“More or less. He’s a squid, in small business terms.” Vaughn blinked uncomprehendingly at Melekhin, who clarified: “He’s got his fingers in a lot of pies. One of those compulsive entrepreneur types. One business fails, he starts up another three. Assets all over the place, hard to figure out exactly what he’s worth without an audit.”
“Anything point to his businesses being a front for Kyra’s cartel? Could they be laundering together?”
Xiang replied, “Too early to tell. I’ll flag it, though. All their assets are frozen, so we can pick ’em apart at our leisure.”
Vaughn nodded. “Well, it’s been a long haul. And you’ve got a long trek back. We used to have a tradition back in the day – any trip longer than two jumps earns a plate at the most expensive eating place in the first port you come across. One course for every jump. Three course minimum. Courtesy of the ‘Miscellaneous’ column in our ‘Emergency expenses’.
The others shared his mischievous, knowing grin. “There used to be a restaurant here, overlooking a canyon,” he said. “Minerva, I think it was called. They served the best slow-cooked brisket in the quadrant, imported direct from a premier farm world. You’ve never tasted anything like—”
“I’m vegan,” Melekhin cut in.
“Not when you smell this you won’t be.”
“Ah, I’m vegan too,” said Xiang.
Vaughn sighed. “Well, there’s plenty of grass on the lawn. Nosh yourselves up. I’ll go book us a table.”
But it wasn’t long before the elderly residents began pottering about in the lobby outside Minerva, snapping photos of Vaughn through the windows. He was still something of a celebrity lawman after all this time, and now something of a freak as well, having aged only a few months to their two decades. He’d told the maître d’ not to admit anyone – reserving half the tables was sufficient as compensation, seeing as it was between peak meal times – but that had only piqued the residents’ curiosity. Word spread quickly on Cunard’s Star. By the time their main courses arrived, a throng of busybodies clogged the foyer and remote drones hovered outside over the canyon, filming the meal.
“You’re like a one-man traveling circus – and the elephant in the room” quipped Kyra. “I knew I should have brought my trapeze outfit. It’d be perfect for swinging over that canyon of death out there.”
“You want me to do something about it?” asked Melekhin, digging into his meat-free lasagne.
“Like what?” enquired his mentor.
“Like doffing his clown suit,” said Kyra with a touch of venom. “That’s what this whole thing is now – a freaking clown show. I might as well wave to the galaxy. Don’t bother looking for me, assholes; here’s me eating a brisket. Come dine at Minerva, where the Omicron even pay to advertise your exact location to every assassin within a hundred zees. Hey, I’m screwed, but at least I’ve got a side order of skin potato wedges and a slurpy.”
“You need to relax more,” Vaughn told her. “What’s happened has happened. Nobody knows where we’re going from here. Enjoy the view. Stop worrying about things beyond our control.”
“And that’s a bullet in the back of my head in three, two, one…”
“Care to enlighten her, Agent Melekhin?” asked Vaughn. “As to why she isn’t in any danger here?”
The youngster finished his sip of red wine before explaining, “We instigated a total comms blackout the minute we arrived. These people can scream as loud as they want, no one outside Cunard’s will hear them until Agent Xiang and I tell Central Control it’s safe to re-establish comms.”
“’Twas always thus, Miss Stone,” added Xiang. “Omicron takes care of those in its protection. You and your fiancé will be light-years away from here with Agent Vaughn by the time pictures of this meal hit the podnet.”
“I see. You’re a shadowy lot,” said Kyra, seemingly oblivious to her hypocrisy.
“Speaking of which…Agent Vaughn, I was meaning to ask – and my dad would kill me if I didn’t—” Melekhin paused to laugh at Kyra flipping the bird to the fogies ogling her from the foyer, “—what happened that day on the Gilpraxia Moon Bridge? He’s been telling me about it for years, how the bomber launched himself into space and just vanished. Climbed into some kind of octagonal device, and the next minute it was empty, like he’d incinerated himself. Only there were no ashes, no remains.”
