Birthright: After Earth Read Free

detection by an Ursa: to “ghost,” as this accomplishment was referred to. Only someone who was utterly fearless was able to perform that particular feat, and Janus had been as fearless as anyone she had ever known.
    The worst thing was that the forest seemed to be determined to put her off guard. The smell of the greenery was pure and pungent. When Janus had been courting her, they’d enjoyed taking walks in places just like this. The pleasant aroma was enough to trigger recollections of her time with him—
    “Sector clear” came a report over her comm unit from another squadron. That was the third one stating with utter conviction that there were no Ursa around; not that it necessarily meant anything. The damned things were capable of hiding in plain sight.
    “Stay frosty, people,” came the brisk command of Captain Terelli, the leader of her particular squad. “It might still be right in our backyard.”
    They confirmed with a brisk series of “Copy that.” Mallory was gripping her cutlass firmly, the bladed weapon secure in her grasp. She swished it back and forth experimentally. She was breathing shallowly. The longer this hunt went on, the more she could sense her heart pounding away. She kept herself icily calm through sheer willpower. It had only been recently that the other Rangers had stopped treating her as if she were liable to shatter from a harsh word. She wasn’t about to do anything that prompted any of them to return to worrying about—
    A faint snap of a branch nearby was the only warning any of them had that an Ursa was in their midst. And then there it was, the monster revealing its presence accompanied by an ear-shattering roar.
    Ursa didn’t simply attack; they liked to play with their food. This Ursa roared, then vanished, and as the Rangers whirled to face it the creature suddenly reappeared outside their circle. It leaped upon the nearest Ranger, a new guy, Harrison, who barely had time to react. And the reaction was a scream as the Ursa whipped around a clawed paw and sliced through Harrison’s jugular with surgical precision. Harrison went down,blood jetting from his ruined throat.
    The Rangers started to move to surround the Ursa. “Stay in formation!” called Terelli. “Hopkins, flank right, maneuver nine-seven—”
    Mallory wasn’t listening. She was hearing the words, but it was as if they were being addressed to someone else entirely. Someone who gave a damn about maneuvers and training and the signals and orders that Terelli was calling out. Someone who was, in short, not her.
    Words were irrelevant to her. All that mattered was what she was seeing. Yes, Ursa had not killed Janus. But their makers sure as hell had. If it hadn’t been for the Skrel, the Ursa would never have arrived on Nova Prime. And the Skrel had also dropped the mine or unexploded shell or whatever it had been that had blown Janus to pieces.
    She stared at the Ursa, saw the direct link between the creature’s presence and the alien bastards who had been responsible for her husband’s death. And then, without the slightest hesitation, she advanced on the Ursa.
    Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard Terelli ordering her to stay back, to remain in formation, to do what she had been trained to do.
    I’m trained to kill these things. And that’s what I’m going to do
.
    “Hey!”
she bellowed.
“You ugly son of a bitch! Here! Over here!”
    The Ursa’s head snapped around. Ursa didn’t have eyes, but they could hear perfectly well, and her furious shout had snared its attention.
    Mallory advanced on it and wasn’t even aware that she was doing so.
    Time seemed to slow down. The world was a blur, punctuated by mental snapshots of the other Rangers. Their eyes were wide with shock, their mouths open. Some of them seemed in the midst of forming the syllables of her name.
    She ignored them. Nothing mattered except the Ursa, and she closed the distance so abruptly that she was unaware of how much