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

by Elliott Kay

  “That’s fine,” said Naomi, shaking her head. “Listen, the field school offers more class credit than you can get in a normal semester on campus. It’s seven and a half weeks each way with ten weeks on site in the middle for the dig. We cover most of the trip on liners with ‘semester abroad’ classrooms, so everyone is taking courses along the way. Once we’re back, we spend the rest of the fall semester on workshops and wrap-up work. You’d come out of this with a minor in xenoarchaeology without pushing back your graduation. And field experience.”

  “Wait, stop,” Tanner said. “It sounds great, but I can’t. I can’t afford it. I’m here on a student visa—and asylum. I can’t have a job on a student visa, and I’m sure as hell not taking out any student loans after what I’ve been through. I’m living on savings as it is. When I left Archangel, I had a good bit of money in my pocket, but it got cut down fast and I’ve still got at least three years to go. I can’t do things like this.”

  “No, that’s fine,” said Naomi. “The university covers all expenses for my assistant, including tuition. You’ll knock out a bunch of coursework and take the whole trip on the school’s dime. Hell, you’ll come out ahead of schedule on your academic plan.

  “You’re more than qualified,” she continued. “You already knocked out all the foundational stuff like logic and composition. I know you can keep up with accelerated coursework. And I’ve seen the credit the university gave for your military service. Nobody else on the expedition has training in crisis intervention or wilderness survival. None of us have the sort of first aid training you do.”

  “Okay, that was a one-week survival course four years ago,” Tanner broke in. “My first aid training is mostly about trauma. And ‘crisis intervention’ isn’t as exciting as it sounds. It’s about talking people down from domestic violence and stupid bar fights.”

  “That’s still outside everyone else’s skill set.” The pace of her sales pitch slowed. She took in a deep breath, choosing her words hesitantly. “You have practical experience nobody else on the expedition can match. Life experience. The other students have spent their whole lives in academia. Even me. You’ve seen the real world at its worst.” She winced slightly as she said it. “I think we might need that on this trip.”

  His stomach grew heavy as the implications sank in. Naomi waited, sitting up straight and looking him in the eye, but behind her posture and her forthright expression he could see the awkwardness…and something else.

  “Naomi, why did the other guy quit?”

  “He…we got a travel advisory from the foreign office. It turns out Minos is rougher than any of us realized when we signed up. At least, nobody talked about it much. Vandenberg says it’s all overblown, and he’s the only one of us who has actually been there. But the advisory laid it all out and Russell took it seriously enough to quit. I gave it a second read, and now I’m taking it seriously, too.”

  “Can I read it?” he asked.

  She nodded. With a tap on her holocom and another at the glowing menu screen, Naomi had a copy of the document projected on the table. She sent another to his message file.

  He read.

  A waiter came by with their drinks. Tanner didn’t look up. “This. This is why I can’t have caffeine.”

  “Really? Because I feel like I need more of it whenever I think about this stuff.”

  He read in silence. Naomi winced as his eyes turned up to meet hers. “You got to the part with the pirates, huh?” she asked.

  “What did you call it? My ‘life experience?’ Is that how I should list pirate-fighting on my résumé?”

  “I don’t really know how to come right out and say it.”

  “Sometimes I call it ‘face-murdering,’ but my current therapist says I’m using sarcasm as a shield against my trauma.”

  “…what?”

  “It’s true,” Tanner replied. “I thought it was a way to confront what I’ve done without diminishing any of it. Then he says, ‘No, you’re still being sarcastic with me.’ So if he’s the one who gets to decide when I’m being sarcastic, where the hell am I supposed to go from there?”

  “I don’t know what to say to that,” Naomi managed.

  “Neither do I. Nobody does. What does Vandenberg say about all this?”

  “He says it’s all overblown and there’s nothing to worry about. We’ll be out in the middle of nowhere, anyway. Nobody’s going to bother a bunch of university students.”

