Ecotones: Ecological Stories from the Border Between Fantasy and Science Fiction

by Ken Liu

  He slid his finger over the trigger and squeezed, shifted, squeezed, shifted, squeezed again.

  The only sound added to those of the forest was a muted, plastic click and the whup of displaced air, repeated, repeated. His aim ended back on the original target, which flinched, staggered and toppled, rag-dolling down the slope in a tangled flop of limbs.

  Anxo scanned back to confirm the same of the two who had followed. A perfect take-down from back to front, none of them aware anything was wrong until it was their turn.

  He rose, slung the rifle and descended, flexing Objective Successful, Zero Fatalities, Agent Unharmed. Between sending and receiving the AOK reply, his skinmap reconfirmed the jaguar’s location for him. Still well over three hundred metres out. Plenty of time.

  He went down on one knee beside the first target and rolled him over. Wide eyes, a line of drool stringy from a slack mouth. A dart lodged in the meat just above his clavicle. Anxo plucked it and lightly slapped the man’s cheek, provoking a blink before the wild gaze focused on him.

  “Hello, Mister Rolland Garnett,” Anxo said, using the target’s native English. “You and your friends are under arrest.”

  Anxo tethered the three poachers together, back to back, each one staring daggers at him as he knotted them in place. Garnett’s gaze in particular dripped vitriol, as much as his stroke-slack features could muster, but the only thing passing his lips was spittle. The neurotoxin in the darts put paid to any backtalk as effectively as it did getaways. The other two looked more resigned than anything else.

  In the process of divorcing them from their firearms and anything they might use to free themselves (multiple blades of one sort or another, only one that would have dealt with the woven-monofibre cord now binding them at ankle and wrist, then to each other elbow-to-elbow) he also collected their means of communicating with the wider world: three satellite radios, three obvious emergency one-click broadcasters, and one not so obvious built into an external hearing aid behind Roche’s left ear. Like an ex-combat merc wouldn’t have an implant if he was impaired.

  He dug through his pack and withdrew a small quad-rotor drone, unfolding it and checking the battery. When he turned it on, it synced with his tracking computer and he issued a few basic commands to its simple AI, then he tossed it and it whirred to life, stabilising in mid-air at chest height.

  The confiscated comms went into a fine-mesh net bag which he attached to the hovering flyer. It bobbed as it compensated for the extra weight, then abruptly rose into the mist, a small laser visibly flicking upward as it searched for a route through the canopy. Once it was out, it would track west and then north at a human pace, periodically stopping and perching on the treetops to recharge its solar cells. If anyone was keeping tabs on Roche through them, they would have no idea he wasn’t where he appeared to be until he was safely in custody.

  When the flyer was out of sight, Anxo withdrew a telescoping aerial from the pack, extended it to its two-metre length, and speared it into the ground in the gap between the three men’s backs. Its emitter would, eventually, bring the pick-up team, but in the meantime it would support an ambient IV, the same tech his pack used to suck water from the heavy air. He plugged three snaking tubes into it, snapping off the needle covers from each.

  “This will keep you hydrated for the next couple of days,” he said, popping a vein on Garnett’s arm and spiking it. “Tops up the tranquiliser as well, I’m afraid,” he added, then repeated it for the locals in Spanish as he did them too.

  Almost done. Just one more, nasty thing.

  “I’m a little sorry to do this to you, chicos,” he said, “but you come poaching big cat territory, I can’t just leave you here. Might get you eaten. And that I don’t want to happen, even though in my opinion you all are worthless shits. I’m not having one of the last jaguars killed for a man-eater because you gave him the taste.”

  He took a step back, brandishing a spray canister as he did. “This is going to keep anything bigger than a mosquito well clear, so don’t you worry.” He pulled a transparent breathe-sheet up from the front of his camo-vest, over his head, pressing it down across his shoulders and folding it around his throat to temporarily seal himself in. “Afraid you’re not going to like this much,” he said, then popped the cap and sprayed them down.

