The Last Good Man

Ninety Seconds

We were spread out on the slope above the road, at least sixty meters apart—too far to see each other through the mist and past all those sapling trees—and everything had gone to hell. Hector had been silenced by a small, intense explosion. Jesse was the only man beyond him and he’d dropped out of comms, so I knew the line was broken. And there was intermittent shooting down there.

Mason said, “That’s Jesse shooting.”

Laser pulses, thread-thin, flashed in the mist all up and down our line, and the night was vibrating with a soft, low buzz that made my skin crawl.

“Go to radio,” I ordered. Stealth was blown. We might as well try it.

Francis yelled the order down to Jesse. “Go to radio.”

I don’t know if the software cleaned up the interference or if Saomong just wasn’t pissing on our team channel but the radio was clear.

Francis said, “I’m going after Hector.”

Jesse reported in. “I hit one of the robots. It’s down.” Then he added, “Shit!” Three quick shots followed.

Mason growled, “I don’t have a target.”

I didn’t have a good target either. With night vision I could pick out fast movement on the slope above, what looked like three small drones. They were coming from the head of the line, somewhere above Diego, weaving between the trees, flashing in and out of sight on evasive paths. I tried to target one, but with the trees so close I couldn’t lead with my rifle. They passed, all three going away from me, flying across the slope, moving toward Mason and Francis. A few seconds later something blew up. A small explosion, from way down at the end of the line.

“Jesse, report!”

“I’m here! Still here. One of the fuckers came right at me—” More shooting, swearing. “Fucking killer robots! They’ve got explosives on them. Don’t let them get close.”

Fuck me. That’s what I thought. Just fuck me. We’d heard talk about this kind of shit. We all knew it was coming. I guess we just assumed it would be our side fielding it first.

No joy. And I couldn’t see the three drones anymore. I couldn’t see any other movement, no flashes. “Francis!” I couldn’t see him either, but I knew he was climbing that slope. He’d be right in their path. “Francis, drop!” I warned him. “The goddamn robot swarm is coming toward you.”

His voice came back to me over comms. “Shit. I can’t drop. No room between these fucking trees.” Then, “Jesus! Hector’s dead. He’s fucking dead. He didn’t step on a mine either. His fucking head is blown off!”

This triggered Jesse. “Killer bots!” he screamed. “I told you. Fucking exploding killer bots. You got that yet? I’ve dropped three.” More shots. “Blown up one. How the fuck many are there?”

“We got nothin’ up here!” Mason told him. “They’re all on you!”

Mason was right. Jesse was the only one firing, the only one fighting. I could hear the steady, distant concussion of his weapon, and louder, his cursing over comms. “Goddamn, goddamn. Shaw, I need backup!”

“Retreat!” I told him. “Evade! Get the hell out of there.” Because help was going to take time. I was moving, but there was no way I could get to him in less than two minutes. It was Hector who’d been in position to back him up but Hector was dead, and Francis was in the path of the approaching swarm. “Mason, we gotta get down there.”

“I’m moving, Shaw.”

That’s when Diego jumped in, lighting up a bogie I couldn’t see. “D, what have you got?”

“Nothing.” Two more quick shots. “Just want to see if gunfire will draw the swarm off Jesse, bring the bots back up here.”

That sounded crazy to me, but Francis said, “Shit, it’s working. I got two bots coming back this way. No. Four.” And I knew Diego was a fucking genius.

I told Francis, “Let ’em get past you. We’ll take care of ’em up here. You get down there and help Jesse.”

“On it. Jesse—”

He got interrupted by another cracking explosion… and Jesse’s weapon went silent.

“Ah, shit,” Mason whispered.

Francis ignored my order and started shooting. Maybe a mech had survived the assault on Jesse and was coming after him, I don’t know. But there was another pop, a scream, whispered cursing.

“I see ’em, boss,” Mason said, dead calm. “I’m going to hit the last one in the line.”

“Make it count.”

I could hear that skin-crawling soft buzzing again and Diego moving, his pack scraping like sandpaper against the tree trunks as he squeezed between them, changing his position. It sounded like he was descending, moving toward the road.

I got my pistol out. It was easier to maneuver between the trees.

Mason fired a single shot. “Shit.”

He’d missed. I couldn’t see them yet but I fired a couple shots anyway. Confuse their algorithms. Right?

Mason fired again, again. And I saw one. I led it with my pistol, squeezed off a series of shots, and hit trees. It came at me on a zigzag. Took me three more shots but I got it. It didn’t blow up when I hit it. Just spun into a tree branch and crashed. It struck me that they weren’t that dangerous, not really, not unless they came at you in numbers. But two, maybe three, had buzzed past me and were after Diego, who was lighting things up in an effort to attract some action.

