The Last Hero: Book 2 of The Last War Series

by Peter Bostrom

  “I just want to talk with you.”

  “Not sure you want to hear what I have to say right now, Admiral.”

  Mattis jabbed a finger to the APC. “You see them?” he called. “The armor on that APC is a composite matrix of laminated ceramic-steel-nickel alloy with underlaid reactive armor. It has an effective thickness of 1,600mm. When you busted down the gate and took over the embassy, did you drag any armor-piercing railguns along with you?”

  Ryan said nothing.

  “Come on,” said Mattis. “We can talk about this. But I’m getting mighty sick of shouting.”

  “Like hell, you traitor.” Ryan’s voice picked up. “I thought you were going to be on our side!”

  Mattis rolled his eyes.

  “Sir,” said Modi, behind him, “you should know, five marines just climbed out of the APC and into the sewers.”

  Chapter Eight

  Dining room

  Shuttlecraft Satine

  Tonatiuh Sector

  Bratta stared out the window at the receding inner worlds of the Tonatiuh Sector. It was an actual window, too, not just the usual camera and screen arrangement. The Satine was an expensive shuttle—far more expensive than he could afford—but she had been the first ticket off Zenith, and even a large bite out of his wallet was worth that.

  A far more pressing concern than his dwindling cash reserves, however, was the view this angle gave of the rest of the passengers in the Satine’s restaurant. Adorned with tailored suits, expensive-looking dresses, and noses stuck high in the air, the logical part of Bratta’s brain was fairly sure that the only attention he was getting from his fellow travelers (and there wasn’t much of that) was thanks to his, well, less-than-boutique best clothes. A darker corner of his mind disagreed. Was that man in the dangerously-sharp tuxedo looking at him a little bit too closely? Had that woman in the plunging red dress been glancing his way too much? Was the old man in the other corner, the one with the goatee, really just looking at the painting above his table? Was he about to die? Or had he watched too many spy flicks?

  Bratta pushed the food around on his plate, arranging it by alphabetical order according to its common name (color spectrum, classification, and similarity to the human genome had already been sorted) and tried to not look at any of the other passengers. He was fairly sure it wasn’t the worst strategy for avoiding attention. Just a bored guy in the corner, nothing interesting to see here. No governmental secrets being smuggled off-planet, no, keep moving, it’s fine I swear.

  He was, of course, avoiding the problem. The problem with the aliens. Or … whatever they’d been.

  They’d been bipedal, which was, well, coincidental. Interestingly so, perhaps. Bratta was fairly aware—on a conceptual level, at least—of the size of even the Milky Way. The odds of such a humanlike alien having evolved near enough to human civilization to reach them through Z-space were, while certainly within the realms of possibility, quite literally astronomical. A lack of obvious breathing apparatus on either specimen suggested that their respiratory systems required an earth-like atmosphere, which was another remarkable coincidence, although he hadn’t exactly had a good enough look at either alien to confirm this situation. Then there was the actual structure of the creature—although the size and proportions were monstrously off, especially the great long arms, all the basic shapes had been there.

  And yet, they had been anything but human. The rotting coloration had looked neither natural nor healthy; if not for the ruined teeth he might have postulated some skin-shedding process, but overall it looked like … necrosis, honestly. Then there was the strength of the creatures—and their durability. Most animals didn’t pull off that kind of antics and walk away. The sheer strain they seemed to be able to shake off was terrifying. The scope of it all hit Bratta, and he swallowed, throat suddenly dry. He really had no idea what he was dealing with.

  Except … maybe he did. Bratta shoved a chunk of buttered bread absently into his mouth as he scrolled through his phone’s files. No, surely not, he thought as he flicked through years of particularly fascinating papers. Those authors were crackpots, pedaling notions a step above pseudoscience. The text slowed as he reached his undergrad years, and he kept an eye out for … it would have had “evolution” in the title, wouldn’t it? Still, it was pseudoscience that sounded like these aliens. Maybe there’ll be something useful in their references?

