Jan’s eyesight had returned just enough to glimpse, in the rearview monitor, the massive wings whumping taut either side of the craft, acting like a parachute. But still it clung on, and the ship slowed, lost altitude. So it had to have one hell of a grip.
Where had it pierced?
“Stopper!”
Those two syllables, cried in desperation, seemed to rouse Vaughn from his daze. If he didn’t do something quick, it was game over for all of them.
He pointed to a scorched area on the ground ahead to their right, where twin columns of smoke rose from the veldt. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s why it didn’t work.”
She didn’t understand. But she saw enough in the fierce gaze he flashed her way moments before he pressed the fire button to know that he was back in the fight. For the loyal canine who’d leapt between them and danger without hesitation for most of his life.
A shriek from tenax faded into the hiss of rushing air. The ship shimmied, then leveled out, smooth and unimpeded. Jan watched the rearview as the creature tumbled down and away through a pitiless sky, its wing spines wrecked, smoldering. It managed to flap and flutter enough to mitigate what would have been a lethal impact from a fall of that height. But it could only limp across the empty grassland.
“Until it heals itself,” she said aloud. “You’ve no idea how resilient this thing is.”
“Then we have to finish it.”
“But how? What did you do different this time?”
“The cannons worked all along,” he said. “They were just inverted. I was firing backward.” Jan remembered the twin columns of smoke rising from the scorched area. “So I made use of that,” he added; and, shaking his head, “Next time I take lessons.”
“Me too.” She unfastened her belt, ran back to check on Stopper. On seeing his tongue sticking out through the bars of his cage, and gobs of drool slobber onto the deck, she heaved such a huge sigh that she went lightheaded for a moment. Then his little whelps and whines of excitement – maybe his version of heartfelt relief at seeing her safe and unharmed – welled her blotchy eyes with tears. Hot, wonderful tears that acted like salve on her heightened senses. She blew him a kiss and promised, “We’re going for a two-hour swimathon after this. I swear.”
Rips in the bulkhead on either flank were at least two meters long. They were high up, not near any vital circuits. A constant stream of swirling air danced Vaughn’s spare EVA suit on its hanger, kicking the boots against the metal bench.
Back in the cockpit, Vaughn touched a gentle fist to his heart when she gave him the thumbs up for Stopper. He was still trying to figure out how to flip the cannons so that they faced forward. With one eye on tenax’s lumbering gait northward, he flipped half the switches on the dash, muttering to himself.
“Can’t you just ask the computer for help?” she said.
“Already tried that. I’m pretty sure it’s a manual thing. The Pitch Hopper’s cannons couldn’t invert like that, so this has to be an optional extra.”
“We could call Control, ask if anyone else knows.”
When he didn’t reply, Jan shook her head. Men.
Meanwhile, the creature had upped its pace a little, though it still limped, using three or four of its six legs, and doing its best to shield itself from an aerial attack with mangled, spastic wings folded over its torso. That last effort was prophetic. Tenax flung apart under a devastating blast of raw energy from the heavens. The plasma burst, big enough and powerful enough to smash a meteorite the size of a city block into smithereens, vaporized the creature completely, leaving neither trace nor sample of its existence. The crater it left was the only permanent marker, a fitting memorial for a predator’s reign of terror birthed in the heat of a similar but greater impact in the north.
“Someone just broke about a thousand inviolable laws,” said Vaughn. “A satellite net firing at the surface. Wars have started over less.”
“Yeah. You want to make an arrest?”
“I want to give the sonofabitch a badge, whoever he is.”
“Shall we go find out?”
“I think we’d better,” he said, “before someone else uses it to get rid of us.”
Chapter Sixteen
“The headlines tomorrow will crucify us for this,” said Jan, recording aerial footage of the Miramar carnage with her omnicam while Vaughn circled his bird round to the LZ. “They’ll paint this place as scorched earth for holidaymakers. Look at the way these people rally round each other, though. I know I give them a lot of stick, the customers. But you do see the best of people when things are at their worst. Not just the rangers and the admin staff. We’re a pretty remarkable species, aren’t we?”
