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

by Elliott Kay

  Computer-generated icons and information filled the canopy screen. Naomi could understand bits of it in isolation, like the distance to the surface and the range to the orbital paths of each moon. A scattering of smaller icons and figures appeared at the edges of the canopy. Taking in the whole picture clearly required some training and practice.

  At her station, Naomi found a more streamlined display for the shuttle’s movement through space. It only frustrated her further. The ship’s acceleration built, and yet: “It doesn’t seem like we’re going that fast.”

  “That’s the problem with spaceflight,” said Emily. “Once you’re far enough away from large objects it feels like you’re crawling even though you’re moving far faster than any bullet.”

  “Damn, they really did wipe out all the satellites,” said Gina. “Look at this. There’s nothing left on the grid but debris. Ships, too. The nearest contacts are all at least three hours out.”

  “Meaning they haven’t seen what’s happening here yet,” grunted the pilot. “These assholes sure picked their moment. They must’ve been waiting for a lull in traffic. It doesn’t look like anyone’s making a run out of the gravity well for help except us.”

  “What about—oh!” Gina blurted. A yellow flash brightened the canopy. Warnings rang from the controls. “I guess they can see us.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Emily, her voice tense with this new pressure. “That went kinda wide.” Another yellow flash lit up the canopy, this time with the beam traveling close enough to see ahead of the shuttle’s nose. “Okay, that one didn’t.”

  “I can’t tell where it’s coming from,” said Gina. “Half of Minos is covered in ash clouds or dust storms.”

  “This far out we’ll never angle out of their way regardless,” said Emily. She continued her evasive maneuvers. Another beam flashed by, then another. Neither came as close as the second. “We’re building distance. Getting there,” she murmured.

  “How far do we need to get?” Naomi asked.

  “Hell if I know. Farther is always better,” said Gina.

  Nervously, Naomi tapped the “Cycle Display” key at her screen. Soon she had a broader display of space around them. The closest moon was well out of their path and a couple hundred thousand klicks away, but it offered perspective on their position.

  She didn’t expect to see movement. Rocks broke away and dust flew all across the moon’s surface. Dark objects slowly emerged from seemingly fresh craters. The scanners offered no identification. “Hey, does anyone else see what’s going on with the moon?” she warned.

  “Huh?” asked Gina. The agent paged through her own screens while Emily focused on the helm. Scanners offered blanks and unknown results on most informational fields, but dimensions and trajectories came in quickly enough. They were generally round and rocky, but every protrusion seemed symmetrical. Some seemed as large as a destroyer. Others were still indeterminate. They movements were slow and steady, as if waking up from a long slumber. “Oh, holy shit. Those are starships.”

  “What?” burst Emily.

  “They have starships,” Gina repeated. “They had starships hidden in the moon all along. And nobody ever looked.”

  “The geology has a lot of the same properties as Minos,” said Naomi. “Why would they bother with more than surface scans and a few probes? It’s not like the moons are going anywhere.”

  “Are those ships going anywhere?” asked Emily.

  “No. No, they’re still drifting out. Powering up, I guess,” said Gina. “I don’t think they care much about us.”

  “We hope,” Emily grumbled. “At least the shooting from Minos stopped. We might have broken out of their range.”

  “How soon can we jump to FTL? We only need to get past the lunar orbits, right?” Naomi asked.

  The pilot shook her head. “This is an old shuttle, not a yacht or a military ship. I wouldn’t risk it at the lunar line. We can’t hold up to the stresses a tougher ship can handle. We need to get far away from the gravity well around Minos before we even try.”

  “So how long?”

  “I need another hour at least. Maybe two. Then it’s gonna be at least two hours in FTL to hit the next system. We can’t cut it any closer getting in to Qin Kai, either.”

  Naomi winced. Even once organized, the Fleet would need about as much time to make the trip back toward Minos. She had no clue how much of a force would even be available, or how long it would take them to get moving.

