The Last Hero: Book 2 of The Last War Series

by Peter Bostrom

  With a faint hiss the shuttle and the strange ship docked.

  Moments passed in silence, with the prisoners exchanging confused glances and hushed whispers.

  Then, from the front of the ship, came a man she recognized instantly from the news.

  United States Senator Peter Pitt. Thin and gaunt like a ghost, wearing clothes that draped off him like excess skin. He scanned the room.

  Most of the prisoners had their eyes down, away from the newcomer, but Mao met his with a fierceness that surprised even herself.

  Senator Pitt approached her, crouching in front of her seat. “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  She nodded, shifting in her seat, arms bound in front of her. “Where are you taking us?”

  “To a place where you’ll be safe,” said Senator Pitt. The perfect politicians answer. One, she imagined, that contained absolutely no truth to it at all. “I guarantee it.”

  “Your guarantee isn’t worth much,” said Mao, narrowing her eyes. “I wanna see my lawyer.”

  He laughed—a real, genuine laugh that, while warm on the surface, was cold as ice below. “I’m sure you do. My counter-point is this: if I simply order it to be so, we could vent this shuttle and everyone in the passenger compartment would asphyxiate. Slowly. Painfully. Not a good way to go.”

  Threats didn’t bother her. “Representation is my right as an American citizen. You can’t deny me access to the legal system. And you certainly can’t vent us into space without as much as a trial.”

  “Captain Mao, is it?” asked Senator Pitt. “Do you want a lesson in the American legal system?”

  She glowered and said nothing.

  “The truth is this: the system is and always has been designed to help the people up top and crush the people down low. I am one of the people at the top … and you, you middle aged, fat, broken-down soldiers with a grudge, are the people down below. You’re going to get crushed by a system you do not even begin to understand. And besides, you’re terrorists. Sending you out the airlock would be a mercy, and I’d be hailed as a hero for doing it.”

  Bagram spoke up. “Senator, I want your assurance that my men will be treated well; Admiral Mattis gave me his word that we would be.”

  Senator Pitt’s expression remained cold and empty as it turned toward Bagram. “Admiral Mattis cannot help you any more, little soldier.” He stood up and turned toward the cockpit, moving toward the unseen pilots of their small craft. “Captain, set a course for Chrysalis. We have tremendous plans for our guests.”

  Mao and Bagram exchanged a confused, frightened glance, and she could no longer see that little spark of hope in his eyes.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  3:11am local time

  Senator Pitt’s Office

  Washington, DC

  Earth

  Looking into this himself was proving a lot more difficult than Chuck Mattis had anticipated.

  He’d considered multiple ways to break into Senator Pitt’s office—pretending he had been un-fired and walking through the front door, trying to recover his old ID credentials, even creating a whole new set of identities and working his way in through an intern position—but the simple solution seemed to be the best. A brick through the window in the ground floor lobby.

  No alarms, no sirens. Mattis gave it half an hour just to make sure the cops weren’t going to show up. They didn’t. So in he went.

  Seeing his old workplace, several months removed and shrouded in darkness, was a strange experience. Everything seemed at once familiar and extremely distant; as though some strange, quiet miasma had seeped through every crack and pore in the building. If anyone was there, the crash of the brick through the window would have alerted them by now, but still, he crept around as though expecting to be caught at any moment.

  Chuck made his way straight to the place where any information of value would be kept. Senator Pitt’s office. The largest of all the rooms, but the one containing the least furniture. Just a desk, three filing cabinets stacked neatly up against the far wall, and a floor safe. Chuck knew about the safe. Senator Pitt trusted all his senior staff with the knowledge.

  He felt pretty bad about that. Using Senator Pitt’s trust against him. But at the same time, any help he had to get the job done was welcome. Speaking of help…

  Chuck clipped on his earpiece and dialed Elroy. He picked up immediately.

  “Here,” said Elroy. “Are you in?”

  Are you in? He sounded so excited, breathless even. It bought a smile to Chuck’s face. “Yeah, I’m inside.”

  “Nice going, Secret Agent Chuck.”

  Cute, but he certainly didn’t feel like a secret agent. Not even something as cool or interesting as a burglar or a spy. He felt like he was back working for the Senator—running errands, taking memos, and contributing on policy decisions. This was way, way out of his element. But it was necessary.

  Chuck came to Senator Pitt’s door and gently tested the handle. Unlocked. He stepped into the office and saw the desk computer was still on. The whole desk was the screen, just how he liked it, and it was even logged in.

  Was everything spy-related this easy?

  “Okay,” said Chuck, rubbing his hands together. “Looks like we’re just about done. Just gotta take a look around, see what incriminating things I can find, and then I am out of here.”

  Almost two hours later, and he had found almost nothing.

  He searched the desk, completely, and found absolutely nothing of interest. Just personal notes scribbled on pieces of paper and information about meetings long since attended. A scattering of pens and tablet styluses. A bent paperclip. Carefully, Chuck put everything back where he’d found it, giving it a firm wipe with his sleeve to hopefully smudge any fingerprints. He wasn’t too worried about the DNA evidence—he’d worked here only a few months ago, so it would be easy to dismiss anything they found—but fresh fingerprints might be damning.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing here?” asked Elroy. “You still haven’t searched the computer.”

