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

by Elliott Kay

“If they get into a back-and-forth, it’ll eat up time. That may be intentional.” Lynette watched the shrinking distance between the formation and Minos. The escaping shuttle had turned all the way around and now sped toward the formation. “Let’s hope they don’t keep the rest of us in the dark for too long.”

  * * *

  “This is Ambassador Young. I speak for the Union of Humanity. We come in peace to make contact with you and to assure the safety and welfare of our people on the planet Minos.” He removed his finger from the button.

  “You didn’t address our continued advance,” said Khatri.

  “Oops. They can bring that up when we’re closer,” said Young. “Or, y’know. Fuck ‘em.”

  Khatri’s lips twitched, but her concerns smothered any smile before it emerged. “Apparently the Nyuyinaro weren’t exaggerating. They look much like us. They’ve adopted our language, our terms… even gender, from the sound of things.”

  “Best not to assume too much from that,” counseled the ambassador.

  “Agreed. Best not to assume much at all. At least we have another source,” she said, pointing to the inbound shuttle on her screens. A destroyer dropped back in formation to meet it, though arrangements had the vessel headed straight for Beowulf. “Hopefully she is who she claims.”

  “Not many people would make up something like that.”

  “No. But verification is up to our hosts.” Khatri keyed a channel on the table. “Admiral, have we verified that priority identification?”

  Admiral Branch appeared via holographic stand-in again, this time turned slightly away. “Yes, ma’am. We don’t keep a running database of agents, but her codes are legitimate. I’ve ordered my people to re-arm the landing parties with kinetics. They’re moving on it now.”

  Khatri’s jaw tightened. “Admiral, I don’t recall giving any such command.”

  “Understood, ma’am. The Archangel Navy is responsible for the proper outfitting of its own personnel. My instructions haven’t gone beyond the Navy’s contingent.”

  “The Archangel Navy is under the command of the Union Fleet for the duration of this patrol and in the event of a General Alert, which has already been established. Is that clear?”

  “Crystal clear, ma’am.”

  “Response from the Minoans, admiral,” called out one of her staffers.

  At a gesture from Khatri, the same armored Minoan appeared on one of the larger screens. Numbers in one lower corner noted the shrinking time delay. “You will halt your advance immediately. This is Her space and Her world. What transpires in Her domain is none of your concern. She will contact you when She decides to speak. Turn back or face the wrath of Her people.”

  Young frowned. “I’m happy to do the talking, but this looks less and less like my show.”

  “We’re not turning back,” said Khatri. “We need to slow to engagement speed soon, and we must let that shuttle catch up. The transmission lag and our relative unfamiliarity could work to our advantage. Ambassador, might I ask you to play for time?”

  With a smirk, Young lazily reached for the controls to hit the mic. “Hello,” he said. “This. Is. Ambassador. Young. Again. Your. Signal. Broke. Up. Could. You. Repeat. That. Please?”

  Chapter Thirty-One:

  Hold On

  “1. Never give an order you would not personally carry out. Delegation is a responsibility, not a privilege.”

  --Officer’s Code of Conduct, Archangel Navy

  “Check every weapon and then check it again,” shouted Janeka. Her voice broke through the chatter inside the shuttle cabin, silencing much of it. Grumbles and complaints fell away in favor of the mechanical slides, clicks, and latches of rifles and pistols. “You won’t get another chance before it’s too late. Don’t wait until you’re being shot at to find a problem.”

  Deck crewmen slipped and shuffled through the narrow aisles to help marines from Bravo Company’s armory. One crewman climbed out of the shuttle with half a dozen laser rifles slung over his back. Another strained to hold a Hailstormer vertically while a seated marine checked the action on the heavy weapon’s thermal release.

  Janeka stood in front of her seat with her assault rifle, going through the same motions she demanded of everyone else: safety on, safety off, lock and load, ejection. She made no pretense of serving as an example; for her, the checks were entirely natural. “If you are done, try another magazine. If you are satisfied, check someone else’s weapon.”

