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

by Elliott Kay

  “I’ve made a conscious effort not to inundate my lectures with Minos, since it’s been the primary focus of my research in the last few years. I don’t want to weigh you down with my personal obsessions. Also, literature and other materials suitable for an intro-level class are a bit sparse. Colonization only began forty years ago. But it’s relevant enough for the topic today.

  “The biggest reason we don’t know much about the ancient Minoans is their environment. The unique qualities of Minoan geology block out most ground-penetrating scans. Unfortunately, archaeological study isn’t a high priority for Minos Enterprises. Many of our finds come from accidental discovery during mining or development. Also, as with any world, we simply don’t know what damage terraforming has done until we’ve had the chance for a comprehensive study. Minos still lacks a full survey that will satisfy peer review.

  “As it stands, our best finds happen where business interests haven’t yet spread.”

  The images changed. Sandy brown cliffs rose over rivers and ponds ringed with greenery. The cliff sides looked natural, but markers pointed out the carvings and crevices within.

  “We’ve seen some cultures carve dwellings out of their environment rather than building free-standing structures. Earth has a few examples, some of them spectacular. We’ve seen it on New Yunnan in the cave dwellings there. However, we’ve also seen intelligent species with nothing we’d call shelters at all. We know of a nomadic culture among the quadrupeds that lived on Voltaire, but no evidence of anything we’d call architecture. We may yet find that evidence, but the Voltairans aren’t around to point the way anymore. We also have one still-living species, the Nyuyinaro, who have no physical dwellings of any sort. They evolved their way from the skies of their homeworld into the stars.

  “So be wary of your preconceptions. Look at these caves and the evidence before you. And ask yourself—better yet, I’ll ask you—why here? Why these caves? Why like this?”

  Tanner kept his hand down. He didn’t need further attention today. Reluctantly, a few other hands went up.

  “It’s practical,” ventured one student near the front. “The cliffs are already there. If there are natural gaps and caverns, why not take advantage?”

  “That’s a possibility, yes. You?” Vandenberg asked, pointing to another.

  “Protection? Concealment? With the way they’re contoured, those openings aren’t visible right away.”

  “No, they aren’t, but we don’t know if anything once marked them. There could have been flags, decorations, lights. We don’t know. Protection is always a possibility. Given the patterns we’ve seen among alien species, it may well be a good guess.

  “Of the three species we know to achieve interstellar civilizations, two practice highly communal and cooperative cultures. Among themselves, the Nyuyinaro and Krokinthians display great social harmony. From the more fractious species—where we have evidence of violence in the archaeological record—we have but ruins, and nothing to suggest spaceflight. Humanity is the only known species to have reached the stars while still fighting itself.”

  Chapter Two:

  Civilian

  “The Debtor’s War wiped out untold wealth across the Union. Apart from the Big Three and their woes, numerous other corporate entities and individual investors lost vast sums of money in the fallout. Despite its victories, Archangel emerged tainted by charges of war crimes. It’s fair to say the Debtor’s War ended with lasting grudges all around.”

  --The Solar Herald, May 2280

  They knew his class schedule. The crowd held strong outside his xenoarchaeology seminar, disrupting every class in the building.

  Tanner slipped away to evade the crowd before his seminar ended. A little evasive action and the sacrifice of lunch in the commons helped him shake his pursuers. With their target missing for two hours, the crowd dissipated. By the time his next class rolled around, life on campus returned to normal. Biology and chemistry passed without a hitch.

  He didn’t find anyone waiting for him until he walked out of the chemistry lab. Conservative clothes helped her keep a low profile, but he recognized her immediately.

  “Afternoon, Tanner,” smiled Senior Constable Wright. She closed up the floating screens on her holocom and straightened herself up from leaning against the wall.

  “Constable. How are you?” Tanner asked. Reflexively, he scanned the hallway for her back-up. He found none, but didn’t expect to, either. The Fremantle Police were professionals.

  “Oh, I’m having a decent enough day. Better than yours, it sounds.” She gestured down the hall. “I’m not here to hold you up. I’ll walk with you.”

