Apex

by Robert Appleton

  “First they concoct that fiction about Doctor Intaglio trying to poison them, without any evidence. None. Then they dispose of Kirsten Zeller because she asked the wrong questions and lifted the lid on their smuggling operation. Now they persist in smearing Doctor Intaglio, who’s done nothing wrong except tell the truth about what he saw out there in the field. Power corrupts, and who has the most power in this room? Why’s he hanging around here, taxiing his girlfriend back and forth when he isn’t on leave, he doesn’t have an official reason to be here, and he’s been given unauthorized access to your mainframe account, Isherwood, so he can delete files and bury evidence and generally cover his tracks? These two have systematically undermined security and manipulated the power structure on Hesperidia in order to position themselves as the most powerful players in a criminal smuggling enterprise so brazen, so far-reaching, it beggars belief. The top ranger to gather and smuggle out the goods, and the untouchable lawman to deliver them to his vast network of underworld contacts. Ask yourself why he’s here now, when there’s a galaxy of crimes out there waiting to be solved, if not to ensure the final game-winning moves in his insidious plot?”

  The charged silence in the room only grew more intense. No one answered him; no one dared, it was such an outrageous, intricately spun web of lies and paranoia. He’d overreached, though, surely. Invoking the meteor shower and the whole sat net malfunction as a deliberate ruse to oust Nabakov – it was so ridiculous, it was the kind of thing you’d want to believe if you were looking for evidence to support a preconceived bent. But in that overreaching he’d only further incriminated himself. Vaughn hadn’t considered the sat net going offline as anything malicious until now. So the outrageousness of Tynedale’s fiction was its only chance at achieving the end he wanted. Truly an all-or-nothing bluff.

  If the others bought it.

  “This isn’t a courtroom,” Vaughn reminded them. “No one’s under oath, and he hasn’t provided one shred of evidence to back up his claims.”

  “But Doctor Intaglio—”

  “Is as guilty as his boss over there,” Vaughn interrupted Enola Fashnu, nodding at Tynedale. “I’ll make my case in good time. Until then, there’s no need for anyone to disarm. Put your weapons away, and I’ll do the same. I’ve already made the call to local law enforcement. This is their jurisdiction, not COVEX’s. You’re a political bureaucratic organization, nothing more. If a crime has been committed, I have the power to intervene. But I’m leaving this to local law enforcement because I am here for another reason, another case. And it’s entirely official. So the question you really have to ask now is who do you trust? Don’t take my word for it. Don’t take Tynedale’s word for it. Just wait for the local law to arrive and trust them to sort this out.”

  “No! We need to incapacitate him before he starts tying up his loose ends.” Tynedale’s neck and the tips of his ears were almost beetroot red as he fumed. “Do you really want to turn your backs and let him go free? See how long is it before each of you takes a bullet.”

  “What do you suggest?” asked one of the gunmen. “He’s not coming quietly, and I’m not tangling one-on-one with a fucking Omicron.”

  “Four on one!” snarled Tynedale. “Put him in the brig and this will all be over. He won’t be able to hurt anyone else.”

  Isherwood slowly, very slowly, in full view of everyone – he even showed his hands – shuffled across to the nearest gunman, and asked him to hand over his weapon. It was the man who’d wisely refused to tangle solo with Vaughn. Possessing twice Isherwood’s girth but half his presence, the young gunman looked up to him, swallowed, and wilted. He gave Isherwood the pistol.

  Tynedale jerked toward the door but halted before he’d taken a full step when he heard Vaughn click his safety off. “This changes nothing.” Again the supercilious touch-up of his combover, during which he addressed Vaughn, “It’s still three against one. Isherwood only wanted to spare a frightened boy from his tears. But these other men aren’t boys, Detective. Do you really want to risk a massacre? Hand over your weapon, let us all escort you to the brig, and we’ll wait for your colleagues to arrive.”

  “That’s still a no.” Vaughn rolled his shoulders, advertising to his opponents that he was still very much limber and unperturbed.

