Apex

by Robert Appleton

  “I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Ruben cut in. “We don’t know how big it is when fully grown – maybe not much bigger than it is now.” He scanned their faces before continuing with creaky resolve; he seemed to know he was on shaky ground and wasn’t convincing anyone, but that he had a duty to play devil’s advocate anyway. “Asexual reproduction in large predators is rare, even on Hesperidia.”

  “Your assumptions just crossed wires,” Vaughn pointed out. “Either it’s fully grown and still relatively small, or it’s a large predator that can’t reproduce on its own.”

  “It’s called conjecturing, Agent Vaughn. We’re not writing a coherent thesis here.”

  “And you’re not making a coherent argument either. If you’re going to refute something, get your story straight first.

  “I’m not refuting anything,” spat Ruben. “I’m presenting contrary possibilities. Try to keep up.”

  The big guy swung the coffee pot away from the stove and began pouring. Four cups. He handed Frau Zeller hers first, then filled his own. Next came Vaughn’s, and lastly, Jan’s.

  “Ah, ah. Give me that.” Vaughn snatched Jan’s cup before she could add her milk. He held it and his own cup out to Ruben, and said, “We’ve had enough caffeine for one day. Here, these are for you. Drink up.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said drink up. If there’s a drop left in either of these by the time I stand up, I’m going to kick the living shit out of you.”

  “Wow, Vaughn,” interrupted Jan. “What the hell? What’s this all—I’m dying for that coffee, man.”

  “Did I miss something?” asked Frau Zeller, pulling an appalled face.

  “You certainly did,” replied Vaughn. And to Ruben, “Either take these and neck them one after the other, as is, or I’ll fucking rip you in half.”

  The big guy gulped air, set down his own cup, and took Vaughn’s two. He flipped up his visor, put the first cup to his lips, but hesitated. Vaughn pulled his Kruger and aimed it at Ruben’s glistening forehead. “Drink, mister.”

  Jan gawped, speechless. She’d never seen her man so murderous over such a petty disagreement before, and it shocked her.

  Poor Ruben, who daren’t take a breath in protest or else he’d, well, die—the toxic air or the lethal energy blast had to be less appealing than a couple of long swigs of Joe—unbelievably saw fit to prolong his hesitation, prompting a vocal uproar from the women. Vaughn flicking his safety off did the trick, however. Ruben downed half the first cup before needing to close his visor to draw breath. He repeated the cycle three more times without word, without looking anyone else in the eye, and with such precise, measured moves, that Jan doubted an android could have put on a more convincing show of indifference.

  Clearing her throat to dispel the tension—yeah, right, as if that was all it would take—Jan lowered Vaughn’s Kruger to the ground, pointed out that the coffee flask was empty, and that they all really ought to get moving again if they wanted to catch their quarry before it became Godzilla.

  “Remind me never to order drinks with a lawman,” Frau Zeller whispered to Jan as they were packing up, out of earshot of the others. “What was that all about?”

  “Beats me. But if you want to make it back to base with two rangers instead of one, something’s telling me we need to put some ground between these boys.”

  “No arguments here. Ruben out front. You hold onto Vaughn like it’s Valentine’s.”

  “You stole my line,” said Jan.

  That was the last anyone spoke about the coffee standoff. Vaughn’s blood was clearly up, and anyway, Jan knew he’d explain himself in his own good time, preferably not in the presence of any more hot and murky stimulants.

  The ridgeline they climbed rose gradually out of the glacier toward a mountainous region that glittered in the frosty sunlight. The east face of the ridge grew steep, offering a precarious drop over a series of deep scars in the ice. After a few hundred meters the tracks veered sharply down the opposite, less precipitous side, then rose and fell over a series of rolling foothills. Glare ice channels in the clefts of hills hinted at rivers flowing beneath. Before long they came to what appeared to be a staggered waterfall, superficially frozen but with more than a trickle active behind the crystalline hoods of ice.

