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

by Elliott Kay

  Naomi let out a breath.

  “I also need to bring my people back alive.”

  Tanner rubbed his eyes. It was a lot to think about. “Can I sleep on it?”

  * * *

  “Nobody’s going to chicken out on me now, are you?” Jim asked. He looked back at his men from the front seat, eyes darting from one to the next for any sign of argument or fear. They all looked back at him steadily. These men didn’t back down from anything, and neither did Jim. Certainly not from some myth built around a single militia enlistment and a lot of hype.

  He turned forward again and wiped his brow. It wasn’t hot in the van. He didn’t know why he might be sweating. “We stick to the plan. Standard entry. Prep the approach and let’s move.”

  The street outside the target site lay quiet. As the van passed by the approach point, Troy opened the window on his side and dropped out a pair of small black canisters. Tiny correcting arms sprouted from each canister’s side as they hit the concrete, orienting the throughout the alleyway outside the shop. A fine grey mist poured from each canister’s face, propelled with slow and steady force.

  The artificial fog spread thinly enough to go undetected by most scanning devices until it swallowed up active signals and created a blanket over passive sensors. Mickey backed into the dense blanket.

  Everyone was armored up in combat coats and leg guards. Weapons checks all passed. Jim gave the go signal, sending everyone else out of the van as he slipped through the passenger door and into the sound-deadening mist.

  Chris took care of the security on the door. Mimic pads on his glove held their target’s fingerprints thanks to days of diligent stalking. The door to the workshop below Malone’s residence opened up to shadow and darkness.

  Stairs to the right of the door rose up to the loft, where another closed door waited. Jim took the lead, climbing with practiced stealth, teammates following close behind. The door to the apartment sat on simple, old-fashioned hinges opening inward. It would be much easier than the workshop entry. They could bash right through it if they had to.

  Nobody made a sound. The asshole wouldn’t have the drop on them this time.

  Jim felt a tug on his ankle at the top of the stairs, matched with a piercing metallic racket. He turned and aimed left with his carbine, looking for a target or a trap but finding only a collection of empty cans.

  His eyes went wide in horror. Cans on a string. Sensor-spoofing fog, state of the art infiltration tech, and weeks of surveillance, all undone by a trick any five-year-old could manage.

  Urgency propelled him out of his shock. They couldn’t let this fucker turn things around on them again. Not now. “Go! Go!” he ordered. Jim planted his foot in the door right below the handle, sending it flying open. He swept the darkened living room with his carbine up and ready to go. Nothing but third-hand furniture occupied the small living room.

  He moved fast. So did his teammates, fully expecting a fight. This bastard is tricky. If he had a chance to fight back, it could get ugly. Jim couldn’t let that happen.

  They cleared the tiny kitchen. That left the open bathroom at the end of the little hall dead ahead and the bedroom to the right. Nowhere else to hide. Malone had to be in there. Jim advanced. The team followed.

  Don’t let him fight back, Jim thought. Don’t give him a chance. Don’t let him catch you again.

  This place wasn’t built to stand up to lasers or high-powered bullets. Any decent weapon could shred the wall between Jim and the bedroom. Everyone on the team wore good protection, though. Jim flashed a silent warning sign to his team. Then he plucked a grenade from his belt and hooked it around the open doorway before hustling backward.

  It was a calculated risk. At worst, the grenade might hit Jim and his guys with some splinters or other bits of debris from the wall.

  The explosives stashed under the bedspread were another matter entirely.

  * * *

  “Did you drift out on me?” Naomi asked.

  “Sorry, it’s something you said,” Tanner explained. “The ‘bring my people back alive’ part. Heard that earlier today is all. It’s nothing.”

  “Okay.” She stretched her hands out in front of her on the table in the hope of releasing stress. It didn’t seem to do much good. “You’re sure you can’t give me an answer now?”

