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

by Elliott Kay

  “I have an undergraduate degree in exactly this sort of work. A degree from the University of Fremantle. Summa cum laude, even with the dual geology degree. I’ve almost got a…a PhD, too.” Her voice fell. She didn’t look back from the screen. “Almost.”

  Tanner stepped closer. She didn’t need to look. She heard him, or rather felt him. “Sorry, I’ve been kind of focused. How are you holding up?”

  She gestured to the blank document hanging in the air.

  He waited.

  “I keep thinking about that PhD. I keep thinking about how hard I’ve worked for it. How much this dig means. Everything I gave up for this. Everything waiting at home.”

  “What’d you give up?” he asked.

  “I got engaged before I came out here. Before I first called you, actually. The night the other intern dropped out, my girlfriend set me up to find the ring at home, and…and I didn’t look at my messages until later that night.

  “She got a promotion at her company. She’s been carrying us both ever since we finished our undergrads.” Naomi sniffed. She wouldn’t let out anything more than that, but it took a little willpower. “We met as sophomores. She went to work right out of graduation. Said she didn’t care if I stayed in school and she had to pay the bills. Said she wanted this for me. That was before I knew I’d be coming to this shady-ass rock on the edge of the Union for my dissertation.” She shook her head. “The edge—more like the cliff.”

  “What’s her name?” Tanner asked.

  “Dani. Danielle. What about—sorry,” she corrected, feeling like she’d stuck her foot in her mouth again.

  Tanner snorted. “What’s to be sorry about?”

  “I was about to ask if you have anyone, but you already said you live alone and your social life is kind of on the rocks.”

  “Her name’s Lynette. She’s from back home. Different planet, but still Archangel. She was out on Fremantle right before you called me.”

  “She still lives in Archangel? Must be hard, being away from each other so much. This is already enough to get to me,” said Naomi. “Gotta be even harder for you.”

  “We were never supposed to be a thing in the first place. I couldn’t tell you what convinced her it’s worth dealing with all my ridiculous bullshit, but she hasn’t lost interest yet.”

  “You’ve never asked her why not?”

  “No.”

  Naomi smiled at him. “I’m sure she’s got her reasons.”

  He glanced away, but she knew she saw some blush to his cheek.

  The moment didn’t last.

  “This is going to get worse, Naomi.”

  “What, you mean those soldiers aren’t going to get bored and go home before morning?” Naomi grumbled. “Yeah, I know. They’re probably going to take the whole dig away and kick us out of here. Take our finds, too.”

  “No. It’s going to get worse than that. This was all dodgy enough with the ancient secrets and the corporate guns fighting against an insurgency. Now we’ve got some unknown assholes using alien tech against those guns, and these guys dropping in to take over right after we’ve made our big find?” Tanner shook his head. “I can’t tell you what’s gonna happen, but I know what it feels like right before everything goes to shit. I’ve been here before. This is gonna be bad.”

  “Well, what do you want me—?” Naomi snapped, but cut herself off. She held back with a long breath. “What are we supposed to do about it?”

  His eyes turned meaningfully toward the cabinet hiding their more important finds. “We get ready to move.”

  * * *

  He stood before the discovery of a lifetime. Decades of work, of hope, of secrecy, all of it for this moment—this, and of course the next. The discovery, and then the investigation. The unearthing of secrets, followed by the work of analysis and further discovery. All of it bearing his name. The door stood clear. Behind it might be everything he wanted: the secrets of an alien race, along with a legacy to put his name among the greats of his field. When generations learned of the ancient Minoans in school, they would learn Joseph Vandenberg’s name.

  Unless the uniformed thug at his side had other plans. Or unless Minos Enterprises stole the credit. Or worse.

  He knew all along he would have to negotiate those obstacles. Until now, he hadn’t thought of his dream turning into a helpless nightmare.