  “I know,” said Chuck, dejectedly. “Because if it sends out a signal to anyone, there’s no way I’ll know and frankly, it’s the most likely thing to actually be alarmed here.”

  “Well, yeah,” said Elroy. “Even I have an alarm on my system and I’m a nobody.”

  Chuck couldn’t help but smile. “You aren’t a nobody to me, El.”

  “How sweet. But still. Be careful, okay? At the first sign of an alarm, you gotta ninja-flip out there. I mean it. Full-cartwheel.”

  He snorted and, without anything else to do, plugged in his external storage and touched the desk. The screen built into it lit up, straight to the main operating system. Still logged in. Had been for eight days, according to the readout at the top left hand corner of the screen.

  Eight days? Chuck frowned. He could understand leaving a machine logged in overnight by mistake, once, but for eight days … Senator Pitt must be off-world. During campaign season?

  Something about this didn’t feel right, but he had no time to think about it. “No sign of an alarm,” he said, touching the screen and scrolling through various files. He selected everything and began copying it to the external drive; no sense reading it now, there would be time enough for that later.

  One file snagged. It wouldn’t copy; flagged as open. He told the computer to skip copying that one and made a duplicate of it, then started copying that one. The name stuck out.

  SPECTRE

  Ding. Both copies completed at roughly the same time. Spectre must have been big—lots of images, movies, and audio logs. Possibly even 3d scenes modeled with point data.

  “Okay,” he said, to Elroy, “I got it. Time to get out of here.” Chuck unplugged his device and looked up.

  A man stood in the doorway, a pistol comfortably cradled in both hands. He casually raised the gun and pointed it at Chuck.

  “Well now, fancy seeing you here Mr. Pitt,” said the man, pulling back the hammer.

>   Chapter Fifty-Three

  Captain’s Ready Room

  USS Midway

  En Route to Kepler-1011 system

  Mattis called Modi up out of Engineering and, with Lynch, the three of them retired to his ready room.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” asked Lynch, his brow furrowed in worry. “We really don’t know what we’re sailing into over there.”

  “The gravity mines are a known problem,” said Modi. “The technology behind them is very well understood. Granted, we won’t have a simple way of bypassing their assault if it comes to that, but, at the very least, I’m expecting no surprises.”

  Mattis frowned slightly. “I was kind of hoping you’d tell me that there was a simple, risk-free way of disabling these mines, Modi.” He held up his hand to cut off the guy’s inevitable complaining. “And no. Obviously, that was sarcasm. Just—anything you can give me?”

  Modi shrugged. “There is not much, to tell you the truth. Gravity mines work because they’re dog-simple. A sensitive electromagnet detects the presence of metal hulls even at significant distances. Once detected, the mines activate a chemical rocket which propels them toward the target at high speed. When they get close—and close is more than enough—they activate, and everything in the blast radius is torn apart by the momentary gravity differential. The metal of the ship’s hull might survive intact, but there is simply no way for a human crew to survive that kind of … stretching.”

  “Can we manipulate the ship’s artificial gravity to help mitigate the damage?”

  Modi snorted dismissively. “Our internal gravity system is rated for a maximum of 1.1g. That’s like asking if wearing a pillow as armor will help protect you from a cannonball by reducing its velocity. Technically, yes, but by such a statistically small margin that it would make absolutely no practical difference to the outcome.”

  Lynch clicked his tongue. “Can Admiral Yim be trusted with this information?”

  Nagging doubt tugged at him, lingering mistrust that whispered dark thoughts into his ear, but Mattis pushed it away. Yim had shown that despite their past, for now at least, he wasn’t their enemy.

  “He can,” said Mattis, with as much strength as he could muster. “Pretty sure. He’s just like me, in a way—obviously playing for a different side, but he cares about doing the right thing. He cares about his duty.” Mattis thought of his brother, Phillip—unstoppable images of his face flashing into his head—but for the first time since his death he felt vaguely at peace with everything that had happened, and he meant it when he followed with, “The past is the past.”

  “That’ll do for now,” said Lynch, nodding resolutely. “We can get through this, sir.”

  His communicator chirped. Mattis, almost on instinct, touched the answer key. It was the communications officer. “Sir, we’re coming up on Chrysalis.”

  Mattis straightened his back. Time to be a commander and worry about everything else later. The three of them moved out to the bridge. Lynch took the XO’s position and Modi hung around near the back.

  “Commence Z-space translation,” he said, moving up to the captain’s chair and sliding into it. “Bring us back into the real world. And get ready to send out a signal to anyone who’ll listen.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Senator Pitt’s Office

  Washington, DC

  Earth

  Chuck stared down the barrel of a gun.

  He really had no experience with this kind of thing. He’d never been mugged, or attacked, and apart from schoolyard fights he’d never experienced any kind of violence in his life. So he just stood there, mouth agape, as the strange man pulled back the hammer and leveled the weapon at his head.

  “W—wait,” he stammered, thrusting his hands up above his head. “Stop. Don’t shoot.”

