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

by Elliott Kay

  “We are, yeah,” said Chen. “Not everybody. Lost some people here. I don’t know how many more in the neighborhood. They turned up a little while after the eruption. We’ve been pinned down in here since it started. None of us know what’s going on.”

  “It’s bad,” said Tanner. “They’re attacking everywhere. I think this was a small squad on the way through the neighborhood. The big fights are in the city. I’m Tanner,” he said, looking to the woman at Chen’s side.

  “Emily. Emily Allen. This is my place. Or it was.”

  “I’m sorry. Everything’s fucked.” He looked back to Chen. “Are you still good for that ride out of town?”

  Chen hesitated, looking to Emily. “I dunno. With things the way they are…?”

  “I have to check on family,” she said, shaking her head. “My place is right around the corner. I can’t leave them with everything like this.”

  “I’m not asking you to abandon anyone,” Tanner assured her. “I’ll help if I can. But what’s the big picture on getting out of here once that’s settled?”

  “Oh hell, I have no idea. Not with all this going on. If I’m flying on my own, it’s harder to…” She put her hand over her mouth. “My partner is on the floor right there.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but we’ve gotta focus, okay? I’m sorry.”

  “He’d understand, Emily. You know he would.”

  She sniffed hard, pushing aside her grief. “We’d never get clearance in this. They’d probably shoot us down on the assumption we’re hostile.”

  “The defense satellites are down,” said Tanner. “All of them. At least a couple patrol ships, too. The bad guys shot ‘em all down in their opening moves. Look, I don’t know if anyone can launch a drone with a call for help. Someone’s gotta get word outside the system. Qin Kai is only a couple hours away by FTL.”

  “Okay. Okay,” said Emily. “I’ll try. After I check on my family.”

  “How many people can your shuttle carry?” Tanner asked. “It has a cargo hold, right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. Twenty, maybe thirty?”

  “I have a class full of students with a bunch of alien weapons and tech. The Union Fleet needs to see that stuff. They need to know what we’re facing here.”

  Emily and Chen looked at one another, still out of breath and more overwhelmed than ever. “We don’t have a choice,” said Chen.

  “Yeah. I agree,” Emily huffed. “Okay.”

  “You said your family is nearby? Where are they?”

  “Yeah. My kid is hiding here,” said Emily, pointing to the door. “My husband shouldn’t be far. He was at home. It’s only a couple blocks away. I need to check on him.”

  “We need to get him,” Tanner corrected. “Him and anyone else close enough to squeeze in. I don’t know if you’ll be able to come back. I don’t know what there will be to come back to.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven:

  Division of Labor

  “Malone, Tanner: disruptive, disrespectful, assignments incomplete. Endangers classmates. Failing marks.”

  --Expedition Gradebook, Professor Joseph Vandenberg, 2280

  No one lost any time preparing the shuttle. Though Emily left with Tanner and Chen to retrieve her family, Gina had no problem running the warm-up. Tanner and the others returned to find the shuttle rolled out of the warehouse behind the scrapyard. It seemed only a little wider and longer than most monorail cars and none too pretty, but it would do the job.

  The cargo door on the port side stood open. His classmates worked to load up the headless Regent dragged from the shop on a cargo lifter. Tanner gave it only the briefest thought before seeing the sense in it. Anything the Union Fleet could analyze was worth the trouble.

  Explosions in the distance rumbled like thunder. The sky grew ever darker, with the flashes of battle occasionally reflecting along the clouds of ash. Nothing signaled a break from the bad news. They’d even felt another tremor on their way back to the yard.

  Emily’s husband ran forward to wrap his arms around their daughter as she slipped out of the shuttle’s cargo bay to meet him. The pilot hustled away, too, turning straight for the cockpit. Tanner felt a lump in his stomach. Though it was a relief to reunite a family in a mess like this, he didn’t want to think about how many others would be left behind.

  “Malone,” a voice called down from the rooftop of the front office. Solanke leaned over the side with a rifle in his hands. “Are we good?”

  “Pretty much. How’d you get up there?”