  The errant creature had dug out several dormylux holed up for the upcoming winter. Its irrepressible march into the hinterland had an increasingly spooky confidence about it, as though it had been this way before and knew the paths to its destination by heart. These included the summiting of a series of steep, twisty hill passes. And though all members of the expedition were fit and fed, the pursuit began to assume, more and more, the nature of an endurance event, which greatly favored Ruben, who hadn’t been ill the day before and relished the chance to take point, putting a crow-worthy distance between himself and the others, Flavia pulling him ever onward and upward, as though there was a prize waiting at the top of the highest peak.

  Jan would never have relented, nor would Vaughn, she knew. As they gathered on the lip of a vast lake of glare ice, a frozen tarn at high altitude, overlooked by a towering, frozen waterfall at least a thousand feet high, it was Frau Zeller who finally pulled the plug, saying, “Well, I think this qualifies as a place where angels fear to tread. We’ve given it a good go. We know where the creature went.” She swept her mittened hand over the hexapod tracks that crossed the ice and led all the way to the waterfall. “I say we call it a day. I don’t fancy falling through thin ice, and that misty area at the bottom of the falls looks lethal slippery. What say we come back another time, with more equipment.”

  “We didn’t bring the tents,” Vaughn added. “I think we’d have to camp here if we wanted to go much further. I’m with Miz Zeller.”

  “What about our two rangers?” asked the COVEX delegate.

  Jan cast her male rival a steely, inscrutable look. He returned it with interest before toeing the sheet ice, testing its solidity. It didn’t seem to give. “Skis would do well here.”

  “Snow shoes would be better,” answered Jan.

  “Too cumbersome.”

  “But safer.”

  “Hell, I’m for flying in,” Vaughn suggested, fending off a reproachful elbow from Jan. “I’m serious. A hoverbike apiece. We could cover the same ground in a fraction of the time, and we wouldn’t need to worry about breaking the ice.”

  “And scare our quarry off permanently. Genius.” Ruben’s sarcastic golf clap, an uncharacteristically blatant attempt to needle Vaughn, achieved its desired effect.

  “Then be our guest,” said Vaughn. “Trek on over the lake. By yourself. It’s what you want anyway—to do everything yourself, to be the first, the best. Go on, then. Show us all what it means to be hot shit, hotshot. We’re waiting.”

  The big guy sniffed defiantly, and stood so tall and so broad, exaggerating both dimensions, towering over Vaughn, that his shoulders might have sprouted wings at any moment and flown him across the lake. Though whether or not he’d have achieved lift-off, with Flavia protesting like a banshee as she dangled at the end of her lead, was best left to the imagination. “The rules of the contest state that we’re supposed to act as a team. The consensus has it that we make back for camp, so that’s the right course. For now.”

  “I bet that hurt to say.”

  “No, it’s called being a ranger. It’s called treading carefully. Something a blockhead lawman wouldn’t understand even if he fell in a nest of diabolus aculeus. We each have our expertise. This just doesn’t happen to be yours, Detective.”

  A sudden pain made Ruben grimace, and he doubled up in a crouch next to Flavia, hugging his stomach. When Jan examined him, he was almost as pale as the snow. The way he trembled through hot and cold sweats reminded her of what she’d suffered the previous morning.

  “What’s the matter, hotshot? Feeling a bit under the weather?” Vaughn taunted him.

  “That’s enough!” Jan scolded her man. “If he�
�s got what I had, trust me, it’s no joke.”

  “I do trust you. And trust me, the joke’s on him.”

  “What are you blathering about?”

  Vaughn chuckled to himself as he bent down to support Ruben, to prevent him having to lie on the freezing snow. “Go on, then,” he said to Jan. “Give him a couple of your pills.”

  “How do you know they’ll—”

  “They’ll work. I’ll stake my badge on it.”

  “You’re either gonna get a black eye when all this is done, or you’ll owe us all a serious explanation.” She retrieved her antiemetics, popped the pills into her fist, and then paused, regarding Vaughn with a twinkle of dawning understanding in her gaze. “No, it’s a black eye for you whether or not.” She slowly shook her head at him. And to Ruben, “Here, take these. And if they make you better, I’ll kill you.”