“That’s right,” Vaughn affirmed. “It spooked us at the time.”
“So what really happened? I went to read the official report you filed when you returned after your absence, and admin told me it was still ‘under review’. That was yesterday. If it’s classified, forgive me for asking, sir, but I’ve never heard of an agent’s testimony being withheld for so long like that.”
“Nor have I,” said Xiang.
“You’ll be lucky if it’s ever released without being heavily redacted,” answered Vaughn. “It doesn’t exactly put ISPA in a good light. They sent congressional delegates to ensure the retrieval of an extraordinary piece of tech, and a number of people died as a result of their ruthless tactics. I can’t prove who ordered what, but they were in league with the Moon Bridge bomber. Someone inside ISPA was behind that terror attack. When the bomber showed up in person on Hesperidia, and I found out what the extraordinary tech was, the two had to be linked. He’d used a crude form of teleportation to escape us on the Moon Bridge – impressive but crude compared to what we discovered on the Hesp. So he did disappear without trace inside that octagonal device, but he would have reappeared inside another similar device, probably on a ship not far away.”
“Oh. That explains it.”
“It explains his getaway, but not his connections. There were high-ranking ISPA delegates sent to Hesperidia, and he joined them later, no questions asked. It all happened too long ago now for anyone to get to the bottom of, but the lesson’s clear enough. Trust only those who’ve earned it, Agent Melekhin. The rest are capable of anything.”
“That’s rich.” Kyra sniffed. “A lecture on trust from the guy who locked up his entire family.”
“Add one to that list if you keep spewing like you are.”
“Take it easy, you two.” In Cleeve’s steady hand, a fresh bottle of red wine, unpoured, awaiting a cessation of hostilities.
“Sorry, honey. I’m trying,” she said. “It’s just that—”
“Try harder,” Vaughn warned her. “You rag on me one more time and I’ll dump your whiny ass flat.”
Cleeve didn’t pour. He put the bottle down and clenched his fist around the napkin at his side, leaving Xiang to fill the glasses. The rest of the main course passed in silence, then Vaughn asked Cleeve what he thought of Cunard’s Star now that he’d finally got to visit it. How did it compare to its description in Into Perihelion?
“Harsher. Edgier. Even more mysterious,” came the reply.
“The story of my life,” said Vaughn.
They all looked up at him, and knew he wasn’t joking.
Chapter Five
Though it was crisp in the shade, and pesky milliflies swarmed the dappled morning sunlight, Jan’s anticipation kicked her into a jog. Well, that and Stopper’s ebullience that erupted in giddy yelps and out-and-out barks of impatience. He probably wondered why was she always so slow to reach the Pit Stop when he wanted it most? He twisted himself sidewise to rub flat against the grass until she caught up, then bounded ahead and, holding his mouth in a lopsided curl on the river’s edge, watched her lob the rubber ball as far as she could before he bulldozed into the deep water to fetch it.
It was his favorite time of each and every day while not on safari, just as it was Jan’s. Their own private swimming spot lay just inside the forest on the northeast edge of Miramar glade, where a double bend of the river produced two deep pockets of fresh water, constantly refreshed by the fast-flowing current that skirted them. Perfect for an invigorating morning swim. She dropped her towel, kicked off her sandals, pulled off her slacks and hoodie, and waded into the coo
l water in her customary Lycra swim shorts and sports bra. Stopper brushed against her, and she had to spin quickly to catch his front paws and rest them on her shoulders to stop him from scratching her skin to ribbons – no matter how many times they did this, his instinct to protect her in deep water always got the best of him. While they were together, playing in close proximity, he was fine, but the moment she swam away or dived down or put more than a couple of meters between them, Stopper erred on the side of caution, often making his displeasure known with his hurtful claws when he caught up with her.
