The Last Hercules

by Ron Bender

  The craft slams in, it’s nose pounds to the swampy ground to our right and momentum yanks its tail around hard. Mud and water eject in a wide corona around the crumpled hull.

  The second motor screams to compensate for lift that the craft no longer needs. It howls, shrieks, and then chuffs into the silence of an emergency shutdown.

  The pack with supplies I’m hauling gets dropped. My hand lets go of the doc and I’m lining up gun sights on the back ramp of the nose-down craft.

  Shandra is still behind me. “Get her to cover,” I order the young nomad. Toggling my eyes to mat black I rush for cover closer to the target.

  I hear Shandra urging the doc away from me. The ramp and emergency doors on the downed troop carrier spring open.

  Ducking behind a tree stump, I mark single targets. As I pop out I’m aiming for necks, armpits, and groins. Third generation EXACTO rounds track the few targets trying for extreme movement. Bodies drop.

  A handful of troops are safe inside the wreckage. Soon they’ll exit out of the far side door and I’ll have a firing line to deal with them. A few men stay inside trying to snipe at my position. I wonder how long I have before someone tosses a charge at me.

  The sound of the second VTOL behind me changes pitch as it swings into landing mode. I’m going to be flanked if I stay here too long. The sound growing louder makes up my mind for me. I have to contain these clowns near the vehicle or I’ll be pinned between both vehicles. I break cover at a run, soft mud churns under my boots. I let my coat slip from my shoulders as I move.

  Rushing the smoking wreak, I throw a second sticky charge down the throat of the open ramp. The screams inside the fuselage fade with the echo of the boom. The survivors on this side of the craft are shot at close range.

  A heavy power-jump carries me over the top of the VTOL to its far side door.

  I unleash my hand-to-hand weapons as I drop. The long twin blades of the wolvers spring out along my forearms and lock into place. The six heartbeats near the vehicle die as fast as I can swing.

  Ultrahigh frequency vibration blades part neck armor. Torso reactive armor squeezes tight and then slides down either side of the tapered blades that have sunk eight inches into flesh.

  The sudden stench of segmented internal organs fires up my primal mind. It’s still not my favorite way to play but it’s close enough. The blades snap back as the last man drops.

  I reload my pistol as I poke-check the inside the craft. The view through the door is bloody chaos. Movement near the ruined front of the VTOL brings my hand to snap-fire at the two injured crewmembers coming out of the partially submerged cockpit. One of them still manages a shot as my round takes him out. The metal of the doorframe near my head deforms with a ragged edged pockmark.

  Audio-dampers in my ears kill the din of the gunfire inside the armored vehicle. It’s my additional software that combs out the crap and unmutes the fury of incoming heavy fire.

  I let my knees buckle and I drop into cold mud before rolling away from the hull. The concussion of a RPG detonating inside the downed craft ripples through my chest. Flames shoot out of all of the openings around the brutalized hull. A second explosion of unspent fuel sends a huge fireball up into the trees. The heat ignites the nearest branches overhead.

  I pull up into a crouch and peek at the ridgeline. The kids are scared, heartbeats are racing wild in every chest. I see Shandra on this end. She yells for them all to mark targets as she pops up from cover doing a shoot and scoot along the ridgeline. The guy with the RPG is the one she’s aiming for. She wings him but it’s enough.

  Her example is all it takes. Soon the steady pop of gunfire comes from along the line.

  By the reaction of Bransen’s men I guess the degree of resistance here is unexpected.

  I have no idea what their objective might be. If they’re here to kill Doc, the aerial bombardment and mortars will start soon. If they want her alive, someone will have to march up the low ridge on foot.

  I sprint forward intending to get close enough to bring down the second VTOL. The pilot isn’t going to let that happen. He doesn’t see me but he pulls off and slides away from the firefight, climbing as he does. I can’t afford to give away my location so I don’t fire at him.

  Tactics change.

  Marking targets, I limb a few troops from deep behind their own lines. I’d love to close and finish some of them with my blades but the kids are shooting anything that moves. The men I drop are finished as rifle rounds drill holes in struggling bodies.

