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

by Elliott Kay

  “We had other things on our mind, sir,” said Janeka.

  “Of course.” The leader of Second Platoon tried to pass it off with a dismissive shrug. “Thinking out loud, is all.”

  “We’d do better to think of a plan of action going forward,” said Captain Hancock. Bravo Company’s commander allowed the wounded man to be carted away with a nod. Only then did Ravenell realize Lieutenant Torres was the one on the lifter. “Everyone we’ve encountered from the police or Precision has been as disconnected and desperate as the ones you found. We can forget about backing up the local forces. It was a nice idea while it lasted, but it turns out we’re the only organized resistance.”

  “Beg your pardon, captain, but we’re not alone,” said Alicia. She tilted her head toward a civilian standing outside the huddle. “The local insurgents are still in this. Chen has his people focused on getting the populace out of harm’s way. Not much different from what you’re doing here.”

  “We’re only setting up a command post and a perimeter,” Hancock replied. He didn’t try to hide his skepticism as he glanced to Chen. “How many and where?”

  “How many fighters, you mean?” Chen asked. “I’ve got a few hundred with light weapons. We have some stolen missile launchers but hardly anyone is trained with them. We’re not built for a real fight. I’m not offering frontline troops, but we can help you get around and deal with civilians.”

  “Sir, you said you wanted a plan,” Alicia spoke up again. “First priority on our orders was to protect the population. We were supposed to link up with local authorities to do that but they’re gone or useless. Chen here is the closest we’ve got. He already has his people evacuating and sheltering the civilians, but they can’t stand up to the enemy.

  “We’re outnumbered, but we’re not outgunned. Once we’re engaged, Alpha and the rest of Bravo Company won’t have any trouble finding us. I think we ought to draw the fight away from Chen’s people and keep the enemy occupied.”

  “Until when?” asked Hancock.

  “Until the Fleet breaks through and we can reconnect or that headquarters strike by Precision gets through. Or until the situation changes.”

  “You mean until we’re wiped out,” said Kilmeade.

  Chen shrugged. “They’re coming after all of us, lieutenant. You see what they did to your other platoon. If you’re here, you’re a target.”

  “Yeah, but you know where to find the enemy HQ,” Kilmeade argued, though he turned from Chen to Hancock. “We ought to be backing that strike up.”

  “We have no way to get out there, lieutenant,” countered Janeka.

  “It’s defense, captain,” Alicia continued. “All we can do is buy time and make the bad guys pay for it. If we do it right, we hurt them badly enough to make them back off.”

  Hancock’s eyes flicked from Alicia to Chen to Janeka. “Gunny?”

  “I have faith, sir.”

  He nodded. “Mr. Chen, you’re on. Lieutenant Kilmeade, tell those stragglers from Precision to stay and guard the courthouse. Any of our walking wounded can help. Everyone else comes with us. Let’s go pick a fight.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five:

  One Last Run

  “On the bright side, I found a thousand-year-old jar. Okay, technically the drone found the jar while I was operating it, but still. This trip hasn’t been great, but I’m really proud of that.”

  --Tanner Malone, Personal Correspondence, August 2280

  “We’re not doin’ this, are we? You can’t be serious. Dylan, tell him we aren’t doing this.”

  Sanders sat half sprawled in the sand while Clayton checked the corrective bandage on his ankle. The gunner’s injury left him with nothing to do but complain. Dylan threw Sanders a dry glance as she carried a Minoan shield past him. “You have any better ideas?”

  “Yeah, I do!” He looked across a blasted canyon full of bodies to the foreboding door. He looked out across the desert. He looked to the hauler parked in front of him. “Not this!”

  “Great plan,” Dylan huffed. She set the shield down at the hood of the hauler. Most of the others were already in place. “Little shrapnel on this one, but it’s intact.”

  “Cool,” said Tanner, not looking up from his work at the hood. “Ought to give full coverage. I should’ve thought to bring one more from the other side of the canyon. Misjudged the hood.” He reached low through the hood’s front cargo mountings with the electrostatic tape, running it all the way up to the top. “Okay, next one up.”

