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

by Elliott Kay

  “It fits what we know,” said Naomi. “You saw the containers they were carrying. The style matches artifacts found in other digs, like the one from up on the ridge.”

  “Containers?” asked Tanner. “I didn’t see… oh, you’re at another angle,” he corrected. He’d also been preoccupied with concern for his nerves. Of course she’d seen more than he did.

  “Okay, but they had energy weapons and…and this thing,” said Gina, pointing to the obelisk on the table. “I mean, you said this thing was synthetic, right Naomi? That’s way more advanced than pottery and buildings carved out of natural rock.”

  “Maybe they were more advanced than we thought,” suggested Antonio.

  “Did we see why the Minoans are all gone?” asked Kim. “It wasn’t the volcanic events, was it? The Noonies burned them out.”

  “We don’t know that,” said Naomi. “We only know what we saw, right? But the sky sure looked like it was full of ash. We know the volcanic event happened. But we don’t know when the stuff in this recording happened, or if it’s even real. I mean we could be looking at an ancient Minoan war movie or something. We can’t jump to conclusions.”

  Vandenberg stared at the obelisk, but his soft, pondering voice silenced the others. “The first thing we saw was a near-live playback of ourselves. Then we saw the recording, which ends with the blast and the collapse. It could be fiction or some far older event. Given the details, I think it may be the last images recorded by the device.

  “And the skies were filled with ash,” he continued, looking up at his students. “We know the ashes covering Minos are volcanic in nature. That research is solid. But what if these were coinciding events? Or causal? What if the Nyuyinaro somehow caused the eruptions? The other lights from the sky may not have been theirs. Those beams matched weapons used by the Krokinthians during the Expansion Wars. Both species worked together against us. They never claimed it was their first alliance. And they did let slip that we three are not the only intelligent lifeforms in the galaxy. They only refused to tell us more.

  “If ancient Minos came under bombardment at the same time it suffered a volcanic catastrophe, that would explain much about the lack of visible remains. It would explain the lack of more modern ruins.”

  “You can’t burn down whole cities like that,” Nigel objected. “Even nuclear blasts leave some ruins behind.”

  “Everything burns if you get it hot enough,” Tanner spoke up. “Everything disintegrates. It’s been five hundred years. We only know what they used for their ancient buildings. Who’s to say what they used in later construction? So yeah, if the Noonies and the Kroks were pissed off enough to pound everything to rubble? They could do it, and five hundred years later we might never find it.”

  “That’s why they were okay with us settling here,” Gina considered out loud. “They already wiped out the earlier civilization. Maybe they figured we’re not going to find anything they don’t want us to find.”

  “Guess they were wrong if we found this thing,” said Antonio.

  “Yeah, but five hundred years later, do they really care?”

  “What else did you see? Anyone? What more?” asked Vandenberg.

  “That sure looked like the canyon,” said Naomi. “Only with vegetation all around it. And guide lights. They were running for the canyon. Running for shelter.”

  “They were humanoid, but not,” added Vandenberg. “Bilateral symmetry, bipedal, four limbs as far as we saw, and a head. But the movements were all different. Different joints. Perhaps not at all the same number as ours.”

  “The mouth is oriented differently,” said Tanner. “Vertical instead of horizontal. I couldn’t make out a nose but maybe they don’t have one.”

  “You saw a face from where you were standing?” asked Jishen.

  “Only for a second.”

  “We need to play that thing back. We need to set up recording spots all around this room and run through it again and then watch the recordings one second at a time,” said Emma.

  “That’s gonna take hours,” said Kim.

  “Yes, and we have only until the sandstorm ends before we need to worry about our guests coming to see what we’re up to,” agreed Vandenberg. “We also need to remember to keep them bored. It’s our best defense. We can’t spend the morning giddy about our discoveries. Once they know we’ve uncovered something this exciting, they’ll get nosey.”

  “Wait, what about notifying the Union? This is exactly the sort of discovery that requires it, right?” asked Grace.