  “And it’s no longer three on one,” added Isherwood. Pistol trained on the gunman to Vaughn’s immediate right, he was making his way behind Tynedale toward the door.

  Vaughn seized the opportunity. With deft sidesteps he crept behind the terrified row of COVEX reps, past the gunman with the afro near the door, who was biting his lip. But that bite belied a hidden resolve. The man sprang back against the door controls, shielding the way out, and warned Vaughn, “Do not take another step. Mister Tynedale’s right. You’re too dangerous to let go. You’ve already murdered Kirsten!”

  “Think about that. Think about what you’re implying,” said Vaughn, still aiming at Tynedale.

  “I am. She went out with you, she didn’t come back. And it all ties in to what Mister Tynedale said.”

  “What about the creature that killed her?” asked Vaughn. “Did we make that up too? We’ve got evidence to back up everything we say. The only thing Tynedale has is the word of his accomplice, Ruben, who has as much to gain from lying as Tynedale does. Ruben saw the creature kill Miz Zeller, and he knows Jan’s innocent. And do you know how I know he’s lying, that he’s in deep with Tynedale…”

  The itch in Vaughn’s forearm coincided with staggered alerts beeping all around the room. He lifted his sleeve, and sure enough the subcutaneous nano-glow pulsed up and down his arm – an emergency distress signal, just like Jan’s from the other night.

  “What is it?” asked Enola Fashnu. “What’s happened?”

  Isherwood answered, “It’s the rescue sortie.” Using eye-craft to engage his ’pod, he relayed the audio message to the room via external speaker.

  “What? You sent people up there?” Vaughn couldn’t believe it. “After what Jan and the others advised?”

  “I didn’t know he’d sent them until they were halfway there,” insisted Isherwood, shushing Vaughn with a raised index finger so that he wouldn’t interrupt the faint audio message:

  “…Miri… ontrol, this… scue Two. We’re under attack! Re… der attack! It… out of nowhere. Two men down and we’re… probes destroyed. Have medical tea… case we don’t make it back to base. No sign… Zeller in the lake after… ensive search. Recommend you do not send any further…”

  The signal cut out during what sounded like a screech of rent metal. It didn’t repeat.

  “Was that live?” asked Vaughn, noting that while the distress alert was still pulsing under his skin, there was no audio carrier on that frequency.

  “No.” Isherwood lowered his ’pod pensively. “It was picked up by the sat net…over an hour ago.”

  “The sat net?” someone interrupted. “I thought that was offline.”

  “Our tech team has been debugging it round the clock,” replied the deputy governor. “It’s been intermittently online for the past couple of days while they’ve run diagnostics on its programs. It’s a cyclical process. That’s why there was a delay between receipt and transmission of the signal.”

  “So what do we do to help them?” Enola Fashnu asked Tynedale, and when he didn’t respond, she offered the same question to Vaughn.

  “It’s your show,” replied Vaughn with a shrug. “You were warned not to go near that place.”

  “What sort of law enforcement are you?” another delegate inquired.

  “The sort who listens to expert advice on things I know nothing about. You should try it sometime.”

  “That doesn’t help those men and women.”

  “No. Not now it doesn’t. That ship’s sailed. The way I see it, you have two choices: ask for volunteers to fly up there, armed to the teeth, and attempt a rescue. Or kick it back to sector fleet and wait for them to show up with real firepower. For what it’s worth, I�
��d recommend the latter. But it’s COVEX’s show.”

  All eyes turned to Tynedale. He scanned his colleague’s faces with an inscrutable intensity, then opened his mouth ready to speak. One of the gunmen beat him to it with “There she is!” Unwittingly pointing his weapon at the window, he realized his blunder and switched hands. “One o’clock – there, over the trees! That has to be the retrieval bird we sent out. They made it.”

