The Last Good Man

by Linda Nagata

  Shaw’s strength is not in doubt. He is a fortress, locked up tight. He makes no plea, no threat. He asks no favors. He allows not even a groan of pain. Waiting.

  At this point no one even needs to strike a match. Gasoline is highly volatile. Its fumes are heavier than air. They hug the ground and spread. All it will take is a crackle of static electricity or a spark thrown by a ricocheting bullet to ignite a flash fire.

  It is surely too late to change the outcome.

  Right?

  She sees that one of the Al-Furat men—she realizes it is nineteen-year-old Rihab—has a fireplace lighter in his hand, the kind with a trigger and a long tube to direct the flame. He walks toward Shaw, barking instructions at the camera crew, but it seems to True that his fierceness is an act. As she aims the Triple-Y, centering its sight on Rihab’s skull, she understands that he is afraid of what’s coming. He doesn’t really want to do it. But for him, as for all of them, there is no backing out.

  A breeze flows beneath the canopy. It flutters Rihab’s shirt and lifts ghosts out of the dust. She prays for it to carry some of the fumes away, and she squeezes the trigger.

  Simultaneously, there is a flurry of gunshots in the ravine.

  A second later, all hell breaks loose.

  ~~~

  Miles is taken by surprise when the assault starts. He didn’t hear Chris initiate it. He only knows it’s on when True fires the first shot and Rihab crumples. The air reeks of gasoline fumes so he’s surprised when the shot doesn’t ignite a flash fire. God help Shaw Walker if that happens.

  One of the armed Al-Furat soldiers yells. Miles picks him for a target, squeezing off rounds from his pistol. A streamer of blood on the man’s shoulder suggests he’s been hit but he doesn’t go down. The two with the cameras try to retreat to the house, while the armed men, including the one Miles wounded, turn their guns on the slope. They don’t know exactly where their enemy is hidden, but they start laying down suppressing fire.

  Miles ducks behind the rocks. True goes belly-down too. Rock chips and lead fragments pepper them.

  Another gun opens up from a position off to the side and lower on the slope. Rapid shots a half-second apart. A rhythm so precise, it’s got to be Roach.

  From below, a drawn-out, agonized scream and, simultaneously, a roar of raw, guttural rage. Someone holds down the trigger on an assault rifle, chewing through the magazine, sending dust and broken twigs fountaining around Roach’s position.

  True chooses that moment to stand up. She brings her weapon to her shoulder—but she doesn’t fire. There’s no return fire. Even Roach stops shooting.

  A pastoral silence spreads across the slope: a breeze rustling through the brush, the muttering stream, the faraway bleating of a goat. Miles is acutely conscious of his rapid breathing. He asks himself: Is it over?

  He lifts his head to look cautiously past the rocks. Under the canopy, everyone is down. Pools of red blending with dust in the filtered light. He counts six Al-Furat soldiers, plus Shaw.

  There should be two more.

  Behind him on the slope, the faint distant crack of a stick. Still on his knees, he wheels around, pistol raised. Motion just below the road. An electric charge erupts across his skin and he reacts before his conscious mind understands what he has seen. He dives at True, knowing it’s already too late. One of the road warriors carried an assault rifle outfitted with a grenade launcher. What Miles saw, what he reacted to, was the black mouth of that weapon aimed in their direction.

  But as True’s knees buckle, as he drags her to the ground, he hears the soft hum of a starburst copter and four quick shots. Then a withering explosion as the grenade blows up somewhere high in the air above them. Miles ducks his head, hunches his shoulders against the concussion. A double punch is delivered against his ears. A blast of searing heat. He feels the pummel of fragments impacting his vest and a sharp pain in his skull.

  For a few seconds after that he hears nothing but the ringing of his ears. Then Chris’s voice, sounding muffled: “Miles. True. Report.”

  “I’m good,” True says, voice husky. “Miles, get off me!”

  He realizes he has her pinned and rolls aside. In a moment she’s up on her knees, doffing her visor, peeling off her camouflage hood. Her face is flushed, her eyes frantic, sweeping past him to look downslope. She puts her visor back on and picks up the Triple-Y. Then she’s away, boosting herself over the rocks to charge at an angle toward the bottom of the slope.

  Miles starts to follow, but Chris shouts over comms, “Stay put! Stay put! We’ve got enemy still in the house!”

  True keeps moving, stumbling and sliding, dry brush bursting apart as she hits it.