  “She’s right,” said Naomi. “This falls right into Union law.”

  Tanner opened his mouth to speak up in support. A thought stopped him. “Damn,” he hissed.

  Vandenberg noted Tanner’s curse with a glance. “I won’t stop you. I don’t believe this is the time, but I won’t stop any of you.”

  “How do we do that?” asked Antonio. “We can’t call out right now.”

  “No, but we can send someone into Anchorside in the morning,” Naomi explained. “Minos has a consulate for the Union Assembly like any other planet. We should be able to walk in and talk to somebody.”

  “And there’s a liaison from the Union Fleet,” said Tanner, “but that might be the problem.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Naomi.

  “What are the chances Minos Enterprises is completely in the dark on this?” he pointed out. “I’m not saying they know everything, or they would never let us dig. But it’s hard to believe they don’t know anything. We’ve got babysitters here from their goon squad and our holocoms are compromised. The authorities here are corrupt as hell. How far does that go?”

  “You think the Union representatives here are corrupt, too?” asked Kim. “All of them?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tanner. “But it doesn’t have to be all of them. We were hit by pirates on our way through the system. That put us under the microscope from the police. Then the head of the local mercenaries came out to grill me and look us over a second time. You know who didn’t come talk to us? Not once?”

  “There it is,” Vandenberg said quietly.

  “The Fleet,” said Gina.

  “Yeah. Piracy is a Fleet concern.” He looked to Naomi and Grace. “We’re under legal obligations, but we also don’t know who we can trust. It’s not like the people enforcing these rules are blind to context. They’ll take discretion into account.”

  “Indeed,” said Vandenberg. “My friends, consider the situation. If we report now, it’s possible our hosts will shut down everything for their own gain. The only viable option I see for reporting right now is if we were to pack up and head for Qin Kai. Our early exit would raise considerable scrutiny. We would be searched, possibly interrogated. We could easily be stripped of all our evidence before we leave the planet.

  “So what do you suggest?” asked Kim.

  “I suggest we keep working. Quietly, if we can. Smaller discoveries may continue to go undetected, and we can report them safely when we leave. Should we find something impossible to conceal, our hosts will be in the same bind. They won’t be able to cover it up. And if we come up with some plan between now and then, we can always revisit this issue. None of us want to flaunt these laws. We’re in a bind not of our making. It won’t be a crime to continue our work while we figure out a way around these issues of integrity.”

  “It kinda would be,” said Naomi.

  “In the end, the true accountability would fall on myself,” said Vandenberg. “Again, I will not stop you from reporting this. Any of you. I understand and sympathize. Yet I sincerely believe this is the best way to protect ourselves and our discoveries.

  “So let’s do everything we can while this storm gives us cover. A long night will only help conceal our excitement in the morning. Thankfully, by then we should have enough dust and sediment to require another full field walk. That should help us burn off our excitement and remind our watchers how bored they are.”

  Heads nodded around the
room. Hardly anyone wanted to stop now. Tanner shared a wary glance with Naomi, but he didn’t have any other ideas. Apparently she didn’t, either.

  “I might also note the nature of our discoveries,” Vandenberg added, seeing their discomfort. “We must report as soon as is practical, yes. But we are dealing with an extinct society here. A delay in reporting on the dead will not have the same stink as if we’d uncovered something about the living.”

  Chapter Fifteen:

  Priorities

  High-atmosphere clouds currently contain exceptionally high concentrations of dust due to storms in recent weeks. No hazardous conditions are expected at ground level. Visibility will not be impacted. However, wireless signals and active scanning systems will likely see disruptions over the next few nights.

  --Minos Weather Services, August 2280

  “Everybody’s got problems, kid. All of us bust our asses every day and none of us make the kind of money we should get for it. My kid’s school barely functions. My wife barely talks to me when she gets home from her job. It’s 2280, my liver is shot ‘cause I can’t afford a new one, and if every bit of my salary for the next six years went to paying off my debt, I’d still owe. So what, you want me to join your revolution?”