  It was a sign of just how disgustingly strong the chemical repellent was that all three men managed to emit grunts and moans of nausea, even shifting against their restraints a little. Garnett blasted a gloop of snot from his nose, eyes running with thick tears, but Anxo was already collecting his pack and gun. The poachers themselves were someone else’s problem now.

  He went through the pile of his captive’s gear and claimed some of the fresher foodstuffs to liven up his own supplies, all high-density military rations. What had originally been a three kilogram block of nutrient- and vitamin-infused artificial protein (able to keep a single, disciplined man both alive and miserable for six months) was now two-thirds gone. The sight of grain-and-raisin biscuits made his mouth water, even with the stinging stink in the air.

  After a momentary check on the jaguar’s location—it had veered south again, probably catching the edge of the repellent and driven well wide—Anxo headed back along the route Garnett had approached from, watchful for any unwanted surprises. He found and destroyed a couple of remote cameras that had been spiked into trees a half-metre or so off the ground, and treated the damage to the trunks with an infection-neutralising sealant.

  He called a halt three kilometres on, dusk falling rapidly across the invisible sky above. He climbed a tree with a strong, comfortable-looking forked limb on it about twelve metres up, anchored his web-hammock across the gap and got settled. Drank some piss-sweat-mist water, ate two of his new biscuits. Dozed.

  Garnett had been a nice catch. It felt personal. Ex-private military, fought in the futile African Caliphate Action. Just like Anxo. Only difference was, when they went out-of-contract, Garnett had stayed merc and Anxo had meandered, disillusioned with the work until he somehow found his way into the Global Ecological Organisation’s “green marines”. Traded two-klick head shots in desert towns for half-klick non-lethals in the last of the jungles.

  They’d never served together directly, not that Anxo was aware of, but he’d come to know Garnett by rep since. While Anxo was wasting time on spiritual uncertainty, Garnett had done a handful of years in corporate special ops—what the practitioners called “customer services” with euphemistic glee—before going independent. His premium client list left him legally untouchable, despite countless rumours of his perpetrating this assassination, that incursion, the other coup, etc.

  And, of course, a side-line in protected biological acquisitions which he essentially treated as a hobby, albeit one that probably exceeded all his other earnings combined. There was a lot of money in rarity, and things were only getting rarer.

  All slander, of course, or so his lawyers decried, with charges tied up in courts all around the world, likely forever, leaving him free to hunt again another day. As far as GEO was concerned, Garnett was one of the most reviled human beings on the planet.

  Quite the trophy. Anxo closed his eyes with a smile. Not a bad day. The answer to the bonus question—How the hell did Garnett know where to go hunting?—would have to wait for someone else to answer. Still, there was more than one former merc in the green marines, more than one set of skills worth having around. Apply the right pressure, maybe Garnett would tell them himself.

  It was four a.m. when the silent alarm of the tracker began beating at his inner arm with what could only be described as spastic panic. He passed from sleep to full consciousness with the abruptness of a flicked switch, the dart rifle pulled tight into his shoulder as he scanned the forest floor for threats, of which he found none.

  It took several more seconds before comprehension of exactly what the tracker was alerting him to sank in.

  The jaguar—his jaguar—

  —was gon
e.

  Anxo double-timed it back to where he’d left Garnett, not really believing that he and his men could have escaped, nor that anyone could have arrived quickly enough to effect a pickup—even GEO couldn’t get here in so little time. He slowed as he caught the acrid edge of the repellent, and then spotted the three bodies exactly as he’d left them.

  So not Garnett. Something else.

  He turned south and trotted on, heading for the point at which the jaguar’s signal had ceased. When he switched it from compass mode to the skinmap, the comp provided him with the route the jaguar had taken during the night. Its end was marked by a quivering vibration high on his forearm, right where a junky would needle the flesh and flood the system.

  As he moved, the vibration slowly crept down towards his wrist, a fatal blockage shifting. He tried to put expectation from his mind. Or, rather, dread.