  Andrade held the shield up along the front of the hauler’s hood next to the last one they’d mounted. Most of the front of the hauler’s hood was covered now. Tanner ran tape through the shield’s hand grips and the cargo mountings, keeping it tightly in place to make sure he had multiple points of support. He worked fast. They all did.

  “Tell me this isn’t the craziest shit you’ve ever done,” said Andrade.

  Tanner stood upright and looked at him blankly. “Is that rhetorical?”

  “What?”

  “Seriously. ‘Ever’ is a broad context.”

  He slipped around Andrade to work his tape through the last stretch of the front mountings. The final shield would hang past the right corner of the hood, but he didn’t care. Coverage and security mattered more than neatness. Thankfully, he had plenty of tape.

  “How are we doing, Juntasa?” asked Dylan.

  “Every once in a while I see shadows or a little reflected light. Nothing to shoot at,” she reported. The sniper sat off from the rest, watching the door and the rest of a canyon through the scope on her rifle. “It’s still open.”

  “I guess we screwed up the controls enough on our way out of there,” said Tanner. “Either that or they’re real cocky. Or they’ve got their own issues.”

  “Or it’s another trap,” said Sanders.

  “Then we fight our way through that, too,” Tanner snapped. “I’m not letting the big bad guy get away from me again.”

  Dylan stopped. “What’s that mean?”

  Against his will, Tanner hesitated. It lasted only a second. He continued with his work at the hood. “Pirate stuff,” he muttered.

  Dylan watched him. He didn’t look back, but he could feel her eyes on him.

  “Hey, Malone,” said Juntasa. “If you can drive down into the canyon, why is everything parked up here?”

  “It wasn’t about getting into the canyon.” Tanner hefted the last shield into place with Andrade. “We were worried about driving out again.”

  “Like us?” Sanders piped up. “You got a plan for how we get out again?”

  “One thing at a time,” said Tanner. “Okay, we’re good.”

  “That’s it?” asked Dylan. She looked over the vehicle skeptically.

  “First you thought I was ridiculous for doing this and now it’s not ridiculous enough for you?” Tanner grumbled.

  “Fine. Let’s do it,” said Dylan. Andrade and Clayton helped Sanders up. Juntasa pulled back from her post, though she still kept a close eye on the other end of the canyon.

  “Okay, who’s driving?” Tanner asked.

  Everyone stopped to look at him.

  “Fuck,” he sighed on his way to the driver’s side door.

  He ran up the engine while they settled in. Sanders hunkered down in the cargo bed with Juntasa. Andrade took up the chair behind Tanner. Dylan rode shotgun with Clayton in the seat behind hers. The crew in the cab looked on as Tanner checked and double-checked every control and every setting to the point of locking the doors. “You do know how to drive, right?” asked Clayton.

  “Sure. Kinda.” He threw the hauler into motion, jerking it backward to get space before the turn at the natural path down the ridge.

  “What do you mean, ‘kinda?’” demanded Dylan.

  “We had decent public transit where I grew up, and then I lived on spaceships for five years. But don’t worry, I drove something like this earlier tonight.”

  “Wait, what?” Andrade objected
.

  “Warning,” said the hauler’s navigation system. “You are in hazardous terrain. Off-road capability is not designed for these conditions. Your manufacturer and insurer will not be liable for any—”

  The electronic voice died as Tanner flipped the shutoff for the safety system.

  The turn at the path forced him to wrench the wheel hard to the right with less grace than he’d hoped. The front of the hauler tilted sharply downward, and along with it his stomach. A dark, rocky wall rushed by on one side of the hauler. Through his other window, he saw only an unsettling open space over the canyon floor. The worst of it came in the windshield as the trail bent sharply in a tilted U-turn.

  On the bright side, he figured it would be over quickly one way or the other.

  “Malone,” Dylan warned. He almost tuned her out. She didn’t have much more to say. The road—such as it was—took all his attention. Then her words caught up with his brain: “Brake! Brake! Turn!”