  “Stairs. Antonio helped me. Figured we ought to keep an eye on the neighborhood. We ain’t seen much yet, though.”

  “C’mon down, then. Should be about time to go.”

  “You know I can’t go with you, right?” said Chen as Solanke pulled back. “I can’t leave my people. Especially not in the middle of all this.”

  “I know,” said Tanner. “I’m counting on it.” He kept a wary eye on the streets. Solanke did a good thing in keeping lookout. Tanner glanced back to the shuttle, too, wanting to keep track of the load-up. “I’m still shocked anyone’s got a legal shuttle around here.”

  “It helps Minos Corp put up the façade of allowing private enterprise,” said Chen. “You can have a ship, but you can’t use it with any real freedom. Gotta lay out bribes and other nonsense. Can’t leave with your family. And they undercut the business sixteen different ways.”

  “Are there others?”

  “A couple. None connected to us. If we had anything bigger, we’d have been smuggling people off-world all along. One little shuttle doesn’t make much of a difference to Minos Corp. They still keep everyone here.”

  Solanke emerged from the back door to the office leaning on Antonio’s shoulder. The mercenary didn’t look like he had much more energy in him now. “So what’s the plan, Malone?” he asked.

  “We load up the shuttle and go. Full speed evasion and a little surprise should carry her out of range from those Minoan guns. I hope.”

  “No. I mean, what about me?” Solanke flicked a meaningful glance to Chen. “I’m not one of your classmates. I have a job to do here.”

  “You’re hurt. You need more than first aid. Besides, when all this stuff gets to the Union, they’re gonna want to talk to everybody. You have military training. They’ll want your perspective.”

  “And then what? What about my guys? My job? This whole shitstorm? Someone has to tell Precision what we know. What we found. All of it.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about that,” said Tanner. “You’re tight with Major Dylan, right? You seemed like you’ve got a connection there, rank aside.”

  “You could say that,” said Solanke. “But if I could call her up, I’d have done it already. It’s not like my holocom makes calls any better than yours in all this shit,” he noted, gesturing to the ash still falling from the sky.

  “Right. And you’re in no shape to stay and fight. So where would she be right now? If she’s not already dead, how would we find her in all this?”

  Solanke glanced to Chen once more. “You’re not sending him? Even with the whole sky falling, she’d probably shoot him on sight.”

  “I’m not talking about Chen.”

  Then it was Antonio’s turn to balk. “Wait. Tanner, are you serious?”

  “Nobody’s less thrilled about it than I am.”

  Antonio grimaced, looking to the shuttle. “I’m not sure that’s gonna be true for long.”

  * * *

  Naomi didn’t fool around in securing this last unsettling piece of cargo. With the headless Regent laid out in the back of the shuttle’s cargo bay, she and the others set to securing the thing with every available fastener, magnetic clamp, and simple tie-down strap they could secure to the deck.

  “You think this is enough?” asked Nigel. He had two such clamps over the Regent’s legs and a pair of straps running over them both.

  “Are there more places to secure it?” Naomi replied.

&
nbsp; Sure enough, he found another D-ring under a sliding tile by the Regent’s knee. “Yes.”

  “Then it’s not enough,” Naomi huffed. She pulled the strap at the thing’s armpit tight. “If this thing powers up again we don’t want it to move. Every point of restraint cuts down on the amount of force it can exert. If it can thrash its way through all this, we’re fucked anyway.”

  “Or we could not take it on board with us,” muttered Kim.

  “No, no, it’s too valuable for study,” said Vandenberg. He loomed over Naomi’s shoulder, watching the class’s progress. “If it could still operate, it would have already resisted. You can see through the neck how the damage continues down into—”

  Naomi’s gaze slid his way. “Professor. We’re following another of your ideas here. After everything. Maybe quit while you’re ahead.”

  Vandenberg held his hands up and withdrew to one of the folding bench seats against the bulkhead.

  “He’s right, it’s worth taking back if we can,” muttered Olivia, working beside Nigel. “As long as it doesn’t have some stupid self-destruct bomb inside.”