  Vandenberg stood before the doors, bathed in the same floodlights that illuminated the sheer black slabs from top to bottom. The crystal-embedded engravings at the top stretched all the way down. Within the last hour, his team and their unwelcome support had cleared the last of the rock, mud, and ash covering the doors.

  The job came to an unexpected end as they realized the doors sat atop a natural stone platform rising three meters from the canyon floor. Steps had been carved along both sides, following patterns seen in ruins elsewhere on the planet. In every known case, Minoan construction showed a preference for carving and shaping from existing stone.

  Vandenberg had seen evidence to the contrary. Images of free-standing towers not so unlike human buildings once stood on this planet, only to be wiped from the surface by the wrath of aliens. Humanity knew of the Minoan roads. Many had been uncovered before. Only Vandenberg and his students knew of their cities.

  He wondered how long it would be before these thugs stole that discovery from him, too.

  “Yeah, it’s clear,” said Stockton. He stood near the edge of the stone platform, holding up the broad-spectrum lens of his communications gear to relay the image. Any personal holocom could provide nearly perfect visual fidelity in a camera no larger than a button. Gear like his took in much more than plain sight. “We haven’t found a doorknob or anything. No hinges. Not on the outside at least. I don’t know if we’re gonna have to break it down or blast it or what.”

  A jolt of panic seized Vandenberg’s heart. Could he possibly be serious?

  “Let’s not skip straight to that,” advised the woman on the floating holo screen beside him. “I don’t see that kind of urgency yet. Things seem stable on my end. Let’s leave it until morning, at least. I have to imagine the professor there has some ideas, anyway.”

  “Yes, Major Dylan, I do,” spoke up Vandenberg. A dismissive wave from Stockton cut off the rest.

  “Right, so have your people and his get some rest,” Dylan went on, clearly addressing only her subordinate. “Hopefully I can get out there in the morning to take a look. I don’t know if Geisler will want to come, but we’ll see. Anything else? What about Malone?”

  “Being a good little boy so far. Still got an attitude, but he’s behaving.”

  “He can shoot his mouth off all he wants as long as he stays where we have tabs on him. If that’s it, I should move on. Make sure you maintain your status intervals and I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  “You got it, Major.” He cut the channel. “Okay, let’s wrap this up for the night.”

  “I wasn’t aware you were in charge of the dig,” Vandenberg spoke up.

  Stockton sneered, glancing left and right before stepping face to face with Vandenberg. He was a big man. Taller. Heavier. And that was without the armor and weapons. “Doc, you do not want to get into a pissing match with me. I will drown you. Especially if it’s in public. I don’t put up with people trying to undercut me. You wanna stay up a little later with the kids and play with your brushes and your cameras some more? Fine. But we’re not doing anything to poke at this thing until morning. No probes, no experiments, and we’re definitely not trying to open it. Understand?”

  “We’re so grateful for your cooperation, lieutenant,” Vandenberg sneered back. He turned away, hoping to affect a dismissive air, and engaged the first students he saw. “Antonio, Kim, let’s double-check our readings. It’s getting late, but I want to confirm observations before we call it a night.”

  He didn’t stop for the muted frustration on his students’ faces. He didn’t stop to look back at Stockton, either. Vandenberg put his hea
d down into his work, using it to escape the moment.

  It worked…for the moment.

  Soldiers and students alike trickled away over the rest of the hour. Stockton’s people set up their own portable shelters. Students cleaned up their gear. Vandenberg saw Tanner on the outskirts of the activity, busy with little chores and talking to people. If he got himself put in shackles by these men, it would at least be one problem off the professor’s plate.

  Naomi was gone when Vandenberg withdrew to the research tent. No one else was about, either. He sat at one of the tables, calling up the menu on a scanner he’d used as a personal workstation since he couldn’t trust his own holocom. He had tasks to finish up here: daily logs, gear and accounting checks, journaling. He threw himself into the work, if only for lack of an alternative. The sound-dampeners in his tent wouldn’t shut out the aggravation in his own mind. Too many distractions. Too many reminders of it all going wrong.