  Tanner managed neither as sharply as he’d hoped. They stayed on the trail by virtue of scraping along the canyon wall once he made it all the way around the bend in the ridge. Loud complaints of metal against rock and a shower of dirt only added to his fright.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Clayton blurted, seemingly inhaling rather than exhaling as she spoke. Dylan growled out more instructions. Andrade clutched the handhold mounted over his seat.

  The trail ended at a sharp, ugly rock blocking all but a foot path down the last turn into the canyon floor. Tanner pumped the accelerator and threw the wheel to the right, pulling them off the trail with several feet to go.

  Their landing wasn’t pretty. The jolt at the bottom ran from his ass to his head, even making him wonder if he’d lost a second or two of memory in the transition from trail to canyon floor. Though none of his companions sounded pleased, their continued shouts told him everyone was still alive. The shields on the hood stayed in place. The hauler kept rolling.

  Tanner hit the accelerator again. This time, he stayed on it. The lurch and jolt of the hauler running into the stream at the base of the canyon hardly bothered him now. Water splashed up to either side and created a drag on the wheels, but the stream was shallow enough to power through until the hauler climbed out again.

  Debris from the fight and the destroyed camp bounced off the shields over the hood and crunched under the tires. Demolished shelters lined the canyon floor at his right as he rounded the last bend. The great door came into view, still wide open, along with the looming stone ramp before it.

  The barrage of enemy fire began a heartbeat later.

  Blasts of energy shot past and over the hauler. More than a few scored hits. The shields on the hood absorbed most. Two shots destroyed the windshield; one of them passed between the seats while the other cut through the roof over Dylan and Clayton.

  Despite the jostling and despite his wounds, Sanders got his Hailstormer roaring over the cab. Sparks flew off Minoan shields at the top of the earthen ramp, adding to the chaos. The bullets also made shooting tougher for the Sentinels.

  Tanner hit the ramp with his foot still on the accelerator. Gambles paid off in a single instant: the ramp supported the hauler, the shields were mounted high enough not to dig into the stone, and the tilt didn’t bleed off much speed. Even as he processed all of that, Tanner’s simplest but most important guess proved true.

  The Minoans had spent centuries fighting the Nyuyinaro and Krokinthians. They fielded deadly robots and advanced armor. They mastered and weaponized their own environment.

  And they had never needed to defend against a speeding truck.

  The hauler smashed through a double line of Minoan sentinels, battering most aside while rolling violently over the rest. Screams and metallic cracks outside the hauler filled the cab as its occupants hung on through the rough ride, but then it was over. The tunnel stretched out, unimpeded by enemy warriors.

  “Oh god, it worked,” said Clayton.

  “How far do we take this?” asked Andrade.

  “As far as we’re able,” said Dylan.

  “Yup,” agreed Tanner. He said nothing else. Driving took all of his attention, even with a flat floor and a mostly straight tunnel.

  “That’s really all they had?” Clayton wondered.

  “I’m sure more men are on the—watch!” Dylan blurted.

  The lines at the doorway weren’t the only defenders. More trickled in up ahead, hurrying into positions. Tanner didn’t worry much about them. The Regent in the middle of the tunnel was another matter.

  “Down!” Tanner yelled. He expected the searing red flash. Like the few sentinels that struck the hauler at the ramp, the Regent made the mistake of aiming for the center of the cab. Much of its blast streamed up along the shields before cutting through the open gap in the windshield and the cab wall behind it. Tanner ducked and threw his arm up to protect his head from the incredible heat, but he didn’t stop.

  As he feared, the Regent braced itself in the hauler’s path. He only saw it in the split second following the end of the beam. The Regent reached forward with both hands and bent into the impact. Tanner knew the strength of the stone men.

  Strength was not the same as mass or weight. The collision hit the hauler hard, throwing everyone inside forward and back against their seatbelts, but the Regent couldn’t stop the hauler. Smooth flooring offered nowhere for the Regent to dig in its feet. The hauler shook as the stone man fell under the hood and rattled against the undercarriage.

  “Holy shit,” said Dylan, rising up again. “We made it.”

  “Never know ‘til you try,” said Tanner.

  “Juntasa, anything back there?” Dylan asked over their net.

  “That thing isn’t dead,” the sniper answered from the back of the hauler. “It rolled over once we were past it. Can’t see it now.”