  Tanner continued on with Wright beside him. “It was only a protest. Little louder and more persistent than the others, maybe. I figured they’d stop off after my first quarter. Guess I misjudged.” He shrugged. “Lots of yelling and signs. Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

  “Except for that little matter of an assault?”

  He sighed. “Okay, that was new.”

  “You alright?”

  “It was an egg. I’m fine.”

  “Not really what I meant,” she said patiently. “Anyone might be a little shaken up if they got followed by an angry crowd and someone hit them. But a guy who’s been through the things you have? I’d say the perp is lucky he could walk away from it. I’m not taking for granted that you walked it off so easily, either.”

  “I needed a couple minutes to cool out, but I’m okay,” he replied. “Took my meds. Shook off the adrenaline. It was a hyped-up asshole with an egg, not a hitman. I’m fine. I don’t plan to file a complaint.” Then he frowned thoughtfully. “That’s on campus safety, though. You’re not here to talk about that, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.” Wright held her explanation until they were outside. At mid-afternoon, foot traffic through the university had thinned out. Rather than crowds, they were surrounded mostly by green, open spaces between glass and concrete buildings. Tropical birds in the trees made up more of the background noise than passing conversations.

  “We caught another one last night,” she said. “Jandakot Station this time. He came in on a passenger liner from Quilombo, but if the guy speaks a lick of Portuguese I’m a Krokinthian. His phony identification tripped a protocol with the Customs Service. That got him pulled aside for an in-person check. One thing led to another and he tried to make a run for it. Broke a few agents’ bones before station security took him down. Six hours later, we had him connected to two hit jobs here on Fremantle and at least two more in the Union Interpol Advisory Archive. He’s still in custody but he hasn’t given us any names or leads, let alone a confession.

  “He had a hidden datachip in his luggage. Most of it was a dossier on you.”

  She touched the holocom on her wrist. Two headshot images appeared, one from an identity file and one a little more disheveled, likely after his arrest. Neither looked familiar. Tanner shook his head.

  “Nobody was killed?” he asked.

  “No. The injuries will all be fixed up within a day or two. This time.”

  Tanner’s eyes turned from the holo images, but didn’t rise. “Yeah.”

  “It’s not your fault. I’m not saying it is. When a hitman comes to my town looking to kill someone who lives here, I don’t blame the target. But it’s still a problem, and it’s not going away.”

  “As soon as you’ve got a lead on who’s sending these assholes, I’ll take a trip to have a talk with them in person,” Tanner offered.

  “Oh no,” Wright laughed. “As if that’s not a diplomatic incident waiting to happen. Besides, what makes you think these guys are all coming from the same source? Your people put the hurt on the bottom line for a lot of tycoons. Plenty of them are still rich enough for revenge. They remember you as the face of their troubles. It’s safer to throw rocks at a person than a sovereign state. Less chance of being hit back. But you’re still the one getting the rocks.

  “Fremantle granted you asyl
um. We mean to honor that. I mean to honor that. And after what you’ve been through, you deserve a chance to get on with your life.” Wright shook her head. “Hell, I can see it’s hard enough already. Protests and propaganda and all that nonsense. If it weren’t for my department’s rules about social contact with case subjects, I’d take you out for drinks with my husband and our friends. I’m sure you’ve got some stories to tell. And I have to imagine it’s not so easy to make friends here.”

  “Ah, it’s not so bad,” he said. “My social life could be better, but this still beats the hell out of the last five years.” His eyes lifted to the enormous palm trees that towered over the outskirts of the campus. Some even shared the heights of the skyline with the towers of downtown. A handful of pelicans flew overhead on their way to the harbor not far away.

  It was warm here in the tropics. Warm like home, but with beaches and sheltered coves rather than the sprawling deserts of Tanner’s childhood. And arguably prettier.

  “This is a great place to live,” he said. It didn’t bring a smile to his face.