So she held him with his paws on her shoulders and his hind legs wrapped around her, and they danced in the deepest part of the Pit Stop, her nickname for the pocket of almost-still water, where errant Eusebius eels detoured in their hundreds to catch milliflies and petra-moths and other water bugs before carrying on downstream to their ritual gathering places in the lakes and swamps of the fens. The eels flickered and thrashed in vast numbers, chopping up the tranquil scene. It freaked Vaughn out whenever he saw it, so he never went in on those days when the phenomenon was expected – Jan had formulated an almanac after studying their ritual migration cycle. But she and Stopper knew the critters were harmless, even shy, to anything not on their menu.
Stopper licked her mask and ears while she serenaded him for a few minutes on the ticklish border between the still pocket and the babbling flow. Then she realized he’d dropped his ball too close to the current; it was about to be swept away. The umpteenth that month! For one of his most prized possessions, he sure was cavalier about the fates of his precious rubber balls. She lifted his paws off her shoulders, spun him in the direction of said toy in peril, and said, “Race ya, big boy. Go on. Go get ball!”
She pretended to swim as hard as she could but with no intention of beating him. The current swept the ball away moments before Stopper entered it. He tightened his shoulders and upped his stroke, seizing the toy with his first bite, then made for the pocket of the second river bend, where Jan dived to the bottom. It was deep and cold, yet still clear enough to see amphibious Cuvier nocturnus spawn-pods wavering in beautiful linked string-of-pearls formations among tall weeds on the river bed.
She got out, toweled herself off, threw the ball back in for Stopper half a dozen times, then made her way back to the cabin for breakfast. That was her morning ritual. She might repeat it in the afternoon if it was warm or she felt dirty after strenuous work, or needed to relax after stressful encounters with tourists. But today was different. Today was critical. Nothing less than the future conduct of human presence on Hesperidia was about to be decided when the COVEX officials arrived to give their verdict on the sat net shitshow from a few nights ago.
Governor Nabakov had to take the fall, no question. It had been his responsibility, his defensive program, his failure on every level. That no one had been killed by the meteorite strikes wasn’t as miraculous as some made out – only three moderate impacts and a handful of minor ones had occurred across the entire planet – but from an operational standpoint, anyway you sliced it, Nabakov was toast. The only question was: who would COVEX appoint as his successor?
“How about it, boy? Fancy a move back to the big house?” Jan shook her head as soon as she’d uttered the question, and Stopper cocked his head to one side, almost as if he knew exactly what she meant and had replied, Tell me you’re joking!
“We might not have a choice,” she went on. “I’ll push for us to stay put, but there’s so much to do when you’re top dog, so to speak. You have to be on-call and in the thick of it at a moment’s notice. This might be our last unmolested Pit Stop for a while, sweetheart. I’ll make sure we get some swim time, but it won’t be like we’re used to, at least not until I whip things into shape.”
He licked his lips, then yawned.
“Tell me about it.” Jan zipped up her official Alien Safari ranger jacket, patted the house key in the pocket of her khaki shorts, sighed, and put on the dorky cap with the famous logo stitched on:
“A means to an end, brother. We’ll soon be calling the shots again.”
But as she fixed his lead to his collar and led him up to the Clubhouse – the rangers’ private outdoor meeting place enclosed on the east side of the HQ building – doubts pierced her natural aura of imperturbability. Put simply, she was by far the most qualified candidate, but the bureau bums at COVEX had demonstrated, not the least with the appointment of the airy-fairy Nabakov, a perverse set of criteria for selecting people to oversee operations on the Hesp and other biologically rich worlds. Ideologies had crept into the top-down decision-making, in Jan’s view subverting what should be a paradigm governed entirely by the long-held lesser-footprint science of ecology. They seemed to ultimately want to turn these worlds into glorified theme park attractions, establishing permanent settlements and colonies, so that humans could become co-inhabitants with the indigenous life. In other words, turn the magic and the experience of alien nature into a colossal revenue stream.
With that would inevitably come the erosion of animal and ecological rights, the “taming” or even eradication of predatory species, and a worrying trend that had already reared its ugly head again this year – the theft of endemic substances and life-forms for black market trade. The Alien Safari enterprise had had to be discontinued not long after its inception because of rampant poaching by rich interstellar glory hunters. But this new operation, running on all cylinders, while ostensibly a stricter, more closely supervised tour system, was starting to show those cracks inevitable in a place like this, a treasure trove of rare resources with untapped potential for pharmacological, industrial and countless other applications.