  “I get where you’re coming from,” said Tanner. “You don’t have to worry about me sharing the big secrets. It’s not that. I’m only trying to consider the details. If I’m gonna be gone until mid-November, I have to figure out what to do with my apartment and all my stuff. It wasn’t easy to find a place, and if—”

  An orange flash lit up the bar, lasting only as long as the loud bang that accompanied it. The light illuminated Naomi’s face and the rest of the booth around her. Tanner’s eyes snapped wide, but the coffee shop returned to normal in the next instant—apart from the way everyone had noticed.

  The light and noise startled Naomi as much as everyone else. “What was that?”

  Tanner peered back around his seat toward the front window. Other customers crowded in, looking outside with curiosity but blocking the view.

  He knew what he would see. He knew it. He went to check anyway.

  The shops immediately across the street stood as peacefully as ever. The rest of the skyline beyond it sat largely undisturbed, except for black smoke flames flickering from the top floor of a workshop in the marina only two blocks away.

  His shoulders sank. Naomi stood beside him, watching the unfamiliar sight with surprise. Tanner couldn’t muster up the same reaction. He sighed.

  “When do we leave?”

  Chapter Six:

  Icebreakers

  “Yes, I know what the fire inspection turned up. I also know the five heavily armed dead assholes who broke in to commit a murder are ultimately at fault. Insurance covers the damage. Do you want to keep him here for a pointless investigation, or do you want him out of our hair for a few months? Which choice sounds better for public safety to you?”

  -- Internal Communications, Fremantle Police Authority, May 2280

  The ship was not by definition a luxury liner. Far more opulent and expensive ships held that title, but to Naomi, the liner seemed massive and grand. It felt more like a hotel than a ship. If her room was small, the vessel’s shared spaces made up for it. The bright, spacious lobby alone was a cross between a reception hall and an art gallery.

  Big liners performed the greatest share of moving people around the Union, along with no small amount of freight. Longer, routine trips encouraged larger vessels, for both practical reasons and for human comfort.

  Passengers trickled past her spot near the lobby entrance. Families and solo travelers checked in with attendants, argued details of their reservations, and said their goodbyes. Naomi and Dani handled their farewells at home. Thankfully, nothing like separation anxiety spoiled the last few days together. Naomi recognized all the real sources of her stress, from the group of classmates and their professor gathered nearby to the one remaining name on her roster.

  Technically, of course, his name didn’t show up on all the rosters yet.

  “Hey, there you are,” she said as he wandered in through the entrance. “I’ve been waiting.”

  Tanner frowned. “Am I late? I thought this is still a couple minutes early.”

  “Everyone was early,” Naomi admitted. “They’ve more or less started. I guess you’re the least early.”

  “I’m sorry. Nobody else was here when I first showed up. Figured I should take a walk.”

  “Nobody? When did you show up?”

  “About an hour and a half ago.”

  Naomi blinked. “You’ve been here that long?”

  “I’m kinda used to bad things happening on ships, so I wanted a good look around before we left. I even brought my old vac suit.” He seemed to think it was a perfectly normal thing to say until he noticed her silence. His hand came to the back of his neck, rubbing it awkwardly. �
�This ship is safe. They’ve got it squared away.”

  “I didn’t really need to hear any of that,” said Naomi.

  “Sorry. We’re gonna be fine. For this part of the trip, anyway,” he added.

  “We don’t know that yet.” Naomi turned to the gathered students across from them in the lobby. “We get to find out now.”

  Smiles and laughter encompassed the group. Kim stood as the pair approached, her attention on the loose circle of students. “Okay: Emma, Antonio, Grace, Amelia, Jishen.” She pointed to each in turn, remembering names of people she obviously already knew and dreading the rest. “Olivia, Nigel…” Kim winced as she tried to remember the next name. Her eyes lit up as she saw another familiar face, offering her a cheat: “Naomi!” she laughed. And then stopped.

  Heads turned. Some students seemed unfazed. A few blinked in shock. Their professor fell somewhere in between.

