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

by Elliott Kay

  “Guess they’re way ahead of us,” grunted Biming.

  Bandit kept barking at the rocky lump along the projection. Yihong was about ready to pick the dog up and haul him away when he saw the lump move.

  Dust and rock fell from its sides—which suddenly expanded. Featherless wings spread to either side while a head and shoulders rose up, shaking off the rest of its camouflage. Its skin was as grey and dull as their rocky surroundings.

  They recognized it by its shape alone. Its head turned back to look at the two men and their dog with a wide, dark pair of eyes set high into its forehead over another more or less human-like pair beneath. Then it turned back to watch the desert and the shapes flying out of the canyon.

  The grey tone of its skin shifted into a swirl of colors. Its wings gave off light brighter than the flashlights carried by either man. With a crouch in preparation, the Nyuyinaro leaped into the air and spread its wings. Yihong and Biming watched as it shot straight up into the night sky.

  “Holy shit. I didn’t—I didn’t imagine that, did I?” blurted Biming.

  “How long has that thing been here?” asked Yihong.

  Bandit barked again, this time nudging Yihong’s leg. His dog’s urgency shook him out of his awe. The Nyuyinaro was already gone. Those clouds of ash would be on top of them in minutes. “Forget the alien,” said Yihong. “We’ve gotta go.”

  * * *

  “Yes, the satellites are gone. It’s not atmospheric disruption. They’ve been destroyed. I have confirmation from spacecraft. Here, I’ll send it to you.” Dylan keyed forwarding commands into the display screen at her desk. She didn’t have time for the disbelief of the stunned faces on her channel spread. Some of them were still waking up at home.

  “So this is an attack?” asked Vanstone. “Why didn’t I see this before?”

  The major bit back a rebuke. “It came in less than two minutes ago. You’re seeing it now because I only just saw it myself.

  “We have signal disruption all over the place. Between the ash clouds and the dust storms it’s only going to get worse. The firmwire connections running through the city look good, but we’ve lost a couple of the cables connecting us to points outside.” Dylan braced herself against her workstation as another tremor hit. She expected it to be worse, but the swift end to the shaking didn’t bring much relief. Not with this much bad news.

  “The scary part is the volcanic activity looks global. Other cities put out a call right before the net went down. Any settled areas that aren’t seeing quakes or eruptions were already staring at dust storms. I’d say we’re facing something like the event that took out the Minoans if it wasn’t for the satellites. With them down, too, this has to be deliberate.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” shot back another executive. Dylan couldn’t even remember his name. “Even the geo-tech and atmospheric systems on Earth couldn’t make something like this happen. Not all at once, not at the drop of a hat.”

  “No, it’s not spontaneous at all,” Dylan growled. “This had to be planned. Somebody tracked all of our satellites and took them down from the surface. We can’t get a bead on what weapons they used or where. That and the sudden natural disaster clusterfuck says we’re looking at tech we’ve never seen before, Geisler.”

  The CEO looked up from whatever he was reading. She knew he’d been listening. The call-out wasn’t about getting his attention. “That’s a reasonable theory, yes,” he fumed.

  “We need to bring Captain MacDonald in on this now,” said Dylan.

  “I need more information.”

  “All this isn’t enough for you?”

  “Major, I have disaster response measures to coordinate. Everyone is looking to me for authorization of a hundred things. Our Union watchdog isn’t exactly a priority.”

  “Then put out a blanket authorization for everything and get his ass on the line,” barked the major. “You know what we could be facing here. Every minute could count.”

  “I don’t know that, major, and I’ll remind you who takes orders from whom. I’m not going to waste time consulting a liaison.”

  “Wait, MacDonald?” broke in Vanstone. “What are you two bickering about? What aren’t you telling—”

  Bright yellow light flashed across the window overlooking the city. An explosion rocked the building. Dylan had no trouble differentiating the shock from a tremor. Smoke and debris burst from the tower across from hers. Chunks of concrete struck her window, leaving cracks behind.