  She paged her display back to Minos, but saw only an orb covered in dark grey clouds. “Don’t you die on me,” she murmured.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight:

  Overrun

  “Vanstone is gone and we haven’t heard from Precision. All officers will stay put and defend police property. We’ll move out to defend the public when we understand what’s going on.”

  --Deputy Commander Ryan Irving, Anchorside Police Communications, August 2280

  Dylan blasted away through the gun port as Brody brought the Vanguard around in another run. She had to keep herself braced against the bulkhead after the internal gravity generators took a hit on the first pass, but the transport was still flying. Some jostling and vertigo were a small price to pay for a second crack at the enemies on top of the Executive Tower.

  Even Dylan couldn’t maintain accuracy under these conditions. She saw sparks as her bullets ricocheted across the rooftop below. More of those bullets hit her targets than the blacktop, though. Another of the armored raiders flailed and collapsed under the barrage, leaving only a handful to fight.

  “Five down, nine to go,” shouted Juntasa. She fired through the other gun port beside Dylan to much the same effect. “Think we’ve got the hang of this.”

  The Vanguard ducked under the lip of the tower as Brody curved around. “If we keep at this, they’re gonna get the hang of shooting back at us,” he warned.

  “Stay low and give us a second,” ordered Dylan. “We’ll do one more pass. Directly overhead this time. Juntasa. Grenades.”

  “Right.” The sergeant flipped open a box of infantry gear in the middle of the cabin. Each woman pulled grenades right off one of the battle harnesses.

  Dylan climbed over the storage bin to get to the starboard gun port. Juntasa stayed on other side. “Okay Brody, last pass,” she called. “Over the top and then get us on our way.”

  The Vanguard lifted with another reminder of how much harder people had it before artificial gravity fields. As soon as Dylan saw the top corner of the tower below, she sent the grenade through the gun port.

  Intense light and heat burst through the port, sending Dylan tumbling backward with a yelp. She landed on her butt, safely but without grace. Even with her eyes shut, she couldn’t escape the glare. The heat at her face and hands sent a jolt of terror through her heart.

  Another jolt hit the Vanguard, suggesting another such beam tagged the belly of the vehicle. “Brody, drop and go!” Juntasa yelled. “She’s hurt!”

  Brody was already turning the Vanguard low and to the right before the other woman finished her sentence. A faint pair of booms signaled the detonation of the grenades in their wake. “We’ve lost armor in two spots. We can’t take another hit,” warned Brody.

  “Get us to the Bunker,” ordered Dylan. The heartbeats after the flash gave her enough time to clamp down on her fear. She couldn’t be hurt that badly. Dylan blinked hard. Already the glare seemed less overwhelming. She hadn’t gone blind. “Am I burned?” she asked, feeling Juntasa’s hand on her shoulder. “I can barely see.”

  “No. Little cooked, maybe,” said the sergeant. “God, that hit must’ve gone right up along the hull at the gun port. You think we finished them?”

  “Can’t worry about it now. Brody’s right about our armor. We bought the people in the tower some time and took the edge off that strike force. Security has to take it from here. We’ve got more important places to be.”

  “They’ve got more aircraft out here,” said Brody. “I
’m gonna try to keep low so I don’t draw any attention. Oh, look,” he added sourly. “Internal gravity is back on. Great.”

  They could feel the difference inside the Vanguard. Brody’s violent course now created only a mild rocking motion for his passengers. With Juntasa’s help and a little more blinking, Dylan made it into the front seat beside their pilot. Though her natural night vision was shot, she didn’t need it to make out the worst of things on the ground and in the sky.

  Fires and explosions did more to illuminate the city than street lighting or lamps in windows. Main power had surely been knocked out in most places. Perhaps some civilians had the sense to turn to darkness for protection rather than staying in the light. Several of the taller buildings bore smoking craters along their sides. The blizzard of ash had only grown stronger in the last few minutes.

  Weapons fire lit up the city along the outskirts and at points within. The fighting looked most intense at points along the city walls, though not at the gates themselves. Dylan saw no signs of a massed enemy force, but it wasn’t as if they needed artillery to breach those barriers. The walls had never been meant to keep anyone out. Aside from the bands of armored infantry, still more raiders had dropped from those flying skiffs. The Executive Tower was only one target out of several.

