Apex

by Robert Appleton

  The sanctum was a steaming charnel house of animal skeletons and disgorged carcasses. There was no sign of the predator, but it had been busy. More species than she could recognize, let alone count. In the few days since its birth, the little critter had become a bona fide menace to life in the frozen north. But how big was it? One or two of the dead animals she saw, revenacteus flux and quinoculi, were the size of adult seals. Surely it hadn’t grown that much.

  Was it getting help? Were there more of these things at large, and they’d somehow eluded every ranger that had ventured into this region for the past few decades? Possible, but unlikely, for such a savage creature to go unnoticed.

  Ruben pulled the drone out of the lair and hovered it over warm tracks that trended west down another passage, parallel to the lakeshore. It was at that moment that Stopper and Flavia went crazy…

  Their harnesses were strapped into the sidecars, but the force of their remonstrances bucked the bikes again and again. This activated the emergency hover functions, seesawing the dogs in their seats. The undersides of the cars slammed against the ice and then bounced up, almost upending the bikes from their neutral hover. The dogs were hell-bent on getting out and going after something behind them.

  “No prizes for guessing what,” she said aloud.

  Ruben beat her to the bikes, but it took both of them to steady the seesaws. Stopper and Flavia, however, would not be steadied or silenced. So Jan unclipped her boy from his tether and attached his lead instead. He leapt out of the sidecar and dragged her after him.

  “Easy, Jane. Show him who’s boss. Let’s do this together!”

  He might want the glory for himself, but Ruben was also doing things by the book, so Jan did too. She bade Frau Zeller follow with caution around the edge of the lake on her bike. Meanwhile, Jan unclipped her snowshoes, unslung her rifle from her shoulder and carried it one-handed at her side. Stopper yanked her other arm for all his worth. She had to chastise him before he pulled her shoulder out of joint. But even then, he was relentless, Flavia equally so, as the four of them dashed after their quarry along the icy lake bank.

  For the best part of a kilometer they skirted the sheer cliff, driving through snow drifts, crunching or skidding on glare ice, their efforts to glimpse the creature thwarted by a pall of mist, the edge of which never seemed to grow nearer or further away, until the bank opened onto a wide, hilly expanse. Large snowflakes fell softly. To the north, a steep, mammoth glacier had forced the mountain’s twin peaks apart over eons. To the west and south, hills smoothed almost flat by thick snow hid the glacier’s treacherous scars and crevasses. The area immediately around the lake, before the glacier, appeared more solid, but they were going to have to be extra careful from here on.

  The dogs kept sniffing at the creature’s prints, but they’d stopped their barking. Then both halted and stood tall at the same time, snouts pointed into the gentle breeze coming down the icefall. But there was no sign of tracks in that direction. They clearly trended westward, into a gulch between mountainside and glacier.

  Jan cycled through her omnivision spectra, hoping to spot a trail, a trace, something that would tell her why the dogs had ceased the hunt. A second creature? An avalanche?

  “What is it, girl? What are we waiting for?” Ruben crouched to implore Flavia, but she ignored him just as Stopper ignored Jan. Still the large flakes fell gently. And still the glacier loomed with ancient slyness; a very distant creak, the only sound anywhere, likely signaled its only progress in some time.

  A crunch and a spit of static made her look down at Ruben. But he’d neither moved nor spoken; he was looking quizzically up at her. Another spit unleashed a staccato scream. They spun round together, holding back the dogs as they burst into frenzied lunges. Frau Zeller was not there. Her bike was practically on its side over the broken ice. Still hovering, its self-righting gyros were being opposed by…a strong, persistent pull. It leapt upright and spun, its trailer whipping round over the exposed water.

  “Ja—”

  Frau Zeller bobbed up for a second, scrabbling against the blood-smeared ice, then she disappeared into the hole.

  Jan sped off to help her, and yelled “What are you waiting for?” at Ruben. It snapped him out of his shock. He and Flavia raced ahead in no time.

