“Nah, you go. I want to stay with Stops for a while. He’s had a rough day.”
“Suit yourself. I’ll be back before dark,” he said.
“Don’t be too tired. I’ll wear something special.”
With those tantalizing images slinking through his mind, Vaughn went back to the cabin, dried himself off, put on fresh pants and a sleeveless shirt, devoured a couple of sausage rolls, then went straight to his shuttle. He’d forgotten about the containment breaches. Tenax’s claws had ripped sizeable holes high up on the bulkheads. It took him a good half hour to patch them up with vacuum seals. Those weren’t reliable enough for space travel, though, so he would have to perform a proper patch-and-weld job before he left the Hesp.
Then he spied the odd-looking bony projectiles that had pierced the ship’s shell low on the port lounge bulkhead. There were two, about ten inches long, a couple of inches thick, spiral and serrated, but with carved fletches that would stabilize their flights. They were made of some kind of bone or rock, pastel-colored in a marble pattern that reminded him, for some reason, of the sea. But where had they come from? Who had fired them? Why had they been fired at his ship?
Vaughn vacuum-sealed those holes, and kept the projectiles as souvenirs to show Jan later. He flew west to the Keys. The weather had settled into its sleepy sub-tropical stupor after the storm. The steam of evaporated rainfall was already dissipating. Animals, too, were starting to return to their forest havens in the aftermath of tenax’s rampage. As he approached the serene island chain and sandbars at the equator, déjà vu struck, not vague and befuddling like usual, but vivid, bracing. An intimate memory that had straddled the skew of his time dislocation and survived intact. It invigorated him to know that he’d imprinted himself on this place, perhaps indelibly, and that if that wasn’t a measure of belonging, nothing was.
He saw Ricky Melekhin lying on the edge of the landing pad while he circled for his approach. The youngster had got drunk and passed out, he told himself. But the Omicron in him did not deal in denial. Something was wrong here, something he hadn’t foreseen. Vaughn clenched and churned inside as the landing thrusters threw sand and dried weeds over Melekhin’s body. The rookie didn’t move.
God almighty. What have I done?
A cauterized hole right through Melekhin’s chest confirmed Vaughn’s worst fears. The lad had been armed when he’d approached his killer. He’d gotten a shot off, too; the radial scorch marks on the asphalt and the ripples in the sand tallied with a high-yield energy blast. But there were no signs of his enemy’s blood. The poor youngster had been beaten to the draw, he concluded – Melekhin had fired a reactive snapshot as soon as he was hit, and his gun arm had reached nowhere near noon.
So they were dealing with a trained assassin?
Vaughn crouched to one knee, scanned the tree-line and the beach with his Kruger leading his line of sight. He switched spectra and looked for heat signatures. There was no one hiding out that he could tell, but it was hot here: the body-to-environ differential couldn’t be relied on. He went to the hostel. Checked his angles as he made his way inside. A window had been blasted out in the reception area, and the glass was on the inside, so the shooter had fired from outside. Not a good sign. The whole building was depressurized.
He found another body in the games room. She was on her back, twisted and broken. When he turned her over, a jolt of revulsion, of horror, was quickly followed by a pang of relief. Both reactions left him furious at himself. Joy Horrigan had been shot three times, once in the pelvis, once in the ribs, and once in the chest. Lower-yield blasts than had killed Melekhin, but no less fatal. The assassin hadn’t made as clean a job of this kill. Maybe Joy had been trying to get away…
Her ship was the only other one on the island apart from his. That suggested the killer was no longer here. Melekhin had accosted someone at the landing pad, so that pointed to the same conclusion. The assassin had landed here unannounced, surprised Melekhin, had then rushed to take out Joy, who’d fled from the reception area, where the window was broken. He’d chased her through to the games room, clipped her on the run and finished her any way he could. So the question now was…had he killed anyone else before he’d left?
With grim focus, bristling with hyper-alertness and self-hate, Vaughn stalked through a nightmare of his own making. This island refuge he’d chosen had served up those he’d sworn to protect to an enemy he hadn’t seen coming. But how could the assassin have tracked them here? How could he or she have sneaked onto the Hesp without the scanners pinging their ship? The sat net had been offline, but that wasn’t the only security measure the planet had.
