The Last Good Man

Fairy Godmothers

True grabs a flashlight from the car’s center console and gets out, directing the bright beam into the forest.

Alex has the trunk open. “See anything?” he asks over the sound of a magazine being jammed into a pistol.

“No. But it’s out there, watching us.”

He steps up beside her, a 9 mm in hand. “Someone’s fairy godmother?”

“Maybe. Definitely a biomimetic, but I’ve never seen one like it before.”

“Didn’t notice weapons on it.”

“Nothing overt,” she agrees.

He says, “Dash cam should have an image.”

“Right. I’ll send it in. Tamara should be able to track it down, check for registrations.”

His gaze sweeps the woods. “It’s giving me the creeps standing out here. Let’s get back in the car and go.”

“Okay.”

Alex closes the trunk, but when he gets in, he still has the pistol. He passes it to her without a word, puts the car in gear, and accelerates onto the road.

“Probably just a fairy godmother,” she says.

He grunts.

“Nice design.” She’s trying to sound casual. “Maybe we should get one like it.”

“Damned sophisticated,” he allows. “Not cheap.”

“Not out of reach, either.”

Biomimetic robots—mechanical animals—were more and more common, and why not? Millions of years of trial-and-error testing lay behind their shapes and the efficient physics of their motion. The mech they saw suggested a small deer—a nice option in rural areas, one that True had not considered before. A ground-based design like that would be less vulnerable to strong winds than a flying drone, and a well-made model could be both swift and stealthy in the woods, capable of standing still within the shadows and observing for hours while consuming very little energy. Something like it would be a nice addition to ReqOps’ origami army.

Thinking out loud, she says, “It must have just been released. It shouldn’t have allowed itself to be seen from the road. That suggests it hasn’t had time to learn the terrain.”

“Or it’s lost.”

If so, it won’t last long. Personal drones aren’t supposed to wander through or fly over private property. In rural areas, those that do tend to disappear. Over the past year, True shot down three that flew too close to the house. No way to know if they belonged to hobbyists, mediots, or an enemy. Hostile intent is assumed.

She and Alex keep their own menagerie, of course. Gargoyles—low-slung like crabs, with a carapace designed to shed the force of the wind—inhabit the roof, watching over the house and the surrounding sky. They have enough locomotive ability to keep themselves above any snow accumulation and to keep intruders in sight. The rest of the five-acre parcel is patrolled by two sets of fairy godmothers. The first are squirrel mimetics that can stealth-glide or -crawl in the forest canopy, and the second are turtles—ground-based devices that move faster than their name implies. As a rule, only three devices of each type are active, while a fourth recharges at the house. All are linked to a security AI.

True designed the system, selecting high-end components. Now she feels a sting knowing that none of her devices is as sophisticated as the deer mimetic.

Alex turns the car onto the long driveway. The gate is already open for them as the house senses their proximity and prepares for their arrival. Gravel crunches under the tires. Most of their land is forested in a tangle of regrowth that’s come up in the thirty years since the area was last logged. Dark evergreens mix with alders and maples that are mostly bare this late in the year. The house is a neat two-story skirted by a wide lawn with trees beyond to screen them from their neighbors. True means to plant azaleas and rhododendrons at the forest’s edge, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Amber lights are already on in the house as they drive up. The garage door is open. Alex pulls in, parking next to True’s SUV. They bought the place when she retired from the army, and both hope they never have to move again.

True retrieves her gear while Alex unloads his pistol and returns it to the trunk. She drops her pack in the mudroom, sits down to take off her boots, and then carries her gun cases into the kitchen, leaving them on the table.

She takes a moment to listen, but the house is quiet. Too quiet. It’s like no one lives there.

“We should get a dog,” she says as Alex follows her in.

“When you’re ready to retire, we will.”

She turns, leaning back against the counter, arms crossed, eyeing him, taking in his dark eyes, his high forehead, his lean weathered features. A handsome man, still. She fell so hard that night they met. After she knew she was pregnant, she told her parents, “It was meant to be. We share the same birthday.” God, what a ridiculous tangle of passions she’d been, so defiant, so in love. She let the pregnancy happen, maybe in part to show Colt that her life was her own.

Not the smartest move she ever made, but not one she regrets.

“So tell me all of it,” she says gruffly, brought low by the heartache of fractured trust.

His gaze is stern. “You heard what Lincoln said. Shaw wasn’t the hero you imagine.”

“So what happened? What did he get Diego to do?”

“He got him to cover up a war crime.”

“Ah, fuck.” True turns away. Diego’s time in Kunar Province had cast a shadow over him, but she attributed it to combat’s horrific reality. It doesn’t take a war crime to affect a man that way.

“Wait,” she says, puzzled by a new thought. “Lincoln was there. He must have known.”

Alex meets her troubled gaze. “Yes.”