Apex

by Robert Appleton

  It didn’t hurt that they’d dated for several months as Omicron cadets, and that, after a mutual and amicable break-up, they’d retained a sweet interstellar ’pod-pal friendship ever since. Lacey was happily married, and set to become a grandmother for the second time early next year. The gaunt face that popped up and stuttered into motion on Isherwood’s mainframe VDU did not look like hers, not until Vaughn enlarged it to fullscreen and saw that familiar dimpled smile that drew out the severity of her high cheekbones. Gone was her long-flowing brunette hair; it was now a streaky silvery chestnut, and she wore it up in an odd lopsided bun. He ghosted with self-consciousness as he watched a tired, willowy version of a woman he’d always seen as young and bubbly. Her voice, too, was measured, formal, as though she was giving dictation. Vaughn reckoned there was a PA in the room with her, feeding her technical information while she spoke.

  “…Proxima Pharmaceutical…is under investigation for using unlicensed live bio materials in its skin de-ageing products. We’ve sourced at least nine substances back to exobiological cellular matter found on Hesperidia. And that’s just Proxima. Let’s see…ah yes, seizures of illegal bio materials for industrial research – specifically ‘nylonicum’ for tensile-strengthening applications, seized at Aphelion 41 and on Lunar One. This stuff has made it as far the Core worlds. The list goes on, Vaughn. We’ve cross-referenced rafts of illicit bio matter with the various colonial science data, and Hesperidia keeps showing up. Investigations suggest a strong link between commercial tourism and smuggling.

  “With regards to your specific inquiry, the two men arrested on Hesperidia on suspicion of smuggling bio materials – Leonard P. Nevercott and Joshua Roark – on twenty-one August of this year…were released via plea bargain into witness protection, following a joint investigation by COVEX and the Federal OC Judiciary. The local law enforcement reports you sent us cannot be corroborated because the relevant COVEX files have been classified pending joint ISPA task force operations…”

  Lacey muted her mike, spoke something across the room, waited, then turned back to the camera and unmuted. “Okay, Vaughn, the rest is off the record, so I’m switching to a personal file.” The image blanked, stuttered back to life, no longer with the Omicron insignia in the top-right corner of the frame. “Between you and me,” she went on, “based on what you said about how tricky it is to farm some of these bio materials, there’s clearly more than one rat behind that smuggling operation. It’s been in play for at least three years, based on what ImEx has seen, and possibly a lot longer. Our C.I.s with links to biotech fences say there’s been a steady stream of contraband from Hesperidia. So it’s a recurrent security issue. And if your man Carlisle collared those two tourist smugglers so easily, the question is: how are other smugglers getting away with it? Surely, if they’re using civilian tourist mules, there’d be more amateur mistakes. And more arrests.

  “You once told me that you always look for the common denominator, the point where the means and the motives intersect. Well, there’s a limited number of personnel in permanent residence there. Why not take another look at who oversees security before departure, and which of them has a link, however tangential, to the COVEX people there right now. Sooner or later, greed outgrows prudence, and in my experience, even the most cautious bootleggers do something audacious now and then, to up the stakes of the game. It’s all about people and power. So what moves are being made there, and who stands to benefit? Who stands to exert more control?

  “If you find anything concrete, Vaughn, be sure to let me know immediately. ImEx will swoop down so fast they’ll think Fifth Condor Squadron is back in business. In the meantime, say hi to Jan for me. And buy her something nice. You don’t need a reason. You never were any good at the whole gift-giving thing, but you know you should really start making an effort. Buy her something feminine and corny. Trust me, she’ll light up inside, even when you’re not there. This is Lacey, love doctor, signing off.”

  Vaughn chuckled at her insolent wink, but as he got up and stretched, sighing himself into a gigantic yawn, he felt the ions of the universe around him bristle, invisible antibodies roused to life by a foreign body whose unbelonging had just made itself known. It stunned him into a deep melancholy, the worst he’d experienced since his return from the Star Binder. As he gazed through the squalid sheets of rain outside, a bittersweet heartache enveloped him. It was homesickness, but for a time that had never existed for him – an in-between populated by friends and colleagues and every marker of the natural order, almost a generation-long party – time he pined for, but which repelled him with equal strength.