  Before he knew it, the camp lay quiet again.

  Emerging from the tent, Vandenberg found the site still illuminated, but seeming otherwise deserted. Shelters were closed. Tents sealed up. Everyone had bedded down for the night. Everyone except Stockton’s sentries, banished to opposite ends of the camp.

  Bathed in the intense glow of the floodlights, without people in the foreground to create perspective, the great door looked even greater. He found himself trying to trace out the patterns of the crystal lines, reminded of Celtic knotwork and similar art forms practiced by humanity. He wondered if the distance would aid in the effort, but his students had already tried. They’d run the design through imaging programs, too. Nothing made any particular sense.

  His feet carried him closer until he tripped over the bottom step to the stone platform. Vandenberg shook himself. He didn’t bear all these burdens and come all this way to give it all up to some hired guns. The door was only a few steps up the platform.

  “Forget something, professor?” asked a voice at the top. The soldier sat back in a camping chair, propped up against the rock right at the frame of the door. His rifle lay across his lap.

  “No, no,” Vandenberg said with a forced smile. “Trying to wind down after an eventful day. Are you all by yourself? How did you draw this chore?”

  “I’m not here to get chatty,” said the soldier. He seemed bored. Young, too. He looked as young as any of the students, though that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

  “No, of course. You have your duties. My apologies.”

  “I’ve got my orders, too. You got something to do, fine. Long as it’s not doing anything with the door. Nobody’s opening this fucker up in the middle of the night.”

  “Is it that late? I hadn’t noticed the time,” Vandenberg chuckled.

  The soldier didn’t reply.

  “Moss? That’s your name?” The professor tapped at his own chest to indicate the soldier’s nametag. Again, he got no answer. Vandenberg relented, holding his hands up. “I’m only up here to think.”

  “Think all you want,” said Moss. He conjured up a screen from his holocom, bringing up a text Vandenberg couldn’t read from the wrong side of the projection.

  The dismissal worked for the professor. He turned back to the great door, innocently walking in a wide arc around Moss. Enough dust still hung in the air to create a visible path of light from the floodlamps to the door. Particles gently swirled in the beams, but not so many as to obscure anything along the surface. Vandenberg watched his shadow cross the engravings, looking for any reaction he hadn’t seen before. Anything new.

  He didn’t expect much. People had been in front of the door all evening. They’d been at the door since mid-morning to dig the thing out. No one had found a magic button yet, though in fairness, understanding the door’s functionality hadn’t been a primary concern. Until now, they had focused on getting it cleared.

  Plenty of people had made contact with the door, incidental or otherwise. His students scraped the surface with shovels, brushed it, bumped it with rocks, and touched it with gloved and bare hands. Enthusiasm and urgency overrode best practices more than once today. It seemed no harm was done.

  Nothing looked like a control panel. Nothing seemed interactive. Were it not for the example of other ruins, he couldn’t even be sure this was a door at all. Perhaps it was merely some flat slab built as a monument. Perhaps it served some purpose humans would never think of…or perhaps it was exactly what it seemed, and what all the evidence suggested.

  The ancients ran to this canyon. Presumably they ran to this door and the shelter behind it. If the door had been open then, it may have been shut from the inside. It may only open that way, too. Did they know when they had everyone inside? Did they wait until a certain time, leaving anyone else behind? Or could Minoan hands open it again? Unlike all the other ruins discovered before now, this one had embedded crystals. Could they be functional, like the crystals in the obelisks?

  His hand fell into his pocket. The simplest of comparisons could be handled now, without the watchful eye of Stockton or others. He didn’t even want his students to know what he carried. He tended to think of it more as a good luck talisman than anything else, but such sentiments were silly. He’d brought it for a reason. This reason. As it turned out, he didn’t need it to activate the obelisk, but this…

  “That’s close enough, old man.” The warning practically came out as a yawn. Moss didn’t even look up from his holo screen.