  ~~~

  True is trusting Roach and the starburst copter to cover her. They’ve owned this battle so far. She’s pretty sure the copter took out the two road warriors on the high ground, hitting one just as he pulled the trigger on his grenade launcher, sending the explosive on a wild arc.

  She reaches the bottom of the slope. Cuts right to angle across the flat. As she does, Roach emerges from the brush in front of her. It’s a meter-long monster, moving with swift, revolting grace on its stout insect legs, gun-barrel head supported on a jointed mast as it snaps around to target her. She is so startled, she cuts sideways and almost screams. The barrel shifts again, upslope, where she left Miles.

  It doesn’t shoot. Both of them are white-listed. True imagines a database table updated with her current position, a description of her that reads “potential obstacle,” and the instruction “do not harm.”

  Roach moves on, skittering with frightening speed toward the house just as the copter buzzes into sight, appearing around a corner of the building and flying low. The copter banks around the SUVs, then cuts under the canopy, a half-second behind Roach.

  Two soldiers are still in the house. With the mechs pressing the assault, True knows the firefight could erupt again at any second—but the way to the SUVs is clear.

  She sprints for the one with the twenty-liter jugs. Her hands are slick with sweat beneath the fabric of her gloves as she grasps the cap of the blue jug and wrenches it open. She smells it to be sure. Water. Hauls it out of the bumper rack without bothering to cap it again and runs with it beneath the canopy, the forty-pound mass banging against the outside of her knee and water sloshing out. She runs to where Shaw is pinned against the ground.

  Gunfire again. A single shot. So close and so loud, every muscle in her body tenses. A glance shows her it’s Roach, shooting into the house through the open door. The mech skitters inside. The starburst copter swoops away, out from under the canopy and out of sight.

  Leaving the conclusion of the battle to Chris and Tamara, True sets the water jug down. She drops to her knees. The stench of gasoline that’s rising from Shaw is almost overwhelming. His eyes are open but he doesn’t seem to see her. She tips the jug, spilling water over his face. His eyes squeeze shut. She drenches his face, his scalp, his neck, his shoulders. She wets the ground around him and he starts shivering. He turns his head to retch, then whispers something. She leans over him to hear him better. He says it twice more before she understands: “No way back.”

  She is crying. She takes off her MARC visor and drops it beside the Triple-Y, using her sleeve to swipe at her eyes. Then she grabs the steel loop around Shaw’s neck that’s helping to pin him to the ground. There’s hardly enough room to get her gloved fingers around it, but she does. She tugs at it. It’s solid, so she rocks it a little, back and forth, careful not to hurt him as she loosens it. After a minute she’s able to pull it out. She pitches it away.

  Only then does she notice Miles standing a few feet away, bright red blood staining his collar as he watches her with what looks like simmering anger.

  Righteous Justice

  When the shooting stops only a handful of seconds after it started, Lincoln wonders, Is it done?

  He and Rohan are still charging toward the house, scrambling around boulders, not trying
to be quiet anymore. More shots fired. “Chris!” he pants. “Report!”

  “True and Miles are ambulatory, we have secured Shaw Walker, and Roach has two combatants pinned down in the house. I need you up there, Lincoln. Someone’s got to accept a surrender.”

  “Surrender?” Rohan demands, scrambling up a final slope. “You mean that’s it? The mechs took the fight and we’re just the cleanup squad?”

  “That’s it,” Chris tells him.

  “What happened to the road warriors?”

  “The copter took them. Welcome to the new world order.”

  “Fuck. What the hell are we even doing here?”

  Lincoln’s wondering the same thing. Chris answers the question for both of them. “You’re accepting a surrender. Move.”

  They never stopped. They climb fast, up to the flat where the house is situated. “What’s Shaw’s status?” Lincoln pants.

  “Not good, but he’s alive. True is with him.”

  Lincoln holds up a hand, signaling Rohan to pause as they reach the edge of the brush. From here he can look across the flat to see the back of the house and the two parked SUVs. Khalid is bringing their truck bouncing down the lane from the road. No one’s in sight.

