The Last Hercules

by Ron Bender

  “Seconded.”

  I make a mental note of everyone supporting Shoshauni. I would burn them all out of the council. No one fucks with my business, my people, or me, this hard. There’ll be consequences….

  Yolanda leans to my ear just so I can hear her. “At least those meetings and the lawyers will drag this out for a long while.”

  The speaker calls everyone back to order. “We will look to AlphaTek to cooperate and provide any such intelligence or information as requested about the Speedwell incident.”

  “As it clears my desk, Speaker, I will pass it on.” Directly to the media. They’re capable of proving the veracity of exactly what I want them to see and bypass the closed-door bullshit of this chamber. I am done here.

  “Motion to dismiss this meeting.”

  ˜˜˜

  Council members, assistants, security, and media all mill around outside of the doors overlooking the Council Plaza.

  Outside, through the tall windows, I can see a podium, complete with glass shielding, prompters, and a shelf capped with a single slender microphone, standing atop the curving entrance steps.

  Rashid Dureera, from Peak & Dureera, the councilmember who had forced the rest of them to study the proposed oversight, intercepts me as I make my way closer to the doors. “I know what you’re thinking, Mr. Ferdinand. Who the heck am I and why am I wanting to help you. Well, it’s easy. The motion is stupid, dangerous, and should be as illegal as hell. But I got the impression that ramming it through the emergency council may have been their plan from the beginning. I figured delaying it for review and study would buy you some time.”

  “It does.” I shake his hand. “And thank you, Rashid.”

  I wasn’t going to tell him that my frustration almost had me declaring an unspoken war on all of them. His solution is better, cleaner, and gives me a chance to target the few instigators properly.

  “We should talk about this again before the next session.” He says as we make our way through the foyer.

  “I agree. Call me with times and I’ll do what I can to accommodate you.”

  He nods and we are separated by the moving crowd. Looking around I see HelBraun and her cronies taking the MagLift. They’ve opted to leave quickly via a separate landing pad, leaving me to dance in front of the crowds.

  She sees me as the doors glide closed. Her smile widens.

  The instant I have a stable connection Jen cuts in over my com-link. “Bransen’s men are still continuing their assault on the encampment. There are large numbers of dead and injured on both sides. Picasso and Lexi have continued with counter insurgency. Doctor Hildebrandt may, at this time, have minor injuries. Media is locked down on this event and we have air units in the area as active support.”

  I ask. “What’s the status in orbit?”

  “We have sent several recovery craft into the area to secure the wreckage for forensics.” She continues after a short pause. “The incursion team’s shuttle is on a continuous one point five gee return thrust. They will be arriving at the Corporate transfer LEO platform shortly. ETA two hours to planet side. Colonel Morochevsky has been stabilized and is undergoing ERRASS.”

  “How is the medical on that ship?” I ask as the idea that I might lose Alex because of dated gear hits home.

  “It has a newer medical bay, retrofitted two years ago. The Emergency Remote Robotic-Assisted Surgical System is being handled by a medical team led by Doctor Vlasta.”

  I say. “Keep me informed as to their status.”

  “Yes, sir.” Her report flows. “Media Control has expressed the need to meet with you as soon as you are able.”

  “I’ll be on my way to AlphaPlaza after this circus is over.”

  I step outside, grateful for the night air. People all around me now connect to the system and DV’s all across the plaza chime and ring. It’s normal but even given the events of tonight it feels like there’s are a lot more activity.

  Yolanda is meeting with the Speaker and motions me forward toward the podium. As she does, even she accepts a dv call.

  Jen adds, “As per your request we tracked Bransen’s account in South Africa. Jimmy’s software managed to lock a single frame of him leaving the Bank and making his way down the street.”

  “Are we sure it’s him?” I don’t want to be chasing ghosts. I want a target. One I can give to Baylen. It might not matter. He might not trust me to get it right.

  Yolanda finishes her call and steps forward to the podium. Her address begins by thanking the assembled crowd and media for their attendance.