  The assault on the hoverbike resumed. A frenzy of savage blows and powerful jerks pummeled it down against the ice, but it kept righting itself. One yank pulled it over so hard its handlebars crashed through the top layer of ice and clanged on the rocky bank beneath. This noise seemed to incense the creature further. It leapt onto the seat and, with a flurry of vicious stabs, pierced the shell of the vehicle’s flanks multiple times. Jan’s first glimpse of its form confirmed that part of her deduction, at least – sharp-tipped, wing-like appendages that it used for stability when moving, and most definitely for attack! Other than that, it appeared slender, supple, segmented, armored, its head partially retracted inside its breastplate for combat. And its taloned hexapod limbs were no less tenacious than its wing incisors.

  The damage quickly ruptured the fuel cell. Caustic smoke billowed from the engine, masking the creature once again. Neither the vapor’s smell nor its toxic nature deterred the onslaught, though. Several more seconds of punishing damage shredded the bike’s guts. Perhaps disappointed that there wasn’t a meal inside, or simply confused as to what this stubborn flying thing was, the creature slithered down through the hole in the ice and vanished.

  “Miz Zeller!” shouted Jan.

  “Kirsten!” called Ruben.

  But the icy water sloshed under the poisonous cloud, and she didn’t reappear. It was too dangerous to venture near the breach. One, the ice was unstable. Two, the creature might spring up at any moment. And three, the dogs did not wear breathers, so letting them anywhere near that acrid smoke was unwise.

  “We need to end this now!” he said. “Lure it up somehow. Bait it. One shot is all I need.”

  “You hope. It looked pretty well-armored to me.”

  “These darts can pierce gigas Ladon scales.”

  “Yes, but this is something we’ve never come across before,” she reminded him.

  “You have a better idea?”

  “We send for backup immediately. Frau Zeller—”

  “Is gone! You saw that thing go to work. No way she survived that.”

  “You don’t know that, Ruben.”

  “Then why isn’t she contacting us? Her ’pod works underwater. She can’t be that far away.”

  “Maybe it was damaged.”

  “In which case her breather was damaged and she’s dead anyway,” he said. “Come on, we’re wasting time. I say we fetch the other bikes. It seems to really hate those. Maybe if we rev one up on the water’s edge—” he motioned around the lake, near the area where the dogs had lost the scent, “—over there. It didn’t just up and vanish. It doubled back underwater. Somewhere over there is another entry point into the lake. An underground river network. We tease it out there, then we both put it to sleep. Look, we’ve still got the trailer. All we need now is the moxie to pull this off. And I know you’ve got that, Jane Hopper. What do you say?”

  She imagined, beyond the mist, the mountains that stood between them and Miramar. They would interfere with any radio distress call, and with the sat net intermittently offline, a live uplink was unlikely. “It’s worth a try,” she said. “I’ll activate my SOS and record a distress call the ’pod can recycle on all frequencies.”

  “We’re in the mountains.”

  “I know. But there’s a chance someone on this latitude might pick it up and relay it.”

  “Fine. Do that. I’ll get us re—”

  A wolfish snarl from Flavia cut him short. The big husky reared up and pulled him into a sprint back around the lake. “Okay, I think I just saw it,” he said on the run, and glanced back to make sure Jan was in pursuit. She was. And almost on her ass – the surface was slick and bone hard at several points where smaller waterf
alls had frozen across the bank. “Be ready to take a snapshot,” he cautioned. “This thing moves like a supernova. It’s on the—ah, okay, new plan. I see a spot where we can ambush it. Jane?”

  “I’m with you.”

  “When I break right, you keep your heading, parallel to this trench.”

  “Copy that,” she replied. “And we take positions on opposite sides near the T branch? To get it in a crossfire?”

  “You got it. We’re simpatico.”

  For the first time in our lives, she thought.

  Crouching over the three-meter drop, her rifle aimed at the heart of the crossroads below, Jan harbored serious doubts about the wisdom of this trap. It might be sound in theory, but in practice it had a number of fatal flaws. The dogs’ incessant growling and barking killed any hope of surprise. The creature could easily climb up at any point along the trenches and rush her or Ruben from behind. Perhaps most importantly, the tranq darts worked fast but not necessarily fast enough; without knowing its anatomy or its nervous system, there was a risk of potency lag. At close quarters like this, the creature might still get in its killing strike.

