Last Man Out (Poor Man's Fight Book 5)

by Elliott Kay

  He came out of it almost in the blink of an eye. Davis pushed himself over onto his back. At first, he saw only ash and a heads-up display full of bad news. Every name but Frazzy’s turned up in a dim, warning red line.

  Mara was dead. She lay only meters away, dangling from the stone creature’s hands. Her helmet was gone, now held by her killer as if that was all it had wanted of her. The thing turned its glowing face toward Davis.

  “Can you hear and understand me?” it asked with a calm, entirely human voice, like a man waiting tables in a restaurant.

  Davis reached for his sidearm again, but it was gone.

  “Are these words correct? Do you speak English?”

  He snatched his rifle out of the ashes. Effective or not, he had nothing else. “Platoon, this is Davis!” he shouted. “I need help!”

  “This answers only one of my questions.” The stone man closed in, ignoring the lasers Davis put into its chest and head. “Can you understand me?”

  Then it jolted forward. Sparks flew from its shoulder with a loud pop from behind. More followed to similar effect. Across the smooth floor, Frazzy was up on her knees, firing her pistol.

  “Platoon, Frazzy!” she shouted. “We need help! Xeno contact! Xeno contact!”

  The red tau on the stone face glowed brighter. It turned to Frazzy, enduring two more shots without complaint.

  Red light burst from the stone man’s face with a thunderous crack. The thing sustained its beam for several seconds. When it finished, nothing remained of Frazzy or the others but soot on top of ash.

  Davis searched frantically for his pistol. Without his weapon, fear turned to panic. A hand with all the strength of stone shoved him onto his back.

  The storm picked up, deepening the darkness. Ashes washed over the black surface that had only briefly served as a battlefield, burying it again. The red glow of the alien face stood out among the gathering shadows.

  “You are a warrior? Healthy and suited to battle, like these others?” the thing asked.

  Davis didn’t answer. He couldn’t form words.

  “You will suffice,” it said.

  A stone fist came in at Davis’s helmet, ending all of his fear.

  Chapter One:

  Living the Dream

  “Archangel claimed their war against the Big Three was primarily over student debt. The Debtor’s War destroyed one major corporation and savaged another, leaving the interstellar economy in turmoil. Nine months later, the Union of Humanity is more unstable than ever. Tonight on Verified, we’ll look at the human cost of the Debtor’s War as it is felt here on Fremantle: some of the millions of lives lost, and others left shattered by this brutal conflict. Don’t look away.”

  --Polaris-Fremantle News and Entertainment, May 2280

  “They’re protesting him again.”

  Naomi looked up from the spread of holographic messages and notes at the conference room table. “What are they protesting now?”

  “Not what, who,” Kim corrected. “Him.”

  Naomi rose to see what she meant, killing the images projected by the holocom mounted on her ring. A glance at her reflection in the window confirmed her “adult professional” disguise was still in place: jet black hair pulled back from a pretty, dark brown face, grey and blue skirt suit conservative enough to mark her as an instructor rather than an undergrad. No one would know how tired or overwhelmed she felt. The reflection disappeared from the glass as she stood beside Kim to look out over the quad.

  Dozens of students flowed past the building. This wasn’t the protest itself, but rather people on their way to it. She read the signs, noted the energy in everyone’s step. The ubiquity of personal holocoms meant everyone had their own holographic projector, but in a crowd all those translucent images could easily become a cluttered jumble. Half of these students held actual printed signs.

  The words were easy to read: Murderer. Maniac. War Criminal. Terrorist.

  Not On Our Campus.

  Naomi knew exactly where they were headed. Her shoulders sagged. “Shit. Don’t they have to study for finals?”

  “It’s Thursday,” Kim noted. “They’ve been studying all week. Maybe this is how they deal with burnout.” Naomi’s fellow doctoral candidate pointed to a young man in shorts and a red bandanna leaping buoyantly through the flow of students, waving his hands in the air to rile them up. “Maybe they’ll get it out of their systems and move on before your seminar.”

