all she told him was, “Close the door.”
    He did as he was told. Then he waited for his superior to take a seat behind her desk.
    Finally, she looked up at him and said, “Cadet Raige.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” he replied, so curious that it hurt.
    “That,” she said, “was quite a spectacle out there this morning. One of the few bright spots, in fact, in what was frankly a mostly unimpressive war game.”
    Conner bit back a smile as hard as he could. It was one thing to look pleased with himself in the barracks and another to do so in the Prime Commander’s office. “Thank you, ma’am.”
    “Where did you come up with that strategy?”
    Strategy?
The word implied that he had thought in advance about what he had done. But he hadn’t thought about it at all.
    “I just went with my gut,” he said.
    The Prime Commander’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Your gut?” She didn’t look satisfied.
    “I just knew what it would take to lure Red Squadinto a trap,” Conner ventured, hoping it would sit better with Wilkins. “And I did it.”
    But Wilkins’s expression didn’t change. “You just
knew
.”
    He tried a different approach, one he thought she would want to hear. “I come from a long line of Rangers, ma’am. My dad, Frank Raige … I believe you know him.”
    “I do,” she confirmed.
    “And there’s my uncle Torrance and my aunt Bonita. And everyone else in our family that’s served with the Rangers for the last six hundred years. I guess some of what they know rubbed off on me, um, a little.”
    “And that’s your explanation?” Wilkins asked.
    Obviously she didn’t like that one, either. She was looking for something else, but he didn’t know what. “Yes, ma’am,” was all he could say.
    “Well,” said the Prime Commander, “you’re a superior tactician, Cadet Raige. That much is clear. But you’ll never get a chance to put your abilities to work on behalf of the colony until you can articulate the thinking behind your tactical choices. At least not as long as I’m in charge. Because what may seem like blind instinct to you is actually an application of intellect. It’s that intellect I’m interested in, and it’s what you should be interested in as well.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Conner said again, though he didn’t necessarily agree with the intellect part. To him, instinct was more important than