  The big flakes continued to fall gently. The dogs’ displays of aggression continued to point to their enemy being close by, somewhere along the T branch to Ruben’s right. Long minutes wound by like hidden fuses, threatening to explode at any moment. But nothing happened. Jan’s left arm began to ache, so she shifted position to rest her elbow on her knee. Her fingertips and ear tips began to tingle. Stopper stood tall, his hind legs tensed, bent slightly, ready to spring into action.

  But nothing happened.

  She rolled her neck, stretched her limbs one at a time to stay limber. The sound of measured breaths filled her headspace. Snow settled all about like wool on winter sleep. A core chill gnawed and made her shudder; it rose up her chest with a silent bell-ringing shiver that set her teeth a-chatter. There was a disbelief that she was here, now, doing this instead of the million other things she could be doing and wanted to be doing. There was a strong desire to call quits for now and return tomorrow with a freaking arsenal. Then reality bit, and she was in the trap that was set. Theirs. Its. Fate’s. And there was no escaping it until someone made a move.

  But nothing happened.

  The first pangs of a headache creased the center of her crown. She exercised her brow muscles to keep the blood flowing, but it only made the ache worse. Dehydration was a ranger’s most persistent foe. It was the easiest thing to overlook and it restarted its insidious countdown after each drink. She’d left her pack and her canteen at the hoverbike. Careless really, but they’d been forced to improvise. They hadn’t had—

  A muffled scraping silenced the dogs. The rhythm was frantic, chaotic. It reverberated through the ice for about half a minute, then it stopped. The snowflakes weren’t as big any more but there were far more of them. If the wind got up it would quickly become a blizzard, but for now there was only a gentle breeze blowing down the glacier.

  Flavia backed off a little and whimpered. She danced on the spot at the end of her taut lead and seemed to want to pull Ruben away. Stopper whined as well, but he was watching Flavia. Whatever their instincts had cottoned on to, it seemed to be on Ruben’s side of the trench. Then she really pulled…

  The ice gave way under Ruben and he plummeted before he could get a word out. Snatching the lead saved him, but he had to drop his rifle to grip it with both hands. He gave a cry of pain, as though his legs had been wounded. Flavia dug in low and backed up, pulling him out. His weight on the edge of the hole opened the crack further. It was a crevasse, Jan reckoned, superficially iced over; thick enough to hold his weight, the ice had to have been destabilized from beneath. Which explained the frantic, muffled scraping.

  No sooner had he struggled to his feet with a bleeding ankle than the creature scrambled out after him. It circled to his right, reared up to its full height – four feet, at least – and flung out its wing-tip appendages ready to strike. Jan aimed her weapon. Damn it! Ruben was hobbling into her firing line. She sidestepped to get a better angle, took aim.

  Flavia leapt onto the creature’s back and brought it down sidewise. A curtailed blast of its bass-horn voice suggested the impact had knocked the wind out of it. The big husky bit into its shoulder and shook it like a deflated innertube. It appeared lifeless, but only for a moment. With a violent contortion it flung Flavia off and landed prone, tensed, alert. As though it was reassessing its strategy. With the feelers on one of its upper limbs it touched the bite wound on the opposite shoulder. Then it rushed Ruben again, a lightning quick crab-like attack so low to the ground that it barely resembled the same animal.

  Again the husky intervened, this time grabbing a wing tucked against the creature’s flank and dragging her writhing enemy away from her master. Flavia lost her grip. The creature darted away, wary of her, and circled back toward the crevasse. Jan aimed, took her shot. The dart buried itself in the snow a few meters behind its target. She reloaded. Shot again. Tough to hit a moving animal, especially from the side. She missed by inches. This time the creature turned and saw where the dart had come from. It paused to watch what Jan was doing, fluttered its injured wing, then slunk down into the hole before she could fire again.