  The green marines—more formally known as the CAF or Conservation Armed Forces—were ostensibly an anti-poaching operation. GEO, non-political in a way that the UN wholly failed to be, had won remarkable cooperation from governments around the world. The combination of absolute neutrality and their policy of non-lethal action made them a benign presence within a nation’s borders, not to mention a frequent source of prestigious employment. The reformed hunters, poachers and ex-military personnel which made up their numbers on the ground were always teamed with local consultants, scientists and conservationists, who could share their expertise with the CAF platoons that rotated between projects each year.

  That this service came free, and removed the expensive necessity of policing whatever endangered animal life a state might have dominion over—and, in the process, excused each government from any failure to do so—made giving permission an easy choice to make. As a result, even in regions where allowing international organisations access was anathema, it was common to see wildlife watched over by CAF operatives. Even the African Caliphate permitted them to oversee what remained of the great herds of the Masai Mara.

  However, just like any other army, the CAF had both a public face and a more secret one. In those territories where their operations were prohibited, covert preservation initiatives were undertaken to provide backup (or to watchdog) whatever efforts the state made itself. Argentina, China and Russia were the most notable hold-outs, and GEO’s suspected presence in each was a subject of both sabre-rattling and global rumour.

  But there was another side to these covert ops, even in countries where GEO was welcomed with open arms. One about which no rumours circulated, even amongst the green marines themselves. Anxo’s side.

  With human expansion persisting (in spite of any lip service paid by the world’s political and financial leaders to notions of global sustainability), the impact upon the natural world was relentless, and escalating. As vital habitats were eroded by the attendant need for more space for people to fill or to use—or, as across South America, were simply ruined into non-existence—confirmed and suspected extinctions began to escalate. Larger, low population species were most at risk, and their scarcity only increased their value to the unscrupulous.

  Mammals were the primary targets, especially the big cats. There were only five known wild jaguars still at large in the Americas. Each of them, once, had been trapped or tranq’d, then tagged with a unique tracker. Each tracker was paired to a portable computer whose output could be interpreted by one agent alone—even the operatives back at GEO’s monitoring headquarters were ignorant of the subject animals’ exact locations.

  These agents formed a protective bottleneck: the sole permitted point of contact between their charges and the human world, with complete discretion to act in defence of the animal their service was devoted to. Each jaguar now had a bodyguard.

  Anxo’s was one of only two females.

  And now he had lost her.

  When he reached the approximate location where the signal ended, Anxo found nothing to indicate either a capture or a kill. The tracking system guided him to within what he could call with confidence fifty metres of the jaguar’s last known position, but he turned up no tracks, no blood, nothing.

  This was barely more encouraging than the alternative. It had taken him hours of hard hiking to arrive, enough time for a diligent clean-team to erase any trace of themselves, though it was hard to imagine anyone bothering in an environment like this. Just as Garnett had not, they would have no reason to anticipate his presence. And how much evidence could someone leave behind in a jungle anyway?

  He marked the projected direction the jaguar had been heading, but the skinmap was no use to him any more. He switched the tracking comp to full watch mode, its reception boosted to respond and direct him to the slightest signal from the jaguar’s implant… still nothing.

  Rifle in hand he headed south, trailing a route that wasn’t there.

  The terrain was rougher even than it had been before Garnett, rising and falling in sharp, brief crests, brackish water pooling in the troughs. His pace slowed to a crawl as he edged higher, slinging the gun to free his hands for the climb. The canopy seemed to draw closer as though the ground rose to meet it, but he was simply above the heavier mists, seeing the foliage more directly than before.

  When the ground finally began to level out, he bowed to the inevitable and Morsed a message to GEO: Target Dark, Drone Request—a risk, since drone-dropping a communications array could pin-point his location for anyone seeking to get to the jaguar through him. On the other hand, he didn’t have the jaguar to give up right now, did he?

