Apex

by Robert Appleton

  “Okay, well the two of you can probably make a go of it anywhere, then. Just keep it small-time, under the radar.”

  “You’re sure he’ll be there?” she asked between bites of her lower lip. “What if they’ve already—”

  “He’s in custody. It’s all arranged.”

  “So we just…what…pick him up and disappear?”

  “I’m taking you both someplace safe, someplace I can be sure who comes and goes.”

  “And Mom too?”

  Vaughn nudged the stick forward, advancing along the loopway. He figured he’d be through on the next cycle but one. “Your mom is being taken to a safehouse. She won’t be coming with us, and you won’t be able to speak to her directly, but I’ll see to it that she gets any messages you want to send.”

  “Jesus. I really screwed things up, huh.”

  Vaughn didn’t reply.

  “But you’re saying I’ll get none of that protection if I don’t testify?” she added.

  “Only short-term, I’m afraid. It won’t take them long to zero Hesperidia as a probable hiding place. It’s not on my official file, but I pretty much live there when I’m on leave. And it’s not exactly a classified secret that one of the top female rangers there knows how I like my eggs for breakfast.”

  Kyra snickered. “What’s her name?”

  “Jan.”

  “What will Jan say about you bringing a cartel war to her paradise pad?”

  “Let’s just say the eggs won’t be over-easy for a while.”

  “She a smartass like you?”

  “Smarter. And she has a better ass. I really need to work out more.”

  Kyra slowly shook her head. After a lengthy pause she said, “I’ll have to talk it over with Cleeve, about me testifying.”

  “That’s good. That’s exactly what you should do.”

  “But I have to warn you, he’s way more cautious than me. He doesn’t know half of what I’m into, and when he finds out the shit-swamp I’ve dug for us, he won’t want me anywhere near a witness box.”

  “We can do that remotely and recorded. You can be light-years away from the actual trial.”

  “But I’ll need to be sworn in somewhere by the official jurist, in person, and it has to be seconded by a member of the prosecution team. I know how it works, Vaughn. The point is that the jurist and the attorney can both be tracked, no matter how far they travel, and that puts me in harm’s way.”

  “You’ll have to trust me, Kyra. This is what I do.”

  She widened her knees apart and pressed the soles of her feet together under the blanket, adopting a kind of yoga pose. “You know, I wasn’t going to say this till later, but I don’t want to get mollified by some false sense of security. So here it is, Uncle Ferrix: how can I trust you not to use me to get a result?”

  “Explain that. Carefully.”

  “You know what I mean. Nobody puts their whole family behind bars and accepts a promotion because of it unless they’ve got a fucked-up value paradigm. Mom told me all about it, how you dug in on your moral high ground and refused to even acknowledge that you’d played any part in ruining her life. She was eight years old, for Christ’s sake, and she wanted to be just like you when she grew up. Then you showed up with your shiny new badge and your strongarm buddies and ripped the heart out of the only home she’d ever known. All so you could prove how incorruptible you were. To get a result. The keys to a high-flying Omicron career. Everyone knew your name and everyone said what an honorable thing you’d done, and nobody gave a thought to the traumatized eight-year-old girl you’d left behind. That was her result. Cast adrift. Left to foster care. No hope, no prospects, and a hated family name. So my question is: how the fuck do I trust you to do right by me when it becomes expedient to hide behind the law? You know how to take the moral high ground. You’re the master at that. So what happens to me, a known criminal, if you’re put in that position again – forced to choose between loyalty to your family or reaping the kudos of another personal sacrifice to the altar of the law? We both know this whole set-up is corrupt. If you’re forced to compromise, which one will it be? The niece you barely know or the career you couldn’t bear to live without?”

  Vaughn let the heat of her words rise and start to dissipate in the cool cockpit. Then he replied, “Nice try, sweetheart.”

  “Don’t you sweetheart me, you son of a—”

  “Okay! First, you don’t get to take the moral high ground. You’re a lowlife piece of shit your own cartel wants to scrape off its boot.” He waved away her protests, then silenced her with an adamant forefinger thrust in her direction. “You’ve had your say, now I’ll have mine. Second, there’s only one person in this galaxy I owe an apology to, and that’s your mom. I’m doing this as a favor to her, not to you. You don’t like it, feel free to turn yourself in to the first backwater law station you come across, after I see you reunited with Sondra.”