  Per the bo’sun’s instructions, everyone stayed in their seats to make room for the armorers and deck crew—at least, everyone except Janeka. That made for a lot of marines waiting through chores they’d rather handle themselves. Alicia had already endured it like sitting through a rush job at some military salon from hell. Thankfully, that crewman was already out the door, but another one came through on his heels.

  “Pardon me, Gunny, more ammo,” mumbled Crewman Mendez. He shuffled past Alicia with too many metal boxes tucked into his arms. With her row against the forward bulkhead and the back-to-back rows of chairs in front of her, there wasn’t much room.

  “Don’t apologize for doing your job,” Janeka replied with all her characteristic warmth. Even her encouragement could leave a scar. Still, she put her money where her mouth was, stepping up onto the seat of her chair and practically folding herself in half against the overhead to let Mendez by.

  “Wong, are you set?” asked Lieutenant Torres at her other side.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” She’d already checked her weapons as thoroughly as she could.

  “I’ve gotta pay attention to a briefing.” He tapped his helmet at his ear. “Take over on the shuttle status. They’ll ask if we’re ready to go. Just give a thumbs up or down,” he explained for her quizzical expression. Then he slid the faceplate of his helmet down, suggesting the brief contained some sort of video feed. He may as well have tuned out to take a nap but for his strong posture.

  Most of the armorers and crewmen were on their way out. Heavy gunners for each squad had their Hailstormers and launchers racked and secured. Each marine had at least one bandolier of magazines slung from their shoulders. In the event of a disastrous drop, everyone would have something to run on. More ammunition was loaded into racks at the corners and halfway points of the cabin. Mendez struggled to load up the last of it.

  “Stupid thing,” he grunted, fighting with a slider mount that wouldn’t fully depress after the second box. “When’s the last time they did maintenance on this?”

  “Civilian shuttle inbound for Beowulf,” said a signalman over Alicia’s headset. She was still tied into fleet coordination. “Top priority landing. Wounded on board. Bravo Landers, what’s your status?”

  “Beowulf, this is St. Catherine, we need another two minutes,” came one reply.

  Another voice came through louder and more clearly than the rest. She knew it was her own shuttle pilot. “First Platoon, how do we look back there?”

  Alicia turned to look to Mendez. He was still fighting with the last boxes. She hated speaking for other people, but realized it was precisely the job she’d stepped into. “Less than a minute, I think,” she replied.

  “Say again? I didn’t catch that.”

  She opened her mouth to reply. A loud “Ping!” and a curse from Mendez stole her answer. A clatter along the deck pushed her mind further off-track. Caseless ammunition spilled under the chairs in every direction like the bounty of an overturned jar of steel-jacketed candy.

  Each box sat crookedly in the rack, except for the one that didn’t load at all. Mendez pulled his hand back as if in pain. His wide eyes and gasping mouth said plenty about his true concerns.

  “Shuttle One, repeat, what is your status? We have wounded incoming,” said the voice from Beowulf. “We need a space now.”

  “First Platoon leader,” urged the pilot. “What’s our status?”

  “What’s going on?” asked Torres.

  None of the other armorers or deck crewman remaine
d. Mendez was the only one left. “Take us out,” she urged. “We’re good. Go now.”

  The shuttle doors slammed shut. Internal artificial gravity surged through the cabin, promptly followed by the shudder of the engines. Mendez looked to her in shock. For once, even Janeka seemed surprised.

  “What are we doing?” Torres pressed.

  “Mendez, you’ve got your helmet and as much gear as the flight crew,” Alicia explained. “You have all you need. Fix the rack. It’ll be fine.”

  To his credit, Mendez didn’t argue or freeze. He swallowed hard and got back to work.

  “Wong, this is a combat drop,” hissed the lieutenant.

  “He’s new enough that he’s been through weapons and tactics before he got here, sir,” said Janeka. “He’ll be fine.”

  “He’s a deckhand.”

  “Yes, sir,” Janeka replied. “The Navy has had a lot of good deckhands. He’ll be fine.”