  Naomi turned her eyes to the other woman. “Why? Why would you say that? Why now?”

  Olivia mumbled a quiet apology and said nothing more.

  Behind Olivia, Solanke climbed on board the shuttle with help from Antonio, Tanner, and Chen. As the wounded mercenary settled into a chair, Tanner and Chen headed for the cockpit. “Okay, you guys got this?” asked Naomi.

  “Yeah, we’re good,” said Nigel.

  “Let’s put a tarp or a blanket over it, too,” suggested Kim. “Couldn’t hurt.”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Naomi agreed. She left them to catch up with the others at the cockpit. Everyone else who wasn’t working on the Regent was already seated, including the pilot’s family. The husband and daughter both seemed a little shell-shocked by it all. Naomi couldn’t blame them. Half of her wanted to take whatever blanket they found for the Regent so she could hide under it.

  Tanner and Chen didn’t move all the way into the cockpit, though two of the four seats were still open as far as Naomi knew. They lingered at the cockpit door. She picked up the pilot’s voice as she joined them.

  “We’re ready to go as soon as we close the doors,” said Emily. “I can’t see much of where we’re going, though.” She tapped one of the viewscreens displaying the skies above—or rather a viewscreen showing mostly interference and null results. “I don’t like flying blind. And I don’t like the idea of being the only thing in the sky. Your friend here says these guys can see through the dust?”

  “It’s Gina,” her copilot prompted. “And yes, that’s what it looks like. How well, we don’t know for sure. But better than us.”

  “The Minoans can reach orbital range with their guns, but everything they hit so far was caught by surprise,” explained Tanner. “You’ll be a moving target. Point this thing up and go.”

  “Thank you, Emily,” said Chen. “Good luck.”

  “You too, boss.” She looked back to him with an apology in her eyes. “Hang in there.”

  “Always do.” He moved back out into the cargo bay, making room for Naomi to slip in beside Tanner.

  “We’ve got everything stowed. Everyone has a seat,” said Naomi. “Time to go, right?”

  “Right,” said Emily. She keyed up the engines, sending a tremor through the shuttle.

  “Tanner, if you want to make yourself useful, there’s always the engine monitors,” Gina suggested. She jerked her thumb at the crew seat behind her.

  “Sorry. You’re gonna have to get along without me from here. Soon as the doors shut, go. Don’t stop for anything until you reach Qin Kai. Good luck.”

  “What?” Naomi blinked. She caught his arm as he turned to leave.

  “Whoa, whoa!” Gina climbed out of her seat. “Where the hell are you going?”

  “Gina, listen. This shuttle needs at least two on the crew and I’m a terrible pilot.”

  “We’ve got a pilot. I’m not running the controls. Don’t put this on me. I’m supposed to keep an eye on you.”

  “What the hell are you thinking, Tanner?” Naomi pushed. “We are not leaving without you.”

  “You have to,” Tanner argued quietly. “You’re all witnesses with research and samples. The Fleet needs to see this and hear what happened. They need to know.” He looked to Gina. “And the only thing that might take longer than getting to Qin Kai is getting to someone in authority. But they’ll listen to an Archangel Intelligence agent. You can cut through all the crap. They’ll listen to you.”

  “So what?” asked Naomi. “Why do you have to stay?”

  “Because in the meantime everything here gets worse,” said Tanner. “People are gonna keep dying until help gets here. The mercs need to know what we found. Chen can’t tell them. They’ll never trust him. I have to stay.”

  Naomi looked to Gina for a counterargument, but the other woman only let out a bitter grunt. “Damn it,” Gina fumed. She turned back to her seat.

  Naomi didn’t let go of his arm. “This is bullshit.”

  The apology in his eyes didn’t surprise her. She didn’t let go when he put his hand over hers. Not until he said, “I’m sorry. I’ve gotta go. Thank you.”

  She blinked. Her hand loosened. “For what?”

  “For sticking up for me. For reaching out. It means a lot.” He took her hand from his arm, squeezing it once. “I’ve gotta go.”