  All around, she saw people running in the streets: some with flashlights, others by what little illumination remained from surviving streetlamps. Some carried children. Some stumbled and fell. They ran, though no direction offered a final escape.

  “Have we got any comms yet?” Dylan asked.

  “Scattered static,” grumbled Brody. “Think we’re down to using wires and point-to-point beams for the duration.”

  Something exploded on the north side of town near the walls, sending up a bright plume of orange flames. Dylan saw a tank in the street with its turret facing the light. She felt some mild satisfaction at the implications, only to lose it as sustained red laser blasts cut into the tank from behind the flames. The tank exploded, taking much of a nearby two-story building with it.

  She knew what delivered those lasers. She also knew most of her troops weren’t equipped to deal with them or the enemy infantry’s body armor. Even her order to rearm what personnel she could hadn’t been fully implemented yet.

  “How far to the Bunker?” she asked.

  “Sixty seconds. Assuming they don’t misidentify us and shoot us out of the sky.” He put the Vanguard through another drop, bringing it close to the rooftops outside the corporate core.

  Fires lit up the slums. Dylan spotted another of the enemy’s flying boats as it turned toward the Vanguard. Though she didn’t know the aircraft’s intent, she opened her mouth to warn her pilot—only to close it when a missile from the rooftops of the slums blew the boat out of the sky. It crashed into another low building with more flying debris than flames.

  “That’s great,” she grunted. “At least somebody’s geared up for this fight.”

  “We didn’t exactly have to prioritize anti-air weapons against local crooks,” said Juntasa.

  “We’ll see how much longer we all live to regret that,” said Dylan.

  The Bunker sat well outside the corporate core amid the north end of the city. Though fenced off and guarded, the broad building hardly looked like a military headquarters. As envisioned in the early days of settlement, the Bunker served as a base of operations outside the city. When the urban sprawl overran the Bunker’s surroundings, Precision’s commanders decided to repurpose the building. What was once a key facility now resembled a simple supply depot and community office. Warehouses and workshops surrounding the Bunker provided camouflage. The Bunker served as a headquarters that didn’t stick up into the skyline like a giant target.

  Troops with missile launchers and plasma weapons guarded the rooftop. More personnel fanned out into the neighborhood, expanding the defensive perimeter and keeping the population under control. Brody landed in the small parking lot rather than taking up a spot on the roof. The Bunker didn’t need the added marker of importance implied by a military air vehicle up top. Ashes swirled as the Vanguard settled.

  The guards at the front entrance seemed relieved as Dylan climbed out with her rifle in hand. Nobody saluted or threw out any formalities beyond opening the door for her. “Good to see you, major,” grunted one of the guards. That was it.

  Dylan and Juntasa blew through the main floor offices and the stairwell to the lower level. Facial recognition and voice print scans made for a quick assurance of security. Within seconds, the pair passed through the thick blast doors to the Bunker’s command center. Screen after screen displayed city chaos and updates in text along two banks of workstations. Larger screens and a few maps lit up one wall. Men and women in fatigues typed furiously or spoke on headsets.

  “Oh, thank God,” grunted a man in the center of it all. Lieutenant Conroy stepped out of the scrum with his shoulders dropping in relief. “We couldn’t track you after you left your office. As soon as you bailed out, we lost the wires at the tower.”

  “I assume they’re working elsewhere?” Dylan asked, gesturing to the wall.

  “You’re looking at surviving connections. We’ve culled a lot of dead or damaged channels. Virtually all the local media has been cut, too. We figure that must be at the source since they had one of the better cable infrastructures for emergencies.”

  “What’s the situation in the city? We saw firefights at the wall and in several neighborhoods on our way down here.”