  Any notion of its retreating was wishful thinking. It sprang up from the trench and made a beeline for Jan, neither crab-like nor winged, neither low nor erect. It seemed to be adapting, trying new modes of attack. This was an all-limbs, all-out berserker strike. A ferocious leap to kill. She fired a snapshot and hit something. Stopper threw his full weight at the creature in mid-jump, side on. His momentum hurled it off course. Again, the bass-horn punched its note of distress. Winded on landing. It backed off, circled around to get a better angle on Jan. Again it rushed her. Stopper didn’t hesitate. He leapt onto its back and savaged it, mindful of its lethal wing-tips and the strength of its writhing. That was its weakness, he’d figured: on its back, between its shoulders where the wings couldn’t reach. He thrashed it and mauled it and wouldn’t relent.

  Flavia leapt across the trench and joined in. The creature fought as hard as it could, but it just couldn’t get up. The dogs bit hard and shook it and drove it into the drifts of virgin snow. It was as vicious a pummeling as any alien animal had ever received from an Earth-derived species. In a paroxysm of desperation, of survival, it finally managed to curl itself into a ball and then throw itself under Flavia. Snow and ice flew up as its claws scythed a path away from them. It scurried off into the hinterland, with the dogs in furious pursuit.

  Somewhere in the area they’d lost its scent before, it vanished again.

  Ruben’s ankle was broken. His Achilles tendon had been severed, so there was no way he could walk on it.

  “Jane, just go. Leave me here. You need to get the bikes.”

  “Two bikes? On my own?” She thought around the problem. “I could tow yours.”

  “There you go. Sangfroid. That’ll work.”

  “You sure you’ll be all right? What if that thing comes back?”

  “I’m betting it will, sooner or later,” he said, wincing in agony. “It doesn’t seem to take no for an answer. Which is why you need to go. Now. Don’t give it time to lick its wounds.”

  “Right. Here, you take the rifle.” He didn’t refuse. “I’m pretty sure I hit it once,” she added.

  “That should slow it down.”

  “But it won’t stop it altogether.”

  “We’ll need stopping power for that,” he said. “In my rucksack, there’s an Ares P-41.”

  “Same here.”

  “Great minds think alike.”

  “So do bankrupt ones,” she replied. “Okay, I’m off. Flavia, do your thing. I’ll be back in record time.”

  But she wasn’t. At the end of the kilometer run back to the frozen waterfall, twin columns of yellow smoke dashed any hopes of a quick getaway. Her hoverbike had been mauled, its guts ripped out. Ruben’s was on its side, partially submerged in
the lake, the fuel cell smoldering. Both sidecars were more or less intact, but not much use without impulse. Their supplies, too, lay strewn across the ice. She managed to retrieve Ruben’s rucksack and one spare O2 canister. Her own supplies, though, were too far out on sheet ice she wasn’t sure of and daren’t risk walking on, not even with snowshoes.

  “Okay, boy, what do we do now?”

  In Stopper’s loyal gaze she saw one thing for certain – she was going to get out of this alive. He would make sure of that. But the options for rescuing Ruben were dwindling fast. She could hike back to camp, return with one of the rovers, only that was a long way on foot. It would be dark long before she got there, and without shelter Ruben might not survive. He’d probably try to build one for himself, using the trenches and the loose snow. But there was a more immediate problem: the creature. He was right – it didn’t take no for an answer. At least four times it had been punished by the dogs, and each time it had come back for more. A vociferous apex predator staking out its territory would not go quietly into the night. It would be back with a vengeance, having learned from its previous mistakes. What if Flavia couldn’t fight it off on her own next time?

  No, she couldn’t afford to leave them alone for that long.

  “So we can’t fly him out, and he can’t walk out. We’re just going to have to pull him out…somehow.” She crouched beside Stopper, hugging his neck. “Come on, boy, work with me. We’ve got two sidecars but no engines. Without impulse, the pulling power is going to have to come from…” She tightened her fist on the grip of his lead, stroked his harness straps, and smiled to herself. “From you, old friend. You and Flavia are going to pull us out of here.”

  She was about to uncouple the sidecars from the wrecked bikes when something Ruben had said earlier, no more than a throwaway remark really, inspired a change of plan. “We’ve still got the trailer,” he’d said. Frau Zeller’s trailer! More efficient by far than dragging two unwieldy sidecars; one trailer, holding two people and a handful of supplies, was the better option. Two huge GenMod canines, in peak health, could pull that all day.