  Vaughn heaved a sigh of relief. The craft was a long way off, and the heat haze over the forest wavered its shape and progress, so it was impossible to tell how damaged it was. But he couldn’t discern a smoke trail of any kind distinct from the light, wispy steam evaporating from the trees – ruptured fuel cells tended to emit noxious gas coolant.

  “No. It’s going down!” Isherwood pointed out. He wasn’t wrong. The variegated colors of the forest canopy intensified, then blurred altogether as the craft dipped into it, out of sight.

  He hated himself for the thought, but Vaughn knew that that ship’s crash had probably just saved him. It was his best, maybe his only chance to escape his current bind without bloodshed.

  “Okay, brother,” he addressed the doorman while lowering his Kruger. “We’ll have to pick this up later. Those people need our help. Please make way.”

  But Tynedale’s man was not so easily swayed. “First you hand that over,” nodding to Vaughn’s sidearm.

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Then I’ll have to put you down.”

  “Shoot an Omicron agent? In cold blood? In front of all these witnesses? You’d hang before the sun set.”

  “Self-defense.”

  “Not by any definition.”

  “Mister Tynedale—”

  Isherwood lunged from the man’s blindside, snatched up his gun-arm and directed the shot at the ceiling. It punched a hole six inches wide and caused everyone in the room to duck. Down, too, went the doorman, under a hammer blow to the back of his head from the butt of Isherwood’s own weapon.

  Though the last two gunmen maintained their aims, they didn’t escalate as Vaughn and Isherwood backed slowly out of the room and, sliding the door shut behind them, bolted downstairs to the foyer airlock. The air outside was warm, muggy.

  “You go take care of the crash rescue,” said Vaughn. “I won’t be coming on this one.”

  “Understood. Go take Jan someplace safe.” Isherwood was about to kick into a sprint when he spied the clusters of tourists watching him from the lawn. Not wanting to panic anyone, he quick-walked instead, and issued the all-points summons for non-essential staff to gather at Miramar’s hangar. “I’ll see you when all this is over, Vaughn,” he called back.

  “When the rock-hoppers arrive.”

  “Copy that.”

  Vaughn headed in the opposite direction, to Jan’s cabin, where he fetched Stopper from his pen and put him on his lead, and slung a large bag of Rip ’Ems over his shoulder. Jan wouldn’t be returning here until all the conspirators were in custody, however long that took.

  A shrill animal noise pierced the tranquility of the forest. More followed, a cacophony of shrieks. They came from the direction of the crash site, roughly at the start of the fens wetlands. Vaughn hadn’t caught the explosion, but he expected to see a column of smoke at any moment. The worst possible end for those poor rangers. If only COVEX had listened to – but they had listened to someone who’d been up there, witnessed the danger firsthand. Christ, what had Ruben said? What had he been forced to say?

  “Come on, boy. Let’s go get Jan.”

  The loyal rascal looked up, cocked his head to one side, then launched toward the laboratory building, his entire rear quarters wagging with excitement. Vaughn had to pull hard to rein him in one-handed.

  “We’ll take the scenic route,” he said, casting a wary glance over the hub area between the HQ and the lawn, and guided Stopper on a wide arc toward the tree-line. Jan answered his hail, said she’d be right out.

  “Wait in the airlock until I get there,” he told her. “If you see anyone else coming, run. Lock yourself inside somewhere. I’ll get to you.”

  “Oh-kay. What’s this all about?”

  “I’ll explain on the way. Is Carlisle with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Patch him in.” After a double deep, “Carlisle?”

  “Go, Vaughn.”

  “It might not be safe for you here. The COVEX people are compromised – Tynedale and at least one other staffer are behind the smuggling operation. I don’t know how many others. They know I’m onto them, and they’ve already tried to take me out of the equation. They’re saying Jan and I killed Kirsten Zeller. It’s getting desperate – there’s no telling what they’ll do to stop the truth getting out.”

  “That’s crazy. How can I help?”

  “Get yourself out. Don’t wait around for them to compromise you, or worse. The more honest people who know the truth, the better. Where are you stationed?”