  Jen replies to my question. “Lexi and Jimmy have both confirmed the person in the still frame capture is Bransen.”

  Yolanda continues, “Mr. Ferdinand and AlphaTek, as the council pointed out, have secrecy, weapons and direct control over every aspect of the lives of everyone in New White Sands, and I for one am done with that. It’s time to rise up and martyr yourselves for the cause of freedom….”

  “Jen, I have to—"

  “He’s just one man. The head of the snake.” Yolanda yells into the mic, “Strike now before it’s too late.”

  My security team is already moving.

  I’m already moving.

  Guards from across the plaza, media types with small arms, even two of my own men, begin firing at me.

  Yolanda turns and rushes me with her bare hands, trying to keep me from getting behind the podium and into cover.

  Terror and chaos make up a two-fisted grip, clenching everyone nearby. The surprise, the intensity of the violence, turns the panic blind. Amid the bullets, people scream, shove, and trample.

  I keep one arm over my head and run forward in a crouch. My armored suit takes hits as I move. The sound of heavy assault rifles, and small arms fire create a din that swirls around the once pristine marble canyon. The place becomes a death trap.

  Two heavy rounds shear into my right arm. A piece of software inside me senses an overload and cuts out. The searing pain vanishes and milspec combat drugs wash into my bloodstream from a dozen different points.

  Yolanda dies in front of me. Her scream frozen on her lips as my blow catches her in the throat, flinging her corpse away into a line of oncoming fire.

  I duck as the podium gets hammered.

  Booming thunder deadens my hearing and compensators in my ears struggle to mask out the sound.

  Angel slams the Oppenback straight down into the space behind me, filling the narrow gap between the podium and the building front. She steps part way out; her steady rifle fire is methodical, aimed. I move at her signal.

  Attackers around us rush forward with a suicidal relentlessness. The outer shell of the AV is dented dozens of times. Nothing penetrates its armored layer.

  A grenade lands near me. Rashid throws himself onto it. His yell of warning, the way he’d responded…he was military.

  Was.

  The detonation thuds through him.

  My own men have fallen back into the building and the attack is withering quickly.

  Guards from other corporations, without clear direction, randomly fire at anything suspicious. My men track weapons fire aimed at themselves, or me, and select fire in return.

  The screams, the gunfire, the howling of the air car, like a hell-born thing, boils up a deep anger inside me.

  As the insanity of it becomes clear, resolving itself into the bigger picture, part of me understands that something is so very wrong with all of this….

  I throw myself flat into the car.

  Angel has us up and flying in seconds. She’s bypassed the safety mode and we peel away with one door still trying to cycle closed.

  My dv has been chiming incessantly. There’s no name on the display.

  “Jen?” I taste blood on my lips and know it’s not my own. I try to push myself upright. With a grunt, I fall back. My arm is a mangled ruin, twisting free, separating itself, inside the suit jacket. Only the metallic bulk of the elbow joint saved me….

  “Untra
ceable connection.” Jen says quietly. “I am working on finding the source. Emergency extraction plan delta two nine point three has been activated in Ops room three. The Ops team are asking if we are offering assistance to the NWSPD?”

  “No. Let the bastards come and ask us for help. The priority for Ops Three is to get our people out of there. Even the dead. Have everyone fall back to the rooftop landing pad.” Helbraun knew. That’s why she didn’t use the main doors…I make a snap decision about the call. “I’m taking the call. Track it as we go.” I say as calmly as I can into my dv. “Hello?”

  “Well hello there, Mr. Ferdinand.” The voice on the other end sounds impossibly happy. “I was wondering if I’d just done myself and the world a favor. Only a small part of me is relieved you’re alive.”

  I recall his voice from footage recovered from the Bastion Medical Center. Voice ID confirms it as I reply, “Mr. Townsend.”

  “Good, you recognize me. That saves us both some time. Ya can call me Phillip.”

  “Then please, call me Mr. Ferdinand.”