  The building held residences for executives and people in sensitive posts, including the Chief of Police. His place on the channel spread now held only static.

  Dylan understood the implications. The towers no longer provided a command center. Now they were large targets full of vulnerable people. She slammed her hand down on another key at her station. “This is Major Dylan. We are under attack. Evacuate the building and head to your assembly areas. I repeat, all personnel evacuate and report to assembly areas. Emergency teams head to Building Two for casualty recovery. All other hands, evacuate.”

  “Major, what’s happening?” asked one of the other executives on her call.

  “We’re under attack,” she snapped. “That blast took out Vanstone’s residence. He’s probably dead. I’m evacuating and taking field command.” Dylan slapped another call button. “We need to empty out all the towers and get people into whatever shelters we’ve got. I’ll coordinate the rest with you when I can.”

  “I’m on it. Go,” barked her subordinate.

  She saved her last words on the channel for her employer. “Geisler, if MacDonald doesn’t have a Union distress call out in the next twenty seconds, I’m saving a bullet for your ass.”

  The building shook again before she made it to the door to the office—this time from a hit to her own tower. Everything but the tables and the couch came tumbling to the floor while the overhead lights flickered. For a brief instant, she thought the whole floor tilted halfway over. The world held steady as she made it to the door, where her closer confidants were ready. Juntasa held out an assault rifle. Brody held an extra bandoleer of ammo pouches.

  “Up or down?” asked Brody.

  “Up,” said Dylan. “We go up. The Vanguard is the fastest way into the fight.”

  * * *

  In the first few seconds, Captain MacDonald felt proud of the way he made the bed shake. Then he and his companion realized it wasn’t him. Loose items like their holocoms and wineglasses rattled off the shelf-like headboard. By the time they both looked to the window of the darkened penthouse, it almost felt like the building was swaying.

  A loud boom hit the windows hard enough to make him think they’d crack. Neither of them suspected an eruption until Vickie turned on the news.

  It was the only reason MacDonald had his pants on before things got really bad.

  “It doesn’t seem like the quake did any real harm to the firmwire network,” said Vickie. A holographic newscaster floated over her lap in the bed. “We’re bound to lose wireless signals in all that ash, but there’s not much to be done about it.”

  “I’ve got to at least check in with my staff before then,” said MacDonald.

  “Why?”

  “I’m in command. I only need to touch base with them. Hand me my shirt?” He noted the roll of her eyes as she tossed the wrinkled garment from the side of the bed. “You’re not even the least bit shaken up by this? You should be in command of a cruiser.”

  “The quake frightened me. So did the boom. Now I have perspective. It’s not like we have to run for our lives from flowing lava. I don’t even have to go outside in this mess. I can get anywhere I need to go through the skybridges and tunnels connecting everything in the core. The people who have something to worry about are all those poor bastards in the slums. No sense borrowing any of their troubles.”

  MacDonald shook his head. Anything he might say to that would only spoil his good times. “I’ll only need a minute for this.”

  “
Do you have a protocol for a volcanic eruption?”

  “Look, I’m the commanding officer. Not everyone has nerves of steel like you. I’m only checking in. It’s the responsible thing to do.”

  With his shirt on straight and a quick rub of his eyes, MacDonald keyed up the connection to his staff. He didn’t worry about looking disheveled. It was the middle of the night. No one would be at their best. The comms screen appeared in the air before him, separating into four sections for each of his staff. A couple of them blinked to life with familiar faces. Two others went to audio-only, for which he couldn’t blame them.

  “Morning, everyone.” Being the responsible commander he was, MacDonald made sure to adopt a calm, reassuring tone. “Sorry to call at this hour, but for once I’m pretty sure nobody will blame the boss for waking them up in the middle of the night.”

