The Last Champion: Book 4 of The Last War Series

by Nick Webb

  Pain. Mattis ducked behind the ruined table. His helmet flashed up warnings of a breach, but while the wound hurt, the suit had absorbed much of the impact.

  A spray of hostile gunfire through the table—somehow missing him completely—reminded him of the exact weakness he had, only moments ago, exploited. He leaned around the side, letting off a burst that sparked as it caught the shoulder pad of his attacker.

  “US Navy!” he called, knowing it was futile. “Drop your weapons!”

  His answer was another burst of fire through the feeble defense, reminding him that concealment was not cover. One of the shots hit his visor, sending spiderweb cracks all along the surface, the impact causing the whole suit to shudder around him and knock off the earmuffs, the sudden noise making him jump more than anything else. Air rushed in, and with it, the smell of the place; mold and sweat and gun smoke. His ears rang.

  Another round struck his back, fortunately absorbed by the micrometeoroid plating. That the rounds had to travel through the steel plate helped. Everything helped. But it couldn’t last. He could hear Lynch firing back from behind the door, but the Forgotten must have had decent cover themselves since they continued peppering him with rounds.

  Fuck this. The table had stopped shotgun blasts, it would probably stop fragmentations. Mattis snatched a grenade off his belt and yanked out the pin. The lever flew wide. Three, two, one… he flung it over his shoulder.

  “Grenade!” shouted one of the Forgotten, right as a thunderous detonation cut the words from his mouth.

  Mattis, disoriented and with the ringing in his ears amplified, staggered to his feet. The blast had shredded the opposite side of the table almost as completely as it had shredded the four Forgotten and their combat armor. Well. The British Caernarvon had more powerful grenades than he was used to on the Midway. They didn’t mess around.

  “Mmm… ‘splodey goodness,” said Lynch with a smile as he surveyed the carnage left by the grenade. “You ok?”

  He nodded, holding a hand down to tell Lynch to shut the hell up since there might be more enemy combatants down the hall, and stepped over the shredded bits of the Forgotten corpses, ejecting his magazine with a clatter he barely heard. Replaced it with a click he barely heard. Next room.

  It was some kind of prison cell, completely with little waiting area and floor-to-ceiling bars sealing off a whole section, presumably where the guards had been taking shifts. This far in, the gunfire was barely a distant rumble, hardly audible over the rattle of machinery and whine of air processors. There were no lights. Either they had been switched off or blown out.

  “Anyone in there?” he called, probably a little too loudly, a profound ringing still in his ears.

  “You aren’t Forgotten,” said a raspy voice from the shadows. He caught sight of two eyes on a grime-smeared face, hiding low in the corner. They studied him with an unsettling intensity and Mattis saw recognition in them.

  “Hand up, and step out slowly.”

  There was a brief flash of something in those eyes. Anger. Confusion. Doubt. “Who are you?”

  “It’s Jack. Admiral Jack Mattis.”

  From the shadows emerged a man. Unshaven, disheveled, and wearing the tattered remains of an orange jumpsuit which had been, seemingly, cut apart and crudely sewn back together—or something unskilled hands had made themselves. Mattis wouldn’t have recognized him if it weren’t for the look in his eyes. A view straight into the man he used to know.

  Lynch gasped. “Oh my God. That’s Jeremy Pitt.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Patricia “Guano” Corrick’s J-88

  Space near Jovian Anchor

  Planetoid Slingshot

  Vellini System

  Tiberius Sector

  Guano closed her eyes, focused, and—with just a moment’s pause—the battle fugue came back, strong and focused and clean. When she opened her eyes her vision was clear and sharp, the enemy ships practically drifting through space on entirely predictable paths.

  A dozen thoughts flowed through her head.

  Stay aggressive. Conserve fuel and ammunition. Use missiles sparingly, and remember, each ship only has twenty seconds of cannon fire aboard.

  She throttled up, giving a gentle touch on her rudder to align her ship’s nose to the first target, painting it with her targeting radar. There was something odd about it. Something wrong and false about the RCS return. Guano struggled to understand, falling back further into her fugue. What was it? What was causing her finger to hesitate over the firing trigger? It was a perfect shot.

