The Last Good Man

Precision Strike

True is sitting behind the wheel of her SUV, stopped at a red light during the brief exchange with Lincoln. The abbreviated conversation reflects the tension, the mistrust that has surfaced between them. She doesn’t like what she’s learned about him in the past twelve hours. He withheld facts from her about Nungsan. He failed to report a war crime.

She wants to believe he had good reasons.

She feels cut off, isolated by the secrets of others. Alex swears he’s withheld nothing more from her but the wound remains, while Lincoln might still have more secrets to confess.

Then there is Shaw Walker.

Did the deer mimetic belong to Shaw? Or to his outfit?

Variant Forces.

The light turns green and she’s rolling again. Traffic is heavy, but over half the cars are autonomous, helping to smooth the flow. AIs are better drivers—more efficient, patient, and conservative than humans. True sometimes uses autonomous mode, but this morning she’s driving. She needs the sense of control.

As she nears ReqOps she finds herself following Renata Ballard’s sleek red two-seater electric. Renata’s brake lights come on as she rounds the last curve. True slows in turn, surprised by the sight of several cars parked on the road’s shoulder. A ReqOps maintenance worker stands watch at the end of the driveway. He waves at Renata to come in. True follows. Strangers are gathered at the entrance taking pictures, but no one tries to block the way.

Renata stops at the gate. An automated inspection clears her car and admits her. True goes next. The tall gate and a masonry wall screen the parking lot from view of the road. True pulls into her usual stall, then meets Renata. They trade fist bumps, knuckles stiff in the early morning cold.

“Missed you last night,” True says.

A smile brightens Renata’s graceful, fair-skinned face. Her perfectly groomed eyebrows rise in teasing challenge. “Hey, so I was a little late. You were already gone.”

“Yeah,” True concedes as they walk together across the damp pavement. “Had some things to deal with.”

In an ideal world, a woman would be judged purely by her skill set, but both True and Renata live in the real world and they accept that looking good—in a way that is powerful and feminine, with no affectation of weakness or vulnerability—is an effective asset. True’s ideal is a polished but relaxed look, mature and coolly competent. Faux military is a favorite and she’s wearing that today: slim ankle boots, form-fitting slacks, silky shirt under a cardigan jacket, all in understated colors. Minimal makeup.

Renata is more flamboyant. Like True, she’s taller than most women but where True is slim, Renata has curves, and dresses to enhance them. Today she’s wearing gray slacks, a dusky-rose sweater, and heels of a height that True would never go near. Her honey-blond hair is pinned and braided in complex patterns.

True says, “That was one intense exit from Tadmur. I knew the technicals wouldn’t be a problem for you, but when those Arkinsons showed up… we all sweated that one. Nice job holding them off. Spectacular fireworks when you took that one down.”

Renata wrinkles her nose, shakes her head in disgust. “That wasn’t me on the stick. I turned it all over to the AI when the Arkinsons showed up. Fully autonomous mode.”

True stops at the edge of the terrace, disturbed, and a little angry too. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry to hear it.” She shakes her head. “We really have ceded the battle space to programmers and engineers.”

Renata answers this with a wry smile and a dismissive wave. “Inevitable. It’s what we’ve been training the AI for and thank God it performed, or you wouldn’t be here, sister. You and me, we were lucky we got into it when we did. Lucky we had a chance to fly. And now?” She shrugs. “I still get to be air force chief and you get to play commando, so what the fuck.”

“What the fuck,” True echoes agreeably. “And regardless, you’re a great air force chief.”

“Thanks, sweetie.”

The door opens ahead of them. Hayden is at the reception desk. His cheery good morning is immediately countered by a gruff audio message from Lincoln, piped in through her TINSL: Conference room. Now.

Her gut clenches. Something has changed in the twenty minutes since his terse phone call. “Got to go,” she tells Renata. “Lincoln’s in a mood.”

Renata lifts an eyebrow and taps her own TINSL. “I got the same message. Come on. I’ll walk with you to the conference room.”

Chris is there ahead of them, sprawled in a chair, a cup of coffee steaming on the table in front of him, his cheeks flushed like he’s just finished a run. They crosscheck and confirm: None of them knows the topic of the meeting.

Swift, clattering footsteps in the hallway. Tamara enters, looking harried and impatient. She plops into the seat at the head of the table, rocks back, and says, “Someone want to tell me why we’re here?”

