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

by Elliott Kay

  Antonio hesitated, but asked, “What’s the deal with Morales?”

  “I didn’t realize I got loud about it before now,” Tanner chuckled.

  “Only a little. I had a girlfriend who’d have whole conversations in her sleep. You’re not that bad. Seemed intense, though.”

  “Morales was on my first ship. He was my boss.”

  “And he died, right?”

  “Yeah. I keep seeing him floating out into space.”

  “Damn.”

  “I don’t think that’s why it comes back, though. I saw lots of people die. People I liked way better than him.” Then it was Tanner’s turn to hesitate. “This isn’t something I say much, but Morales was an asshole. He made my life miserable. I was ready to punch him when he died. A lot. But he didn’t deserve to die. Think that’s part of why I keep seeing him.”

  “Did that have anything to do with why he died?”

  “No. We never would’ve seen it coming either way. He died because bad people wanted to kill us all.” Tanner leaned his head back against his seat. “There’s some survivor’s guilt there, obviously. The crazy thing is, I don’t think the nightmares are about him dying.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Antonio.

  “Brains are weird. I was in a lot of combat and a lot of other scary shit besides. And I was scared. Scared out of my fucking mind. I did a lot of ugly things, and I don’t know what all that says about me. I’ve thought about it a lot and I don’t really know. But the truth is, it’s not the combat or the scary shit that makes it so bad.

  “It’s about going back into the Navy. Like I signed some stupid form I forgot about or there was some fine print in the contract and they get to drag me back anytime they want. It’s always back to the first boat, and the first year, and I’m never going to get to do anything else. Never be anything else. I feel like it’s never going to end.”

  “Damn,” grunted Antonio. He kept driving.

  Tanner waited.

  “Seems like the fighting and the getting hurt would be scarier,” ventured Antonio.

  “It doesn’t mean I’m not scared in a fight. I’m scared every time.”

  “You didn’t seem scared when the pirates came at us. You seemed mad.”

  “I was mad because I was scared. I don’t want to die and I don’t want to lose anyone else. I’m not bulletproof. I can’t dodge lasers. I’ve met better fighters than me. I get new nightmares from new fights, too, but they aren’t the ones that hang around. Like I said, brains are weird. I had no friends on that first boat. I was miserable. Guess I’m more afraid of being lonely than of dying.”

  “What keeps you going, then? In a fight, I mean?”

  “The thought of what’s gonna happen if I don’t do anything. It’s fear pushing in one direction against fear going the other way. And some anger. I can’t remember ever feeling brave.” He smirked. “I might run on a little spite, too.”

  “And after? Are you still scared?”

  “Sometimes. I’m scared of losing myself, so I hang on. Scared of losing the things I wanted before my life got so violent, so I hang onto those, too. If getting through the dreams and the rest is part of that, I guess I have to do it.” Tanner watched Antonio quietly. “The nightmares scare me, too. I worry they’ll never go away.”

  “Yeah,” Antonio said—then glanced awkwardly at Tanner as if he hadn’t meant to say it. He looked away, eyes on the road, shaking his head. Eventually, he shook it again, and kept on shaking. His thumb tapped at the wheel. “I keep thinking about it. I can’t sleep.”

  “I know,” said Tanner. He winced in apology when Antonio looked his way. “Sorry. All I mean is sometimes you’ve been distant and a little jittery since the fight. I figured it’s bothering you. It would bother anybody.”

  “Then why didn’t you say anything?”

  “You’ve been steering clear of me ever since. I wanted to respect that. It doesn’t help to get pushy. I think. I dunno.” Tanner shrugged. “I’m twenty-three and this is my first year of college. It’s not like I have all the answers.”

  “Everyone says you’re super smart.”

  “I know how to look stuff up in books. The books said not to bother you, so I didn’t.”

  “You looked that shit up because of me?”

  “Naw, man,” Tanner lied. “I’m just saying.”