  Too perfect. And the maneuvering enemy fighters… also too perfect. Too sharp. Too precise. They were either the world’s best acrobatics team, moving and flying in perfect sync, or they were drones.

  The other ships in the flight loosed their missiles, a flaming barrage of thin projectiles screaming silently across space, her spacesuit helmet full of missile calls. Fox two, fox two, fox two…

  No. Guano thumbed the radio key. “All craft, all craft, emergency traffic! RCS returns are ducks. I say again, they’re decoys. We’re looking at decoys.”

  “Guano, Roadie, interrogative.” The voice of the CAG came over the line. “How do you know they’re decoys?”

  Shit. It was one thing to just say something, but proving it was another. I had a feeling just wasn’t going to cut it. “Uhh…” She released the key, then pressed it again. “Stand by.”

  As she watched, the storm of missiles streaked towards their targets, winking out one by one as they connected with their targets and exploded. The radar return signals continued to come through strong, as though no damage were done at all.

  “Dammit,” said Roadie. “Weapons safe, all ships weapons safe. Hold position. Confirm targets are ducks.”

  The J-88’s around her banked and weaved as they decelerated, stopping dead in space. Fortunately nobody collided with each other. The strike craft milled absently as, presumably, Roadie talked to the Caernarvon and the Stennis, asking for orders.

  “We’re RTB,” said Roadie, finally. “Everyone return to your ships. Ground pounders will mop up on the station. Nothing for us to do here.” He grumbled. “Now why the hell would they send out ducks? Don’t they have pilots for these things?”

  Whining and bitching and complaining filled the radio waves as his question went unanswered, but it died down pretty quickly. The flights split up, banking toward their ships.

  “Well,” Guano said, switching frequencies so only Roadie could hear her. “That went well.”

  He drifted his ship toward hers. “Any battle we didn’t die in is a good one,” he said, without any sarcasm. “I know we got tricked, but … eh. Everyone who went out came home. As a CAG, can’t ask for more than that.”

  Guano nodded, even though the gesture was entirely lost on him. “Right.”

  Flatline spoke up. “That’s true,” he said. “Most people die in the most stupid, inane ways and for stupid, inane reasons. Like being too old and shitting themselves to death.”

  That was true enough. “Or,” she said, “you know. Like Longjohn.”

  Longjohn had been one of their pilots who had died in the battle of Friendship Station. Mentioning his name caused a pallor to settle in over everything.

  “I miss him,” said Flatline.

  A brief moment of silence over the line.

  “Back in flight academy,” said Roadie, a distant wistfulness coming over his voice, “they used to tell a story. During one pilot’s early space flights—like, third or fourth, I think—a wasp got into the cockpit about halfway into the flight. No idea how it got into the ship, although it probably made its nest somewhere when the ship was in atmo’. No idea why it waited that long to come out and say hello. The fucker just buzzed around until the instructor, sitting in the gunner’s seat, tried to swat it. It stung him. Instructor was allergic. Died right there in his seat. Damn nugget pilot had to fly all the way back to the mothership with their instructor’s corpse right behind
him.”

  “Gnarly,” said Flatline, behind her. The same seat the dead guy would have been in.

  Roadie’s voice cracked slightly. “Yeah. Not sure if they dropped out or not, but eh. I would have.” Silence for a bit, then his professional voice returned. “Hey Guano, nice spot on the ducks.”

  She smiled a bit. “Yeah. Thanks boss. You’re not mad, are you?”

  “Nah,” said Roadie. “If you get mad at someone for being right, they’ll second-guess themselves constantly. If you yell at them for telling the truth, they’ll just lie next time.”

  Fair enough.

  “Okay.” Roadie cleared his throat. “ILS locked in, let’s go home, pilots… refuel, re-arm, and get ready to get back out there at a moment’s notice.”