  “I hope so,” said Wright. “I mean to keep it that way. That’s why I came to see you, Tanner. These guys coming after you aren’t your fault. I’m not blaming you. But if this isn’t the end of it and they keep coming, sooner or later it’s going to get ugly.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Then you know you might not be the only one to get hurt. It’s my job to keep you safe. It’s my job to keep everyone else safe, too.”

  The statement took his eyes off the palm trees in the distance. He looked to the constable, knowing exactly what she meant before she elaborated.

  “I can’t do anything about the other side of that equation, Tanner. The only side of it I can do anything about is yours. If this keeps up, I might have to.”

  * * *

  The counterintelligence guys on his ship had seen some of his problems coming before he was discharged. Tanner spent his last weeks in uniform taking a crash course on how to avoid surveillance and go unnoticed. Though they could teach him only so much in their shop on a battleship, he absorbed the fundamentals fast. He learned to vary his movements as much as he could—unavoidable patterns like class schedules aside. Today, he took the monorail all the way around the perimeter of the university district before he went anywhere.

  The detour added half an hour to his commute. He saw no suspicious figures along the way. Even after getting a visit from the police to tell him another guy had been arrested for coming to kill him, Tanner felt paranoid for doing things like this. Paranoid and irritated.

  His holocom buzzed with an extra irritation: “No class tonight. The dojo has a plumbing problem. Sorry.” His last bit of routine was now shot, and with it his best stress relief.

  It was still relatively early in the afternoon. The monorail wasn’t crowded, but he saw people on their way to or from jobs. He saw pairs and small groups chatting amiably: friends, family, people with normal lives and normal problems. The path offered a view that included both the glittering towers and trees of downtown and the coastline out beyond it. This really was a paradise. He lacked only someone to share it with.

  He got off two stations early and walked the rest of the way. Tanner lived over a yacht repair shop, where the owner saw the financial wisdom of converting the break room to a loft apartment. It was comfortable enough. Tanner knew the shop’s schedule and the employees’ habits and kept out of their way.

  Though warehouses and maintenance facilities lined his street, the marina district was only mildly busy at this hour. He knew it was much too late for the delivery truck in the alley outside the shop.

  With the back cargo door open, Tanner saw only a few boxes lining the inside. Two men peered into the contents of an open plastic container atop the others, one of them with swarthy, rugged features, the other a lean, bearded black man. A third, bulkier man with blond hair lingered in the alley looking inside the open cargo bay.

  All three wore jackets and boots. All three looked solid and fit and kept their hair cut short. None of them carried the casual air of three guys on an ordinary day at work.

  Tanner set his backpack down at the lip of the alley and quietly walked forward, holding close to one wall where his movement was less likely to be noticed. The three men focused on their tasks. Apparently, this was serious, and they didn’t have much time. He spotted no unusual bulges at the waistband or under the armpits of their jackets, but that confirmed nothing.

  And they’re all bigger and thicker than me, Tanner confirmed as he closed in. Damn it. I’m not small. I’m not even close to small. How are they always bigger and thicker than I am? Shit, is there another one in there? Whatever their number, it was too late to back out.

  “Hi. Who sent you?”

  All three men looked up at him with surprise. Tanner gave them only a heartbeat to register their shock. “No, really,” he said, dropping the friendly manner. “Who sent you?”

  Standing in the truck cargo bay, the swarthy one looked to the other beside him, who in turn looked to the guy standing nervously beside Tanner at the foot of the cargo bay. The swarthy one slowly moved his hand behind his back, saying, “Uh, we’re only—”

  “Oh, thank God,” Tanner sighed.

  His foot shot out in a side kick at the man in the alley, striking his knee. As the man buckled, Tanner lunged for the buttons over the bumper. The cargo bay door came down in a rush, closing before either man inside had his pistol out. Having bought himself a few seconds, Tanner he spun back to his first target.