Lincoln must have just stepped out of his office, because Tamara’s question is still hanging in the air when his chiseled figure looms in the doorway. “I’ll tell you,” he says in clipped syllables. He slams the door behind him with a concussion that makes True jump. His artificial eye overlooks her. Overlooks Chris and Tamara, too. Fixes on Renata. “I just got off the phone with Eden Transit. They’ve been hit. A pair of Arkinsons carried out a precision strike against the hangar where our Hai-Lins were housed—”

“Fuck!” Renata says. Her fist bangs the table, causing True to flinch again. She meets Chris’s stunned gaze across the table’s expanse as Renata rises to her feet. “What the hell kind of security—”

Lincoln holds up his right hand, his living hand, palm out. Renata breaks off, but her pretty face has darkened with ominous anger.

Chris speaks into the silence. “We got anything left?”

“Not a damn thing.” Lincoln passes behind True’s chair. As he does, she feels the prickling current of his anger on the back of her neck. He says, “The Hai-Lins are a total loss. They were being serviced, prepped for a move to Tel Aviv when an anonymous warning was called in, ninety seconds ahead of the strike.” He reaches the end of the table, turns his scarred face to take in his senior staff. “The hangar is still on fire, but all Eden Transit personnel got out and are accounted for.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Tamara says with conviction. “It was Variant Forces, wasn’t it? It had to be. Thank God they had the professional courtesy to call in a warning—”

“Professional courtesy?” Renata echoes, contempt in her voice. “We took out one of theirs, so they take out three of ours? That’s not courtesy. It’s a declaration of war.”

True is thinking the same thing. She remembers what Alex said, that Shaw Walker is not above revenge. “We didn’t just take down one of his Arkinsons,” she says. “We hit his reputation.”

Chris asks Lincoln, “Do we know it’s Jon Helm? Has there been a claim of responsibility?”

“Not so far.”

Chris says, “We need to be absolutely sure before we react.”

“I’m not sure we can afford to react,” True says. She’s feeling sick as she runs a mental tally of their losses. “We had the Hai-Lins insured for accidents but not for acts of war, so there is no way we are going to be able to recover their value. We’ve also lost the income they earned flying as armed escorts.”

“This is a major, major loss,” Lincoln agrees. “We are not going to be able to replace the Hai-Lins. Not right away.” He looks at Renata.

She returns his gaze, hands on her hips. “Are you firing me?”

“No. We might have to subcontract you out, though. We’ve proved our AI can fight. Maybe we can run the software on someone else’s machines.” He pulls out a chair and sits down. “Cash flow is an issue but the security of our people is a bigger concern.” He rests his arms on the table, the riotous colors of his sleeve tattoos enhanced by their contrast to the polished wood. True’s gaze shifts from those illustrations of dragons and koi and snarling lions to find Lincoln studying her. “True, why the hell didn’t you let me know the moment you detected an intrusion at your place?”

Chris leans forward. “You had trouble?”

“No trouble. Not really. It was just a surveillance device. Sophisticated. Not something I’d seen before so I sent video to Tamara.” She turns to Tamara with a questioning gaze. “Did you find anything on it?”

“It’s a custom job,” Lincoln says coldly.

Tamara nods. “You should have copied the boss on it, True.”

Lincoln takes it a step farther: “You should have called it in.”

True doesn’t like being put on the spot. She squares her shoulders, crosses her arms. “It was 0400. The thing had no weapons; it presented no threat. There was no reason to call it in.”

“You think you’re safe here?” Lincoln asks her. “What if that device was sent to confirm your presence in the house before a strike was called in?”

“This is not the TEZ,” she snaps.

“What if similar devices were snooping around the homes of everyone else who just got back from the TEZ? Don’t you think they might have liked a warning?”

True weighs this. It was just a surveillance device. Beyond that, the incident had felt personal—just me and Alex bonding over a common enemy—but she sees, in retrospect, that it was a mistake not to report the incident. “Okay, you’re right,” she says. “I’ve had surveillance drones fly over before but this was different. I should have called it in.”

“I’d like to see the video,” Chris says.

“I’ll forward it.”

Lincoln stands up. “It’s 0800 and we’ve got a company meeting. Staff is already assembled in the auditorium. True, I want you to kick things off with an update on the status of the Hai-Lins. Chris, you’ll follow with a review of at-home security protocols. I’ll go over what not to say when we have our interviews with the feds. They’re due at 0830. We push them through as quickly as we can, and once they’re out of here we’ll meet again and consider our options. Let’s go.”