  Again, Vandenberg forced a smile and gave the first explanation that came to mind. “Only taking a few pictures.”

  “Didn’t you already have cameras recording everything all day?” Moss countered.

  “It’s always good to have extras for comparison,” said Vandenberg. He brought up a holo screen of his own. “As it turns out, we have to match a few—”

  “Don’t really care.”

  His smile didn’t require so much effort after that. Vandenberg brightened his screen, wanting it only for the deterrent to Moss’s peripheral vision. He looked from the screen to the door and back again, feigning a comparison of views and pictures.

  His fingers fished the crystal shard out of his pocket. It probably meant nothing. One minor idea out of dozens he’d have to try before getting to the bottom of this, assuming their hosts didn’t kick them out of the canyon in the morning altogether. He only wanted a brief chance to compare and consider.

  He didn’t expect a dim flash of pink light from the entire crystal pattern.

  “The fuck was that?” Moss asked. Though he stayed in his camping chair, his eyes came off his holo screen to look around and up. The door stayed as it had been.

  “What? Er—was it my holo screen?” Vandenberg tried to cover. He put the crystal back in his pocket, but wondered if the die had already been cast.

  The release of dust and dirt from the door seemed to confirm that thought. It fell in a single cloud, as if the door had taken a good kick or a shove. Moss climbed out of his seat with his rifle in hand. His eyes swept the door and the wall to either side. “Did this thing move?”

  “I don’t see how,” Vandenberg replied. “There aren’t gaps at any point along the seals.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing.” He didn’t try to convince the younger man. Not with his attention elsewhere. His observation was honest enough: the door didn’t seem any more open now than it had been. Yet he saw the reactions to the shard. He’d done no more with it than to put it in plain sight.

  The door looked the same: no handles, no buttons, no visible controls at all. Perhaps it only opened and shut from within, but that would shut out Minoans trying to flee here for shelter. Was this only a shelter for certain Minoans, or could any make use of it? If so, how could they open it without a key—unless the key was something any Minoan might have? Could it be so simple?

  “Tom? Tom, are you up there fucking with me?” Moss called to the top of the canyon.

  Vandenberg winced. The last thing he wanted was more attention. N
ot now. “You know, we had an earthquake earlier today. Aftershocks can take place anytime, even mild ones.”

  “God damn you, old man,” grunted the solder. He raised his hand to tap his earpiece and activate his communications channel with the others.

  His finger never made contact.

  A pointed shaft burst from his skull, tilting downward like a stake made of dark metal now covered in blood. The other end ran almost two meters in length, embedded in the upper right of the soldier’s head. Vandenberg’s breath caught in his throat as Moss staggered and fell dead on the stone.

  The professor stepped back. His eyes turned upward, searching the ridge in terror. He saw a hint of movement almost three stories above his spot, but the floodlights didn’t reach that high.

  The sudden fall of another soldier’s body onto the stone platform solved that mystery. He bounced slightly on impact to Vandenberg’s added horror. Blood pooled all around from several wounds, pouring most freely from the man’s smashed face.

  The next surprise from above landed on its feet with the heavier crack of stone hitting stone. This one didn’t bounce. Articulated feet and knees absorbed the impact, though the latter bent backward. The figure then rose to its full height, staring down at the shocked professor with a red glow in a tau-shape he’d seen before.

  “Do not make a sound,” said the figure. “If you remain silent, you will not be harmed.”

  Again, Vandenberg’s breath caught in his throat. It spoke. It clearly couldn’t be human with those proportions. He had every reason to believe it was a robot, that it was alien…and yet it spoke English with a human voice.

  Another figure joined it, falling from the ridge to land on two feet. Human feet. A human figure, clad in black armor over black cloth. Dark grey sand fell from every part of the person’s body as if they’d been rolling in it only seconds ago.

  “You are the leader here,” said the inhuman figure. “Is that correct? Answer quietly.”