  “Right now? Papa.”

  “Good. That’s good. It’s remote and should buy you plenty of time. Hopefully this’ll all be straightened out by the time you get there.”

  There was no reply.

  “Carlisle?”

  “Vaughn, it’s me,” said Jan. “I think I can see the rock-hoppers. They’re flying in from the north, over the fens. But it looks like—hot damn, are they on fire?”

  Vaughn couldn’t see that far; he was too near the trees. So he ran southwest, up both verges to the fence enclosing the green. When he turned, his gaze swept across a view his brain somehow refused to reference. It was like a forest fire blazing across the canopy roof, but linear, geometric. They were streaks of angry reddish-orange light bent from a central source – the blurred craft in silhouette. But what could possibly have happened to the ship’s engine to make it throw out an energy signature of that kind? It was nothing he’d ever seen or heard of.

  The foliage began to fidget all across the tree-line. Branches swayed, lianas swung, birds shot out and away as though from the epicenter of an earthquake. The smallest, nippiest animals emerged next, almost too quick for Vaughn to see. Then the bigger creatures of various stripes and gaits stampeded, but not toward the green; they headed west across the tree-line. Most were terrified loners, but several groups ringed into bullish defensive positions, odd conglomerations of different species that otherwise had nothing in common, now staking their ground in collective defiance, and showing every plume and claw of their impressive regalia.

  It sent a shiver through him. The true alienness of Hesperidia had always been both the heart of its appeal to tourists and the antithesis of such a commercial enterprise. Its terrible magnificence could strike the unsuspecting and the veteran alike, because like all things wild, it cleaved to its own deep-rooted patterns of survival. It struck Vaughn now, drawing his gaze back to the forest fire and its darkly crafted crown. The curved streaks folded inwards. The fiery light collapsed with them. At the center was nothing mechanical. Vaughn saw the translucent wings meet and ripple, then fling apart with tremendous force. He glimpsed something large and hideous, as inhuman as an insect and as supple as a sea serpent, swooping with all its barbed limbs outstretched for the kill. Then the wings caught the light from the sun just so, and refracted it, magnified it into a brilliant liquid haze that somehow bent the livid colors of the spectrum into streaks that were impossible to focus on.

  It felt like alien necromancy. He summoned the words moments before Jan uttered them for him over the comm link: “What the hell has that thing turned into?”

  The creature from the crater was now airborne, about the size of a rover. It cleared the trees before Vaughn could reach Jan and Carlisle. Snapping its sharp wing tips together, it impaled the rescue shuttle during takeoff above the hangar, crushing it like it was a can of soda. Then it flapped its wings and gained altitude, up to twice the height of the trees, surveying its options. Vaughn looked to Jan, who beckoned him to follow her to the LZ. She was scared
but in control. Then he watched the frenzy of panicked tourists as they scattered back to the hotels, trampling the tardy and frozen alike, hoping four walls and a roof, no matter how flimsy, would keep them safe.

  The creature bellowed a blood-curdling caw that drowned the screams of its prey. It stopped flapping. At the apex of its ascent, it spread its wings and threw the disorienting spread of colors ahead of its swoop, as a visceral shock of light.

  It attacked Miramar green with a savage ferocity.

  Chapter Fifteen

  To everyone but Jan it was something demonic, supernatural. At first even she succumbed to the creature’s shock and awe. But a side-profile glimpse of its attack forged an intuitive link in her mind. The way it projected riotous colors was phenomenal but not unique. She’d seen the bay-dweller do much the same thing in the cave: mucous jets from apertures all across tenax’s wings sprayed the air ahead of its lunge; but instead of producing its colors through bioluminescence, it was somehow able to refract and bend sunlight through a prismatic quality in the wing membrane itself. A remarkable ability that appeared to warp reality, through light and color, utterly bamboozling its prey. It rendered the wings themselves almost invisible, and distorted tenax to such an extent in the victim’s vision that its exact proximity and shape were impossible to determine.