  He strode through the cargo bay as if he knew it was his only chance. The other students looked on, knowing something was wrong but not understanding. “It’s been fun, guys. Take care.” He didn’t seem to know what else to say, either… until he found Vandenberg sitting in one of the last seats before the cargo door.

  “Oh. And you.” Tanner stuck his finger in the professor’s face. “You are gonna spill your fucking guts about all this. Everything. Every secret you’ve held since you first heard of Minos, every artifact you hid, every name of anyone who covered for your bullshit. You’re gonna sit down with Fleet Intelligence and you’re gonna tell them all of it. And if it’s your career down the tubes, that’s the price you pay for living through this. You got me, asshole?”

  It was enough to surprise Naomi out of grabbing his arm again before he stepped out onto the ground. The shuttle trembled again as the antigrav engines fired. The pilot wasn’t waiting. Naomi knew better than to jump out with him, but she didn’t give up.

  “This is bullshit,” she yelled. “You’re not staying. You are one of my students and I—” She cut herself off. Swallowed. “I dragged you out here.”

  “You didn’t drag me. You offered. I took it. Hell, I didn’t have an apartment to go back to, anyway.” Tanner shrugged. “I promised I’d get everyone home.”

  It didn’t make her feel any better. “You wanted out of all this!”

  “I wanted out of the uniform. I wanted out of living where other people said I had to go. I got that.” He shook his head. “I can do something about this, Naomi. I can try. I’m better off staying than I would be if I left.”

  The shuttle started to move. For the first time, Vandenberg spoke up. “What are you going to do?” he called back.

  “I’ve seen their base and I met the head bad guy,” said Tanner. “What do you think I’m gonna do?”

  * * *

  They watched the shuttle lift off on antigrav, tilting its nose skyward to rise a few stories above the ground. Thrusters fired at an intensity never legally allowed at so low an altitude over a civilian area. The shuttle disappeared into the sky of ash and darkness in almost no time.

  Tanner and Chen watched the skies a little longer, hoping to see nothing else. If the shuttle was out of view, that was good. They dreaded the flash of long-range weapons pointed toward the sky.

  Nothing came.

  “How long until they’re out of range, you think?” asked Chen.

  “The outside range of any human weapon I know of is a hundred and twenty tho
usand klicks,” said Tanner. “That’s all human weaponry, obviously. Minoan stuff seems comparable. I don’t have a clue how it works, but their guns don’t seem to completely outstrip ours. Anything as small and fast-moving as that shuttle is gonna be tough to hit. If the pilot goes evasive it gets way harder, so… I dunno. Few minutes? They’ve gotta be through the upper atmosphere by now, at least. She can get even crazier out there.”

  Ash kept falling. The wind blew. Explosive booms and the crackle of weapons echoed across the neighborhood from the city in the distance. “And they’ve gotta be far enough out by now that we won’t see whatever shoots at them from here,” Tanner surmised.

  “Then we’d better go,” suggested Chen.

  “Yeah. How’d you get here?”

  “Hidden in the back of a truck. It’s in the garage. You don’t want to take the Vanguard?”

  “Do you know how to fly it?” asked Tanner.

  Chen made a face. “No. I thought you did.”

  “Aircraft don’t fly the same as a starship. I could probably figure it out if you really want to, but there’s another problem besides all the combat going on.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m a terrifying pilot,” said Tanner.

  * * *

  Naomi sat in the cockpit seat behind Gina, dutifully not touching anything. She stared first at the canopy and then screens and instruments she didn’t fully understand. Launch brought a quick transition through the canopy: ashen skies, then immersion in complete darkness, and then stars. Calm, peaceful, steady stars.

  Whatever happened on Minos, whatever might happen to her shuttle and her class and her life, the stars remained.

  Almost as soon as that thought registered, the stars whirled and shifted. Naomi felt the tiniest lurch. Emily had the vessel in evasive action, mixing a computer-operated randomization of their course and speed with her own input for an added human variable. The shuttle continued on in the same general course, but pinpointing it with a weapon would be difficult.