  “They’d better,” Naomi grumbled. “I’m not in the mood to deal with this again.”

  “Have you had any more problems?”

  “Not since the idiot freshman with the bucket of fake blood outside my door.”

  “No, I mean with him,” Kim corrected.

  “He’s not even a problem. Probably the best student in the class. Gets every assignment done early, writes well, aces every quiz. When he speaks up, you can tell he did all the reading and probably more.” Her praise carried annoyance. Naomi watched more student protesters trickle by. This would grow into a mob. “Now the class only gets freaked out when somebody reminds them to be freaked out.”

  “I think I’d be a little freaked out,” Kim admitted. “Or bitter. How much grant money did the school lose by taking him in?”

  “I don’t know, how much of your educational debt got wiped out when NorthStar and Lai Wa made their ‘goodwill adjustment’ after the war?”

  Kim frowned. “A lot. Not all of it, though.”

  Doors slid open at the other end of the conference room, drawing their attention. Other heads looked up too, from the conference table and the coffee service to one side.

  “Oh, is everyone here already?” Typical postgraduate students called their advisors by first names; Naomi’s had never once made such an invitation. He was still Professor Vandenberg, Doctor of History, Anthropology, and Xenoarchaeology. He strode in wearing a tan suit and tie, smiling under his bushy grey mustache. “Good. We can get started right away.”

  “Wish he was the only man causing me problems,” Naomi muttered.

  “Thank you all for being prompt,” said Vandenberg. He sat at the head of the table, calling the meeting to order by his tone of voice alone. Naomi, Kim, and the others returned to the table. For the undergrads, this would be the final word on their summer quarter and possibly determine the trajectory of the rest of their time at the university. For students like Naomi and Kim, it would deeply impact the course of their future careers.

  “I know what a busy time of year this is, but these meetings are important to hold in person. We’ll keep it short. I have a lecture after this myself.

  “I concluded a call with the foreign ministry only a few minutes ago. They’ve asked that we provide full travel advisories for Minos. I need each of you to read and sign your advisory to make the university happy. More importantly, they’ve confirmed with the security services on Minos that there are no further requirements for our visas. That was our last bit of red tape.”

  “So it’s on?” asked Emma, a junior with a festive purple and blue dye job and an excited grin she couldn’t hold back. Others showed much the same energy as they listened.

  “It’s on,” confirmed Vandenberg. “You can forget the field school on Anambra. We don’t need a back-up plan now. Our dig on Minos is full speed ahead.”

  “What’s this about a travel advisory?” asked Antonio. As the pride and joy of the school’s champion soccer team, arrangements for the trip were even harder for him. He had to navigate the coaching staff along with all the other bureaucracy. “What does it say?”

  “Minos isn’t in the nicest neighborhood of the Union, but we knew that,” Naomi answered. In contrast to the others, she held her feelings in check. “Minos Enterprises doesn’t guarantee the same civil rights we have on Fremantle. They aren’t all that consistent about protecting the rights they do recognize. The advisory gives plenty of examples.”

  “So don’t do anything to get yourselves arrested,” Vandenberg chuck
led. “Field work has its risks. Anambra wasn’t always the safest location, either. I once wound up in the hospital for weeks with some unclassified bacterial analogue. I’ve had digs interrupted by men in uniforms with guns before, too. Such moments are usually political theater, or at worst a shakedown for bribes. We’ll have friendly locals. If things become problematic, we’ll get early warning. That said, accidents and crime can happen anywhere. Even on campus, or on your way home.

  “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t recruit students for an expedition if I thought it truly dangerous. It’s the chance of a lifetime, ladies and gentlemen. I’m glad you’re interested. On that note, do we have our roster finalized? Are there any further applicants?”

  “No more at the moment, professor,” said Naomi. “But we do have two more open slots.” She didn’t need to call up the list to recite it. Given her responsibilities for organizing all the nuts and bolts of this expedition, she’d lived and breathed practically every detail for the last two months.