  The bright yellow flash in his window cut him off, along with the explosion it created. The captain dropped to the floor before he heard the rattle of debris against the glass. MacDonald rushed to the window to see a smoking crater in the tower across from his. More streaks of yellow light followed, blasting into other tall buildings in the corporate core. Blessed with corner windows to his penthouse, MacDonald didn’t have to go anywhere to trace the beams back to their source.

  Most of the blasts looked every bit as broad as laser artillery. He’d never seen lasers flash in yellow, though, nor from so far up in the sky. Steady points of fire suggested hovering aircraft. In these conditions, he couldn’t begin to guess at their range, but the next few shots seemed to all come from about the same area. There had to be multiple aircraft.

  “What the hell is that?” blurted Vickie.

  The windows shook again, this time from the close passage of something in the air. He thought it might be an airvan until he looked to the corporate towers again. The aircraft came to a halt beside the smoking hole in the tower, but it was no emergency response vehicle. He’d never seen anything like it at all—at least, not in the air.

  Human figures stood in the small flying boat. Each wore black armor and carried large shields. He saw no weapons evident until one of them raised an arm and fired another yellow beam from something mounted on his wrist. Though the blast wasn’t nearly as large as the earlier shots to hit the building, it still cut away a bent support beam obstructing the hole. Then each of the figures jumped from their flying boat into the darkness and smoke.

  MacDonald felt his resolve harden. These couldn’t be the insurgents. “Josie, listen,” he said to his screens. “We need to—” His words ended with a ray of yellow light that tore through his windows and the wall behind him.

  Vickie gasped. Virtually nothing remained of MacDonald but a smoking mist in the middle of the room and a horrid smell. She grabbed her clothes from the headboard and ran.

  * * *

  Tanner only noticed the background noise of the corridors in its absence. He’d focused on all the tech and keeping his sense of direction in the march to the control room. Escorted through the halls once again, Tanner detected a strange emptiness in the air. He didn’t hear the hum of power or machinery. Nothing echoed through the passages. Earlier, the footsteps and voices of his classmates took center stage in a setting with the noises of life, even if that life was distant or just out of sight. Now every footfall and every word stood out in a void.

  “Where are you taking us?” demanded Nigel.

  A sentinel nudged him down the hallway—oddly enough, the same way they’d come. “You have too many questions. You’ll see,” said the sentinel.

  “Questions don’t seem to be a problem for you guys,” noted Tanner. They didn’t seem too worried about numbers, either. The escort party had dwindled in number to three of the sentinels and a single Regent. The sentinel in the lead carried the jar of memory crystals, suggesting they would be kept wherever the class was going, too.

  “We have nothing to hide from you,” Doram replied. “We are in control. By the time you talk to your people again, they will already know much of what we have revealed.”

  “How long do you plan to keep us?”

  “That depends on how long it takes to establish communication with your leaders.”

  “You could do that right now,” Vandenberg objected. “You don’t have to attack anyone!”

  “It is Her will. You failed to convince her of another way. I am indifferent,” said Doram.

  “Indifferent?” asked Tanner. “You don’t sound like it.”

  The lead sentinel sneered beneath his helmet. “Your language offers so many terms for the invaders outside. ‘Vermin,’ I believe?”

  “Some of them are only children,” Tanner pointed out. “They didn’t choose this.”

  “I assume you see this as a tragedy or a crime.” Doram’s head went through one of those little twitches again. “Yes. Your kind place a priority on the survival of children. We are typically given new bodies at a greater stage of development than childhood. When memory is reawakened to a new life, there is no need for such a delay. In our natural forms, we can produce children, but it is often a waste of time and resources.” He made a casual sweeping gesture. “I am indifferent to yours.”

  Tanner nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. So where are you taking us? Seems like we’re going back the way we came. Are we going all the way back to our camp?”

  “No. You will stay until we finish the invaders. Then we may return you to your people. The gestation tanks that developed our bodies will keep you in stasis during the interim.”

  “You’re putting us to sleep?” blurted Olivia.

  “Oh my god,” Nigel shuddered. “You can’t do this.”