  The man stepped forward, into the light. He was an older guy, about forty, grizzled, and clad in a finely pressed suit. He had a narrow brimmed hat on his head—like something out of a detective movie. The gun in his hand was polished chrome. Chuck didn’t know much about guns, but this one looked deadly.

  “I’m hoping,” said the man, “that it doesn’t come to that. But you’re really putting me on the spot, Chuck Mattis.”

  The use of his name startled him and, for a second, Chuck almost completely forgot Elroy was on the phone to him. “Who are you talking to?” his husband asked.

  “How do you know my name?” asked Chuck, ignoring Elroy for now. “Who are you?”

  “Who I am is unimportant.”

  “What do you want?”

  The man smiled uncomfortably. “It’s not about what I want,” he said. “It’s about what you want. Assuming, of course, you value your continued health. You’re asking the wrong people the wrong questions, and you need to just go home to your sick kid and your loving husband and give this whole thing up.” The man’s tone was at once kind and hard. “Live a good life, Chuck Mattis. There’s no need for you to end up like your father.”

  He stared. “What’s wrong with my Dad?”

  “Nothing,” said the man. “Yet.”

  The ominous threat hung in the air. The silence grew to be unbearable; Elroy was saying things into his ear that he didn’t even hear, but that probably subconsciously made his growing panic even worse. Chuck, too, just started saying things; unconscious word vomit that in no way resembled sentences or meaningful information. Just words. Words about the aliens and mutants, words about the attack on Earth, words about Admiral Jack Mattis and his seeming predilection toward getting himself into every damn situation that cropped up.

  None of it seemed to do any good.

  “Enough,” said the man, shaking his head. “Shut up.”

  It was time to be quiet. Chuck took a deep breath and composed himself, pointing a shaky finger to his external device. “I’m guessing you want that,” he said.

  “Only,” said the man, seemingly full of patience for Chuck’s display, “if you don’t think you can send out the message yourself.”

  “What?” Chuck sniffled, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “What are you talking about?”

  The man inclined his head toward the external device, sitting in the middle of Senator Pitt’s desk. “Had a chance to look at any of that stuff yet?”

  “No.”

  “You should. Check out files in the folder X-3711b.”

  With a shaking hand, Chuck touched the screen and scrolled through the folders. X-3711b … there. He opened it. It contained a series of video files with seemingly random names. Ten in all.

  203301

  446469

  953427

  293268

  981326

  038586

  768594

  564494

  422634

  471690

  “What am I looking at?” asked Chuck.

  “Videos. Videos that should interest you. Try it and see.”

  He tapped on one at random. 038586.

  It was a video shot in a starkly lit room, a heavy light casting sharp shadows across every surface. A creature lay splayed out on a metal table, its body pried open like a clam. Most of its organs lay in nearby jars or on metal trays. A woman dressed in a medical lab coat stood with something in her hand, inspecting a small thing the camera couldn’t quite catch.

  “-bject 0385868221, classification 211 bravo. We call this one Irene.” The woman put down the device, her face a mask of frustration and disgust. It was a removed eyeball. “This one is contaminated just like the rest of the batch. The low gravity and solar radiation that bake every fucking living thing on this rock destroy their eyes. Apart from what we have in our labs, Chrysalis’s general population seems to be unaffected. Must be some regression in the genome …” The woman sighed. “Like I fucking need more of those. Autopsy concludes at 11:39pm.” She tossed the eyeball down in disgust. “Hopefully the next one will be—”

  The video cut out.

  “Interesting,” said the man. “Do
n’t you think?”

  Chuck stared at him as, slowly, the truth dawned through his panic stricken mind. “You don’t work for Senator Pitt, do you?”

  The stranger’s smile widened. “I do not.”

  “You’re here for the same things I am.”

  “Naturally,” said the man. “It’s no coincidence we’re here at the same time, I imagine. I’m guessing you saw the same thing I did; Senator Pitt travelled off-world three days ago, and surveillance of his house showed he packed enough clothes to be gone for at least a week. Last night was a bust, of course, due to the construction being performed across the road—too many security cameras, especially at night, always on the lookout for thieves—but tonight … tonight was perfect. No moon, and the block party down the street would muffle the sounds of intrusion. I came in through the car park, of course—a bug I planted a few weeks ago in the system’s automatic doors. I’m guessing you came in through the ceiling however—bold move, but faster. I like your style.”

  Chuck stammered slightly. “Uhh, no. I, um, threw a brick through the front door and I came here because it was the first night I didn’t have to look after my son.”

  The man stared. Then laughed. “I believe you, Chuck Mattis.” He held out his hand. “Call me John Smith.”

  John Smith? Chuck hesitated, then took the hand, giving it a firm shake. “That sounds like a fake name,” he said, before he could fully think through what he was saying.

  “Of course it is.” Smith nodded to the portable hard drive. “I have a contact in the media who’d be dying to get hold of these files. If you don’t mind—” he held out hand, touching a switch on the underside of a ring on his right finger. The device flashed as it copied—hopefully copied, not moved—the data from Chuck’s device. “If the next piece of the puzzle is on Chrysalis, we should probably consider going there right away.”