  I get my answer about their mission objective soon enough. They want the doc. A four-man fire team slips away on the north flank, making their way around. I hear Sal yell as he realizes what’s happening. Hidden explosives, crude unshaped charges, rip up chunks of ground, and uproot whole bushes. The fire team drops. I can still see movement but it’s subdued. Sal, rises to one knee, rifle in hand, intent on mopping up. The nomad is too high out of cover. It’s a split second. Even as Sal fires, the target I swing under my sights also shoots.

  I drop my man. My man drops his.

  I can hear fear leap up in the kid’s voices as the news of Sal’s death races down the firing line. The nomad ranks go soft. Their fire rate becomes sporadic.

  Because I’m active on their flanks the troops are onto me in no time. I’ve got too much heat on me to be effective. Some of the troops turn and fire to suppress my activities.

  I have to fall back. As I do another team tries to flank the ridge on the south end.

  Fuck.

  I’m forced forward again to lend support to the kids on the ridge.

  Overtaking the enemy line with my blades, one at a time from behind. I slide tree trunk to tree trunk, zipping open armor, flesh, and bone. I work my way up their staggered line. The point man turns at the last instant and gets his weapon up. My blade ripples along the hardened metal shroud of his assault-rifle.

  I hear Shandra yell a warning. From the corner of my eye I catch the image of men power leaping over the ridgeline, firing downward as they drop onto the defensive line the kids are holding.

  It’s another moment frozen in time that I can’t do anything about; like watching your lover get shoved off a curb and tumble just out of reach into traffic.

  Then suddenly I get my fight. The guy I’m facing turns into a striking, whirling, parrying, lashing ball of armored metal and flesh.

  He discards his rifle and claws unfurl from the backs of his hands. He’s fast. My guess is he’s over-amped his adrenals, or is scorching his hardwired nervous system. I’ve played this game more than I can count. I see his surprise when I keep up.

  His style is tight, quick, loaded with rapid short strikes.

  The waft of neurotoxins hits my analyzers as his hands wave around. I get why he fights the way he does. He only needs to hit real flesh once.

  We tangle up. He headbutts me, our skull armor plates batter together. My blood comes to life. Here was my place.

  I slide the edge of my blades down the outside of his left arm. Synthetic skin and muscle part from reinforced and sheathed bone.

  He jumps back. I let him tear off the long skin flap of useless covering. He rushes me hoping for a cross elbow strike and a hip toss. I side step and pull up a countering knee strike. As he rotates his hip backwards the internal shotgun buried in my thigh blows the fabric of my pant-leg out. The depleted uranium slug rips a hole into his abdomen igniting as it goes in. But he’s built up as much as I am. He staggers away trying to pull the molten metal slug out of his guts. Maybe in his panic he forgot to pull his claws in. But it really doesn’t matter. I lunge. He jerks his arms up to block.

  Except I’m lunging past him, just out of reach, the sticky charge I underhand at him seals to his chest. The blood-soaked concussion knocks my lunge into a twisting dive. Something gives way and I end up laying there for a second as my hardware resets.

  I know a shut-down can’t be good. But I can’t go back to AlphaTek for a check-up. I had just bribed
the tech, medical, and psych guys to forward my file to Jen. I hear screams from just out of sight behind the ridge.

  I scramble onto my feet, pull my back up gun, and try to run up the low hill.

  A second concussion buckles the ground under my feet. I’m horizontal and then breathless on the ground. My view is of the night sky framed by scorched leaves hanging limp from the trees.

  Shandra crouches over me. I can lip read but my audio has temporarily shut down. Blood is running freely along her cheek from a slash along her temple. “Get up.” I read from her. “The VTOL is coming back. Get up.”

  I struggle. I’ve blown an actuator in my lower back and the redundancy is running at half power. My marquee takes its sweet time getting me an update. I can see urgency in Shandra’s eyes as she struggles to get me on my feet.