  “Boss, wait up. I’m not in the revolution,” said Bao. He looked nervously past the coworkers at his side to the office exit. The windows vibrated from the machinery below the supervisor’s room, but nobody took for granted the noise outside would cover their conversation. “We’re not talking about anything crazy like that.”

  “No? Then what are you talking about?” asked the shift supervisor. His eyes swept the crew of men and women in orange jumpsuits. “You think I don’t know this is a shit job? You think I haven’t tried to make changes? I’ve pointed out the problems. I’ve talked to who I can talk to. Shit hasn’t changed, and it isn’t gonna. Yeah, conditions suck. It’s better than a lot of other people have got.”

  At eighty-five years old, Jack Bauman came to Minos with the first waves of settlers. He had more hopes then. He also had debt, bad career prospects, a broken marriage, and more debt. Minos Enterprises took on all of his debt as part of his contract. Unlike the Big Three and their efforts to smooth over the scandals of the last few years, Minos Enterprises forgave none of it.

  Life’s burdens showed in his wrinkles. Modern science could make him a young man again, but the company would never spring for a second series of longevity treatments. He’d never be able to afford it on his own, either. That was the way it went. He was too old and too worn out to wring his hands about such things now.

  “Jack, other people having it worse doesn’t mean we have it good,” Bao argued. “It doesn’t even mean we have something acceptable. We don’t. We’re here eleven hours a day and for what? This paycheck? Hell, we have to pay for our own gear.” The young man tugged at his jumpsuit. “I had to buy this for the privilege of working here.”

  “You get housing.”

  “I’ve got a closet. Housing was guaranteed to us in our parents’ contracts. I don’t see any new housing going up. C’mon, you know the profit margin on what we do here. Any old fool can scare up some crystals for us to process into data storage chips. They’ve got the money to do better by us.”

  “Yeah? You don’t know what they’ve gotta do to process those crystals at the front end,” Jack pointed out.

  “Nobody knows that,” agreed Bao. “Nobody except the guys at the front end, and they aren’t talking.”

  “We aren’t supposed to be talking about it either, Bao.”

  “It’s proprietary tech, some cleaning bullshit, no big deal,” scoffed another of the floor crew.

  “No, Ken,” Jack pushed back. “It isn’t that simple. And we’re not talking about it.”

  “Fine. That’s not what we came to talk about anyway,” Bao broke in again. “Look, it doesn’t matter what the front end does. We do everything else from collections to cutting and pressing to warehousing. And it would be a simple job if it wasn’t at a breakneck speed all fucking day. We’ve got shit for breaks, we’ve got shit for pay, and we’ve got shit for safety standards. Don’t look at me like that. Safety isn’t about you, it’s about the rules as written. People get hurt all the time, and then they get to enjoy Minos Medical at its finest. How many people never come back to work after an accident?”

  “You feel better getting all that off your chest?” Jack fumed. “What’s your point?”

  “Shit could be better around here. The bosses just have to decide to make it better. They can’t tell us it’s too expensive. Not with the profits they’re raking in.”

  “Bao. Listen to me: what do you think we can do about it? The company decides the rules here. There isn’t anyone to complain to. Nobody else to fix this.”

  “I’m saying we form a union,” said Bao.

  Coworkers nodded and murmured in agreement. Jack looked them over with wide eyes. Now it was his turn to look warily to the exit. “You listen to me real good, guys,” Jack said, his voice dropping. “The only thing that might be worse around here than talkin’ about processing at the front end is talking about a goddamn union. Christ, they don’t even teach that shit in the schools here. What’d you do, dig up one of your parents’ books? Talkin’ about unions is a great way to get yourselves fired. They’ll fire everyone you hang out with, too.”

  “They can’t fire all of us,” another worker spoke up. “That’s the point.”

  “Yes, they fucking well can. There are too many hungry mouths and too little good work on this planet for us to pretend we’re irreplaceable. They’ll throw us out on our asses. We’ll be lucky if it ends there. You think they won’t find an excuse to lock us up? Or worse? And if you make too much noise, they’ll replace us with fucking machines. All they gotta do is decide the expense is worth getting rid of the headache of live workers. Happens all through history, kids. We won’t be any different.”