  “Cut me loose now, if that’s your stinking game.”

  “No. We’ve both put her through hell. My excuse is I was put in an impossible position, and there was no good way out. You, on the other hand, could have done anything, been anything, but you chose to dreg your way into the most obvious one-way deathtrap there is. So we both owe her this. After Hesperidia, as soon as I get word from the Bureau that the Big Red murders are sewn up and we have a solid case against the cartel who hired Sixsmith, I’ll take you to see your mom. Then you can decide what happens next. In the meantime, until you’ve earned my trust, I ain’t telling you squat.”

  Lips pursed, she rolled her tongue over her teeth. “You finished?”

  “Until you start spilling what you and Hemp were up to, and exactly why you had to go on the lam, we’re finished.”

  “You son of a bitch!”

  “Make yourself comfortable, sweetheart. Paradise is a long way off.”

  Though they both kept to their stubborn words and didn’t speak again before the jump, Vaughn had never known the silence in the cockpit to be so disquieting. She might not have earned her impudent foot stomp on the moral high ground, but she was up there nonetheless, perched over him on her mom’s behalf. It was intolerable and unavoidable. She might be on the wrong side of the law, but that didn’t mean her argument against his conduct all those years ago didn’t hold weight. What was worse, he’d never honestly won that argument with himself.

  As he spitefully cut in front of the small freighter ahead of him in the queue, in order to make the cut-off for the next jump – what would they do, arrest an Omicron officer? – Vaughn glimpsed Kyra shaking her head from the corner of his eye. He glanced round at her. She flicked up an insolent eyebrow and curled the edge of her mouth into a cruel, knowing smile, as if to say, Not above breaking the rules when it suits you, right, Mr. Law Dawg?

  “Care for a bit of country rhythm?” he asked, firing up a jaunty old square dance album, the first track of which never failed to get his toes tapping.

  “Oh Jesus,” she replied. “This is gonna be a long-ass trip.”

  Vaughn grinned, and entered the warp gate muttering a quiet “Yeehaw” under his breath. But the levity fell flat and, as the colors of reality deluged into an ever-whitening blur, a chilling regret bristled him, forced him to fend off a stampede of fears and equivocations he’d tried and failed to corral on that fateful day…

  The jaunty rhythm slid and slowed and stretched into wiry infinity. But his toe kept tapping.

  Chapter Four

  The approach to Cunard’s Star was every bit as disorienting as Vaughn remembered. He knew better than to even attempt to manually match its crazy spin, so he gave that job to the ship’s AI. A fragment of a gray dwarf, cooled and encrusted with kilometers of fused rock from the God-knew-how-many ancient-infant nebulae worldlets it had passed through on its way to this remote system, it resembled a glob of glassed treacle tossed into the cold of space. Its gentle plumes of icy outgassing, tenuously held by the core’s strong gravitational pull, formed a comet-li
ke coma that trailed Cunard’s orbital path. The large but not very bright sun at the system’s center had only a classification index for a name—J1-8738—whereas this miraculous celestial visitor trapped in its thrall was one of the most famous of all non-planetary bodies.

  Every kid knew the story of Edward Cunard, the eccentric trillionaire asteroid mining tycoon who’d discovered the gray dwarf with his dying wife on their last exploratory trip together. They hadn’t known at the time how rich their find in fact was. Not until after Sarah’s death had exogeologists found a cornucopia of exotic new inert and radioactive elements embedded around the core, a legacy of its nebulae encounters. These had opened up new pathways in particle physics, superconductors and many other fields. But the trove had been in jeopardy because of its decaying orbit around J1-8738. In a little over six months, not enough time for a mobilization to mine and extract the dwarf’s full wealth, it would have reached perihelion and been lost to science forever.