“When we’re not a panicky rabble.” Vaughn watched an elderly civilian man with a bandaged head orchestrate the loading of wounded tourists on stretchers onto an orbital shuttle. “We have our moments.”
But the provision of emergency medical assistance was not his priority right now. These staffers were fully trained and capable; they knew how to patch up wounds in the field, how to administer blood transfusions, etc., and Doc Cochran was already separating those in need of specialist surgery, for immediate flight to Saint Jacques’s warp gate hospital, from those he could operate on himself.
No, first aid was not his concern. Murder was. Tynedale was still at large, and if the old adage about animals being at their most dangerous when cornered was true – and Vaughn knew it was true – then the COVEX man was the last creature on Hesperidia they could afford to turn their backs on. Hell, if Jan hadn’t insisted on coming back here to help with the clean-up, he wouldn’t have brought her within a thousand klicks of any COVEX rep.
“Wherever you go, you go armed,” he told her; and, scanning the green, “Where’s Carlisle?”
“Vaughn, I’ve got this. I know what to do.”
He shook his head, admiring her pluck and despairing of her stubbornness at the same time. “Find Carlisle. Stay with him, for me.”
“I’ll…get to him.”
“Or at least stay around people – the more the better. Tynedale’s less likely to make a move in public.”
“Copy that. Now go.”
The first shuttle took off for Saint Jacques. The wake from its thrusters sprayed Vaughn with water droplets as he skirted the crater Isherwood had been working on the previous day. The deputy governor was the only “official” he trusted. And as the rock-hoppers still hadn’t shown up, hadn’t even sent word despite the sat net being intermittently operational, Vaughn knew his next move would have to be decisive.
He dodged a young couple wrestling with a crushed magno-locked suitcase that kept springing open, then helped a boy with a bleeding ear find his grandparents, one of whom had to hop around on a mangled prosthetic leg. Vaughn pointed them to the line of fold-out wheelchairs that were being assembled outside Coriander Hotel. They thanked him for his help. At the boy’s wide-eyed pleading, Vaughn unclipped his badge and let the youngster play with it for a minute.
He used that time to get a bead on who was where around Miramar. The rangers were all engaged. Hotel staff and HQ admin personnel dashed about fetching equipment, or helping to carry or wheel the injured: those with minor wounds to the HQ foyer, those with treatable injuries to the hospital, and those in bad shape to the shuttles. Jan was right. Not just the staffers pulled their weight. Hardscrabble colonial living had toughened generations of pioneers in ways that pampered Earth dwellers – well, those from the affluent nations – could never imagine. He’d seen it throughout his travels as a lawman. The juxtaposition was perhaps starkest here on Miramar green: colonists, by necessity, had to know first aid, emergency survival protocol, and they responded to crises with an all-hands-on-deck approach, mucking in and doing whatever it took to keep the community safe. Alone, in their family units, they tended to be territorial, driven, mistrustful of others. But in an emergency, they, mirroring the symbiotic defensive behavior displayed by disparate animals on the Hesp, we
re better equipped to protect the colony as a whole than anyone who hadn’t experienced that day-to-day fight to carve out a living against the odds.
But there were always rogues, like tenax, who conducted themselves according to their own stripe, who threatened to tip the balance of an ecosystem with their excessive thirst for power.
Tynedale was the latest. Flanked by two armed colleagues, fired up with renewed zeal, he strode out to meet Vaughn on the asphalt hub between the hospital and the visitor’s center. The area still steamed. Black smears scarred the asphalt where the flamethrower and the Molotov cocktail had scorched tenax. Splashes of mud covered the entire ground, and the walls of both buildings, around where the writhing creature had dowsed its flames on the flooded part of the lawn. If he weren’t confined to his breather, Vaughn would have smelled charred alien flesh that would have knocked him sick.
The other COVEX delegates, including Enola Fashnu, filed out of the visitor’s center and formed a barrier between Vaughn and Tynedale. They were keen to defuse the situation, as was Isherwood, who ran over from one of the depots to join them. But when pressed, the deputy governor refused to relinquish his own sidearm, and was thus forced to choose sides. He stood beside Vaughn, waving away all pleas for a unilateral ceasefire.