  He laughs. “Sure. I guess I can afford to be generous with the walking dead.”

  The dv calls across the plaza…. Just like the Doc Ripperkin clients that came active and tried to kill Raven. Implanted controls…. “That was your handiwork in the plaza?”

  “Heck yes. I figured it was time I gave you some payback. You kicked me just as I was getting myself going. I decided to kick you back. Except, as of now, you’ve got nothing to kick at. And me? I can kick all I want; anytime I want. Because from today until you die for real, anyone you meet, ever, may be a killer made by me, waiting to drop you.”

  “What do you want, Mr. Townsend?” I try to keep him talking, hoping that Jen will lock onto someplace we can send a strike team.

  “To show you that you have no control over me, no authority whatsoever over my plans. No matter what you do, or try, I’ll run right over you whenever the hell you get in my way.”

  “Get in your way?”

  Jen comes on. “The line is dead.”

  “Tell me you got something.”

  She sounds as disappointed as I feel angry. “We have nothing from the trace.”

  She waits until I finish swearing.

  “However,” she says. “Medical and technical are waiting for your car to set down.”

  Angel com-linked AlphaPlaza our ETA. I can see a crew waiting on the extended pad. The view south of AlphaPlaza One is darkened by a horizon thick with clouds. White-Blue lightening pulses deep inside them.

  The storm that I smelled earlier, has finally arrived.

  3.25

  The Storm

  The thundering rain turns a nice summer evening stroll and its bits of violence into a muddy scramble out of flooding lowlands and swirling waterfilled mangrove. I tighten my jacket around me. As I look back down the trail I thumb the heat on.

  It’s raining South Am hard; so heavy my optics play tricks on me. Stretched out blurry shapes pull upwards into spindly towers that could be tree trunks. But like they say; fool me once— fuck you, I kill you; there is no fool me twice. Now I have back up built-in. I layer a couple of different visual frequencies over my audio inputs and let software do the rest. Heartbeats and breathing pinpoint the center of mass, and millimeter wave bursts along with the rest, give me a nearly perfect view.

  The doc looks like she’s suffering in this shit. Bad boots, kids dead everywhere, even more injured, and then having to pull the trigger herself… those would’ve been enough. But now the weather’s blown in and we gotta walk.

  She shambles along with the others behind me. A fucking line of zombies. No one’s looking up, no one has a weapon you could call ready….

  “Why’d you stop?” Shandra asks from a little further up the trail.

  “I don’t want to get so far ahead as to panic the fuck outta anyone. In this kind of crap, unless you’re on a drop someplace, you keep an eye forward and back. It’s not always about only clearing point. You have to check on your slack man once in a while too.”

  I remember learning that lesson the hard way. It was dark and weather just like this. I had point. The rebels let me sneak right by. Then they’d rolled up my squad by hand. The distance and sound drowned out everything. I didn’t hear their surprise, or the quick hand to hand.

  Eventually I turned around and went back to find the bodies. They’d been pulled off the line of march and tossed into the undergrowth. I booked it to the LZ.

  The beatings I took from other guys, at night when no officers were around…

  Back then I hadn’t been geared like I am now. Now I know better.

  Shandra either has listened and learned, or is ignoring me. She says. “There’s a clearing ahead we have to cross and then we have a quarter mile along a tree line to get back to the camp.”

  “You still getting reports?”

  “Yeah.” She nods. “My people are still recovering dead, and the wounded are getting worked on in a couple of trailers loaned out for medical use.”

  “No more enemy?” I ask. We’d be wiped out if even a quarter of the men from before showed up now.

  “No. Reports of a lot of air traffic to the north and west of here during and just after the fighting.”

  “Wolf’s air units. He would have sent more, but your eldest—"

  “You mean my Grandmother.” She says, her head coming up sharply.

  “That’s right. Tessa. She was so dead set against getting more help. Afraid Wolf ‘d come at her with a bill or claim some labor….” I wasn’t gonna tell the girl that Wolf could have set this place up so Bransen’s men never would have seen the camp and died lonely deaths on the horizon and done it for free. “So here we are.”