  The level ground appeared to be a small plateau, the hills continuing to rise to the east, raising the canopy with them. Above it was solid, the only glimpse of blue beyond breaking through in distant slices that seemed to keep pace with him. Though the foliage was still a good fifteen metres overhead, it seemed almost claustrophobically close after being so long half-hidden by drifting mists. When he hopped across a small stream flowing westward he had to fight the urge to duck his head.

  He wondered why he’d received no response from GEO, flexed for a refresh, then paused in surprise when he felt nothing in response. He lifted his hand, stared dumbly at his arm as he flexed again—the tracking comp was inactive.

  A thought crossed his mind, and he brought his arm up fast for the rifle on his back.

  “Touch the weapon, we will fire,” said a voice—and, recognising its type, Anxo froze.

  He interlaced his fingers above his head, extended his arms straight up, turned his palms to the hidden sky; stepped his feet outwards, widening his stance until his centre of gravity was too low for easy balance, forcing him to strain his toes, his calves, the small of his back to maintain stability; all at the order of the voice.

  It was amplified and split into two tones, one rumbling base, the other a weirdly high pitch designed to cut through any degree of background noise straight to the audio nerves. Disturbing to listen to, impossible to ignore. Not a mere person’s voice, but that of someone expensively augmented for crowd control. The kind of someone capable of responding vigorously when disobeyed.

  An unseen figure—not the speaker—approached him from behind, lifted the pack and rifle away from his back and, with three effortless strokes of a blade, cut their straps. He didn’t even feel a tug. A blade that sharp would sink into granite if dropped point first.

  While all this went on Anxo had time to look, not at the merc behind him, but at the jungle in front. He finally spotted the speaker, totally motionless and obscured by a thick snarl of roots, gun motionless too. He was indeed augmented, a metal band mounted across his face with two black holes where the eyes should be, the bridge of his nose surgically modified to fit below the implant like a fleshy pigeon beak. The only difference between the twin holes of his eyes and those in the muzzle of his weapon was that they were horizontal, not vertical.

  Smart-plastic restraint cuffs were squeezed around his raised wrists, which were then forced behind his back by two huge fists, gripping him by the elbows with ast
onishing strength and twisting until his threaded fingers parted—resistance would only have torn his shoulder muscles. He didn’t turn, but he could feel from the angles of pressure that whoever was behind him was taller than he was, and the hands suggested gross size in general.

  Behind his back, the cuffs were pressed into brief contact. When they parted they were linked by a short, liquid string of iridescent plastic, already solidifying between them. Anxo was careful not to pull against it, re-lacing his hands together palm-to-palm. Best to use all his advantages when he would have at least a chance—in an aug-sniper’s crosshairs he had none.

  Anxo sensed the looming presence behind him nod, then the gunman stood and approached, his passage shifting the plant life less than the sluggish air—he recognised the movement of a skilled stalker. At a closer range, Anxo corrected himself: the aug was a woman. He cast his mind back to the few female snipers he’d met or seen reported on, but none of their faces or descriptions clicked with what he could still make out of this one.

  “Start walking,” she said in that same, off-putting synthesized voice, and he wondered what other modifications she might be carrying, less obvious than the face-mount. His captor pushed him firmly in the back and Anxo took the opportunity to stumble and twist as he began to walk, catching a fleeting glimpse of a close-combat steroid-junky clutching his pack and gun in one giant hand like they were a child’s toys. Male. Probably.

  The augs kept a few strides behind him, just far enough to attack or defend more effectively than he might manage to. They followed the course of the stream. After perhaps ten minutes walk across the relatively easy ground of the plateau, the stream met an animal path and he was diverted along that.

  Shortly after, the path crossed a tree line into a wide, circular clearing, the dark humus of the forest floor giving way to shin-high grass, even a few flowers—artificially unlikely to Anxo’s eye. It was occupied by several cabins, at first glance appearing to be ranger stations like those that dotted the rest of Monteverde, plus the Osa Penisula, Cocos Island, and other key locations of Costa Rica’s conservation reserves. Good cover for a poaching operation.