  “You don’t believe him, do you?”

  “I want to, but he’s not very forthcoming on the topic. Or convincing.” Naomi sank back into her seat. “He’s had this expedition planned for four years. Since before his last expedition ended. His whole career is wrapped up in it. And in fairness, he’s been there before and I haven’t, but I can’t tell if he has everything sewn up or if he’s sticking his head in the sand. It sure sounds like Minos has only gotten rougher in the last few years. Like the rest of the Union.”

  “Yeah,” huffed Tanner. “I noticed.”

  “Anyway, if he had some sort of escort or protection arranged, he’d have shared it with me. Hell, he would have had me handle the arrangements.”

  “There’s no chance of the university calling this whole thing off?”

  “No. There’s too much riding on it,” said Naomi. “We can’t call it off.”

  * * *

  “Yes, we can absolutely wait on this, Jim,” said Troy. He rode in one of the van’s back seats, clad in body armor and tactical gear like everyone else. “We’ve picked up his trail. We can hit him whenever we choose.”

  “What’s your problem?” asked Jim. He sat in the front passenger seat with Mickey at the wheel. “You wanted it simple. This is simple.”

  “This is reckless,” Troy replied. “We’re risking a lot of exposure and collateral damage. This is a stand-up fight in an urban area. It’s exactly what we wanted to avoid, and also what the client wanted to avoid.”

  “It won’t be a stand-up fight, Troy,” the team leader pushed back. “We’re gonna take him by surprise. If he was worried about being hit at home again, he’s had a couple hours to second-guess it all and cool out. Nobody can be on guard all the time. We’re gonna burn a hole through his skull before he knows we’re there.”

  Troy didn’t respond. Yanis and Chris held their peace. The van rolled on through the streets until the driver glanced to the team leader beside him. “And if he does see us coming?” Mickey asked. “Again?”

  “It’ll be five against one,” said Jim. “No fucking around. We’re all professionals. He’s not as tough as the hype makes him sound. He’s not bulletproof and he can’t dodge lasers. We take him down and we extract. Don’t make it complicated.”

  * * *

  “It’s always more complicated,” said Tanner. “I take that for granted.”

  “I’m really not supposed to talk about this,” said Naomi. “The thing is, if you knew, you’d understand. You wouldn’t say it’s not worth the risk.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You implied it.”

  Tanner bowed his head in concession. He pointed at the travel advisory. “Somebody in the foreign office looked at the data and decided it was worth warning the public. Developed worlds like Fremantle don’t like to exaggerate dangers like piracy. It tends to lead to an arms buildup. I’ve had some experience with this.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that about you.” The glare left her eyes as soon as the last words escaped her mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “It’s okay,” said Tanner. He waited.

  “This isn’t just about the department’s funding or everyone’s academic plans,” she said. “It’s more than my PhD or my career. It’s bigger than that.”

  “I believe you. I’m listening.”

  “I signed non-disclosure agreements. If I tell you and it gets out, it really is my career down the tubes. Even letting me know was a big deal, but I’m the assistant leader, so…” She lo
oked out at the other patrons, dwindling in number now, and then to her hands. “Can I trust you?”

  “You’re asking me to go with you to some sketchy hellhole on the ass end of human space on a job that pays in class credit,” said Tanner. “You already trust me.”

  Wrestling with her concerns, Naomi browsed through her holocom file options until she came to a chart of the Union. A miniature three-dimensional star field floated between them. It hardly looked out of place. Customers at other tables played games and watched holo dramas together. Her chart was one of the least eye-catching projections in the shop, yet she kept her voice to a murmur. “Highlight Fremantle. Highlight Minos,” she said. “Show distance.”

  The selected star systems flashed yellow labels brighter than the rest. Other systems appeared as well, most notably the Solar system near the center of the chart. Fremantle floated close by, with only a handful of other colonized star systems between itself and Sol. Minos lay far on the other side of the chart, over four hundred light years from Fremantle. Dim red and blue margins at the edge of the chart marked out the territory of the only two known alien races—both of them close to Minos.