  He struggles to pull off his camouflage mask with his prosthetic hand, gives it up, holsters the gun, and uses both hands to get the mask off. Sweat trickles down his cheeks. He looks back, and spots Felice a hundred meters behind, following slowly. Somewhere below her, goats are complaining in a chorus of bleats.

  Chris says, “I need you inside the house, Lincoln.”

  “Yeah.” They need to close things out, pack up, and go. So why the fuck is he hesitating to take the next step?

  Rohan peels his mask off too. Gives Lincoln a quizzical look. “Now you get to see him again after all these years. That’s got to be a hell of a thing, given the history.”

  “That’s about it,” Lincoln agrees. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  They trot together across the flat, meeting Khalid just outside the house. The area under the canopy is a reeking charnel floor.

  “Jesus,” Lincoln says, taking in the scene.

  The six dead men have all fallen to precision headshots, brought down by Roach in a rough half-circle around Shaw. The starburst copter hovers in a stationary position just beyond them, gun barrel trained on the dead—an eerie sentry, standing guard… in case they have not quite crossed over to the other side?

  Miles has a weapon too. He’s bleeding from the back of his scalp, red seepage soaking into his collar as he holds a pistol in one hand, looking like he wants to use it.

  “You’re wounded, Miles.”

  “It’s nothing,” he growls.

  True crouches at Shaw’s feet, wrestling to loosen a bent steel rod that pins his ankles to the ground. She’s weeping.

  Lincoln is glad that someone can.

  Shaw’s eyes are open, aware, but he hasn’t noticed Lincoln yet. His head is turned as if to contemplate the smooth steel spike that’s been pounded into the ground through his right hand. Blood pools in his palm before trickling to the wet ground. This man, once a friend, a brother. What have you brought us to? A bitter thought. Lincoln’s anger rises, a subsurface flame that burns off both pity and guilt, and hardens his sense of duty. Finish the job.

  He turns to Rohan. Voice low, businesslike: “I need you to secure the two men in the house. Take Khalid with you.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  He tells True, “Let me help.”

  She looks up, eyes defiant behind her tears. Whatever she sees, it reassures her. She makes room for him. He uses his good hand and together they work the U-shaped rod out of the hard ground. He gets out his med kit, telling True, “I’m going to put a tourniquet on that arm before we try to get the spike out.”

  His work is interrupted by a hoarse whisper from Shaw: “Fucking Lincoln. At least you showed up this time.”

  Lincoln stops what he’s doing, the tourniquet only half on. “I thought you were out of it,” he says, meeting those familiar pale eyes. “I’d tell you to go to hell but you’re already well on your way.”

  “No argument,” Shaw whispers as his eyes drift closed. “Rihab’s a fuckin’ artist, just like the Saomong. Or he was, anyway.” Cocky still, but his whisper is getting weaker.

  True kneels on his other side. She strokes his forehead as if he were a sick child. “You’re going home,” she promises him.

  His words are slurred when he says, “One way or another.”