  “What’s that ahead?” asked Sanders.

  Tanner blinked. He’d concentrated so much on the last curve he didn’t notice the change in the lighting. “Stasis. It’s the pod farm,” he began, but they were already there. The tunnel curved again to bring them along the balcony path overlooking the great space of pods and the wide open gap to their right. He’d meant to warn the others. He meant to think ahead about this.

  He failed. They paid for it as soon as they emerged into the gap.

  Heat and red light flared into the cab again, this time with far worse results. The beam came from the hauler’s right, cutting through the cab and the rest of the vehicle along its side as it passed. Tanner’s world tilted backward as the beam sliced the back tires in half and dropped the hauler’s rear end to drag on the deck. His heart leaped into his throat as he lost everything but the momentum of the front tires. Though the steering wheel responded, Tanner overcorrected to keep them away from the cliff on the right. The hauler scraped along the wall on the left to get past the end of the gap.

  They came to a stop only a few meters into the next tunnel. The hauler banged along against the wall with its last shreds of momentum. Tanner inhaled smoke and the stench of burnt flesh. He looked to his side. Dylan was already turning around in her seat. Behind her, Clayton hung forward against her seatbelt with fumes rising from her body.

  “Oh god,” Tanner choked. She wasn’t moving.

  “Andrade?” Dylan asked.

  “I’m okay. I dunno how, but I’m okay. Jesus, Clayton is—”

  “She’s gone,” Dylan cut him off. She grabbed Clayton’s riot gun and a bandoleer of ammo from the dead woman’s shoulders. “Juntasa? Sanders?”

  “He’s hurt,” Juntasa reported. Sanders groaned in pain in the background. Either his helmet was gone or he’d lost his connection on their net.

  “We’ve got to move,” said Dylan. She rolled out of the door, tumbling gracelessly to the deck but springing up again. “How bad is he?”

  “It’s bad,” said Juntasa.

  Tanner climbed over Dylan’s vacant seat to follow her. Everything Juntasa meant to say after that was drow
ned out by the roar of Sanders’s Hailstormer firing out the back of the hauler. Looking down the hallway, Tanner saw Regents and sentinels behind their shields. Some went down under the force of his bullets. Others held on.

  “Go,” Sanders shouted. “Go!”

  Juntasa jumped out of the cargo bed. Before Tanner spoke, Dylan took Sanders at his word. She ran down the hall. Andrade and Juntasa followed.

  Tanner hesitated. Sanders was hurt but still fighting. Tanner had only ever left the dead behind in a fight.

  “Go!” Sanders bellowed. He didn’t speak again. The Hailstormer spoke for him. Hating himself, Tanner rushed on after the others.

  They were close now to a destination he couldn’t be sure would remain open, or one that might not hold their current target. Close, and down to four people from a team of twenty with air transport and heavy weapons. They kept bleeding people. Bleeding lives.

  The empress wouldn’t be alone. Even unthreatened, she had a dozen people and two Regents in the room with her. His team was down to four.

  An explosion shook the air back along the tunnel. He didn’t hear the Hailstormer anymore.

  “Malone!” Dylan shouted as they came to the next juncture. The tunnel turned left and carried on forward.

  “Straight ahead,” Tanner yelled back, catching up fast. “Don’t turn. Straight ahead.”

  Dylan kept running, though she fired Clayton’s riot gun toward the upcoming turn as soon as she was close enough for the angle. She didn’t need to aim. Bright green smoke burst from the wall as her first shell hit, followed by the fireworks of a miniature chaff blast from the second. Burning streams of magnesium and worse bounced around the hallway. Clayton had loaded to provide cover and distraction. If anyone or anything lurked in the adjacent tunnel, they would be deafened and blinded.

  No one took it for granted. As he came to the junction, Andrade fired his airburster into the passage on wide dispersal. Tanner saw the wave of hyper-compressed air rush through the sparkling cloud. Yelps and the clatter of metal beyond the cloud suggested Andrade had hit something. As they reached the opposite edge of the tunnel, Juntasa hooked a thermal grenade back through the cloud to cover their rear.