  “Hey folks, this is Tanner,” said Naomi. She hoped her introduction and sideways gesture weren’t as awkward as they almost certainly were. “Russell had to pull out as my intern, so I hired Tanner for the spot.”

  Her new intern nodded. “Hi.”

  The shock only spread with her statement. Apparently a few hadn’t recognized his face until they heard his name.

  “Well,” coughed Vandenberg. “We’re settling introductions and learning everyone’s names. Please, join the group. Ah, Naomi, could I have a word?”

  Tanner stepped in beside Kim’s spot on the couch. “Sorry if I interrupted.”

  Kim stared, her mouth halfway open with a word that would not come out.

  Vandenberg took Naomi behind a nearby pillar. He kept his voice low. “I won’t ask if this is some bad joke, because you’re not the sort. What the hell are you thinking?”

  “I asked eight different seniors and grad students. They all turned me down. I had to look elsewhere. He’s completely qualified.”

  “You didn’t think to ask me about this before you brought him on?”

  “I told you I had somebody. You didn’t ask who it was.” She hesitated, but the rest got out anyway. “You told me this was my problem to fix, so I fixed it.”

  “And then you kept quiet until it was too late to do anything about it.”

  “No, I kept quiet at his request,” she said. “The attack at his apartment was all over the news. He didn’t want his name circulating on any records or messages until the last minute. It seemed like a good idea to me. I only filed the bare necessities and left the rest until now. If you had asked who I found, I would have told you.”

  Vandenberg fumed, but considered her explanation. “I suppose that diminishes the chances of any blow-ups from the faculty.”

  “Would that have mattered?”

  “Do you even need to ask? You know the uproar we had when he was first accepted. It wasn’t a simple matter. That was politics, and it came with a cost.” He let out a huff, glancing back to the others. “You don’t suppose the rest of the class deserved to know in advance?”

  “Why? So they could protest or drop out because I included someone they might not like? There’s not a single personal complaint against him from another student, pending or otherwise, or I’d have seen it flagged when I processed his enrollment. He has as much right to be here as anyone else.”

  “This puts me in a complicated position, Naomi.” Vandenberg looked back to the class. At least they were talking again. “I need your support as the assistant field leader, but I’m also supposed to back you up, too. I can’t do that very effectively when I’m caught by surprise. Not if you make provocative decisions like this without me.”

  Naomi blinked. ‘Provocative’ seemed equal parts exaggerated and legitimate.

  “Are there any other surprises in the works?” he asked. “You should tell me now.”

  “No.”

  “I hope that means we won’t get any surprise visits from Union Fleet Intelligence while we’re out there. He has friends, you know.”

  “Which is another reason I didn’t put any of this in writing until the last minute,” said Naomi. “I verified his visa and passport outside university channels. Nobody saw his name pop up on a filing with the foreign office or the school administration until this morning. Unless they have somebody on him like glue, the only people who know he’s here are the Fremantle police and the people who saw him walk onto this ship. And nobody can run on board here on the spur of the moment. We’ve got this covered, sir.”

  Vandenberg sighed, patting her arm. “Oh, don’t call me that. Let’s not resort to formalities now,” he grumbled. “I’m your advisor, not the prime minister.”

  “He’ll do the job,” she assured him.

  “I’m not worried about his clerical skills or his punctuality. I’m worried about how others will handle this, and how much baggage he carried onto this ship with him.”

  * * *

  “I wanted to do this all along,” said Gina. “Thing is, I goofed up my dates and missed the first filing deadline. After that happened, I blew it all off as a lost cause. No sense wishing for what will never be, right? Then on Monday morning I heard somebody dropped out and I got my application in before my last class was over. I had most of it already written up and organized. Thank God I didn’t delete it, huh?”