  So Cunard, in a gesture of either unfathomable philanthropy or equally unfathomable romantic devotion, had poured his vast fortune into a nutty scheme: to shift the dwarf into a synchronous orbit around the sun. Over two dozen massive nuclear bombs, detonated at precise intervals to exert maximum cumulative force, would go down in history as the trillionaire’s “twenty-eight gun salute” to his wife, to science, and to the betterment of humanity. It worked, and the wily old-timer spent the rest of his days and his fortune turning Cunard’s Star into a science haven and an exclusive retirement resort—with the option to go into cryo-freeze for those with terminal conditions.

  Its secrets had been pretty much mined by now. But the gorgeous auroras lighting its cloud trail and sprinkling the perpetual dusk on its glassy surface were magical things to experience, especially in the twilight of one’s life. With all the amenities money could buy, Cunard’s remained a popular retirement resort. And as its own private warp gate was one of the most carefully curated anywhere, it was an ideal safehouse for those in temporary Omicron custody. Vaughn had brought witnesses and their families here many times. But when he transmitted his inked ID, the resort’s computer responded that he was no longer on the system. After nineteen years since his last visit, he’d been archived.

  “Old but not obsolete, right, Uncle Ferrix?”

  “Maybe the other way around. The jury’s still out.”

  Kyra snickered. “Cleeve isn’t gonna dig this one bit. He never was big on breathers and domes: he’s more of a lungs-of-the-world type guy. Gets claustrophobic sometimes. He’s either gonna kill me or marry me on the spot for this.”

  Vaughn gave her a blank look, waiting for an explanation.

  “One of his favorite novels is set on Cunard’s. Into Perihelion. I think it’s a mystery. I never was into the whole reading for pleasure thing. But his paperback copy’s falling to bits on his nightstand. It’s one of four or five he just re-reads endlessly. You know it?”

  “I read it in school. It was part of the syllabus.”

  “I never got that far into school.”

  As the ship achieved its optimal sync vector ready for landing, he glimpsed her reflection in one of the monitors, saw that she was biting her lip again. “You seem bright enough. How did the two of you meet?”

  “I was leasing a new warehouse and flop-port for one of our freight outfits. Cleeve was joint owner. He took me to dinner so we could ‘smooth out the details’ – that’s how he put it. He’s a smoothie all right. Only he’s not like that with most people. I think he’s one of those that instinctively knows whether someone else is on his frequency or not, and if they’re not, he can come across as cold and aloof. But if you are on his frequency, and he decides he likes you enough to lavish his attention on you, there’s nobody warmer or more fun to be around.”

  “It’s chemistry.”

  “Yeah, instant chemistry. Either you share it or you don’t. Was it that way with you and Jan?”

  Vaughn smiled to himself. “I guess you could say that. She rubs most people the wrong way, but the more she tried it with me, the more I liked her. It’s hard to explain. She’s an original, a bit of a loner, and for a guy like me, that keeps her interesting. You’ll know when you meet her. She can’t help but stand out.”

  “Well, this threatens to be an interesting chemical experiment then – a four-way one.”

  “Good thing I’ve brought a fire extinguisher, just in case.”

  “No. I think I’ll like her,” said Kyra, throwing off her blanket on the way to fetch her jacket and boots. “Anyone who throws you sass and gets away with it is okay in my book.”

  “Don’t forget the sole insulators for your boots,” he remined her. “The glass on Cunard’s can get…warm.”

  But not as warm as the welcome. Cleeve Brougham nearly squeezed the hose of her breather as he lifted and spun her in a bear-hug embrace. Any discomfort he’d felt using artificial air he either hid well or had forgotten altogether. Six-foot-one, wiry but strong, he was a young-looking guy with a sharp aquiline nose and an open, handsome face. He shook Vaughn’s hand with an overly enthusiastic grip that belied his unsurety. Understandable really. As was his preoccupation with his fiancée’s safety status. Was she hurt? Who was after her? Should he hire private bodyguards in addition to the three Omicron detectives currently with them?

  Vaughn insisted he say nothing to anyone until told otherwise.

  “As you say,” replied Cleeve. “But I want to know everything you know.”