He got it, all right. The swarm was after him but he was a step ahead of all of us. He’d moved downslope until he was right above the road. Then he pulled a grenade, dropped it where he stood, and sprinted toward me. When that thing went off, it knocked trees into the road, but it made the kamikazes disappear.

“Shaw!” he yelled, trying to find me.

I moved out to where he could see me. He looked okay.

“You hear anymore?” he asked when we met up.

No. I could still hear Francis over comms, soft moans, trying to bite down on the pain, but the forest was quiet. That awful low humming, gone. “I think you got ’em,” I said.

The fight had gone on for maybe ninety seconds and I had three men down.

We set off together, moving as quickly as we could. We had to help Francis, and confirm Jesse’s status.

“If we see more,” Diego whispered, “don’t shoot at them unless they’re coming straight for us. Don’t approach them. I think perceived aggression sets them off.”

Perceived aggression. That’s how he described it. Hector had tried to touch one and it blew his head off. Jesse had lit up a swarm and then gone silent. A touch, or a fusillade—it was all the same to the machines. But I let Mason know what Diego had said.

We rendezvoused by Francis. His right hand was gone and his face and neck were shredded but he was still alive. We hooked him up to a pack of artificial blood and sprayed dressing on his wounds.

The mission was fucked. We had failed. No way to recover. The CCA would have picked up the explosions, the gunfire. Saomong was aware of us. They would be coming, and we needed to get out. Out from under their radio interference so we could call for a ride.

There was no way we could carry Hector’s body with us, not through the maze of that sapling forest. So we took his tags and his electronics and left him where he fell.

I got Francis onto my shoulders and we went to find Jesse.

Diego and Mason broke trees, pulled branches out of the way, tried to make it easier for me. We were getting close to the place where Jesse had to be, when Diego found a broken mech lying in the leaf litter. It must have been one that Jesse shot down. Diego moved in on it.

“Don’t touch that thing, D!” I warned him.

“I don’t need to touch it.” He stopped a couple meters away and scoped it. “Put a light on it, Mason. I need to see the details.”

Mason didn’t like that idea at all. “We can’t use a light,” he growled.

Like the CCA didn’t already know where we were? I came down on Diego’s side. “Get a light on it, tight beam,” I ordered. “We need to know what it is, where it came from.”

Mason fished in a pocket for his LED. He illuminated the target.

Diego took pictures through his scope. Mason pulled out a smart phone and took a couple more.

I still had Francis draped over my shoulders, so I just asked them, “What have you got?”

Mason came over to show me. We hunched over the screen to hide the light. It showed a clear, magnified picture of the mech. It was lying there, belly up. Its wings and its landing gear were broken but the fuselage was intact. A flattened diamond shape, maybe eight inches, nose to tail. Fucking kamikaze killer mech. First time I ever saw one. Color was light gray. Looked like aluminum or titanium, but it could have been plastic.

“You see those markings?” Diego asked, still studying it through his scope.

I saw them. There was a label with Western-style numerals alongside several columns of Chinese characters. The characters didn’t bother me. Those are used in a lot of Asian countries—Japan, Korea, Vietnam. No, it was the logo that burned. Lotus flower, four petals shaped like curved swords. I knew that design. Diego knew it too.

“That’s Kai Yun,” he said.

Kai Yun. The agency that was supposed to be assisting with oversight on our mission.

“Enough,” I said. “Kill the light.”

Mason switched off the display. He was still cool. He was always cool. But Diego was winding up. “What the fuck? Kai Yun is supposed to be on our side. And they blew Hector’s head off? Blew off Francis’s arm? And Jesse?”

“Yeah, and now the CCA knows we’re here,” Mason reminded us, unnecessarily.

“That too,” Diego growled.

Kai Yun had killed us. We all knew it. The question was, on purpose or by accident? That we didn’t know—but we had more immediate concerns.

“We gotta get out of here,” I told them. “That’s the only way we are going to get us some righteous justice. We get out of here, and I promise you I will see to it that someone hangs for this.”

They liked that. It settled them down. But we still needed to confirm Jesse’s status. We pushed on, leaving the mech where it lay. We couldn’t risk recovering it and having it blow up in our hands.

Later, though, I wondered—was it as dead as it looked? Or was it still playing spy bot, recording everything it heard around it? I imagined some technician in a secure facility somewhere in Shanghai hearing those words I’d said—I will see to it that someone hangs for this. And I knew we were fucked.