  Antonio drove on. His forehead glistened with sweat. The desert was as hot as ever, but the vehicle’s cooling system kept out the heat. “It was one fight. I didn’t even get hurt.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You don’t need to get hurt,” Tanner explained steadily. “It doesn’t even need to be about fighting at all. Antonio, your life was in danger. They were pirates. They would’ve killed everyone, or at least everyone who wasn’t worth a ransom. Maybe they’d have recognized you as a star athlete, maybe that would’ve gotten you a ransom, but I doubt it. And you care too much about the others for that to make you feel better.”

  “Yeah, I am an athlete,” fumed Antonio. “I’m a leader. I shouldn’t be freaked out by this.”

  “That’s not how it works. Doesn’t matter how big and strong you are. Doesn’t matter if you’re a leader or a star. You had to fight for your life. You saw me kill people. I killed a guy while you were wrestling with him, Antonio. That’s traumatic shit.”

  Antonio cast him a glare, as much out of resentment as anything else. His eyes turned back to the road. “So what do I do about it?”

  “You get help,” grumbled the mercenary in the back seat. “Drugs and therapy and shit, like he said before. It’s not weird.”

  Tanner looked back to Solanke, unable to smother a grin. “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re still a wuss, Malone,” said Solanke. “I’m not backing you up on anything about that. Just sayin’ there’s nothing weird about needing to get your head straight after something like that. It happens. Brains get messed up. We’re headed into the city. See a doctor. Get some help. You’ll be alright. Then I won’t have to hear Malone’s bullshit.

  “But you, Malone? You were right in the middle of every important thing for years. You had your hand on the wheel, man. Deciding shit. Fucking presidents and kings had to listen to you. How old did you say you are? Twenty-three? All that, and you ran to hide in some school on the other end of human space. You didn’t walk away because of trauma. Doctors can fix trauma. You ran away because you’re a pussy.”

  Tanner sank back into his chair, jerking his thumb at Solanke in the back seat. “See? There’s your second opinion. Let’s find you a doctor.”

  * * *

  Space Age technology made for rapid progress on the dig. Laser cutters split the mound into precise, meter-deep sections. Kinetic cartridges injected into the dirt unleashed shockwaves to loosen the soil. Even the shoring at the bottom of the mound involved netting built from the same materials used in starships. Perhaps the biggest help came with the antigrav assistance on the clawhand, a construction apparatus built on much the same principles as powered armor. The clawhand braced itself with a retractable second pair of legs before digging with its powerful armature, reaching over the operator’s head with its namesake claw-and-bucket.

  Despite all that, the job of moving large mounds of earth still required picks, shovels, and muscles. Minos didn’t allow for civilian use of plasma borers that might otherwise let the excavators vaporize their way down. Such tools also risked any artifacts that might lie beneath the soil. Even the laser cutters and the clawhand were a calculated risk, but at least the dirt could be sifted later.

  Naomi still didn’t expect much from the mound itself. She stood near the bottom of the slope, watching her students and peers dig at the top. Another wave of dirt slid down the right side of the slope, cast off by the clawhand.

  “Kim is having way too much fun running that thing,” said a voice beside Naomi. Jishen pulled his shovel from over his shoulder to lean on it like a walking stick. “I keep thinking I’m going to dig right throug
h to something and break it every time I push into the dirt, but she’s really going at it.”

  At the top of the slope, along the flattened section already dug by the crew, Kim swung the clawhand’s mechanical arm for another go along the next section. Safety programming let her colleagues work nearby without fear of being hit. The white sunshield stretched over the corner of the canyon protected everyone from the worst of the sun.

  “You’re not over that yet?” Naomi asked. “The first sign of finding anything is a thump or a scrape. You don’t find anything in mint condition when it’s buried underground.”

  “I know, I know. I’ve heard it all. It still makes me nervous. What if, y’know?”

  “Look at it this way, if you scrape or crack an ancient artifact, that’s how you put your stamp on history. Besides, we’re not going to find anything in that dirt pile. Under it, maybe. But that’s a rockslide buried under flow from a lahar and then a few hundred years of sandstorms on top of it. Anything of interest is gonna be at the very bottom.