  She spins about on the muddy trail and moves off. I look back down the line. They’ve closed up enough that the slack can see me. I urge him forward, turn, and follow Shandra along the edge of the clearing.

  I try my com-link. I’d only had a few minutes of clear com time since the fighting ended. Nothing. I’m about done with a piss filled nature hike. I pull out my Dv and check it for signal. The signal is weak and fades in and out but I try a call to dispatch.

  The operator sounds spooked. “Dispatch.”

  “Operative Picasso, calling in to for a link to Wolf Actual, Jen, or Ops Two, Lexi Control.”

  “Operative, we’re dealing with a situation here right now.” The nervous dispatcher says. “I’ll send orders to have a call back go out to you in twenty-five minutes. I say again; two-fiver, minutes.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa buddy.” I stop walking. “You can’t just drop a turd like that on me and not fill me in a little. What’s the situation?”

  “Someone tried to kill Wolf Actual on the steps of the council building.” His voice shakes. “It’s a bloodbath. Ops Three is running Delta Two Nine for extraction.”

  Someone grew some balls. The dumb shit. I’d been telling him for years that someone’s just gonna roll up on his fancy race car while he’s getting a blowjob from some super model and drill him in the ass with run of mini missiles. “Fuck. Requesting immediate pick up.”

  “No, Operative. I have specific orders for you. You get a call back in twenty-five minutes.” Then the bastard actually cuts the line. He knows my reputation, because he blocks my call-in number too.

  “Mother fucker.” I scream over and over, stomping and jumping around the muck filled space, until I see the whole line, Doc included, stopped, staring at me. Capering around like a wack-cracker on sack full of uncut Chu-two party-line.

  I stomp my anger out by covering ground. I want hot coffee, a solid roof, my bike nearby, and my fucking call back. Delta Two Nine Extraction meant kill anyone in the way. Citizens, CEO’s, Council Members, Cops. Serious shit is happening in the city and I’m still out in the fucking bush babysitting.

  I swarm past Shandra. “Hey,” she calls. “What happened to waiting for the slack?”

  “You fuck’n wait in the rain. I’m d
one with this shit.”

  ˜˜˜

  The tribes camp has been pounded. Trailers are flattened, vehicles, some burned out and still burning, their power cells splattered toxic shit across the ground. The people will end up moving for sure.

  Yard lights on mechanical booms dimly light the area. The lights barely do the job against the torrent.

  The little kids are huddled around the bunker that kept them safe. I stomp past.

  “Hey, where’s everyone else?” one of the guys in the group asks.

  “They’re coming. Where’d my bike end up?”

  He shakes his head. “Dunno.”

  “Coffee?”

  He points to a one of a handful of undamaged mobiles. “Try there.”

  The shack on wheels is made up of patches and plates pop riveted over one another except for a strip under the front glass that could original. A bruised beige, patterned to look like a strip of wood runs the old vehicles width. Greenish letters, barely legible, spell what could be the word Winnebago.

  A power generating awning is pulled from the sidewall of the rig, jutting out from above the side step. It makes a decent sized dry patch next to the open door. As the cloth bounces in the wind the lights inside brighten and dim perceptibly. They’ve run the power cell all the way out.

  The sparse looking woman who greets me at the door eyes me up and down. She croaks, “You look like a drowned possum.”

  “Some guy said there might be coffee in here.” I clench a fist around my hair and squeeze water out its whole length.

  Her eyebrows climb and her lips twist into a grimace. “Blacks all we got.”

  “That’ll work.” I don’t go inside. I wasn’t invited.

  She pours me some and wordlessly hands it over.

  The heat radiating through the edible cup provides the mental justification and my body reacts to it. I snort at the gullibility of the human mind even as I feel warmer. Dropping onto a knocked together bench, I’m out of the rain and pouring the hot coffee into my face. The jacket heater and the java warm me up my insides.