The Last Good Man
Page 44
She sits up again, swaying with the motion of the truck. He watches her in silence for another minute, maybe two. Then his eyes drift, until a final stillness comes over them.
~~~
What’s left? Lincoln asks himself. He’s got the air conditioning running full blast, countering the heat of too many bodies in the truck, and the stink of sweat and of blood and the faint lingering reek of gasoline… though that last might be his imagination.
He did what he could to secure the battle site before he left.
With Rohan and Miles helping, he searched the house and inspected the two SUVs. All the weapons they found—assault rifles, handguns, grenades—they stacked in one vehicle, setting it on fire before they left. The electronics—tablets, laptops, phones, cameras—he confiscated. Tamara might find something useful in them.
He left the second SUV to the two surviving Al-Furat soldiers, along with the task of dealing with their dead comrades. Maybe they’ve left the bodies to rot, but Lincoln was hoping they would take them somewhere and bury them, out of sight. What he was certain about was that they would not risk arrest by going to any police or other authority to report what had happened.
The starburst copter that had dueled with the sentinel was a loss. Tamara lost contact with it, concluding that the two battling machines likely collided, or if there was a victor, it probably ran out of battery power before it could return. Their second copter and Roach are back in their shipping containers, secured to the roof racks along with the rest of the team’s equipment. There’s no room anymore for the gear inside the packed SUV.
He turns to check on the team. Miles gazes out the window, lost in thought. Next to him, Felice is nodding. Rohan, who’s leaning on the seatback, notices his gaze. He turns to nudge True, who looks up, red-rimmed eyes bright and fierce and bitter. When she sees Lincoln, her lips part as if she’s about to speak, but she changes her mind and instead she draws her fingers across her throat. And it hits him, a sharp blow, more painful than he thought it’d be. He nods brusquely and turns back to face the road ahead.
What’s left?
Shaw said a lot when Khalid and True were working on him, getting him ready to move. Lincoln heard most of it, words that might be easy to dismiss as the ravings of a dying man, except that more and more lately, Lincoln has been thinking the same things.
When autonomous fighters command the air space, self-driving tanks control the ground, and agile robotic vehicles scout and secure cramped urban areas, what need will there be for soldiers on the front lines?
Times change. War grows ever more impersonal. Anyone who dares to look can see it coming. Combat duty will be limited to a control room half a world away from the front line. That’s where Lincoln is supposed to be now.
His prosthetic hand runs through the tapping sequence. He regards it, admiring its functionality but resenting the limitations it puts on him. And he is conscious of the blindside deficit in his vision that makes him see Khalid as an indistinct figure behind the wheel, cast in shades of gray.
He is not qualified for field duty. He knows this time he’s going home for good. That shouldn’t feel like a tragedy—God knows he’s experienced his share of battles—but it does anyway. What’s left? He’s acutely conscious of a sense of loss, of dislocation, not just for himself, but for a profession that reaches back to the days of the American Revolution. Soldiers, always ready to step up when they were needed, ready to serve, to trade their lives for the defense of the country.
It’ll be robots instead in the years to come, because, like Shaw said, who gives a fuck if they’re shot down, blown apart, or burned up? Better to lose machines than sons and daughters, right?
Yes!
Lincoln has been shot, blown apart, and burned. He doesn’t ever need to experience any of those things again, doesn’t need to see others suffer them.
He asks himself again: What’s left?
This time he has an answer. Claire is at home. She might still be willing to try to patch their broken marriage. Unlike his father, he might get to see his children grow up. He’s grateful for that chance.
Even so, it provokes him to think that his profession will become the exclusive province of programmers, mechanics, engineers, and the autonomous systems they design.
Autonomous warfare will not be bloodless. War by machine proxy is still war, with the sacrifice pushed out of sight, the burden unloaded on distant people. The repercussions, inevitable.
It’s not hard for him to imagine an armed Arkinson—or something worse—engaging above an American city.
The tragedy of the world is that for all the clever minds and brave hearts that have ever been, no one has figured out yet how to forge a lasting peace. Lincoln is confident that armed conflict will not be going away. If he keeps Requisite Operations on the cutting edge of battlefield technology, he could be in business for a long, long time.
~~~
Alex sits on the wide ground-level deck behind the house, boots propped up on a stool, gazing at the trees across the lawn, watching their shapes slowly emerge from the grip of an early-morning fog. He hasn’t slept all night. Yesterday he went home from work early after messing up on a call. He let them know he wouldn’t be back—not until he knew if she was alive, if she was coming home, if he could ever forgive her.
He’s read her last message a hundred times. I’m with Lincoln now, and this is almost over.
The deck heater kicks on, humming quietly as it struggles against the cold. His phone is on the table beside him. Jameson called thirty minutes ago to say the team had recovered Shaw Walker and were on their way to a pickup point, but since then the phone has been maddeningly silent.
When it finally does ring in its standard-issue corporate chime, he doesn’t reach for it right away. He lets the tune play for several seconds before he leans over to see who’s calling. If it’s Jameson, it’s probably another update. If it’s Chris… well, that would be bad news.
The call is from her.
He picks up. Waits.