  “And don’t tell anyone they’re having too much fun,” Naomi added, grinning back at him. “If they have fun, they’ll make better progress. Digging gets tedious after a while.”

  “Yeah, I figured that part out a couple weeks ago,” said Jishen.

  “You’re still smiling.”

  “Naomi!” called a voice from above. Professor Vandenberg leaned over the edge of the first “terrace,” waving to her. Kim was crawling out of the clawhand. “Could you come up here?”

  Naomi and Jishen began the climb up the slope. After a few dozen trips back and forth, a path had begun to form along the left side opposite the channel for discarded earth. At a third of the way up, Naomi casually stopped to breathe and look across the canyon floor. With the focus on this end of the canyon, there wasn’t much activity to see, but she was fine with that.

  In particular, she was fine with the sight of Garcia back at his chair outside his hut playing some game on his holocom. As long as he remained in plain view and well out of the way, she had no complaints about his inactivity. She returned to her climb.

  Most of the crew was on the task of clearing the slope. Given the amount of dirt to be moved, it wouldn’t be long before the team had to shift more manpower toward hauling away material at the bottom. For the moment, almost everyone worked at the top—or had worked. Now only a few kept at it, and they were all kneeling on small cushions at the rocky face of the canyon wall to brush and scrape away dirt.

  At the bottom of the cleared edge, all along the canyon wall, the natural contours of the rock turned to a straight, perfectly flat line. At the very bottom, where the mound still met the wall, the team had begun to uncover geometric patterns carved into the flat surface.

  “Holy shit,” Naomi breathed. She moved in to take up a spot beside Vandenberg, who set aside his trowel for a brush to clear off more of the design. “You found this in the last two minutes?”

  “More like five,” admitted Vandenberg. He flashed a contagious smile. “You know how it is. Once we were onto something, everyone picked up the pace. Look at this, it spans a good ten meters in either direction from me.”

  “This is only, what, two meters from the top of the mound?” Naomi didn’t have to look hard for references. The crew had dutifully set out markers along the mound.

  “Yes, hardly more than that,” said Vandenberg. He kept eagerly brushing and scraping.

  “Convenient, isn’t it?”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “This is going to go all the way down,” Naomi predicted. “We’re sitting on top of the entrance to another cave ruin.”

  “Or something grander. Grace, show her.”

  The younger student brought over a holographic screen of still pictures of their discovery. Graphs and formulae lined the outside edges of the picture. Naomi recognized some of it before Grace could explain with a giddy smile. “This is showing a matrix similar to the one on the modern jar. It isn’t carved. It’s artificial.”

  “All of it?” Naomi blinked.

  “Well, not all of it, no. There’s a straight line of separation all along the surface. The top is carved from the rock, while below it is artificial. Not that you can see it. They merged the two so well you need a computer scanner to show the difference.”

  “It was here all along,” Naomi murmured.

  Vandenberg seemed to feel her eyes on him. “We had to perform due diligence on the rest of the site. Some of that work turned out to be momentous on its own.” He leaned back from the wall to roll his shoulders, taking a look at his students. “We’ve also got other problems. Is our sitter still sitting?”

  “He hasn’t moved,” said Jishen, casually glancing back to the shelters.

  “Alright, everyone listen,” said Vandenberg. “Put the tools down. Come closer. It’ll only be a moment, come on. Don’t worry about the others, we’ll pass this on when we get a chance.

  “We’re going to clear this as quickly as we can. Remember, caves and carved ruins have been found elsewhere on Minos. It’s exciting that we’ve found one of our own, but as far as our sitter needs to know, that’s all we’ve found. And that may be the truth. This may be no more than empty walls and floors like the others. Forget the rest. Let’s not draw any further unwanted attention if we can help it, understand?”

  “So you’re saying you don’t think it’s the same old sort of ancient ruins?” Kim asked with a conspiratorial grin.