  The ridgeline is smoking. The air tastes like burned peat, plastic, and charred flesh. I can see the Dragon climbing. Its firing as it does. A threading line of dirt thuds upward as the belly gun worms over bodies, confirming kills with each round.

  Their objective has changed. Something happened to make them want everyone dead. Light missiles zip out of low-slung side-pods. The tree line to our left detonates into fireballs. Heat bends the grass in a flattening wave, carried forward by the concussion. I slam on my adrenal booster. I turn away from the blast, pull Shandra into my arms, and brace for the blow. We’re at the edge of the worst of it; I struggle to maintain footing. My ponytail whips by over my shoulder trailing smoke. My hearing kicks back in.

  VTOL thunder drowns out screams from beyond the rise. Two short sharp cracking sounds underpin the violence. Abruptly the AV VTOL has both engines flame out. It just drops from the sky, straight down, crushing and crashing through trees and bush. It lands, belly down, with a resounding thud.

  More kids than I thought would be alive converge on the craft, dodging cover to cover.

  “Where’s the doc?” Even to my ears I sound tight.

  “She’s injured but she’s okay.” Shandra points. “She’s over that way.”

  I look between the downed VTOL and the direction she’d pointed. The craft probably only has a handful of crew on it. A satchel charge detonates next to one of the side doors to the excited cheering of young nomad warriors. They don’t need me to exact revenge. Their gunfire echoes.

  I make my way toward where the doc is supposed to be. I toggle my emoto-eyes back on. I’m less likely to be shot at range if I’m recognizable.

  I crest the first ridgeline. The bowl between the two low hills is nothing but churned ground and cybered up bodies. A few kids lay, twisted and still, here and there along the inner lip. I get no joy out of the view. I wonder if I’m getting old, soft….

  It takes time for me to lurch across the broken ground and up the far rise. Near the next line of trees, I pick out the shapes of three nomad girls standing near to two stout looking trebuchets. There are buckets of metal scraps and hunks of chain standing ready for a second volley.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” I say loudly as I approach.

  The artillery crew look at me and then grin. One of them slaps a hand on the wooden frame. “History books. Who knew?” she says cheerfully. “No heat, no electronics to lock onto…”

  A little way beyond the cumbersome weapons I make out a few wounded warriors propped up on the lee sides of tree trunks. Doc is moving among them. She’s checking bandages and cleaning dirt from faces and hands.

  I can see Sal’s handgun shoved down the back of her pants. I slow and admire the curves of her hips, ass, and thighs, contrasted with the cut and press of the gun against fabric and flesh as she bends forwards and squats down.

  If I slow too much I’ll look like I’m stalling so I finish closing the last few yards at my best speed. “Doc,” I say.

  “You’re alive.” Her tone is flat as she looks up from her patient. Her left arm is wrapped from shoulder to elbow. Her face has scrapes and a layer of grime across one cheek where she hit the ground hard.

  “So are you.” I’d grin at her but she’s not ready for that yet. I try to judge where she’s at. Big fire fights sometimes can screw up newbs.

  Her eyes go distant. “A lot of people aren’t.”

  I figure she’s a little screwed but the nomads around me hold a casual disregard in their poses.

  “They did really good.” I know the kids are listening.

  Maggie’s mom who hates nomads and one of The Wolf’s hunters spoke; that’s what the kids will remember. I was sure that everything we said right now was going to be repeated around campfires for weeks.

  “I killed one of Bransen’s men.” Her hands are moving but the task she’s working on isn’t getting done.

  “Was he going to kill you?” I ask, “Or was he going to kill one of our group?”

  “Yes.” She snaps and then trails off. “He’d done that already. He was going to do it again. I shot him in the face.”

  “So, you did it with intent?” I stay perfectly still as I ask. I can see she’s more screwed than I’d figured. I know my bedside manor sucks. She’ll get what she gets. I say, “Well, Doc, that’s kind of the point of pull’n the trigger when the business end is aimed at another person.” I narrow my eyes at her. She looks like she still doesn’t get it. “To me doing it any other way is like masturbating and not getting off at the end. It’s a waste of time and effort with no tangible results except the frustration of knowing you did it wrong.”

