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cleared his throat and in a manner that seemed far too faked to be anything legitimate said with an air of forced offhandedness, “Not sure. I know he’s coming home tomorrow. I’ll ask him then.”
    “What’s that like?” asked one of the Rangers.
    Kitai stared at him in confusion. “What’s what like?”
    “You know! Having the Original Ghost as your father!”
    “It’s great,” Kitai replied. “He’s a great guy. It’s all great.”
    The cadets glanced at one another, and several snickered. Before the question could be pushed any further, one of the RIs emerged from the nearby makeshift headquarters that had been thrown together. “Tomorrow, eleven hundred hours at Ranger headquarters. You will be given the results then.” That was his entire pronouncement on the subject. He turned on his heel and walked away.
    Kitai took the opportunity to get the hell out of there. Rayna even called after him, but he ignored her. The Ranger cadet who previously couldn’t get enough of talking about such subjects as himself now seemed extremelydedicated to the notion of putting as much distance between himself and his fellow cadets as possible.
    Bo didn’t know whether to find that amusing or just sad.
iv
    Kitai stretched out on the hammock in his bedroom that evening, slowly turning the pages of his book.
    His. Book.
    It was something of a rarity, this novel of his. Printed in the twenty-first century, long before the Earth was abandoned, it was an ancient story about a man obsessed with a whale named Moby Dick. Not very many of the books had been made, and this rare copy had floated from hand to hand over the centuries, working its way into the Raige family via Senshi, where it had remained ever since. Kitai had been fortunate enough to get his hands on it.
    He had been reading it over the last few nights. It hadn’t been an easy endeavor. Someone had said to him that by the time he was finished with the novel, he would know far more about hunting whales than he would ever need to know. About a third of the way through the book, he’d come to the conclusion that that assessment was an accurate one.
    He heard his mother’s feet approaching his room. She sounded like she was trudging, which didn’t surprise Kitai in the least. At least he’d been done with his day before the afternoon was over. His mother’s getting home fairly early was something of a rarity.
    Moments later his mother appeared, and she looked utterly worn out. She had dust on her coat. Her exhaustion was reflected in her eyes, but she visibly pushed it aside so that she could speak to her son. “Hey there, honey. Sorry I’m late. Do you need—”
    “Something to eat?” He shook his head. “Nah. Ate already. You okay?”
    “A lot of spikes today,” she said by way of explanation. “We had a lot of orographic uplifts.” She paused and then said with mild challenge, “What are orographic uplifts?”
    Kitai was ready simply because not being ready wasn’t an option. “The vertical forcing of air by terrain features like mountains.”
    She nodded approvingly. “Good. One day when you’re done running around and hitting things, you’ll take over the turbine research division for me.”
    He smiled humorlessly at that. “Sure, Mom.”
    She returned the smile because they both knew she wasn’t serious. For Kitai, his career as a Ranger was a given. Only the specifics of how long were still up in the air. “How’d the test go?”
    “I’ll find out tomorrow.” He kept up a deadpan expression for as long as he could, but then a smile crawled across his face that he was unable to hold back.
    His mother couldn’t help seeing it. “Looks to me like you’re confident about how you did.”
    “It’s just … it’ll be great when I tell the general I got into the Ranger program on Senshi’s birthday. That’ll be great, right?”
    “Not everyone gets into the Ranger program on their first try.”
    “Yeah, but those guys are bums,”