What if the killer’s been here all along?
But the only ship that had arrived here since his encounter with Sixsmith on Mars was the COVEX flight. Those delegates had all been preoccupied, one way or another, with the tenax problem and the meteorite crash sites. Or had they? It would have been impossible to keep tabs on them all, even if he’d wanted to. Did it scan, though, as a narrative? An assassin sent in disguised as a COVEX rep on the off-chance that Vaughn would bring his niece here?
Possible, but it was a heck of a gamble. A longshot. Anticipating him like this had taken balls, insight, and serious connections. To fake COVEX clearance was impressive enough, but to come here in person, alongside colleagues from that same organization, and pass oneself off as a learned professional…that took serious moxie.
Who the hell are you?
He covered three quarters of the island and found no trace of Kyra or Cleeve apart from her yellow shoulder wrap and his-and-her matching towels personalized with their names stitched inside a heart in the corner – corny, he thought, for a girl like Kyra, but perhaps he didn’t know her well enough to make that call.
The towels had been dropped on the trail crossroads that forked, from the hostel compound, to the beach on one hand and the forest on the other. He’d instinctively followed the former trail – why else bring towels – but had found nothing on the shoreline or in the shallows to suggest they’d fled that way after dropping what they’d been carrying, presumably after hearing the shots. Boot prints in the sand, too, were unhelpful. Between Melekhin’s and Cleeve’s, both large, size twelve or thirteen, and the women’s, size five or six, it was impossible to discern the tracks of any fresh interloper. Which meant the killer could be either man or woman.
The only trail left was that which wound through the forest. He passed the spot where he’d found the towels, and mentally ran ahead to picture what lay along the route. Vaughn kicked into a jog when he recalled the boating pond – Jan had often swam there with Stopper on days when the sea was too rough. Kyra and Cleeve might have been heading there, with their towels, when they’d heard the shots…
But they were not hiding near the lagoon. They weren’t in the rowboat either, or swimming, or up a tree. Vaughn punched through the fronds of a glabbus bush. He raised his head to the sky peeking through the forest canopy and screamed his frustration. A shot from his Kruger widened the gap. Bits and pieces of foliage sailed down and settled on the calm, clear surface of the lagoon.
A bubble emerged near the far bank, popped. Vaughn wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been watching the litter spread minutely across the glassy surface, but it interrupted the tranquility. It led his gaze to the dive flag floating near him, the significance of which only someone with knowledge of scuba protocol would perceive. Had the killer missed it? Luckily, Vaughn had had a good teacher. And Joy Horrigan was an experienced diver too. Between them, they would certainly have made sure Kyra and Cleeve knew to leave a flag up whenever they went down.
They wouldn’t have wanted to leave a marker to give away their hiding place. But maybe they’d left the flag there from a previous dive, and one of them had remembered it while they were hiding underwater, and had taken the precaution of moving as far away from it as possible.
Vaughn ran around and jumped in near where the bubble had popped. He swam down. There, in a hollow under
the lip of the sheer bank, his niece and her fiancé clung to one another, petrified, until he shone his mask lamp, showing them who he was.
They appeared unharmed. Kyra swam out and wrapped her arms around him, and he held her tight in return. The significance was not lost on him. It was the first time he’d hugged a family member since that day he’d “earned” the Omicron badge by breaking the Vaughns apart forever.
This wasn’t in any way how he’d imagined this relationship would go, but he had to admit, it was progress. Albeit at a terrible price.
He flew them to the continent, to Echo Outpost, Jan’s old station that was deserted now, overgrown. But its perimeter fence was still intact. It was the only refuge he could think of that wouldn’t put them in contact with other personnel.
Kyra and Cleeve didn’t say much during the flight. Vaughn preferred it that way. They’d seen how angry he was – mostly with himself – and that he was absolutely not in a mood to console anyone, or offer apology, or give anything more than curt platitudes. He was, as others had pointed out whenever he sharpened into this tenacious hunting mode, a real sonofabitch to be around.