  Miles steps closer, the pistol still in his hand, his tone belligerent: “I don’t know. Maybe we should just leave him here.”

  ~~~

  “Maybe we should just leave him here,” Miles says, remembering the pain of gravel grinding into his knees and the desert sand soaked with the blood of innocent men on that day when he said nothing. The smell of blood is making him sick.

  He has stood here and watched True weep, but he refuses to believe these tears are for Shaw. She cannot be crying for him. Her tears must be for Diego.

  “He’s dying,” Lincoln says tiredly, tying off the tourniquet. “You can see that. Let him die in peace.”

  Miles checks the chamber on the pistol he’s holding. He only remembers firing three or four shots, so he should still be good. Roger that! There’s another cartridge in the chamber. “Why?” he asks, looking at Lincoln, honestly perplexed. “He doesn’t deserve it.”

  “No, he doesn’t. We’re going to give it to him anyway.”

  Shaw’s eyes are open again, turned in his direction. Miles feels himself caught in their fierce focus. He waits to hear some smartass remark harking back to that day—you shouldn’t have come here, Dushane—but Shaw’s brow only wrinkles in puzzlement as he whispers, “Who the fuck are you?”

  True is looking up at him too, wide-eyed, fearful. Only then does Miles realize he has the pistol aimed at Shaw’s head.

  “No, Miles,” she says.

  Lincoln rises to his feet, gaze locked on the pistol. He speaks softly, “Give me the gun.”

  Miles shakes his head in disbelief. “He doesn’t even remember that day. It’s just one more forgotten atrocity for him, one more day of banal carnage. Not so different from today.”

  “Don’t make it worse,” Lincoln says.

  And True: “What he did to you… there’s no reason for it. No reason for any of it. Nungsan destroyed him. Don’t let it destroy you, too.”

  Shaw is the calmest among them. He gives up on the puzzle of who Miles might be. Gives in to the situation. “Hell, you need some righteous justice, brother? Go ahead. Do it.”

  Miles is tempted, but disgust chokes off the impulse. Shaw is only playing with words. Miles knows there is nothing righteous here. Not in himself—it doesn’t take a brave man to speak up from behind a gun—and not in Shaw. Miles tells him, “To forget a day like that—it’s pathetic.”

  But that’s how it goes. Atrocities, one after another, spinning off from the storm front of violent conflict, so many even the perpetrators don’t remember them all. It’s a reminder to Miles of the idealism that sent him into journalism post-army. It had felt necessary to tell the stories of those affected… both the victims and the aggressors.

  It still does.

  He lowers the pistol, takes out the magazine, ejects the cartridge.

  “I’m writing a book,” he tells Shaw. “You’re going to be in it.” He hands the gun and the ammunition over to Lincoln. “That’s my righteous justice.”

  Turning back to Lincoln, he indicates with a nod the spike piercing Shaw’s hand. “You want me to try to find a saw to cut that?”

  “Fuck,” Shaw says in disgust. “Just pull it out.”

  Bitter Philosophies

  They’ve lowered one side of their SUV’s split backseat. Shaw is laid out there, wrapped up in an emergency blanket, with a nest of camouflage blankets padding his head against the bounce and vibration of the road. Still breathing. A bag of artificial blood swa
ys from a hook. He’s drifted in and out of sleep since a morphine injection. True watches as his eyes blink open again.

  She sits cross-legged beside him, crammed into the cargo area, her shoulder against the back hatch. Rohan shares the cramped space. He’s sitting with his long legs bent, an elbow over the seatback, turned so that he can watch the road ahead. Felice and Miles are squeezed into the half-seat. Lincoln is up front, with Khalid driving.

  They are rushing to make a rendezvous arranged by Lincoln’s State Department contact. A bulk transport helicopter has been hired to ferry them out of the country. They should be aboard in another twenty minutes.

  Shaw’s eyes turn to look for her. He seems uncertain. True isn’t sure how well he can see. His corneas look a little cloudy. Scarring from the gasoline, maybe. She leans closer, touches his bearded cheek. “Almost there.”

  He surprises her with a faint smile. The scar on his upper lip—a souvenir of Nungsan—is bloodless and pale. He fainted when they lifted him from the wet ground under the anti-surveillance canopy to move him into the car, and he’s said nothing since. But he speaks now, a whisper barely audible over the road noise: “Eight years late.”

  Raw truth. It’ll all be over soon and they both know it.

  Before they moved him, Khalid had bandaged his hand and replaced the outer layers of the dressing on his shoulder. Shaw had spoken through that process, revisiting his bitter philosophies in a manic episode discharged in an angry, panting whisper—his last chance to get it all out there: “We’re done. Done. Our time’s over. The human race is getting phased out and we deserve it. Diego saw it coming. I laughed. I laughed at him when he talked about robots taking over our job. But he was right. Mechs make better soldiers. Easy to print, easy to train, ruthless. And no one gives a fuck if they’re shot down, blown apart, burned up. So what are we for, True? You ask Lincoln that, okay? What’s left? What’s left when you’re a species running on an outdated operating system? What’s left to do but rage, rage.”

  Eight years squandered on rage. What a fucking waste. But he gave some comfort to Diego in those last hours, and even knowing what he’s done since, it’s a consolation for her to do the same for him. It eases the bitter ache. She braces herself against the hatch door and leans over until her lips are close to his ear. “Thank you for taking care of him. I know you would have saved him if you could.”