“When there’s a dispute,” he said, “the last one you should want to disarm is the licensed lawman. Anyone says any different, his reasoning’s taken a walk. So I recommend y’all do just that – take a walk – and let the law handle this.” He turned to Vaughn. “How am I doing?”
“You’re not wrong, brother.”
But he was wrong about them taking a walk. Instead, they scattered when Tynedale cocked his weapon. One or two of them slithered on the wet surface. Vaughn didn’t hesitate, nor did Isherwood. The conference room standoff resumed, except Tynedale had two less gunmen backing him up – tenax had dined on them. At his beckoning, though, a new player entered the fray. Ruben hopped out on crutches from the rear of the hospital. The big husky wasn’t with him.
“Is Flavia okay?” Vaughn asked as he circled round toward the invalid. Isherwood followed, no doubt bemused by the sudden change in tactics. But this was a move Vaughn had hoped the smugglers would make. It brought all the lies and the liars onto the board at the same time.
Ruben nodded. “She’s sedated. Looks like a fractured pelvis.” Backing away on crutches wasn’t easy – the big guy thought about it, but held his ground. After all, Vaughn had his Kruger trained on Tynedale, not him.
The COVEX man yelled, “What are you doing? Vaughn, I’m warning you. Get away from him!”
“It’s time we had a little chat,” replied Vaughn. “Settle this once and for all.”
The color drained from Ruben’s face. “Mister Tynedale, I—I don’t think…what if he’s…aw crap, what should I do?”
“Stick to your story, boy. Stick to the truth. Don’t let him bully you like he’s bullied his way to where he is now. He’s the cornered one. Remember that. Vaughn – take one more step and I’ll—”
“And you’ll what? Nobody ever got hurt from having a chat.”
“I know how you people interrogate witnesses. You put the squeeze on them till there’s no truth left.”
Vaughn pursed his lips at Tynedale, had to swallow his urge to spit. He raised his voice so that everyone could hear: “If it’s truth you people want, let’s air it, shall we? Once and for all, let’s air the truth so that everyone can see.” He tore Ruben’s mask and breather rig off his head, then flung them high onto the hospital roof.
The invalid immediately started coughing. His eyes bulged, his glistening face turned ashen, then purple. He dropped his crutches in order to clutch his throat, then collapsed in a heap, choking.
“Uh, Vaughn, what the hell, man? Guy’s gonna clock out. He can’t breathe.”
“Easy, Isherwood. He’s had this coming to him.”
“What? You want him to suffocate? Don’t tell me Tynedale was telling the truth.”
“No, you’re watching the truth. Easy, I said. Nobody lifts a finger to help him.” Vaughn flicked his pistol’s yield wheel to its highest setting. “Make me vaporize you, Tynedale, you sack of shit. I said nobody move!”
The other two COVEX gunmen trembled with fear and vexation so convincing, it would be almost impossible to fake that body language, those expressions. Their boss, on the other hand, didn’t even try to fake his. He clenched into a ball of hateful indignation, hunched and hideous, chewing his bottom lip until he drew blood and snorting curses at the lawman who’d refused to blink in this deadly game of brinkmanship.
“This is murder!” one of the gunmen cried.
“If you think that, by all means, save him,” replied Vaughn. “Buddy breathe with him till someone can fetch him a fresh rig.”
The appalled henchman glanced to his boss for permission, and appeared even more vexed when he didn’t get it. “Sir? He’s going to die if I don’t—”
“No. That’s what he wants.” Tynedale looked up at the roof, then across to Vaughn. “Okay, so you’ve killed another witness. What next?”
“Oh, I’ll think of something.” Vaughn strolled over to the choking man and, after making sure he had everyone’s undivided attention – not that they were tempted by any prior engagement – stepped onto Ruben’s broken ankle. Not with all his weight; just enough to elicit a cry heard across the continent.
He guessed one or more of the gunmen would snap under the pressure, perhaps dangerously, so he crouched behind Ruben as the latter sat up, shuddering in agony. No shots came. Vaughn caught the invalid’s faint, and held him for a few moments in his lap. Then he gave him a few gentle slaps on the cheek to rouse him. “Wakey-wakey, Doctor Intaglio.”