  The flight drifted toward the Stennis and then, as they drew close, Guano aligned her nose to the hangar bay and let the computer do the landing. As they passed through, Guano touched one of the buttons on the console; she didn’t quite understand what it did. The ship shuddered slightly as something flew off the bottom, latching hold of the hull. The device flashed a bright blue light then went dark.

  “What was that?” asked Flatline.

  “Nothing,” said Guano, extending the landing struts and powering down the engines, aligning toward the landing strip and slowing the ship, steering with little puffs of gas. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Cockpit

  The Aerostar

  Upper atmosphere, Vellini

  Vellini System

  Tiberius Sector

  Chuck couldn’t sleep.

  After their little meeting in the cargo bay, he’d changed Jack, then Smith had suggested everyone get some shut-eye while the ship’s computer flew them to their destination up in orbit. The others had filed off to their cramped little quarters—Reardon’s snoring echoed throughout the ship like the bleating of a dying lamb—and Chuck had no doubts the disciplined, self-controlled Smith would sleep as well. But no matter how much Chuck lay on the bottom bunk of the cramped guest quarters thinking about Elroy, he couldn’t get his eyes to close.

  So he decided to pay Lily a visit.

  The mutant had been shackled to the wall of the cargo bay ever since he’d let her out of her box. She was still there when Chuck arrived, staring out the porthole. Just like she always seemed to. What was she looking for?

  He wasn’t sure what had bought him to her, but a slight mania brought on by chronic lack of sleep, possibly, contributed. Even so, something—a father’s instinct, perhaps?—called to him. “You hungry?” he asked, curiously.

  No answer.

  Chuck fished into his pocket, pulling out a protein bar. Instantly Lily’s head turned to him.

  Food. She wanted food. “Here you go,” said Chuck, holding it out.

  With startling speed, Lily dove forward, her hands outstretched for his neck. She stopped short, yanked back by the chain.

  It wasn’t his neck she was going for. It was the bar.

  “This is for you, Lily,” said Chuck, crouching down and sliding the bar across the metal floor toward her.

  The mutant snatched it up and tore into the packaging with her teeth, scoffing down the tasteless hunk of compressed vegetable protein.

  He stared until she was done. She looked at him expectantly. “No more,” he said, turning out his pockets. “No more.”

  “More,” she said, growling out the word.

  Well. That was unexpected. Carefully, Chuck stepped back, peeked into the supply cupboard—it was almost all instant ramen, cereals, and dried junk food—and found a second bar.

  “Here you go,” he said, sliding it back to Lily. She ate that one too, with equal gusto, but at last didn’t ask for more.

  “So…” Chuck smiled at her. “I think we got off to a bad start. I’m Chuck. Hi, Lily.”

  “Hi, Lily,” echoed the mutant, turning to stare, once again, out the porthole, her hands outstretched as though she were flying. “Hi, Lily.”

  Chuck sat there, waiting for the mutant to pick up the conversation, but she didn’t. “So,” he said, ever-so-casually drumming his fingers on his hip. “How’s… stuff? How’s the, uh… the piloting going?”

  “Piloting going,” said Lily. “Going.”

  He wasn’t sure if that was her echoing him, or if she was saying that the ‘ship’ itself was going. “Okay.”

  “Okay,” said Lily.

  Chuck leaned back on his heels and closed his eyes a moment. “So, hey. I don’t want to just, you know, stand here awkwardly. Do you mind if I just talk for a bit?”

  “Little bit,” said Lily.

  That probably as close as he was going to get to a yes. “I met Elroy’s parents for the first time a few weeks ago.” He smiled slightly. “You know, it’s kind of weird. They didn’t come to the wedding. They haven’t been a part of his life for, oh, about fifteen years, give or take. Which is an insane amount of time when you’re young, but gets significantly less terrifyingly vast when you’re older. And finally they decided that, since we had a grandson now, they were going to—you know, finally—be a part of his life again.

  “So we arranged to go out to dinner. Elroy wanted to impress them. I know how fucked that sounds—they were the ones who abandoned him because of who he was, not the other way around—but… you know. He still loved them, I think, in his own way. So we went to this super expensive seafood place two blocks down from our apartment. We brought Jack. Everything was planned down to the last detail. We were going to meet them at seven sharp.