  Or there might have been, if the paper had been on his phone. Damn. Well, that wasn’t too much of a problem, he had everything on his external hard drive, he’d just have to wait until he was in his—

  The sound of a child yelling broke apart his train of thought, causing Bratta to jump about a foot in the air. Around him, a few of his fellow restaurant-goers were similarly startled, but most of them reacted only by shaking their heads a little, and muttering, if at all. When Bratta’s eyes found the source of the disturbance, he understood. Red Dress lady was standing over a boy of about ten years old in a suit—bow tie and everything—performing a strange duet with his steadily rising voice, as he pointed, red-faced, at his, uhhh, entrée, probably. They had Australian accents.

  Bratta looked away, and noticed three sets of eyes on him once more. The old man with the goatee was definitely looking at him, eyebrow raised, and Tuxedo Guy had been joined by a friend two tables over in a turban. The old guy had a big chunk of his ear missing, like a dog had chewed it off, or even a wild haggis … perhaps some other kind of rodent? Either way, it had left a massive lump of scar tissue right on the side of the guy’s head.

  Bratta shuddered and stared back, trying to commit their faces to memory. Goatee looked surprisingly healthy for a man his age, actually, although yes, those were plastic surgery marks right there. Tuxedo Guy was plainer than his clothes, but he had a few red marks on his right eyelid. Bratta stopped. Those weren’t just any marks, that was a signature rash of an irritated cybernetic eyesocket interface. He’d be able to see, well, everything. Paying for tech like that, the man must have been one of the richest people on the shuttle. And then Turban. Hmm. For one thing, the man was Caucasian, which made for an odd combination. Ooh, and for another, his fingers were ever-so-slightly yellowed. Nicotine staining. He was a heavy smoker.

  Bratta was feeling quite Holmesian until he realized he was attracting more stares. Ah. He’d quite forgotten about that bread roll. And if he remembered correctly, it wasn’t exactly good etiquette to sit around with half a bun hanging out of one’s mouth.

  On the plus side, he hadn’t met up with Jeannie yet, so this was one social faux pas she’d never be able to insult him over.

  Success?

  He wolfed down the rest of his food, then bolted with almost equal speed for his room, where four walls and a porthole opening only to space would shield him from the rest of humanity.

  On the Satine’s plush carpets, Bratta never even heard the footfalls coming up behind him. He only noticed the stun-stick pointed at him when its voltage was already coursing through his frame.

  And he definitely never felt the hand rifling through his pockets, and plucking out his new phone, the Ume-chan anime girl sticker on its back filling his vision for a moment before everything went away.

  Chapter Nine

  Inside the Chinese Embassy

  Sanctuary

  Omid Sector

  Ryan shifted away from the second floor window, careful to keep his head down. The damn reds would have snipers everywhere.

  His hand was shaking. Hadn’t done that since the war. Not even storming the building had gotten his fingers to tremble so. Yet now they did. The last time that had happened, the Chinese had established air support over Sanctuary, and with their newfound dominance, halted the American advance and reversed it. If the end of the war hadn’t happened, every single one of them would all be dead; ground into paste by round-the-clock bombing.

  He didn’t like that it was back.

  “Sir,” said Gunnery Sergeant Kellie Castro, his communications sp
ecialist, a middle-aged Cuban woman with a tablet in her hand, hair dyed bright pink to hide the greying. “We’re still trying to get through the interference.”

  “Gunny, I need you to do better than try,” said Ryan, snappishly. “There’s a goddamn Chinese APC out there and they aren’t coming over to talk.”

  “Yeah, well, they ain’t exactly making things easy on me.”

  “Hearing a lot of excuses, Gunny,” said Ryan. “Get through that goddamn jamming signal, oorah?”

  “Oorah,” she said, turning back to her tablet.