  Conroy confirmed it with a grim nod. “Alpha, Delta, and Echo gates are holding on. Bravo and Charlie lost contact, but it didn’t look good. Their air power doesn’t seem high-performance, but with the way they snuck up on us they still got in some serious strafing runs on the spaceport and the police stations. They hit from above, then air-dropped their troops to press the fight. We lost all our vehicles at the spaceport along with a couple barracks buildings. The south depot is gone, too.”

  “Shit,” Dylan fumed. “This is a hell of an opening move.”

  “Major, these people—they look like humans, only altered,” Conroy explained. “We’ve got a few visuals of dead ones. They’ve got golden skin and—”

  “Yeah, we saw a few. I don’t know what to make of it. They fall down when you shoot them enough, so we’ll go with that. What else?”

  “West Depot seems to have gotten it together now, but so far they’re still fighting their way out of the initial attack. Nothing from the East.”

  “What air power do we have left? Orbital? Ships?”

  “Two corvettes. They’re still running around to check on the other cities per your earlier orders. Haven’t heard back yet. We’ve got a handful of aircraft scattered around but none have checked in. Orbital still looks like it’s gone.”

  “Any sign of enemy command and control? Or analysis on where they came from?”

  “Nothing on either score. On that note, I should mention we lost track of Geisler right when we lost touch with you. Only he didn’t say where he was going.”

  “Right now, I’d say we’re better off without him,” she grumbled.

  The floor shook under their feet, along with everything else from the workstations and chairs to the lights overhead. Dylan reached for a chair to brace herself. Conroy seemed to be getting used to it already. “And then there’s that,” he said.

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t get worse,” said Dylan. “We can’t fight earthquakes. Let’s focus on what we can fight. I need a written rundown of what units have checked in. We have to put some pressure on these guys.”

  Conroy turned to the holocom menu screen floating beside him. “I’ve got a running tally. At least we can send and receive when we’re inside.”

  “Echo Gate is in trouble!” someone called from one of the workstations. A tech sergeant directed the issue to the center screens on the wall. The initial action was mostly smoke or the tail end of explosions at best. The sideways image of an apartment entrance became cl
ear in one, righted by computer adjustment a second later. A Precision trooper took cover in the doorway, desperately firing his laser rifle. His helmet was gone.

  A yellow beam cut through his stomach and the wall behind him. The black armor and shields of his attackers were familiar by now, though Dylan hadn't seen them without the stress of immediate personal danger until now.

  Two of the raiders pressed into the apartment building. More of their weapons fire flashed against the windows. Someone tried to crawl through one of the front windows—a middle-aged man, his hair gone grey early. A yellow blast through his chest cut him down, leaving his body slumped over the windowsill. Inside the building, the shooting continued.

  “My god, they’re going after the civilians,” Conroy breathed.

  Secondary displays popped up to show other camera feeds in the area of the gate. Bodies lay strewn in the street, mostly in Precision Solutions fatigues or in civilian clothes. Only two wore the armor of the attackers. A rover burned in the street. Not far away, another apartment building burned.

  “That’s Echo?” asked Dylan. “Damn it, that’s three gates down. We need to get weapons teams and back-up to all of them. Now. Who’s still connected nearby? Third Support? Call them up and get them out there.”

  One of the guys at the control stations blanched. “Ma’am, Third Support is cooks and—”

  “They’ve got guns and they went through basic, didn’t they? Then they know how to fight. Get ‘em moving. We might have this entire office in the fight before it’s over.”

  Dylan caught an uneasy glance from Conroy. She knew what he was thinking. “We can’t win this by clawing and scratching for our lives,” she agreed before he spoke. “We need to get organized. But first we have to get our people to hit back.”

  “I guess we know for sure it’s not the insurgents,” said Conroy.

  “No. I only hope they realize who they should be shooting at.”

  * * *

  The rover accelerated as the road straightened out. In the driver’s seat, Tanner forced down his nerves about operating vehicles and other crazy little things like the lack of headlights. The nightvision overlay on the rover’s windshield helped. What didn’t help was a full rundown of every dent he’d put in his first starship and every snarky comment anyone ever made about his skills, although naturally his brain eagerly provided one.