Yes, she needed to secure this job and she needed it urgently. No, they would not take kindly to being lectured on any of that. Jan would have to play their game, say what they wanted to hear, and then, if they saw sense and appointed her, she could solicit her congresswomen allies to help her reduce the overbearing human presence in paradise.
As ever, it all came down to people skills – not her strong suit, not by a long chalk.
Flavia sensed Stopper’s presence before they clapped eyes on each other, and almost yanked Ruben off his bench with excitement. There were four other rangers present, one female, three male. A posse of COVEX men and women, overdressed in full-body designer survival apparel, was gathered around a digipad on one of the picnic tables. Tynedale, he of the immaculate combover, guided his colleagues’ attentions across a holographic map of Hesperidia’s biggest continent, the one they were on, and spoke his quiet narration. When he saw that Jan had arrived, he ended the projection and told everyone to take their seats. Her natural reaction would be to do the opposite – she hated, hated being told what to do anywhere on her adopted home world, by anyone – but cooperation was more important today.
“Thank you all for coming,” he addressed the rangers. “You probably have some idea of why you’ve been invited. First, I’d like to assure you that no decision is or ever will be taken lightly concerning the operational management of so important a planetary enterprise as this. Hesperidia is the crown jewel in our exploratory legacy, and to ensure it is governed properly and effectively, we’ve come to the unfortunate conclusion that Doctor Nabakov can no longer continue in his current role. In addition to the shocking satellite system failure two nights ago, we’ve received worrying reports of protected biological materials from Hesperidia becoming in-demand commodities on several colonial black markets. Doctor Carlisle has personally caught two smugglers red-handed…”
Jan looked across at the taciturn ranger from Outpost Papa, whose reputation as an anti-poaching game warden on Earth’s Indian sub-continent had preceded his arrival here about eighteen months back. And while Jan had only met him once or twice, she respected his dedication in studying the more aggressive predators on the Trident peninsulas to the southwest, an assignment that had bested some preeminent xenozoologists over the years. She’d expected Carlisle to be on this shortlist for the top
job, but this was the first she’d heard of his encounters with smugglers. She would quiz him on it later, find out exactly what was happening and where.
“We’re consulting with law enforcement agencies,” Tynedale went on, “and Doctor Carlisle has recommended we hire tour marshals to accompany all excursions, to better monitor the behavior of our tourists. The parties are often too big for a single ranger, and that’s something we’ll have to reconsider going forward.”
Jan mentally shook her head. These were all things she and her fellow rangers had complained about, mostly to deaf ears, for as far back as she could remember. Hesperidia needed a police force, not just a team of tour marshals. It needed a Ferrix Vaughn, someone who could sniff out and crush any attempt to interfere with or exploit alien nature. Hell, she’d gladly strap a Kruger to her belt and join him, as long as she could have some time to continue her research.
“In the meantime, myself and my colleagues from COVEX will oversee the transitional period until a replacement can be appointed. But rest assured, that transition will be quick. None of us is qualified as scientist, administrator and ranger on Hesperidia. But that combination of talents, we feel, is vital to the success of whomever will shepherd this enterprise into the future. So the First Ranger – a title that will replace ‘Governor’ from now on – must come from the ranks of experienced ranger-scientists with a notable background in field-craft.
“To that end we’ve invited the six of you, each of whom has expressed interest in assuming a leading role, to participate in a unique series of auditions for the role of First Ranger. I’ve personally met each of you over the past week or so, and gained some valuable insights into the kinds of things you do here, but I haven’t had a chance to observe you at work in the field. What happened the other night was a catastrophic failure of protocol and more importantly of leadership. No safeguards were put in place, and too much was left to chance. What we’ll be assessing over the course of the next few days are the specific character attributes we’re looking for, as well as decision-making and practical knowhow.
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