  No, there was no way to reconcile the skew, so he had to put it behind him. And yet the best and the worst aspects of his life spanned that missing time. To recall them in their entirety, he had to broach that gap. Jan, Stopper, his career triumphs, his biggest mistakes, his tragic regrets: all were bound to the old Vaughn, and he would have to carry them, astride the alienation, wherever he went.

  So live in the moment, Jan would tell him. Enjoy what’s real, what’s right in front of you. To hell with the rest.

  That was how she lived her extraordinary life on an alien world, and the more he thought about it, the more it appealed to him too. Elsewhere the heartache was bound to follow him, the irreconcilables were bound to drag him down whenever he was alone. It was only this place that was somehow timeless. And with Jan and Stopper ageing so slowly, he would never have to be alone ever again, here on the Hesp. He would not need to suffer homesickness if he made this his permanent home.

  Lacey’s digital attachment icon sprouted wings on the desktop and chirped its reminder for him to download the inventories of seized substances illegally exported from Hesperidia. Vaughn rubbed his tired eyes with the heels of his hands. Half an afternoon and a full evening’s work on the mainframe had wiped him out. He couldn’t take another xenozoology lesson or substance manifest, but he did crave some good company, someone to kick back with, share a few drinks, shoot the breeze into the early hours. The storm was raging outside, so he downloaded the attachment to his ’pod, remotely backed it up to his ship’s memory bank, then went downstairs to the communal lounge area.

  A family of tourists was in good spirits at one of the hologram roundtables, doing a quiz on Hesp wildlife, in which a 3D image of an animal would pop up in the center, and the players had to press the correct name on a holographic panel that rotated its multiple choice answers around the table’s circumference. The first person to hit the correct answer won points, depending on how fast they got it, while wrong answers detracted points.

  Vaughn fed a five-credit clip into the drinks vending machine, said “Fusion Max with lime”, and waited for his soda to pour. A pair of young rangers-in-training he vaguely recognized powered up the twin pinball machines next to the bar, which was closed. He sipped his Fusion and watched the family delight in getting most of the animal names wrong, with the youngest girl quietly racking up points by guessing late, after the other players had eliminated a number of wrong answers. A sound strategy, and she was deceptively alert despite her faux “bored teenager” aloofness. Vaughn got about half the animal names right, mentally crowing after each one. Zoology really wasn’t his forte, but he’d tried hard to remember Jan’s oft-mentioned species. And it pleased him to know that if he ever did decide to turn in his Omicron badge and head up Hesp security, he at least had a decent working knowledge of the beasts around him.

  A vibration in his wrist began to itch. When he peeled up his sleeve, the smart ink pulsed back and forth under the skin on his forearm – a nano-alert – an emergency distress signal relayed by his ’pod from an outside source. He downed the remainder of his soda, then dashed upstairs to put his omnipod on. The live audio exchange on the same frequency soon had him throwing on a rain cloak from the main airlock cloakroom, and sprinting out into the storm to his ship.

  “Miramar Control, Miramar Control, this is Ranger Quebec Niner Four, Ranger Quebec Niner Four.
Over.”

  “Ranger Quebec Niner Four, this is Miramar Control. How can I help you? Over.”

  “Miramar Control, this is Quebec Niner Four, approximately four klicks east of Big Fens Geyser, heading south-south-east toward you. Requesting retrieval for two adults and two canines. One adult has a broken ankle. We have been pursued by a lethal unknown predator – it may or may not be tracking us, so come armed. Over.”

  “Quebec Niner Four, this is Miramar Control. Message received. Do you want me to escalate this to a mayday distress call? Over.”

  “Miramar Control, this is Quebec Niner Four. That’s a negative on the mayday. We do not appear to be in imminent danger any longer. The predator may have headed north back to its lair. But request armed retrieval as a precaution. Over.”

  “Quebec Niner Four, this is Miramar Control. Retrieval will be delayed due to the storm, but we’ll get to you as soon as possible. Our excursion log lists you as a party of three adults. What is the status of your third member? Over.”

  “Miramar Control, this is Quebec Niner Four. I’m sad to report Kirsten Zeller of COVEX is missing presumed dead. I’ll give the coordinates of her last known position when I come in, and we can discuss a possible search and retrieval operation. Over.”