  “Clearly we can,” Doram replied as if it were obvious.

  “Son of a bitch,” muttered Solanke.

  “So we are going back the way we came?” asked Tanner.

  “Yes,” said Doram.

  “Awesome.” He caught a series of stunned looks from his companions, but only shrugged in reply. Either they’d pick up on the hint or they wouldn’t.

  Or he’d fall flat on his face and possibly, probably die. He was used to that being on the table.

  “Why do they answer you and not me?” grumbled Nigel. Freaked out or not, he still had his head together enough to complain. It seemed like a good sign.

  “I’ll tell you in a minute,” said Tanner.

  “There’s gotta be something we can do,” said Olivia. “Can’t anybody do something?”

  “If you resist, you will suffer injury or death,” replied one of the Regents.

  Tanner glanced to the Regent walking to his right, then back to Doram. “Do these guys speak with more emotion when they use your native language? I assume they can do that, right?”

  “Emotion is often influenced by biological function,” said the construct. “Depending on how one defines biology, we have little or no such components.”

  “Little or no?”

  Doram smirked at Tanner’s quizzical look. “The Regents are more than robots, as your kind might call them. Some memories are selected for rebirth, as I was. Some are kept in trust until She or Her deputies decide. Some are given a more durable shell for long-term tasks like the care of a slumbering civilization.”

  “Huh.” He looked the Regent over again. “Sounds like a shit job.”

  “It was an honor to serve,” said the Regent, though without any tone of objection.

  “Is it your intent to give insult?” asked Doram.

  “Nah, I’m just sayin’ it doesn’t sound like a great job to me. Five hundred years of watching and waiting and doing maintenance with nobody to talk to except the other Regents with hardly any emotion?” He looked to the Regent again. “Did you volunteer for that?”

  “Regents are chosen. I do not know of any who volunteer.”

  He looked back to Doram and shrugged again. “See what I mean?”

  “Tanner,” hissed Olivia. “Quit it! You’ll piss them off even worse.”

  “
You do not seem as fearful as the others,” Doram said. “Why is that?”

  “I told you, I’m terrified on the inside.”

  “The more you speak, the less believable that seems.”

  He held his tongue as they came around the last curve in the underground corridor to the spot overlooking the massive tank farm. A simple guardrail to the left separated the path from a long drop to the floor. The guardrail turned and bent outward to make room for a platform Tanner could only assume was some sort of lift. He didn’t know how else they were supposed to get down from here.

  It was now or never.

  “It’s true,” said Tanner. “Also I got sick of living in fear a long time ago, so now I just bury it in spite. Speaking of which: Solanke, remember why I wanted you with us here?”

  The mercenary in the borrowed coat looked at him with a confused scowl. “…Yes?”

  “Cool. See, Nigel,” Tanner continued as they came to the rail, “I think they answered my questions because you have to get them talking first. It takes them off-guard. Then they answer whatever you ask.”

  “We do not,” said Doram.

  “You sure? Think back to the whole conversation we had three minutes ago.”

  Doram frowned. His head twitched. It lasted only a second.

  Tanner had learned long ago how much one could make out of a single second. This one was enough to slip the hammer out of his belt.

  His target snapped out of the momentary trance in time to recognize the danger, but by then the hammer was in motion. Tanner planted the claw of his hammer in Doram’s eye. With his target screaming, Tanner pulled the lead sentinel down by his gruesome hook.

  He didn’t stop to assess anything. The next enemy was close by, turning around in surprise. Tanner rushed for him with a shout: “Fight!”

  The sentinel at the front of the group dropped the obsidian jar and whipped his shield off his back and extended a spear from out of nowhere before Tanner reached him. His shield folded out to each side and down, quickly covering him from above the shoulder to the thigh. Expecting a tackle, the sentinel had his shield up high. Tanner flung himself low, leading with his legs to take the enemy’s feet out from under him. They wound up in a tangle on the floor with shield and spear flailing out to the sides.