  Her eyes harden.

  I nod at her. “Now you get it.”

  “Young people.” She starts off, stalls, and begins again. “People who are so young that they have no business carrying guns died because of me.”

  Heads turn. Most of them are at least fifteen. Different circumstances, but they’re the same age I was my first time. Nomad faces look on in disbelief at her words. Later I’m sure the ones with enough sense will remember that she has never really been outside of the city.

  “Bullshit. Every one of them knew what could happen. It’s the way the world works. Especially out here.” I look around at the faces turned up to look at me in the darkness. “Struggles make them tough, smart, and resilient. They wanna live like this so at day’s end they’re beholden to no one but themselves.”

  She starts again. “But because of me—”

  I cut her off. “No. They died because of Bransen. They died because of Bransen and we can’t change that.” My patience slips. I gesture around us as my voice comes up. “These kids fought for an idea; the idea that family comes first. The idea that out here, in the day-to-day shit storm of trying to do better than just get by, that family members protect themselves, and each other.” I watch her collapse inwards under my words. “And like it or not, Doc, by their rules; you are family.”

  She gulps air. Maybe she’ll faint, maybe not.

  I lower my voice. “Everyone dies, Doc, and for those people up there.” I point to the ridge. “For them, it happened today.”

  She sits and falls silent clutching her dirty washcloth.

  I stalk away from her. I haven’t talked that much since my last regular fuck. I glower back over my shoulder at her. I’m not even getting action from her. I mutter to no one, “Wolf you bastard. Babysitting my ass.”

  I pick up my coat and head toward the second VTOL. I run into Shandra as I dig out a painkiller and jab it into my side as far around my back as I can reach.

  “Hey,” I say.

  She still has her rifle ready. Her dark eyes peer out into the trees but she’s not seeing anything.

  “Hey.” I level off my anger at the doc. Shandra looks out of her depth. “Good job.”

  She looks toward the rise. I can see tears well up.

  If she were older her look would be hot, as it is it’s just sad. I look toward the ridgeline with her.

  She wipes her nose with her wrist and doesn’t look at me.

  “What happened in there?” I try to picture how it all went down. “All I saw was t
he troops making a heavy jump.”

  “I sat in on Sal’s lecture to the grownups,” she says.

  I’m not surprised that he let her listen in. Maybe she eavesdropped.

  “I had all of the spare explosives laced along between the ridges, under our feet. As soon as the men tried a power jump I signaled the family. We scrambled to the outside edge and let them land.” Her voice gets small. “Some of us didn’t clear the lip in time.”

  “You mined inside your position expecting being overrun?” I feel my eyebrows climb.

  Her brow pulls together right above her nose. “As long as the doc made it out of the hole with a few of us, we achieved our orders.”

  “Huh.” The whole thing suddenly stinks. This is the kind of shit Basillio would pull. “Still, pretty ballsy.”

  “It didn’t work out so well for everyone.” She stifles a sigh. “A lot of my friends are in there.”

  “Right or wrong; you made a decision. There’s always a price for making decisions.” I’m not gonna blow sunshine. “It doesn’t get easier. Ever.”

  She meets my eyes; her face is empty. “What do I do next?”

  Her look stops my typical fuck-you kind of answer. I give her the text book. “Next? I’d try and message the main camp. If you don’t get through then send a fire team back to the camp to scout and report back. Meantime, withdraw to a second position, tend to your wounded. Keep or kill any of the enemy left alive. Legally, you have to help’em, got that?”

  She looks kind of pissed at this last part of my answer. “Okay.”

  “That said.” I look around us. “Out here, between you, me, and the trees; fuck that, you do what you need to. It’ll be your decision. Whatever you can live with paying.”

  Her lips turn into a thin line.

  “But,” I say. “Maybe consider any live ones as a good place to get answers from, or ransom, or maybe even repatriation money.” I can see ragged groups of faces moving around in the darkness. “Lastly, sometimes you have to get ready for another wave of troops showing up. If they came now we’d be dead, right?”