  “Um, does anyone want to fill me in on what all this is about?” asked Frau Zeller, petting the equally confused dogs. “There’s not even any coffee this time.”

  “It’s nothing,” replied Jan, now sharing Vaughn’s wry amusement. “A private joke that’s in no way funny, believe me.”

  “I should think not.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” said Jan.

  Chapter Nine

  It was unanimously agreed that, to better understand the potential for an ecological disaster, the best course of action was to take as many samples as possible back to the Miramar lab for study. The two halves of the hollow rock, the residual amniotic fluid, spoor samples, disgorged carcasses, and as much biological and geological minutiae as Jan could gather in a grimly focused couple of hours: she was on electric form, brokering no advice or compromise whatsoever. Frau Zeller needed no further evidence of her skills, knowledge, dexterity, or bloody-minded dedication to her job.

  Ruben, on the other hand, had displayed a bloody-mindedness of a very different sort. The antiemetics had quelled his nausea at the frozen lake, but they’d also left him drowsy, as they had Jan the day before. The difference was that he’d denied it at every turn during the trek back. And in the field, in a survival situation with other colleagues, that was reckless and selfish. Maybe he thought that by not complaining, by coming off as a trouper, it would win him points in Frau Zeller’s estimation. Perhaps he thought it would mitigate his treacherous behavior. Not a bit of it. He was now asleep in his tent, exhausted and shamed. And when the COVEX rep asked Vaughn bluntly if he had any evidence of misconduct, he didn’t stand on ceremony.

  “I saw him pour something from a vial into our drinks—mine and Jane’s,” he said. “Sleight of hand worthy of a magician, but I was watching for it. That’s partly why I’d been goading him. I suspected he’d drugged Jane’s drink the night before the expedition. You see, before I set out, I asked Doc Cochran if anyone else had suffered from food poisoning. When he said they hadn’t, I was skeptical of that being the cause. Those pre-packaged meals come in batches. If the source was contaminated, it’s highly likely more meals would have been affected. Plus, the timing was too perfect. Jane is hardly ever sick, least of all from things she eats—that woman has a caste-iron palate—so to fall ill just before she’s set to embark on a crucial career-advancing expedition whilst in direct competition with a known asshole colleague—you don’t need an Omicron badge to work that one out.”

  Vaughn lobbed her the empty vial. She caught it. “I took it off him at the frozen lake. Whatever was inside is odorless and colorless, but you might want to have it analyzed when we get back.”

  “I will. And if it’s something illicit, believe me, he’s done.” She looked flustered, disheveled. Vaughn led her to the lounge on his ship, fixed her a drink and made her comfortable.

  “What does your husband do?” he asked, noting her wedding band.

  “He’s in interstellar freight insurance. An executive in one of the top firms.”

  “A high roller. What’s the most expensive vacation he’s ever taken you on?”

  “Mm. I’d have to say Rhea. We went on a tour of the Wing Worlds, and we even dined with Queen Mircalla. That was…unforgettable.”

  “I’ll bet. Ever been on safari before?”

  “What? Here?” she asked.

  “Anywhere.”

  “Heck no.” She chuckled. “Larry’s an insurance man to his last breath. He’s so risk-averse he imports his own bottled water from the Highlands of Scotland on Earth. I’m not kidding. He co-owns the loch where it comes from. Wherever he is in the galaxy, that’s literally the only water he drinks.”

  Vaughn playfully shook his head. “So is this you rebelling, throwing caution to the wind?”

  “Detective, every woman is a little girl at heart. This little girl happened to dream of doing what your Jane does for a living. She’s an inspiration. And I’m having the time of my life out here, believe me.”

  “I’m glad.”

  She stretched, then sank back into the sofa cushion with her fingers interlaced on the back of her head. “Do you mind me asking if your case—I mean what you came to consult with Jane about—has anything to do with the black market smuggling? Glyn Tynedale is adamant it needs to be the first priority for whoever wins the First Ranger position, but as far as I know there hasn’t been an official investigation started or any kind of preliminary report filed. It seems to be mostly rumor and anecdote. As a matter of fact, the arrests made by Doctor Carlisle are the first actual evidence I’ve come across that there’s anything untoward happening on Hesperidia.”