  “Quebec Niner Four, this is Miramar Control. Sorry to hear about Miz Zeller. Stay on your current heading if possible, and we’ll come fetch you asap. I’ve advised the rangers to come armed. Over.”

  “Miramar Control, this is Quebec Niner Four. Copy all that, and thanks. It’ll be good to be warm again. Out.”

  Vaughn spotted her trailer’s emergency lights during his first flyover, and called it in. But even when she was back in a warm place – his ship’s lounge, lying on the sofa, covered in a fleece blanket, nursing a hot chocolate with extra marshmallows – it took Jan the best part of an hour to stop shivering altogether. Ruben chose to remain on oxygen whilst on board, saying it would help his pulmonary system to acclimate to the change in pressure. He passed out on the bed almost as soon as his head sank into the pillow. Vaughn wrapped him in a safety blanket, on suspicion of hypothermia, after having redressed his ankle. The dogs he fed a full bag of Rip ’Ems each – a seven-course feast by their standards – but it was all he had on board, and they had just burned about 12000 calories.

  Though Jan was eager to make her full report to Isherwood and Tynedale, Vaughn let her sleep there on the ship until morning. He looked in on Stopper and Flavia from time to time – they hardly stirred from their much-needed slumber – and only let Doc Cochran on board, so he could take a mobile X-ray of Ruben’s fracture.

  The worst of the storm passed before sun up, but the rain continued to hammer Miramar glade well into the afternoon, swamping the green and ruining the work Isherwood had done to resurface the LZ after the meteorite damage.

  Jan woke refreshed, and despite a stiff back, was surprisingly animated after such an ordeal. She brunched with Vaughn, and he’d never known her talk with her mouth full so often; she couldn’t wait to share her adventures. Half-chewed theories about the predator’s biology tumbled into one another like the frosted Wheaties she devoured. Vaughn mostly just nodded and admired her pluck – an ordinary person would be moping around in a timid daze for some time after a grueling life-or-death pursuit like that.

  He’d only snatched a few power naps during the night and was in need of a long, uninterrupted sleep, but Jan’s energy was infectious. She’d presented the creature’s arrival in such dramatic terms – words like ‘unprecedented’, ‘game-changing’ and ‘ecological disaster’ she did not bandy about lightly – that there was no way he was going to bow out now. He had to see what the rangers and COVEX would do next.

  Jan called an emergency meeting of all available department heads in the HQ conference room. Tynedale presided, and invited the other contestants vying for First Ranger. Quell and Prabang had already set out to fetch specialist instruments from one of the other outposts, for their own assignment, so they weren’t able to attend, but Thiem and Carlisle did. Ruben attended remotely from his hospital bed, where he was still on oxygen, the extreme cold and the abrupt changes in altitude having affected his pulmonary system, though Doc Cochran hadn’t yet given an official diagnosis.

  The COVEX people flashed Vaughn an occasional leery glance as he observed the meeting from the corner of the room. He was treading on their jurisdictional toes, and they’d be glad to see the back of him, he knew – until the shit hit the fan, of course. Bureaucrats were like the finery of tall trees out here: high and mighty in the sunshine, but when a strong wind blew, you’d soon be scraping them off your boot. Isherwood was no politician. His presence at least helped deflate the COVEX pomp to a bearable level. And of course Jan was about as circumspect as a knee to the groin.

  “This isn’t about the meteorite crash anymore,” she told Tynedale. “Forget that. That’s cosmetic. What we’re dealing with, in ecological terms, is potentially as impactful as the spontaneous migration of Hesperidus tridenticus, the deadliest known natural phenomenon ever discovered here. The creature that hunted us yesterday is every bit as savage and cunning as the Hesp hydra.”

  “But we’ve quarantined that whole region where the hydra hunts,” countered Thiem, the other female ranger. “There’s no use legislating for aberrant spontaneous migration. We simply leave it to its own devices and let it find its own ecological equilibrium. Can’t we do the same here?”

  “No, because we don’t know the extent of this new creature’s territoriality,” said Jan. “For all we know, it migrates with the seasons as a matter of course, and not as an aberrant phenomenon. Maybe across the whole planet, who knows? There’s a—”

  “That’s unlikely,” Ruben cut in, his reddened face behind the misted visor of his breather filling the large VDU on the wall at the front of the room. “It stopped the chase near the bay area. That’s a pretty clear boundary, if you ask me.”