“Hey,” she says after a few seconds. Her voice sad, hoarse. He thinks she’s been crying.
“You all right?” he asks gruffly.
“I’m not hurt.”
“Jameson said you’re bringing Shaw home.”
“Yeah.”
“Was it worth it, True?”
She takes a few seconds. When she does answer, she speaks slowly, trying to find the right words. “You told me that Nungsan was like a black hole that we’ll always be circling around. You were right. It’ll always be there. But we don’t have to look at it all the time. I don’t have to. Not anymore. Alex, are you going to be there when I get home?”
He thinks about this, thinks about his options, and tells her the truth: “Where the hell else would I be?”
“Okay, then. I’m on my way.”
Acknowledgements
I want to thank all those who helped with The Last Good Man. First and most essential, my freelance editor, Judith Tarr, who read an early and incomplete version of the manuscript. Her feedback helped me to move ahead with the story and, when I had a complete draft, Judy went over the manuscript again, providing insightful suggestions throughout.
Early beta readers were Larry Clough, Mark English, and Nancy Jane Moore. My agent, Howard Morhaim, provided additional suggestions, as did Andy Baguio. After I completed another round of revisions, Alex von der Linden took on the heroic task of reading the manuscript during the holiday season. Vonda N. McIntyre provided detailed feedback on a near-final draft, and Cat Rambo did an incredibly helpful line edit.
I also want to acknowledge those who helped with research questions: Yasser Bahjatt, Nyan Aung, Aung Phone Myint, Ramez Naam, and Ken Liu.
Everyone mentioned here has my thanks and my gratitude. They tried to steer me in the right direction. All remaining errors and deficiencies are my own.
I’m grateful as well for all those who share their knowledge via the Internet. Without you, this
novel could not have been written.
And last but certainly not least, thank you to my readers. I’m so deeply grateful for your continuing support and encouragement.
— Linda Nagata
February 2017
Also by Linda Nagata
The Red Trilogy
High-tech, near-future, military thrillers:
The Red: First Light
The Trials
Going Dark
Lieutenant James Shelley commands a high-tech squad of soldiers in a rural district within the African Sahel. They hunt insurgents each night on a harrowing patrol, guided by three simple goals: protect civilians, kill the enemy, and stay alive—because in a for-profit war manufactured by the defense industry there can be no cause worth dying for. To keep his soldiers safe, Shelley uses every high-tech asset available to him—but his best weapon is a flawless sense of imminent danger…as if God is with him, whispering warnings in his ear.
Both The Red: First Light and Going Dark were selected as finalists for the John W. Campbell Memorial award. The Red was nominated for the Nebula award, and was named as a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015.
The Red is “…one of the best pieces of near future Mil-SF ever written. What’s so good about it? The action rocks and the characters are engaging as hell. But this isn’t just adventure fiction, it’s Mil-SF and very well done, straight out of DARPA’s dreambook, not somebody’s fantasy.” —Ernest Lilley, SFRevu
“The Red delivers intense action, leavened by a genuinely sympathetic portrait of soldiers caught up in battles they never chose. Best of all are Nagata’s well-informed representations of future military tech. This is hard science fiction at its finest, full of devices like bionic limbs, exosuits, autonomous drones, and brain implants that are being developed in labs today. But you’ve never seen them like this, at play in a realistic field of battle, controlled by people you actually care about.” —Annalee Newitz, io9.com
For more information and to read sample chapters, visit the author’s website: MythicIsland.com.
Books by Linda Nagata
The Red Trilogy
The Red: First Light (Nebula Award nominee and finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award)
The Trials
Going Dark (finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award)
Stories of the Puzzle Lands (gritty dark fantasy)
The Dread Hammer - Book 1: a tale of love, war, murder, marriage, and fate
Hepen the Watcher - Book 2: a tale of exile, rebellion, fidelity, and fire
The Nanotech Succession - a collection of four stand-alone novels set in a shared science-fiction story world, beginning in the present day and reaching into the far future. Following the timeline of the story world the books are:
Tech-Heaven (prequel)
The Bohr Maker (winner of the 1996 Locus Award for Best First Novel)
Deception Well
Vast
Other Story Worlds
Light and Shadow (a short-fiction collection)
Limit of Vision
Memory (finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award)
Goddesses & Other Stories (a short-fiction collection including the 2000 Nebula Award winner for best novella)
Skye-Object 3270a (young adult/middle grade)
Additional information on all of Linda Nagata’s books, including sample chapters and links to print and ebook versions, can be found at the author’s website: MythicIsland.com.
About the Author
Linda Nagata is a Nebula and Locus-award-winning writer, best known for her high-tech science fiction, including the Red trilogy, a series of near-future military thrillers. The first book in the trilogy, The Red: First Light, was a Nebula and John W. Campbell Memorial-award finalist, and named as a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015. Book 3, Going Dark, was a runner-up for the Campbell Memorial award. The Last Good Man is her newest novel. It’s available in ebook and print editions from Mythic Island Press LLC, and as an audiobook from Audible.
Linda has lived most of her life in Hawaii, where she’s been a writer, a mom, a programmer of database-driven websites, and an independent publisher. She lives with her husband in their long-time home on the island of Maui.