  “Then why are we even here now?” called out a voice from the back.

  “Because this planet’s full of colonists and their kids who need jobs to keep ‘em busy,” said another worker. “They can’t risk us leading independent lives where we might make things better for ourselves, so they keep us playing their game.”

  “Oh, for the love of God,” grumbled Jack. His eyes found Cecily in the small crowd. She always was a troublemaker. “Listen, nobody forces you to work. If you think you can make it out there on your own, there’s the door.”

  His anger silenced the room. His people were used to him being a little coarse, but they knew he cared about them. The enemy was out there, past the doors where Jack pointed.

  A sudden, low boom beyond those doors snapped everyone out of the debate.

  Alarms followed. Jack pushed through the clutch of workers to look out his office window at the machinery floor below. He wasn’t terribly worried for the machines themselves, nor for the crystalline stock running through it, but they would give some indication of the problem at hand.

  The sight of the sonic scrubbing tanks going into emergency shutdown filled him with dread. The whole assembly process would be halted, too. Stock would be lost, and money with it. Procedures like this didn’t happen lightly.

  Dull, distant thumps continued, vibrating the walls and even the deck under Jack’s feet.

  “Okay, we gotta get out of here,” he said.

  “Jack, it’s a shelter-in-place alarm,” said Bao. “We’re better off here.”

  “That’s bullshit they tell you to avoid having a real plan. Listen, we gotta figure out where the trouble is and move away from it before it gets here. If those stupid insurgents or somebody are making an attack, we—” A hand grabbed Jack’s arm before he could get halfway to the exit. Jack turned, coming face to face with Bao again.

  A harder thump shook the air outside the office, causing the windows to shake. Jack thought he might have heard distant screams.

  “We need to stay here,” said Bao.

 
; “The fuck…?” Jack asked. Bao looked calm. Apologetic and tense, but calm. “What is going on, Bao? Are you in on this?” His eyes flashed across the gathered workers. Most looked understandably alarmed. Most, but not all. Only then did Jack notice how much of the plant staff was in this room. Other than security and the front-end guys, this was practically everyone on shift. “Did you set this up?”

  “We’re safer here,” Bao reiterated. He glanced to the others. “Everybody should find a place to duck down.”

  Jack glared at Bao with growing understanding. Bao and Cecily pushed for this meeting. For this specific time. They suggested this office, though other spaces might have been a little more practical.

  The windows shook again, this time with a boom rather than a thud.

  A high-pitched tone startled everyone, ringing out from each worker’s holocoms. Emergency warnings flashed in holographic letters all around as every personal device fell into company-mandated crisis presets. The workers received nothing more than another admonishment to shelter in place. As the floor supervisor, Jack got a little more, but it was audio only. He keyed up his earpiece rather than sharing it with the others.

  “All supervisors, this is Ming with security,” began the message. Booms, shouts, and the hiss of lasers filled the background. “We’re under attack by an armed group, identity unknown. They’ve got energy weapons and some kind of body shields. Do not try to call out. We’ve got electronic countermeasures going to jam their comms. We already called for help. Stay put and—” The transmission ended with a shout of pain.

  As he listened, Jack retreated to the safety of his desk. He hadn’t even looked for it, but with the recording’s sudden ending he found himself crouched beside the desk rather than sitting behind it. His eyes sought out Bao again.

  “What are they saying?” Bao asked.

  Jack answered only with a scowl. Stupid kid. What good did he think any of this would do?

  Hard bangs at the door startled everyone. These were metal on metal, not the result of distant explosions. “It’s Frankie,” declared a muffled voice. “I’m coming in.” The beep and the red flash of the door controls indicated an authorized keyed entry. Jack hadn’t even realized the doors had locked, but as part of the facility’s emergency protocols it made sense. At least the company made good on that.