  Ryan risked a glance out the window at the APC. It was a model he hadn’t even seen before; an evolution of their previous types. Back in the day, they used to pop those things all the time. Attacking from below was their favorite trick. When the reds rolled into New Texas on Proxima Centauri Five, he and his men had used the sewer system to damage the vehicle’s undersides. That’s where the armor was thinnest. Even a moderate explosive from below would fuck up an APC.

  His gaze lingered, looking to the street. Maybe they’d gotten lucky and a sewer grate was nearby.

  There was one.

  It was open.

  “Dammit,” he said, ducking back below the window. “Gunny. Gunny! Can you put me through to Mattis again?”

  “Isn’t he just outside?” asked Castro, not looking up from her work.

  He didn’t want the damn Chinese to hear. Or … did he?

  “Mattis!” shouted Jack. “We know they’re in the sewers! If those soldiers come even one foot past the boundaries of the embassy, we’re going to detonate the bombs on every single fucking one of the prisoners, I swear to God!”

  Castro looked up. “We have actual bombs? I thought all we had were grenades, and the SAM.”

  “You’re right, of course. No bombs.” Ryan smiled. “But they don’t know that.”

  Chapter Ten

  Shuttlecraft Satine

  Tonatiuh Sector

  Bratta wondered what had woken him.

  He was comfortable, so that wasn’t a problem. Curled up and … was that carpet tickling at his nostrils? Yes, that was definitely carpet. What the…? He’d never sleepwalked before.

  He stretched out and ow ow ow ow, no, everything hurt. What was wrong with him? He cracked an eye open and saw a corridor. Voices, not bothering to keep quiet, echoed from the other end. There was … there was probably something wrong with that, wasn’t there? He struggled to his feet and stared around. Empty, but yes, that was his room right there and—

  His brain finally kicked into gear. Unconsciousness, muscular pain, particularly in—two areas of his back, he realized—serious disorientation and lack of coordination … well, more than usual. He’d probably been stunned, and drugged with … something. For good measure. Hopefully it would wear off soon; he didn’t like not being able to think. That was why caffeine had been his friend so long. Being tired was the worst.

  The voices grew louder.

  Wait. This was weird. Weird drew attention. Attention was bad. He scrabbled through his pockets, fumbled—no, that was his work ID—ah! His room key! He waved it under the sensor and scrambled inside.

  His room was a bit of a mess. Far messier than he’d left it, actually. He riffled for his phone. Came up with nothing.

  A chill spread up Bratta’s spine. Someone had robbed him, and he could think of only one reason a thief would target the most obviously poor passenger on this ship. He dove for his suitcase, clothes flying everywhere as he searched for…

  His hard drive. There it was, the beautiful, beautiful machine. A little scratched and battered, but that was nothing new. Next target: datapad. The hard drive could, of course, connect to a regular computer as easily as it could a phone. What would have been the point, otherwise?

  Bratta tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for the external hard drive to load. A quick search through his video files, and … yes, yes! There it was. His seated position folded, and he collapsed back onto the cabin’s plush bed. It was safe, thank everything.

  Of course, this meant his life was still under threat—assuming they figured out he’d kept a copy of the video. He shot upright and grabbed the datapad again. Mercifully, the Satine catered to just about every whim and desire a passenger could have, and that included in-flight communications over Z-space. A voice message would be too slow, but a text might work…

  Steve Bratta: Hi Jeannie. On way, got mugged but they didn’t steal everything. Help please?

  Fifteen minutes later, he got a reply.

  Jean Tafola: Not good. Send me vid right now. I have contact, she’ll publish it. U will b safer.

  Steve Bratta: How?

  Jean Tafola: Cloud

  Steve Bratta: But you were worried about security.

  Jean Tafola: Speed more important. U r alive so they dont want u. Need 2 b public

  Steve Bratta: Sent.

  Jean Tafola: Received. C u soon, Steve.

  Bratta frowned at the ceiling. He was still sore, but the wooziness was already clearing off—he should probably get some water, actually. That had been, well, anti-climactic, really. It was out of his hands now.