  “You’re sure? That’s kind of hard to believe. COVEX is usually so…”

  She quirked an eyebrow. “Indeed. We have a reputation for being bureaucratic and, yes, anal i-dotters and t-crossers. I won’t deny it. Which makes it all the more unusual that something so newsworthy hasn’t been more prevalent in the memo-flow. I’m not sure how much of this I’m supposed to say to an outsider, but I’ve always trusted Omicron.”

  “Well, you certainly know how to pique an agent’s curiosity, ma’am. Why do you think it’s been played down?”

  “That’s just it – I’ve nothing concrete to add. I’m merely sharing an observation that it doesn’t appear to have been prioritized with quite the vehemence that bio-smuggling usually is. And with it being Hesperidia—the crown jewel of exobiology—that makes it doubly puzzling, why COVEX hasn’t come down on any hint of smuggling like a ton of bricks.”

  “Who would be the best person to approach about this?” asked Vaughn. “Tynedale?”

  “I would start with Doctor Carlisle. He made the arrests. Find out who initiated contact with him in COVEX, who took the suspects into custody, who took their statements. Read their statements. Then find out who the presiding case officer is. Look into law enforcement liaisons, justice investigations. If those arrests went anywhere, they’ll have a digital trail of bureaucracy it would be impossible to miss. If they didn’t, why not? COVEX prides itself on recording everything, so if a trail runs cold, well, the proverbial disappearing ink comes in all guises, I guess.”

  “Truer words were never spoken. Can I ask why you haven’t looked into this yourself? A COVEX insider is bound to get further than a feet-first lawman everyone sees coming a mile away. It’s clearly been niggling you.”

  “It isn’t my job, Detective. And like I say, everything is recorded. Someone like me makes waves, I become known as a wave-maker; they can always ground me. Someone like you makes waves, there’s no telling how high those waves can get, so they’ll be more inclined to appease you.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind rocking boats.”

  She finished sipping her Arinto, then grinned. “I know.”

  “Why so forthcoming? I thought all you people at committee are snotty autocrats who get high on their power over colonial underlings.”

  “We are, and I am. But that’s not all I am. This place is a treasure, Detective. If it’s being raped and looted, I don’t like that. I’m offended by that. And I want you to allay my suspicion that there’s something
unwholesome happening inside the human governance of Hesperidia.”

  Vaughn caught the sly glance she smuggled his way, and the reddening of her freckled cheeks – unspoken acknowledgements of her betrayal of her own people? A hint that she knew more than she was letting on? Something unwholesome happening inside the human governance of Hesperidia. That was cryptic, but it also spoke volumes about her trust in those she’d come to Hesperidia with.

  He was hooked.

  The first thing he did after he’d dropped Jan, Ruben, Miz Zeller and the two dogs off at Miramar was to radio Carlisle, who was still out on assignment. He got no reply, so he went to the HQ reception to see if Isherwood, the Deputy Governor, was in his office. There was bound to be some record of the smuggler arrests on the Alien Safari mainframe, and in Nabakov’s absence, until a “First Ranger” was appointed, Isherwood was the caretaker administrator of Hesperidia. He wasn’t in, the receptionist said. He could likely be found on the west side of the green, overseeing the repairs to the landing zone following the meteorite damage.

  Vaughn found him doing more than just “overseeing” the repairs. He was operating a maghammer, breaking up the damaged surface around the crater ready for a re-layering of the area. In contrast to Nabakov, who’d been a bit of a wuss when it came to manual labor, preferring to delegate everything short of planting trees, Isherwood had a reputation for getting stuck in. A bronzed, strong, wiry guy about Vaughn’s age and height, he’d grown long, ugly, bushy sideburns and a moustache to hide the scars from a serious reconstruction to his upper jaw. He wore navvy overalls peeled to the waist, and long johns with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. When he saw Vaughn watching him, he powered down his maghammer, removed his work gloves and wiped his visor with his neckerchief.

  “Afternoon, Detective.”

  “Isherwood. Looks like hot work.”