Ruben jerked upright with a start, winced. But did not cough.
“Where am I? Where’s Flav—”
“Flavia’s fine. She’s sedated, remember? We’re in Miramar. Everything’s okay now. You helped us fight off the monster, and you saved both dogs, so we’re in your debt for that, Jane and me.”
With sudden realization, the invalid sucked in a lungful of Hesp air, held it, and twisted out of Vaughn’s hold. Partway through his escape he relented, his shoulders drooped, and he dragged himself a few feet across the wet asphalt, where he sat alone, head bowed, eyes closed into the sun’s glare.
“What is he? GenMod?” whispered Isherwood, taking an involuntary step back. “Why would anyone make… They were all outlawed decades ago. Why make a person who breathes Hesp air? It makes no sense. This isn’t even a colony.”
“Good question,” said Vaughn. “How about it, Tynedale?”
The COVEX man made no reply.
Hushed chatter among his unarmed colleagues grew bold and sharp, accusations flew like friction sparks as the reps closed in on their cornered boss. The other two gunmen lowered their sidearms but, still loyal to Tynedale – or at least hoping that he was as blindsided by this new revelation as they were – held the small mob away from him.
A gust upended half the strands of his combover. He narrowed his eyes at Vaughn, as if summoning even more hate, more treachery, and straightened his hair once more. “It seems I owe you an apology, Detective. We’ve all been deceived. In my defense, I was only acting on information given to me – by someone we now know to be false. No, more than false. Unnatural. An abomination! But it’s clear now—” He raised his voice to address the mob “—the false witness has revealed himself as Kirsten Zeller’s murderer! Why else would he lie about seeing Vaughn and Doctor Hopper kill her? I’ll tell you why. It’s because this thing, this abomination – Ruben Intaglio – was the smuggler all along. He sought to ensure his position as First Ranger by nobbling the sat net, by trying to poison Detective Vaughn and Doctor Hopper, and by disposing of the only witness who’d found him out, and then framing two innocent people for his crimes. If we’d have known what he was – this unnatural freak – we’d never have trusted him. But he was clever. Ingenious, even. He decei
ved us all and forced this almost-deadly confrontation. He needed Vaughn and Jane Hopper out of the way because they’d figured out he was connected to the smuggling operation. And they’d found out his bigger secret, that he wasn’t born, he was created – a sick lab experiment that broke the Eden Law. Everything about him – his lies, his illegal practices, his very existence – is abhorrent. It would be a crime to let him breathe one more breath of this precious air. He isn’t even worthy of—”
“That’s enough!” Ruben’s cry made everyone jump. Still on the ground, he spun himself around carefully, to avoid jerking his injured leg, until he faced his accuser. “It’s over, Glyn. There’s no spinning your way out of this.”
“I’m spinning? Who pretended to breathe oxygen for years outside? Who had to have had a pressurized supply of Hesperidian air to use indoors – inside his omnipod, say? Who faked his true identity to gain entry to Hesperidia? When did you come here? Not as a ranger. It must have been long before that. Maybe you’ve been here all your life, hiding at some outpost with Dr Frankenstein or whoever the hell created you. And you say I’m the one spinning.”
Isherwood blurted a mirthless laugh. “You’re hard-faced enough to spin nylonicum, Tynedale, but that’d be an insult to the poor insects that do.”
“Shut up, grid-licker. The adults are talking.”
“Well, I don’t know about the other adults, but I’d kinda like to hear Ruben speak for himself. You put more words in other people’s mouths than a dentist does fillings. If you were in any way secure about what you’re proposing, you’d let it stand up to scrutiny. And that involves letting the other guy speak.”
“Hear! Hear!” someone piped up from the COVEX mob.
“He’s right,” said one of the gunmen, addressing Tynedale. “You’ve had your say, sir. Let him either refute it or confess.”
“This isn’t a court in session, as Detective Vaughn rightly pointed out earlier. This is…this is a point of order.” But Tynedale’s authority was slipping faster than his trembling hand on his pistol’s sweaty grip. Another gust whipped his combover wildly out of place. This time he left it there, and the extent of the baldness it had been hiding was plain for all to see.
Apex Page 22
