The Last Good Man

The Black Heart

“We’re coming, True,” Lincoln says.

A warning? A promise? True can’t tell.

She is on her knees as he ends the call, her chest rising and falling in anxious rhythm as she wonders again if it’s right action that brought Lincoln here, or vendetta.

She knows—she agrees—that Shaw must account for more than just Renata’s death. There is the threat made against Lincoln and Requisite Operations, the loss of the Hai-Lins, and far worse, the executions Miles witnessed in the desert. No doubt there are many more crimes. God knows what’s been done in the name of Variant Forces. And farther away in time, there is Shaw’s disappearance, his broken oath, his failure to come home.

Still, True would like to believe Shaw innocent at least of the attack at Requisite Operations.

She turns back to him and as she does, the wailing siren goes mercifully silent. She closes her eyes and whispers a grateful “Thank you.” When she opens them again, she finds him watching her. “Hey,” she says, kneeling to pull a roll of gauze from the med kit. “I need you to hold on, okay? I’m going to get you out of here.”

He surprises her again with the strength of his voice—a hoarse whisper, but coherent, easy to understand. “We done now?” he asks. “You get what you came for?”

He’s got a multitool on his belt. “I’m going to borrow this.” She takes it and uses the scissors to cut away his ruined shirt, fully exposing the protective vest underneath. It’s got flat loops meant to hold gear. She threads the gauze through those loops. “I need to stabilize your arm,” she warns him. She doesn’t wait for his consent. She takes his ruined arm and folds it across his chest, hearing the catch in his throat, watching his eyes squeeze shut and blood rush to his face. She uses the gauze to tie his arm down, and as she works, she says, “We’re not done, Shaw. I want you to tell me one more thing. Tell me why we’re here. Why did you take this path? Choose this life? Why didn’t you come home?”

“You got my visor?” he asks, voice weaker now.

“It’s around somewhere.”

“It’s under the car,” Colt says.

The visor doesn’t matter. She pulls both daypacks close and upends them, spilling their contents on the floor.

“Find it,” Shaw tells her.

“Answer my question.” Working quickly, she inventories the equipment. He’s got the extra magazine, a clean shirt, a waterproof sack with battery packs in it, a PV panel, and recharging cables. She’s got a small first-aid kit, a few toiletries, one beetle still secure in its capsule, and two tracking discs—“mother’s helpers.” Not much that’s useful, but she slides the beetle and the tracking discs into her jacket pocket. The rest of it she shoves into her pack, leaving his empty. “Why this path, Shaw?” she presses him.

His eyes are closed. A cold smile is on his lips. “Because I survived Nungsan.”

An answer that says nothing.

“Get ready,” she tells him in gentle warning. “I’ve got to pack this wound.”

At her first touch, he sucks in his breath. His back arches. She’s got nothing for the pain and not nearly enough trauma dressing to finish the job, but she does what she can, hiding the exposed bone, talking as she works. “You were angry. I understand that. To go through that, and to be left there, abandoned there. But in the end you won. You rescued yourself.”

“No.” He growls the word. “Fuck, no. God saved me, True. The Old Man set it up, made it work. I cracked two skulls and walked out of there. No one even took a shot at me. Maybe they were all drunk, stoned; it doesn’t matter. Whatever the physics, it was a fucking miracle.”

She braces for some acerbic comment from Colt, but what she gets is a tired sigh. “Miracles happen,” he mutters—a low, reluctant admission.

“A miracle?” she muses. She wants to hear more and she wants to keep him talking too, keep him conscious. His strength amazes her. It makes her want to believe he could survive this after all.

“A literal miracle,” Shaw insists. “God, this hurts. Will you stop?”

“I’m done,” she lies. “I just want to tape it all down.”

His eyes are open—bloodshot and red-rimmed. His dark tan doesn’t hide the mottled pallor of his skin. But his breathing is quiet and though his voice is a whisper, his words are clear as he says again, “A literal miracle. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I can’t explain it any other way than divine intervention.”

As he says it, a breeze touches her neck. That’s what she tells herself when she feels a chill and hears, faintly, Diego’s agonized screams. “Are you a man of faith?” she asks, working a note of skepticism into her voice.

This earns a slight, bitter smile. “You know how it is. We all want to make sense of things. When there’s some horror show with only one survivor, people say God meant it to be that way. God was done with the rest of them, but not with that last poor asshole. If you’re the survivor, it must be because you’ve still got something to do, there must be some fucking reason for it.”