  She knew what the advisory would say, too. It almost made her wish the expedition had been canceled. Minos was indeed the chance of a lifetime, particularly for Naomi. It was the focus of her dissertation, which was why Vandenberg was her advisor in the first place. But the closer the trip drew, the more highly she thought of a nice, safe trip to the picked-over alien ruins of Anambra.

  There wasn’t any way out of it now.

  * * *

  He walked to class through a crowd of students cursing his name.

  He tried to focus on his breath. So many people had coached him on that, from drill instructors in basic training to the succession of therapists he’d seen ever since. He reminded himself these were only students. They didn’t have the whole story. They didn’t understand. It was a protest, not a riot or a threat. They didn’t know him. He tried to dismiss the rest and ward off the tension and his nerves. In through his nose, out through his mouth.

  Breathing was important. Sometimes it helped.

  Their signs labeled him a mass murderer and a savage. Some projected holo images in the air depicting him in handcuffs. One showed him in his old dress uniform, standing proudly with all his medals, drenched in blood.

  It was a solid rendering, though it conveyed a sort of pride he’d never felt or expressed in his life. He had put on a resolute or firm expression plenty of times. Military etiquette demanded that now and again, and he’d taken a short turn on the ceremonial honor guard. Even so, he couldn’t think of a time when he’d felt like that.

  A good artist with a good computer could make almost anything seem real. He eyed it without real interest.

  Tanner Malone still looked much the same. The source image was probably less than a year old. Longevity treatments taken right after his discharge ensured he’d look twenty-three for a long time to come. He’d kept the same lean frame shown in the uniform. His green eyes remained unlined, and his skin held onto the tone that matched his name. He still kept his face shaved clean. The lone, small gold ball remained in his left earlobe as a memorial to lost shipmates.

  His black hair was longer now. Much longer, down to his shoulders, grown out at the first salon he could reach, almost out of spite for Navy regulations left behind. He didn’t wear a uniform, either. Tanner stuck with light pants and a loose short-sleeved shirt to fit the pleasant weather. Ever since leaving home for the Navy, all he’d wanted was someplace warm with a good university that would accept him. Five years later, he’d succeeded, mostly.

  “He’s got to go!” the students chanted. “He’s got to go!”

  The main entrance up ahead wasn’t the only way into the lecture hall. He could cut around the crowd and bang on one of the side doors until someone opened up. Or he could call campus safety and ask them to let him in that way. By now, he had a relationship with them. They preferred it when he took the subtle and inconspicuous approach. Having done security work of a different sort, he understood the desire to keep things quiet and calm when possible.

  The chanting continued. The signs stayed up. “Fuck it,” Tanner muttered. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

  He kept his eyes low, put one foot in front of the other, and thought about his breathing. It only required him to ignore instincts built up from five years of training and experience. He merely had to ignore the tension in his shoulders and in his wrists, the voiceless growl that crept into his breath, and his own emotions. Simple stuff.

  He made it to within ten meters of the door.

  “He’s here!” shouted a woman beside him. “That’s him!”

  The crowd roared, closing to block his path. The “got to go” chant intensified, now mixed with insults and loud, wordless outrage. Tanner glanced left and right to make sure things weren’t going any farther than that. He felt conflicted about looking back. He didn’t want the crowd to think they scared him, but he didn’t want to take a mob too lightly, either.

  Tanner gestured to the building behind them. “I need to get to class,” he said.

  “You need to get off our campus,” someone shouted. Others immediately echoed her.

  “Go home, murderer!” called someone else.

  “I kinda burned that bridge.” Tanner shrugged. “Not really an option.”

  “That’s your problem.”

  “Yeah, and I solved it. Here I am.” He kept his voice even and casual. Better to let them think their protest bored him than show how he really felt.