  “We arrived at the place. Our table was this little round thing with four chairs and a bunch of candles in the middle. Elroy was fussing so much. Is my tie straight? Are you sure this is the place, how bad is the traffic? Ha. He had his eyes glued to his phone, and he just—he just kept worrying and worrying and I kept telling him that it was going to be okay.

  “So we finally got there, took our table. They weren’t there yet, but we were, like, an hour early, so it was okay. We just sat there, feeding Jack and snacking on fifty-dollar artisanal bread, and we waited. Seven o’clock came. Seven fifteen. Seven thirty. Seven forty-five. We kept saying they’ll be here, maybe they’ve just found the wrong place, maybe traffic is real bad. Then they showed up.

  “His dad, Jonathan, was drunk. I could smell the bourbon on his breath as he sat down. As he did so, this woman who… look. She was extremely pretty. My age, okay? And Elroy’s only three years younger than me. There’s no way his mother gave birth to him when she was a toddler.

  “Elroy and Jonathan start to argue. He asks where his mother is. Jonathan explains, drunkenly spitting everywhere, that he got divorced a few years back and that this was his new girlfriend. She didn’t speak English, and just sat there with this Stepford Smiler look on her face, like it was totally normal for a family to go out to dinner and immediately erupt into a shouting match.

  “So Elroy’s actual mother isn’t anywhere to be seen. The fuck, right? Anyway, I basically tell him we’re leaving, but Elroy wants to stay. He wants to patch it up with his dad, even if he thought it would be both of his parents. So we make small talk.

  “Jonathan explains, proudly, that the woman—whose name was some African word with clicks in it I couldn’t even pronounce if I tried—was a prostitute. A fucking whore as he said. I thought he was being rude, but no, he meant a literal, actual prostitute. They weren’t dating. They were total strangers before tonight. Then we figured out why, because Elroy’s mother showed up.

  “They immediately started to have a screaming fight, of course. Like, full on screaming at each other. The prostitute saw the writing on the wall after a few minutes and booked it, zooming outta that place without even looking over her shoulder. I hope she got paid in advance. They were just, I don’t know, just screaming over the top of each other. He blamed her for leaving. She blamed him for drinking. Everyone was staring, whispering to each other in hushed murmurs.

  “But then
Jack starts crying and, I don’t even know, that seemed to calm them both down. They both pay attention to the baby for a bit and that gets them calm enough to sit down. Janet—that’s Elroy’s mother—tosses her purse into the middle of the table, knocking over a glass of water and some of the candles. I right everything before there’s too much water spilled. No biggie.

  “The waiter comes over and asks if we needed any help, I say we’re fine, just an argument. I must have apologized a thousand times. Elroy was a saint. I don’t know how he put up with it.

  “We order the seafood platter. Janet tries to feed Jack an oyster. We try to tell her that he wasn’t on solids yet, and she went crazy, shouting that she had raised four kids and knew what kids ate. That was the last straw; the waiter came back over and told us that we were being too loud and we’d have to leave. Janet stood up and started abusing him too, just shouting and hitting him. I was so ashamed. Then, well, then she leaned over and grabbed her purse. Her hair touched the candle and it lit up like a firework. She must have had some kind of hair spray, or product, or something, in there.

  “She starts screaming. Elroy starts trying to put it out, hitting her with the menu, trying to smother her hair. Jonathan, he—he thinks that Elroy is attacking her. He starts to beat Elroy. I throw a jug of water over Janet’s hair. A waiter comes and breaks up the fight. The cops come and arrest the pair of them, in front of everyone.

  “We tipped like two hundred percent, and then we fled in shame into the night.”

  Chuck sat in silence, just reliving the story. He often tried to joke about it—saying things like, well, there’s a reason Mother-in-Law is an anagram for Woman Hitler—but he just couldn’t find the humor in it right at that moment. Not with Lily just sitting there.