  His eyes reflexively noted other familiar points. Archangel lay much closer to Minos than to Earth, let alone Fremantle. Tanner was a long way from home.

  “So we’re on the same page here,” Naomi began. “2214 was the end of the last full-blown war between the Union, the Krokinthians, and the Nyuyinaro, right? And they didn’t negotiate a full treaty with us. The Kroks walked out on the whole thing before it started. They said, ‘Go no farther than you have,’ and that was it. The Union decided that meant anywhere we had already sent probes, which included Minos. The Kroks didn’t like that, but the only thing they hate more than losing an unsettled world is trying to argue with humans, so we got away with it.”

  “And then nobody wanted to invest in development that close to the Kroks until about fifty years ago, right?” Tanner picked up from there. “We covered this in class. Minos is naturally oxygenated and the oceans already held lots of life, but the land masses were covered in volcanic ash. It wasn’t until terraforming and settlement work began that anyone realized there had been a Stone Age civilization under all that.”

  “Yeah,” said Naomi. Her voice fell further. “You paid attention in class. We don’t need to go over the rest. So, stay with me on this.

  “In 2215, with ‘do we keep Minos or don’t we?’ in the media, some people in the astronomy department took a good, long look in that direction. Everything they saw was about 570 years old at this distance. They knew from the early exploratory probes that 570 years was about the same time as the geothermal incident that buried the land masses, so they thought, ‘What the hell? Let’s turn our eyes out that way and see if we can see anything.’”

  Naomi reached into the star field projection, noting the distance between Fremantle and Minos with Earth in between. “Everything they saw on Earth? Newer. Here? Older light. Older signals. Looking into the past.”

  “Signals?” Tanner asked.

  “Yeah. Minos should’ve only given them whatever came off of its star. They saw more than that, so they got curious and turned more attention to it. Now, every system has its little idiosyncrasies. Fremantle has always had some garbage in the electromagnetic spectrum. Nobody paid it much mind at first. More important things to study, right?

  “Within about a year of discovering the connection, it all stopped. The waves passed on. About that same time, the eyes watching Minos saw a spike in light waves and then nothing. Everything went dead, like it is now. Most of them assumed they saw the geothermal incident, but the fact that it lined up with the end of the garbage EM waves suggested more.

  “They kept at the waves. They analyzed the data over and over until some brilliant guy in the math department found patterns. Language. None of it made any sense and nobody ever figured out how to translate it or wring any images out of it, but it wasn’t the Kroks and it wasn’t the Noonies,” said Naomi. “Fremantle University turned its attention toward Minos just in time to hear the death cries of a high-tech civilization.”

  Tanner leaned back in his seat, frowning. “Nobody else saw this?”

  “That’s what I said. Look at the chart. Look at the timeline. Only so many worlds in the Union could’ve seen it, and they weren’t looking. Everyone else was too close to see the show, or too underdeveloped to recognize what they were seeing.” Naomi’s finger hovered over Minos. “1647. Everything goes dead.” She moved her finger over the Solar System. “The last signals passed over Earth in the early 1920s. Radio wasn’t even thirty years old.”

  “But it’s been, what, sixty-five years since the astronomy department discovered all this?” he asked. “The Union has laws about reporting alien contact.”

  “Doesn’t qualify. No actual contact, only observation. Ancient… and still anomalous. There’s no proven evidence yet.”

  “Okay, but nobody wrote a book or a journal article? Nobody jumped up and down shouting, ‘Look what I found?’ This is how you get famous.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Naomi agreed. “Eventually. First they thought there might be something wrong with their equipment or their analysis. Then they thought they must be misinterpreting something done by the Kroks or the Noonies. And then, once the self-doubt and the margins of error fell off and the evidence mounted…they got laughed out of the room.”