  “That part’s on Kyra,” explained Vaughn. “They’re hunting her because of what she knows. Whether she’s willing to tell it to me or you or a jury panel, it’s on her. What happens for the rest of your lives will depend in large part on how cooperative she’s willing to be. Which is where you come in, Cleeve. If she won’t trust me, if she won’t talk to me, then maybe you can get through to her.”

  “Erm, you do know I’m right here.” Kyra put her hand up as though calling on the teacher in class. “Could you be any more patronizing? Sheesh!”

  Cleeve turned to face her. “Sorry, love. It’s just that when you break laws and lie to your fiancé about what you do for a living, you don’t get immunity from a little patronizing.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, then addressed Vaughn. “See? I told you he’d want to kill me.”

  “Or marry you on the spot.”

  “Hey, now I’m the one being talked about when I’m right here,” interrupted Cleeve. “Why do I feel like you’re doing exactly what you always do when anyone has the temerity to challenge you? Play the victim card. Then turn the tables on them. Only it isn’t going to wash this time. Like Agent Vaughn says, this time it’s all on you. And no, I don’t want to kill you – not yet anyway. And I’m not going to marry you on the spot. What do I look like? A gimp with a bad girl fetish?”

  Kyra chortled.

  Cleeve shook his head. “That’s just…wrong.” He addressed Vaughn, “Can I trade her in for one of those lady detectives? The ones in pant suits?”

  “No, but I’m buying one of those suits asap, now that I know your fetish,” she replied.

  Cleeve sighed, twitching a smirk. “Now how can you argue with that?”

  A copper gloom descended over the green-lit LZ, creating a weird, otherworldly hue, as the other two agents, who’d fetched Cleeve from his home on Vypeen and escorted him here, made their way over to Vaughn from the hangar. The younger man, Ricky Melekhin, was the son of Anatoly Melekhin, Vaughn’s old cancer-ridden colleague who’d touched base with him at the Salutation Dinner. Word in the Bureau was that the rookie had followed in his dad’s footsteps, had the makings of an honest and tenacious lawman. Deprived of most of his regular trusted associates, Vaughn had had to start again from scratch, professionally. He’d figured that a green agent straight from the tree, and from a trusty sire, was less likely to have been corrupted by the power of his badge.

  But the graduate protocol had changed in Vaughn’s absence. Melekhin had wanted to come alo
ne, but his mentor, Xiang, had insisted on accompanying him in light of the distance involved and the potential for violent intervention by one or more notorious smuggling cartels. If Kyra Stone was a high-profile target, her fiancé certainly was. So while Vaughn didn’t approve of the extra unsolicited agent, he understood why Xiang had tagged long. And the two of them had delivered Cleeve on schedule.

  “Anything to report?” he asked them away from the reunited couple. “I’m guessing you were tailed.”

  “As far as the first gate,” answered Melekhin, a proud twinkle in his brilliant blue eyes. He didn’t much resemble his dad, who’d had a slight build and an even slighter manner. Little Ricky had sprouted into a strapping, charismatic cadet – now provisional agent – who would find it very hard to blend in or pass unnoticed in a regular crowd. A promising frontman, then, but not a viable undercover agent. “We doubled back twice, and had to bluff three times on the loopway. That stopped anyone from following us for at least six cycles. By that time we were pretty much untrackable.”

  “Good work. How did the client conduct himself? Any unusual behavior?”

  The youngster glanced down at his mentor, a shortish, stocky man of about forty-five. Xiang’s pocked cheeks shone like segments of a cratered moon, while his nose had been broken in the past, perhaps multiple times. Vaughn reckoned he’d moonlighted as a boxer or in some other full-contact combat sport. “He took it well,” said Xiang. “They’re usually not that calm. Almost like – and I don’t want to imply anything – I’ve only just met the guy – but if I didn’t know better I’d say he was expecting something like this to happen.”

  “You don’t think she forewarned him?” suggested Vaughn. “She told me she hadn’t been in touch with him for days, not since she and her boss fled to Mars, but given who she is, who she worked for, I wouldn’t put anything past these two. They might be using us to get them off the cartels’ radar, so they can slip out of our grasp and set up somewhere else. Did his finances check out?”