“Anyone shows up here that isn’t me or Jan, don’t hesitate,” he tossed each of them a Hodiak pulse pistol in the mouth of the cave, “blow them in half, maximum yield. We’re playing for keeps now. You only keep alive if you shoot first.”
“How long will you be?” asked Kyra. “I’m not sensing a warm welcome from this place.”
“Not long. If I’m not back by nightfall, I’ll send Jan instead. Just sit tight.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this to you,” she said, “but be careful, Vaughn. I got the same vibe from this killer that I did from the one on Mars. These people are dead inside. How else could he…I mean Joy was a ray of sunshine. He didn’t even hesitate.”
“Neither will I. And neither will you, if it comes to that.” Vaughn turned to her mute fiancé. “Cleeve.”
“Vaughn.”
He flew back to Miramar at Mach 5, and called ahead, telling Isherwood to round up all the COVEX people in one place for when he got there. He’d already run several theories through his mind and punched holes in each of them. At first he was convinced Tynedale was connected to the same cartel that wanted Kyra dead, and that the killer had accompanied him as part of the Hesp delegation. But that was a stretch, he now decided. Tynedale had already gone out on a massive limb by coming here in person to oversee his coup d’état: ousting Nabakov then running sham auditions for his replacement, while the candidate he’d groomed for years for the top job, Ruben, was guaranteed to get it. Highly unlikely he’d risk his own proximity to a blatant cartel killing, perpetrated by someone who’d come to the Hesp under his supervision. Men like him only took the big gambles when the stakes were irresistibly high, and the risk of being caught or implicated could be ameliorated. A coup d’état and a contract assassination during the same visit would raise too many questions.
No, Tynedale was probably not involved. And he could rule out Kirsten Zeller. All four of Tynedale’s gunmen, too, were accounted for during the time of the murders – shortly after tenax had paid Miramar a visit. The creature had killed two of the gunmen, while the other two had been there to back Tynedale during the final showdown.
Who else? He could discount Enola Fashnu. She’d been there throughout the tenax ordeal and had been present for her boss’s arrest. The others, whose names he didn’t know, he pictured around the conference table and in the hub outside. He was good with faces, and they tallied. One could have sneaked off unseen while he and Jan had tangled with tenax in the air, and borrowed a shuttle. But there wouldn’t have been enough time to fly to the Keys and back again for the hub showdown.
Hmm, maybe he was wrong about the faces in the COVEX mob. What if he’d only imagined they were all there, and one had sneaked away? How could he be sure? Check the shuttle transponder logs. The Miramar surveillance cameras. Ask the delegates themselves, one by one, if they could account for each other’s whereabouts at all times, and if not, who was missing and when? Or sweat the truth out of Tynedale, just in case he had sanctioned the hit. No, he’d only do that if all other avenues failed, because he’d have to get rough, real rough, and right now, the mood he was in, he might have trouble containing himself…
“Still no ETA on the rock-hoppers,” Isherwood told him via com link when he landed at Miramar. “There’s been a hi-jacking near Saint Jacques, a whole convoy of long-haul freighters. The local precinct has its hands full, I’m afraid. Wow-wow-wow, where do you think you’re…no, no you’re not. Vaughn said we’re all to stay together till he gets here. Yeah? Take it up with him.”
“Everything okay?” asked Vaughn.
“Yeah, sorry, brother. The suits are folding out here, is all. They reckon they’re being persecuted. Funny how those that dish it never like it dealt. Suits, man. Freaking suits. Oi, Ginter, get back here or I’ll make you suck those cusses through a straw. No, I know you don’t like taking orders. You people never do.”
They were on the north edge of the green, haranguing Isherwood with legalese and petulance. Well, some of them were. Enola Fashnu seemed to be the ringleader, with Ginter, a pale drink of water dressed up, taking the prize for least convincing use of OC gutter speak. When Jan saw Vaughn marching across the lawn, she ran up from her cabin to meet him, with Stopper, off his lead, and Carlisle, jogging at his own measured pace, following not far behind.
Vaughn scanned the COVEX faces he’d mentally matched and filed away during the flight, testing his powers of observation and deduction. At the back of the pack, Kirsten Zeller’s freckled face was the only one he felt he could safely trust. Ruben, on his crutches beside her, needn’t be here for this interrogation, but then again, perhaps his insider knowledge of…
Wait a minute.