  “No, I don’t.” He gestured eagerly to the clawhand again. “We need to keep clearing this away. Let’s all get back to work. Set aside the fine work for now, let’s concentrate on getting the bulk of this cleared.”

  “We should get working on the cast-offs at the bottom or it’s going to pile up real quick,” Naomi thought aloud. Everyone was moving off already. She wasn’t going to find volunteers for the least exciting chore in all this. “Olivia, Nigel, you’re elected. Let’s get—”

  The tremor at her feet cut her off. Everyone else stopped and turned, too, looking around nervously as the ground shook beneath them. Naomi felt her heart leap into her throat, fearing a landslide, but she heard the rumble, too. Looking further out, she saw rocks fall here and there all along the canyon—not in an avalanche, but enough to account for the looser bits of stone.

  Corporal Garcia stood from his chair, but reached for it as a measure of support before he took a single step. He turned his head this way and that in alarm.

  The tremors subsided. Sweeping the area with her gaze again, Naomi saw a few frightened faces and some nervous laughs, but no one hurt. The shelters stood, though a few bits of gear had fallen over.

  “Was that an earthquake?” someone asked.

  “Yes,” said another.

  “Probably,” Naomi agreed, though her training already had her beyond that question. She wanted to know what kind. Though her holocom was compromised for communication and for the dig, she saw no harm using it here. A touch of her earring brought up the command screen in front of her. Several more commands opened up her connection to the sensors laid out all around the site, from the canyon floor to the ridges above.

  Seismic monitors came as part of the standard package on those sensors. The software didn’t include settings for the data she needed, but she was as much a geologist as an archaeologist. She had plenty of reference material on her holocom along with the supplemental programs and her own work.

  “We should run another stability check on this mound,” said Vandenberg. “I don’t want to take safety for granted.”

  “Do you mind passing that job to someone else?” Naomi asked. She kept keying in settings. “I want to get this out of the way.”

  “Olivia, Jishen, you know how it’s done, yes? Take another look, please?” With the chore assigned, Vandenberg stepped over to join her. “What are you looking for? I’m sure the local services will have location and strength available soon.”

  “Probably. I’ve got enough sensors around here for
triangulation, so I can figure out direction and…type,” she murmured.

  Graphs came up on her screen, along with a map of the canyon with faint, superimposed red waves throughout the image. She keyed in a broader time range and grimaced at the results.

  “This would seem to be a little outside my knowledge,” Vandenberg admitted. “What are we looking at here?”

  “Magma,” said Naomi. “That wasn’t isolated. It was a high point, but you can see a long stretch of smaller quakes all along here, right? Going back a couple of weeks. But we don’t have any data from before we got here, so there’s no telling if we arrived during a break or if it all started with what’s on my screen.

  “Earthquakes happen in swarms all the time, too faint for you to feel. And every planet behaves differently,” she added. “So that makes for more guesswork on a planet without a long stretch of settlement and study. Less data to draw on.”

  “Certainly. Why do you say magma?”

  “It’s the pattern. This doesn’t look like a couple of plates slipping. Readings like this are more in line with magma moving around near a volcano. And we’ve got one only a few dozen kilometers away. We’re in the lahar path. Standing on it right now, even.”

  Then it was Vandenberg’s turn to frown. “You don’t think anything’s imminent, do you? This is the first serious quake I’ve heard of here.”

  “I don’t have enough data.” Naomi shrugged. “On another planet, I’d probably be the first to tell you not to worry. But we don’t know enough about how Minos behaves.”

  “We’re going to be up all night around the campfire hearing about curses on ancient tombs,” Vandenberg sighed.

  “Yeah, well. Superstition is funny.” She spread the map open to look at the region, well beyond the sensitivity of her instruments. It didn’t take much of a spread to include the nearest volcano. As far as anyone knew, it was dormant, but she doubted Minos had even charted out any of the magma channels yet. Not with the limits to ground-penetrating sensors. Given that difficulty, she could hardly hold too much against Minos Enterprises. She didn’t know how to crack that nut, either.