  Alicia knew it was too late, anyway. They were already out of the hangar bay. She pulled the latch on her seat belts and leaned over to sweep up some of the rounds on the deck.

  A hand on her shoulder stopped her. “Wong,” came the lieutenant’s voice, quieter and yet firmer than before. “Crawling around on your hands and knees picking shit up off the floor is grunt work. Get a couple of privates to do it. You’re supposed to be an officer now.”

  She looked back, completely unaware of her frigid breath or the ice in her eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me, sir?”

  Torres shrank back. Alicia swept her arm under the chairs to collect more bullets. “Everyone grab what you can off the deck,” she instructed.

  “Not a lot of room to work here, Miss Wong,” replied one of the marines, but she heard belts and straps unfasten along with the complaint.

  “We don’t have to get them all,” she called back. “Some is better than none. We wouldn’t be marines if we needed things to be perfect.”

  Another belt buckle unlatched. Gunny Janeka slid down to the deck beside her. “That was a good line, Miss Wong.”

  * * *

  The destroyer escort felt like a big deal to Naomi. She knew some of it was simple proximity; being so close to a large vessel usually made an impression. She’d felt much the same way about the liner that had taken her class most of the way here from Fremantle. The destroyer wasn’t quite the same size, but it had no problem holding her attention.

  Then Emily accepted a remote control signal to bring them inside a battleship.

  Naomi looked through the canopy with wide eyes and a slack jaw as their shuttle floated through the last in a sequence of large doors to enter Beowulf’s hangar bay. White bulkheads and support beams held up a cavernous chamber. Near the center of the hangar sat a winged vessel with the name St. Catherine written in calligraphy across her bow. Two dark grey shuttles sat off to St. Catherine’s side. Another of their make had slipped out of Beowulf’s hangar as they arrived, leaving behind an open space on a notably spotless deck.

  Between the vessels and all around the margins of the hangar bay hustled men and women in grey and blue vac suits. Most wore helmets with their faceplates slid back, though some still had theirs slung over their shoulders. Apparently these people had perfect faith in that sequence of hangar bay doors.

  She was still taking it all in as Gina climbed out of her seat. “Naomi, c’mon,” she said, giving Naomi’s wrist a tug. “I need you with me.”

  “Huh?” Naomi blinked. She stood more on the instinct to cooperate than anything else. “What are we doing?”

  “We’ve gotta let ‘em know what we know.”

  “You can’t tell them yourself?”

  “This is all alien contact stuff. I’m a spy. I’m not studied up on this. I won’t make the same observations as you. They need to hear from an academic.”

  “What about—?” Naomi began to ask. “Oh.”

  “Yeah, fuck that guy. C’mon.”

  Gina strode through the shuttle’s cargo bay with Naomi close behind, only to find themselves amid worried and shaken students.

  “Are we safe now? What’s happening?”

  “Did you tell them people are hurt?”

  “What happened to getting out of the system?”

  “Stop. Stop,” said Naomi. “We’re on a battleship. They’re sending medical help. I don’t know the rest. One thing at a time.”

  “We’ll all be taken care of, okay?” Gina added. “Try to keep calm and do what they ask. This is as safe as we can get right now. You’re all gonna be fine. Let the crew take care of you. Naomi and I have to go talk to some people.”

  The shuttle’s cargo doors opened, revealing a welcoming committee with gurneys, medical bags, and at least a few guns. Gina flashed a holocom projection of some sort of credentials involving an angel in front of an official seal.

  A loud rumble consumed the air within the hangar bay as one of the other shuttles fired up its engines. No sooner had Emily’s shuttle settled than the next rose up. None of the ship’s crew seemed to give it a second thought. Naomi missed much in the whirlwind of identifications, introductions, concerned medics, and busy deck hands. Gina tugged her through the mess to get her outside the shuttle.