  “It’s too early to tell what that meant. One instance proves nothing,” she reminded him. “It might have been fear of another creature, one it was downwind of. For all we know, it has no other fears in any other directions, so it has no boundaries. Again, it’s all speculation. We haven’t even begun to study this thing. But my point is that we all need to ditch this meteorite mitigation malarkey and get with the real program. Those rocks should never have gotten through, but they did, and it’s on us. If we have any responsibility here, it’s to figure out exactly what this thing is, where it came from, and how to stop it rampaging across the entire freaking continent.”

  “Hear, hear!” Isherwood provoked looks of alarm and condemnation when he placed his sidearm onto the table. “The last thing we want is this thing wandering into a tourist camp. I say we arm a couple of shuttles, flush it out of its lair with smoke grenades, and blast it back into extinction.”

  Vaughn raised a wry smile, and noted that Carlisle, the bane of poachers on Earth, had done likewise. A shared disgust among the others did not need vocalizing.

  Tynedale cleared his throat. “What does anyone else propose?”

  “Nothing until we’ve found Kirsten Zeller,” said Carlisle, his voice surprisingly mellow and well-spoken – an antidote to the group’s heightened edginess. “We don’t leave anyone if there’s even a chance of retrieval.”

  “You weren’t there. It was way too dangerous!” Ruben shot back. “We had no choice but to—”

  “Easy up, there, bucko,” said Carlisle. “That wasn’t a rebuke. No one’s suggesting you and Doctor Hopper did anything you shouldn’t have done. But this is a different situation now. We have other options available to us…”

  “How about a probe?” suggested Jan.

  Isherwood clicked his fingers. “She’s right. An MFS probe – could find a body anywhere, alive or dead, in any terrain. We have drones that could fly one out there. Manual remote control won’t be possible without sat net relay, so we’d have to either fly up north in a shuttle and pilot the probe down
while we hover above, or program its search parameters and send it out there on its own.”

  “They’re pre-programmed, right, for human search and rescue? And underwater?” asked Carlisle.

  “Uh-huh. There’s nowhere it can’t go. And it doesn’t even need to try to bring her back. So long as it locates her, it can let us know and we can send a rescue team in.”

  “I’d advise against that,” said Jan. “Anywhere near its lair, this creature will attack like a banshee. The more people you send up there, the more people will need rescuing.”

  “Agreed,” said Ruben. “Take our word for it – this thing grows more ferocious by the day. Send the probe. Don’t risk anyone else.”

  “Okay. Anyone disagree?” After receiving no other argument, Tynedale appointed Isherwood to oversee the probe’s search and rescue, then adjourned the meeting. Naturally Jan wanted to be an instrumental part of everything that happened from now on. But Vaughn pleaded for her to come away with him for the day – or even half a day – okay then, for just a few measly hours – so she could get some much-needed downtime after her traumatic chase. But he also wanted her to meet Kyra, which she’d promised to do. And last but not least, he could use some beach time, catch a little sleep whilst sunbathing in the shade.

  After much hemming and hawing, she kept her word and agreed to go. But first she collared Carlisle, who’d previously offered to help her examine the hollow rock. His knowledge of geology and astrophysics far outstripped hers, and she respected his quiet pragmatism. He agreed to set up the lab and begin studying the samples she’d brought back. She would join him later, and together they would hopefully solve some of the lingering mysteries surrounding the creature’s near-miraculous hatching.

  An upswing in not just the temperature but their spirits as well signaled Vaughn’s and Jan’s return to their former home in the West Equatorial Keys, a sandy, sea-lapped, forested setting as close to a paradise as any the lawman had found in all his galaxy-spanning travels. To him, a matter of months had passed since they’d last spent time here as a couple, with Stopper owning every inch of the island he’d so diligently marked. But to Jan, and everyone else, they’d vacated this home almost twenty years ago. It was now a functional beach hostel for overnight tour stopovers, somewhere the customers used and abused between safari stages. It had pierced his heart when Joyce Horrigan had first flown him over here on his return from the Star Binder and told him what had become of his island home. It had convinced him Jan was long gone from Hesperidia, Stopper was long dead, and he was lost in every way it was possible to be lost. And even though he’d found them miraculously alive and together at Miramar, a part of him still yearned for their shared, private existence here on Avalon Key.