  “You don’t belong here. You belong in a prison,” yelled yet another student. He was a beefy student in a fraternity shirt, pointing an accusing finger at Tanner. “You’re a war criminal.”

  “According to whom? NorthStar?” Staying calm required an act of will. “You realize that was the other side, right? They’re gonna say that kind of thing.”

  “Don’t try to make it about them. You committed crimes against humanity!”

  “No, I committed acts of war because a war broke out and I was in the military—”

  “War crimes!” someone interjected.

  “—Also, there’s no court for what you’re talking about. The Union sure needs one, though. Anytime you want to stage a demonstration for that, I’ll show up with a sign. But I’ve gotta get to class. Last warning.”

  “Or what?” shouted a different student.

  “We’re not afraid of you,” declared another.

  Tanner sighed. The back-and-forth seemed pointless when his words were drowned out by the noise. It didn’t matter. They’d keep at their demonstration regardless of what he said.

  He tapped the screen on his sturdy wristwatch-style holocom. A holographic screen appeared over his wrist, providing a menu of options from personal files to his library to communications. He hit the key for campus safety.

  “We’re not letting you pass,” came another declaration.

  “And we’re not letting you stay,” said another.

  “Not on our campus,” called out one student.

  “Not on our campus!” echoed dozens more.

  Tanner held up his hands to gesture to the buildings around them. “I’m a student here, too. It’s as much my campus as yours.”

  That only got him louder pushback, with shouts of “No!” and boos drowning out the rest.

  His heart pounded. He took in another breath. Nobody here was as loud as gunfire. Nobody touched him. It was all words and some pictures and a delay getting to class. Nothing to freak out about. He’d survived far worse than this. If it wasn’t so loud and if they weren’t so many, he wouldn’t be bothered at all.

  But they were loud. They were many. And despite what his therapist and the counselors said, it sure felt personal.

  He scanned the crowd, trying to ignore the chants. Campus safety had to know about this shit already. He didn’t see uniforms, though. He only saw signs and waving hands and impassioned faces. A blonde student stepped into his line of sight. “This campus isn’t for mass murderers,” she shouted in his face. “We’re not here to be your shelter.”
<
br />   “This campus is for students,” Tanner replied. “I’m a student. Can I go to class?”

  “Can you give back all the lives you took?”

  “It was a war. I wasn’t thrilled about it.” He looked around again. Where the hell was campus safety?

  “It was a war you started!”

  “All by myself? C’mon, man. Even NorthStar’s propaganda doesn’t go that far.”

  “No, not you. Archangel. Your star system,” barked yet another one.

  “All we did was throw out corporations that kept us in lifelong debt through fraud and abuse. They pulled the same shit here on Fremantle, too. And the rest of the Union.”

  “Don’t act like you did us any favors with all the blood on your hands. War is never the answer. Violence doesn’t solve anything.”

  Tanner’s shoulders slumped. “Oh buddy, I wish that was true.”

  “You think this is funny?”

  “I think you’re forgetting who invaded whom. And I think you’re being a little ridiculous.”

  “That only happened after Archangel destabilized the entire Union’s economy!” shouted the frat brother.

  “Okay, so I’m claiming self-defense and you’re arguing economic justifications,” said Tanner. “Where’s the moral high ground again?”

  Someone spit on him, leaving a nasty wet stain on his shirt. Another roar went up, split between support and disapproval. Tanner sighed. “That’s assault.”

  “Do something about it, asshole!” said the bearded student now in front of him.

  Tanner looked the guy up and down skeptically. His heartbeat climbed in a natural reaction to confrontation. He breathed in slowly and tried to let it go. He didn’t need this. He had nothing to prove to the beard or to the crowd. They weren’t going to listen. He had to ignore this.

  “Back off,” ordered the blonde protester. “Stop it. We’re not here for that.” Tanner looked back to her and realized she was talking to the one who’d spit on him. She pushed the guy away. Fortunately for him and for Tanner, the bearded student complied.