  As usual, she alone seemed happy to see Tanner. Gina sat beside Antonio Gonzales, the star forward of the school’s soccer team. Her golden complexion and natural glow provided a warm contrast to his seemingly darker mood. Then again, everyone had been in higher spirits until Naomi walked up with Tanner in tow.

  They’d tried to get their name game going again. Kim stumbled through the rest of her turn, but things died off after that. Tanner got everyone to at least identify themselves by first name before things derailed. Only tension remained.

  “So if you’re Naomi’s assistant, does that mean you’re in charge at all?” asked Jishen. “As in third in line or something?”

  “No, I’m third in line, technically,” Kim spoke up. “If you need either the professor or Naomi and you can’t find them, you come to me, or one of the grad students.”

  “Outside of helping Naomi I’m just another student,” Tanner agreed.

  “You’re an intern,” Antonio corrected.

  Aw buddy, are we gonna do this? Freshman or not, Tanner felt far too old for college pissing contests. “And I’m an intern, yeah.”

  “Are you rooming with someone?” asked Gina. Her casual question turned heads and left eyes wide among the rest of the group. Clearly no one had considered such horrific details yet.

  “Not really. I coughed up the extra cash to get my own room. Turns out they had a few left open. I, uh… kinda got out of my apartment lease early.”

  “Alright everyone, sorry about stepping away there,” said Vandenberg, returning to the group with Naomi at his side. “Other last minute details to lock down and all. Mister Malone, welcome to the team. I know Naomi will get you caught up quickly.” Another thought occurred to him. “I take it you’re registered for classes for the trip? Are you in my Theory and Practice class?”

  “Yeah,” said Tanner. “Looking forward to it.”

  “Good. What else are you taking?”

  “Ecology is the only other one I had room for besides the Global Studies course, but everyone on board has to take that one.”

  “Er, yes,” said Vandenberg. “Normally the theme for that class is something a little broader and more, ah, ground-level. But I understand they’ve decided to change it up a bit this year to focus on current events. ‘Power and Society in a Changing Union,’ I think.”

  “Can’t imagine what that class is about,” snorted Antonio.

  Tanner held his tongue. No imagination was required.

  * * *

  “Archangel threw all the old power dynamics into chaos with the war, Admiral. No one really knows for sure what the status quo is anymore.”

  “Oh, we didn’t throw all of them into chaos, Mr. Secretary,” said A
dmiral Yeoh. “Money and influence still call the shots in most of the Union.”

  “Fair enough,” conceded her guest. Charles Ohanga sat across from her at the conference table wearing a crisp, dark blue suit and an amiable smile. The Union’s Secretary of Defense wasn’t here to make peace. Treaties and negotiations had handled that months ago. Ohanga wanted something beyond what peace could offer.

  “From a security standpoint, however, things have changed significantly,” said Ohanga. “The Union Fleet itself is largely unaffected by the turmoil of the last few years. But our planning for any alien conflict includes a reliance on corporate security fleets and system militias. The civil war in the Kingdom of Hashem has depleted its strength. CDC’s creditors and shareholders are still sorting out who has ownership of what assets, including its security fleet—which had already taken hits here and in Hashem.

  “And NorthStar faces both losses of ships and a significant change in its security posture,” he continued. “You know their losses in your recent conflict. Add that to their direct territorial responsibilities and they’re stretched thin.”

  “How terrible for them,” said Yeoh. “Reconstruction here in Archangel has gone well since NorthStar’s occupation ended, by the way. Thank you for asking.”

  Ohango turned his hands up. “My apologies, Admiral. I am well aware of the harm suffered here. The Union consulate on Michael sent me a reconstruction report for review before this meeting. I do not and would not ask sympathy for your recent adversaries.”

  “Adversaries?” Yeoh pursed her lips. “Your tact continues.”

  “I try. This is a mission of reconciliation.” His smile faded. “In contrast to your adversaries and your neighbors, Archangel remains well above the limits set by Union arms treaties despite your losses during the war. Two battleships and several other large vessels above those limits, to be specific.”