  “The older guy in there is Professor Joseph Vandenberg,” Gina explained to some officer at the bottom of the shuttle ramp. “He was the expedition leader but do not take him at his word for anything. I need to talk to a lawyer about prosecuting him for violating Union laws.”

  “Union laws?” the officer asked. “There aren’t many to break.”

  “That asshole has been sitting on alien tech for years. All I’m saying is don’t listen to his bullshit. I’d be more worried about the alien robot we tied down to the deck in there, but if Vandenberg starts spinning you a line, tell him to sit down and shut up.”

  “You got it,” said the officer.

  “I have urgent tactical info we need to run straight up to whoever is in charge,” Gina went on breathlessly. “Do you pass everything through holocoms here? Secure lines? How do we do it?”

  “If it’s classified, I can at least put you through to the bridge on a secure line over here,” said the officer. As he pointed to a desk station, he glanced to Naomi. “Are you in the Ministry, too?”

  “No. She’s a civilian, but she’s a subject matter expert,” Gina answered quickly.

  Naomi shrugged and tilted her head toward Gina. “Sure. That.”

  * * *

  “I understand you speak for your empress, but who are you? Do you have a name or a title?” With the transmission delay shrinking, Young gave up on his earlier tedious rate of speech. Soon they might even be close enough for live video connections without too much of a lag.

  For all any of them knew, that would be well within the enemy’s weapon range, too.

  “Shuttle is secured and unloading, admiral,” someone announced in the tense silence that followed. “Bravo Company is now launching for deployment.”

  “Thank you, lieutenant,” Khatri replied. “Please keep me updated with news. I’m eager to hear their story.”

  “You’re not the only one,” said Young.

  “Hopefully Branch and his officers won’t delay or filter much,” said Khatri. “She’s one of Archangel’s own. It’s natural she would report to them first. But this surely concerns us all.”

  “Reply from the Minoans, sir,” said one of the communications officers. At a nod from Young the same golden man appeared on his screen.

  “You will call me Penteth,” barked the Minoan. “In your words, I am First among Her Claws of Stars and Warden of the Void. You will address Her not as my empress, but as the Empress. There is only one. You disobey her at your peril.”

  “That seems a bit dramatic,” the admiral sighed.

  “It does,” Young agreed. “But they know what the words mean. Claws, warden, void. Either they don’t understand nuance, or they’re deliberately choosing to be this pompous. It’s that crack about the empress that makes me think
it’s a choice. By rejecting the notion of her being their empress, he’s implying she’s our empress, too.”

  Another message from Penteth appeared: “She does not wish for hostility with your people. We assure you of the proper care and safety of your kind on Her planet. You may leave.”

  “That’s about as subtle as a brick,” grumbled Young. “Although I’m starting to wonder if this guy isn’t playing for time just like we were.”

  Khatri’s expression darkened. She ran her finger over the panel at her table. “Admiral, have you been following this?”

  Branch reappeared at her table. “Yes I have, ma’am. Like watchin’ my kid try to cover up his whiskey breath after a school dance, ‘cept he never killed anybody.”

  “I believe we share the same concern,” Khatri replied.

  “We’ve got Bravo Company all launched and ready to deploy as soon as you give the word, ma’am. Looks like most of the other ground units are ready to go, too.”

  “If it’s a fight, so be it, but we should remember this is a civilization of unknown strength. And a possible ally against our other alien neighbors,” she reminded him. “We must avoid escalation unless there is no other choice. Admiral, I called to ask about the agent and the others on the shuttle. What is their status?”

  “We’ve got the agent on a line speaking directly to my XO right now, ma’am. She hasn’t had time to put together a formal report. From the sound of things, she’s been running since all this started up and—”

  “Captain!” called out a voice on his end. Branch turned around.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “You’re not gonna believe this,” said Beowulf’s XO as he appeared beside Branch on the projection. “That agent was there on unrelated surveillance. She was embedded with a university class that saw inside the enemy’s base. They’re definitely assaulting cities and other settlements on the planet, sir. She saw it firsthand. They have video and enemy weapons.”

  “Damn,” Young fumed.