Vaughn slowed his approach. Stayed his hand from his holster – caution overriding instinct. His ragged heartbeat thumped in his ear as he veered slightly to the left, in order to get a clearer view of…
…the man with the crutches.
Ruben would have towered over the rest of them, and he had no need of a breather. This man was average height, middle-aged, stocky, balding – Tynedale without the combover – and wore old-school horn-rimmed spectacles. Vaughn remembered him now, the healthy-eater from the HQ lounge. The bandage on his foot was less generous, not as packed. His crutches made him non-threatening, the last person one would suspect. They also explained why he hadn’t been actively involved in recent events.
Or were they a convenient excuse for him to stay at Miramar, bide his time while his colleagues sallied out on their assessment field trips? He could have kept tabs on who went where, and with whom, specifically Jan, on account of her known liaison with Detective Vaughn, the agent in charge of a high-priority target’s protective detail. Vaughn might have planned to bring Kyra Stone here – it was out of the way, secure, and he knew it intimately. A safe place to lie low until she could testify against the cartel. And when Vaughn had arrived, alone, and continually flown back and forth to unspecified destinations, the man with the crutches would have suspected, strongly, that Kyra was somewhere on Hesperidia.
Had he planted a tracker on Vaughn’s ship? Doubtful. His bird’s SI security would have been too tough a nut to crack. Perhaps he’d tagged Jan, and she’d led him to the Keys. However he’d done it, Vaughn was certain of two things. The man with the crutches had not been present in the conference room just before tenax’s attack – as a COVEX rep, he really should have, infirmity or not – and he had not joined them afterward for the hub showdown. If his injury was to blame for those absences, why was he here now?
Too many coincidences.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll indulge me this one last time. It’s critical that you don’t question any of this until I’m done.” Vaughn stood before them, bolt upright, commanding. “Miz Zeller, stand beside me please.” She frowned, glanced at her colleagues, then shrugged and obeye
d. “Thank you. Now, anyone who has personally worked with or known Miz Zeller professionally before this trip, put your hand up.”
Five delegates did just that. He turned to Kirsten. “Are they correct?”
“Yes.”
“Very well,” he announced, “everyone with their hand raised, walk over here and stand beside Miz Zeller.”
Whether bemused or amused, they did as they were told.
Of the four that remained, one was the armed doorman with the afro, another was Ginter, the third was a plump woman with a radish complexion, while the fourth, hunched over his crutches, bore a nametag labeled ‘Papademos’.
This next part would have to be handled carefully. If Vaughn got this wrong, it could blow up in his face. If he was right, Crutch Man would have to make the first move. A killing move. He’d already outdrawn Ricky Melekhin, a talented rookie in formidable shape.
“Where are you going with this?” Ginter’s sneer made him appear weak, silly.
“Of those that remain, raise your hand if you’ve ever met in person or vid-linked with any of the people standing beside me before this trip.”
All four raised a hand. Okay, let’s test that.
“Mr. Ginter, who was it?”
“I’ve worked with Enola Fashnu and Giles Eddy on several previous assignments. Why? What does that have to do with—”
“Miz Fashnu, Mister Eddy, is that correct?”
They both affirmed.
“Miz Harford,” he addressed the plump woman, “who did you know previously?”
“Uh, most of them, Detective, at one time or another. COVEX is a pretty tight organization.”
Vaughn was about to ask the others to confirm her acquaintance when Stopper came bounding up the verge behind the four remaining reps. When he saw Vaughn, his excited tail-wag soon wiggled his whole body; he dropped his rubber ball a few meters to the left of the group, beckoning his favorite lawman to come play at once.
“Don’t mind us,” said Jan, running after him. “Pretend we’re not here.” She snatched up the ball and lobbed it as far as she could back down the verges toward the forest. Vaughn watched Stopper tear after it – only for a moment, because the pacey Boxer was soon out of sight. The next thing he knew, Crutch Man had Jan in a pinch chokehold from behind. Worse, he pulled a customized pulse pistol from inside his jacket, and pressed the muzzle to her temple.
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