  He pulled up another search, and quickly found the article he was after. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and skimmed the title. “Homo Insequens: On the Survival of the Human Race”.

  Chapter Eleven

  Outside the Chinese Embassy

  Sanctuary

  Omid Sector

  “We know they’re in the sewers! If those soldiers come even one foot past the boundaries of the embassy, we’re going to detonate the bombs on every single fucking one of the prisoners, I swear to God!”

  Mattis swore under his breath. The Chinese were good at lots of things—especially digital espionage—but actual stealth was not their strength. This wasn’t going to end well.

  “I would advise against that,” shouted Mattis. Didn’t that dumbass know that explosives going up in a building of that size would kill them too?

  No answer.

  “Damn,” said Lynch, moving up beside him. “When do marines get all ornery like that, sir? When they retire from the Corps, do marines have to hand in their brains along with their base pass?” Lynch blew out a low whistle. “Guess that’s why they call ’em jarheads.”

  It was tempting to say he agreed—inter-service rivalries were a real thing—but Mattis knew better. It was something far deeper than that, far more human.

  “As you take the throne to act, the throne acts upon you. These guys are … they’re not crazy. They’re marines, but that’s not what’s causing this. There’s something else at play here. Something we don’t understand.”

  “Yeah,” snorted Lynch. “Like how these cut snakes believe that just because they storm an embassy building, they should get to negotiate from a position of strength. They have to know this won’t end well for them.”

  The old Monty Python Black Knight negotiation strategy. It didn’t matter how many times someone got hit, as long as they stood tall. “They just want their message to be heard,” said Mattis, almost to himself. “And they’re willing to do anything to make that happen.”

  “I’m warning you!” shouted Ryan from the embassy. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants, and we got the fucking watering cans right here!”

  “It’s like that is it, huh?” shouted Mattis in return. He put his hand on one of the lion’s heads, leaning up against it. “I’m telling you: there’s another way through this. And that’s by telling me the truth.”

  “You? You’re on their side!”

  “I’m on nobody’s side!” roared Mattis. “I’m not even meant to be here, and you damn zealots are messing up a perfectly good, perfectly safe, perfectly boring patrol!”

  “First he complains about it being boring,” said Modi, his eyes fixated on the screen, “then he complains when it stops being boring….”

  Mattis glared back at him. “I like
d you a lot better when you were stuck in Engineering.”

  Modi didn’t look up. “Admiral, it was your decision to promote Mister Lynch to the role of XO,” he said. “I moved into Lynch’s former role. Naturally.”

  “Dammit,” said Lynch, eyes bugging out. “Are you trying to get me fired?”

  “I’m simply saying that the Admiral’s circumstances are entirely of his own making.”

  Mattis held up his hand for quiet. “Okay, fine. Fine. It’s all my fault. Can we fix this so we can go back to the ship?”

  Nobody seemed to disagree, so Mattis returned his attention to the embassy. “You like Jefferson, Captain Ryan? Well, here’s one for you: honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. Talk to me, Captain.”

  Again, no reply.

  Modi had been remarkably quiet this whole time. Mattis slipped over to him. Modi was hunched over a tablet, watching the news.

  “Has this made the media?” asked Mattis.

  “Yes and no,” said Modi, his tone curiously vague.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means there’s something more important that’s stealing the spotlight,” said Modi, tilting the tablet his way. “Your girlfriend just dropped one hell of a bombshell.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Chuck Mattis’s Office

  Washington, D.C.

  Earth

  A short atmospheric craft ride back to his office later, and Chuck Mattis watched the video feed from Sanctuary with growing concern.

  His new position gave him access to government feeds, and there were many eyes on the small, remote Chinese embassy in the Omid Sector. Normally this would be a matter for local police forces, but because the incident had involved the Chinese embassy and Chinese citizens, now it was in murky waters. Chinese law enforcement could only operate within their embassy, but the people involved were American citizens on an American world; communications between high level diplomats and their lawyers had been running non-stop. The whole thing was a bureaucratic clusterfuck.