  She turned off the projection from the holocom, patiently leaving Tanner to stare at her face as he processed it.

  “You’re kidding me,” he said.

  “No, I’m not kidding. You know Fremantle University’s reputation. We’re one of the biggest names outside the Solar System, and have been for over a hundred years. Nobel Prizes, medical breakthroughs, inventions, all that. The university cares about its reputation—a lot. Any old student can chase whatever crazy idea they want, but the faculty is more conservative. That sort of culture is hard to overcome.

  “Don’t forget, the surface was covered in volcanic ash. Nothing poked out through the surface except the mountains. No buildings, no monuments, no visible roads, nothing. It wasn’t until settlement started in 2236 that we knew there had been something on Minos, and that was mostly because of the roads. Even then, it was still a remote planet under corporate ownership. People caught on and universities started sending expeditions, but it wasn’t exactly convenient then. It’s still not easy now.”

  “Okay, but it’s been forty-four years now and this is still quiet?” Tanner pressed. “These people from the astronomy department—and whoever figured out those signals were using a language—they still haven’t said anything to anyone? Nobody hung onto their college coursework after they graduated and went on to their careers?”

  “It wasn’t many people to start with. There were also issues of grant money and proprietary research agreements to complicate who walked away with what.” Naomi shrugged. “If anyone did share something, we don’t know about it.

  “What I can tell you for certain is that somebody shared it with Professor Vandenberg in the early fifties. That’s when his research shifted to Minos. He can’t get out there every year, of course, or even every couple of years. But he’s been at this for decades with the university’s support.”

  Tanner fell silent, considering her story. Vandenberg came back from his expeditions with new discoveries and artifacts, but it all still pointed to an Iron Age analogue at best. Neither he nor anyone else had yet discovered the remains of an ancient Minoan, nor a likeness rendered in any kind of art.

  “Who else knows?” asked Tanner. “On this expedition, I mean.”

  “Nobody else,” said Naomi. “Just me.”

  “What about previous expeditions? Does he tell his assistant every time?”

  She shook her head. “Not from what I understand.”

  “Then why you?”

  “Because he thinks he’s got it this time. He was onto something with his last expedition, but he wound up rac
ing against the clock and lost. He had to come home. That was three years ago and he’s been pulling his hair out ever since. This time he needs to dig. The Minoans carved their settlements into the rock rather than building upward like we did.

  “He has a good site, he needs to dig…and he found an assistant with a double undergrad in xenoarchaeology and geology.” She looked him squarely in the eye. “Sooner or later you have to trust somebody.”

  Tanner glanced down at the table. She’d been nervous when she approached him, reluctant to ask what she wanted and even more reluctant to share these secrets. Yet once she did, she gave it her all. She’d made the decision to confide in him and followed through. For some reason Tanner felt shy. This felt bigger than him.

  “The Union has laws about alien interaction,” he considered. “It’s why the Union exists.”

  “Hey, as soon as we find actual alien tech, we report. Until then, there’s no law broken.”

  “I imagine if the faculty trusted more people we’d have this whole mystery solved by now.”

  “But who?” Naomi asked. “Nobody from Fremantle wants to share their Nobel Prize with some outside corporation or a rival university. Nobody wants to faceplant their way into fame, either.”

  “Huh,” Tanner snorted. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “You know a lot of things most people don’t,” said Naomi.

  He didn’t respond to that. He didn’t know where to begin.

  “So you see, it’s not just a matter of time and money,” said Naomi. “There’s that, too, and all the nonsense with the university’s culture, but there’s something bigger behind this.

  “We know of two space-faring species in the galaxy besides ourselves, but we don’t get along. Maybe that’s our fault, but it’s still a problem. Every other intelligent species we’ve discovered has fallen to dust before they could reach the stars. We may find a civilization that actually made it this far before their end. Think of what we could discover. Think of what we could learn. I believe it’s there. I believe we can find it.”