  The blond knew trouble was coming, bringing up one hand to block. Tanner anticipated it, grabbing his forearm in a ferocious twist. He tugged his foe around the corner of the hauler. The blond had the presence of mind not to fight it, turning with Tanner and enduring the pain while pulling the pistol from behind his waist with his free hand. Tanner planted a dislocating blow into his armpit and a follow-up into his neck. The pistol clattered to the pavement.

  The cargo door slid open. His head start was over.

  Tanner jerked his staggered enemy around in a wild swing back to the open door of the cargo bay, putting him straight into the body of the first man to emerge. Both went down in a tangled mess, but the newcomer still held onto his weapon.

  As Tanner snatched the blond’s fallen laser pistol from the ground, he saw an opportunity in the space under the hauler. He dropped the rest of the way and rolled beneath.

  The black man on the ground quickly freed himself from the blond, springing back to his feet ready to fire. Instead, Tanner sent a point-blank blast through his leg from under the hauler. As he fell, Tanner fired again, catching him across the small of the back.

  More flashes of light chased away the shadows beneath the hauler, only these burst through the vehicle’s undercarriage with the loud roar of igniting gunpowder and ricochets. Tanner fled the cramped space, emerging on the other side of the vehicle.

  “Jim! Troy! You guys okay?” shouted the swarthy fighter still left inside the hauler. Then he added, “Mickey, stay there!”

  Shit. There’s a fourth, Tanner noted silently. Jim, Troy, Mickey and…Swarthy, I guess.

  Popping around the corner of the hauler into the open seemed dumb. The gun in his hand was built for concealment rather than power, but ultimately a laser was a laser. Tanner held the gun close to the outer wall of the cargo bay and blasted away as fast as he could pull the trigger.

  Red rays penetrated the side of the hauler. The whole vehicle shook as the enemy in the cargo bay dodged out of the way. Tanner swept around to the open back end, planting his foot on the lip and launched himself inside.

  Swarthy didn’t hide his shock. He looked about ready to fire back through the side of the cargo bay until he saw Tanner coming. By then it was too late. Tanner pistol whipped Swarthy across the face before planting one foot hard in his chest, knocking Swarthy onto his back.

  His left hand clamped down on Swarthy’s gun hand and twisted. Rather than wr
estle for the weapon, Tanner put his pistol against Swarthy’s wrist and blasted through fabric and flesh.

  As he expected, the jacket turned out to be a civilian-model combat weave, but it wasn’t enough to withstand a shot delivered so close. The bulky automatic pistol tumbled from the fighter’s hand.

  “Fuck! Mickey,” the guy screamed. “Get—”

  No one else was in the cargo bay. Tanner spotted a receiver tucked into Swarthy’s right ear. He slammed the butt of his pistol down hard, crushing the tiny bit of tech along with the skin and cartilage around it.

  “Agh! Son of a bitch,” Swarthy growled.

  “Who sent you?” Tanner shouted. “Who keeps sending shitty hitmen after me?”

  Swarthy’s indignation seemed to match his pain. “We’re not shitty hitmen!”

  “Really? Then how am I still alive? Do they grade you guys on a curve?”

  The floor dipped hard. Tanner’s first opponent climbed inside, followed by a wounded partner barely able to heave himself over the bumper. Swarthy rallied with a punch into Tanner’s gut, leaving the young man vulnerable to the tackle that followed.

  “Mickey, get us out of here!” the blond man shouted. He was on top of Tanner for only a second, hindered as he was by his injured right arm. Tanner got out from under him without much struggle.

  “Hold him, hold him,” Swarthy urged. He scrambled for his weapon. The hauler lurched to sudden movement, throwing everyone off balance.

  “We gotta help Troy and—!” The blond grunted, cut off by Tanner’s elbow falling hard on the back of his neck.

  Tanner made it to his feet. “Shitty hitmen,” he reiterated. “Who sent you?”

  “Motherfucker!” Swarthy raged, coming in at Tanner low. The younger man was ready for it, but he didn’t expect the boot to the small of his back from the wounded man laid out on the deck behind him. Swarthy’s shoulder sent Tanner through a couple of the stacked plastic boxes and out into the alley.