He’s right. People do say things like that, and she gets angry every time she hears it, every time she thinks of the life Diego might have had. “Is that what you believe?”

“Hell, yeah,” he whispers.

“You’re lying.”

A faint chuckle.

“You know it was just chance,” she insists. “Just the way it worked out.”

“No, no, no,” he says in a mocking singsong. “That’s the easy answer. You’ve got to look deeper. You’ve got to see down to the black heart. I’m not a good man. Never was. You ask Lincoln. He’ll tell you. I’ve done some shit.

“So when it came down to just me and Diego, it was D who should have lived. A good man. Deserved to get home. But I’m the one who walked away. And after, I wondered, was I supposed to be grateful it wasn’t me dying in that fire? Was I supposed to see the fucking light? If that’s what the Old Man intended, he miscalculated. I wanted a different deal.”

Take me instead.

A sacrifice offered—and rejected. “So you’ve been feuding with God, Shaw?”

“All is vanity,” he whispers. Then in a firmer voice, “What I’ve learned since Nungsan is that it doesn’t matter what we want or who we are or what we do, because our time is over. God’s done with us. It’s the mechs’ turn to be on stage. Li Guiying worked hard making it happen. A million others with her. Mechs build our shit, they run the economy, fight our wars, while we sit on our asses and pretend we’re relevant. We’re not. You know that.”

He’s not wrong.

What was it Tamara said? An aggressive, diverse swarm is more dangerous than any traditional soldier, and easy to print up. True used to pilot helicopters but most are robotic now. AIs fly warplanes, guide missiles, control satellites. They analyze incoming intelligence faster than any human could process it. Artificial intelligence and robotics make it possible for a small outfit like Requisite Operations—or Variant Forces—to operate with formidable force, invade unprotected territory, engage in raids and bombings and dogfights above peaceful cities. To act with the authority of a sovereign nation.

She thinks of Lincoln, in charge of his own small sovereign nation. He’s moving on foot through the gridlocked city. She tells herself, He’ll be here soon. She shrugs on her daypack so she’ll be ready to go.

Shaw’s eyes are half-closed when he murmurs, “It’s the end times, True.”

“No,” she says in gentle dismissal. “That’s nonsense.” Her tone is a pose, a false front of confidence, but she is not going to encourage his apocalyptic state of mind. She wipes the sweat and the tears from his eyes with a last clean scrap of gauze. “You know you’re fucking crazy?”

“Crazy,” he agrees. “Not wrong.”

She’s almost grateful when Colt interrupts—though there’s fear in his gruff voice. “Oh crap,” he says. “There’s a goddamned armed robot coming down the street.”

True is abruptly aware of the ratcheting sound of tracks on the pavement. She grabs the Triple-Y and starts to lever herself up on stiff legs, her head pounding, but Shaw reaches across his body with his good hand and grabs the rifle barrel, pushing it down, unbalancing her.

“Don’t try to fight it,” he warns her. “You can’t win and you’re not white-listed.”

It comes fast. She hardly has time to look around before it’s there: a little armed robotic vehicle, poised on the threshold alongside Guiying’s remains. It’s got a traditional design, like a miniature tank, riding on caterpillar treads. It’s only about forty inches long, with a jointed arm supporting a short gun barrel, and behind that, a mast with a 360-degree camera sealed within a spherical transparent housing. Affixed to its armored surface is the Rogue Lightning emblem. Marking another deadly mech. She notes this as the gun swivels, sighting on her.

“Fuck,” she whispers and perversely her next thought is how tired she feels. But tired or not, she has to do what she can.

“It’s my people,” Shaw says. “Didn’t want to bring them in. Couldn’t stop the emergency beacon.”

“That’s why you needed your visor.”

“You’ll be okay.”

She doesn’t believe it. Don’t trust anyone.

The situation is slipping away. Lincoln is coming but not soon enough. She turns to hide the movement of her hand as she pulls a tracking disc out of her pocket.

“Two armed males just stepped into sight,” Colt warns.

She activates the disc, shoves it into a hidden pocket at the waistband of her pants. She gets out the other disc, and under the guise of adjusting the medical tape on Shaw’s shoulder, she shoves it between the layers of dressing.

“You got that?” she whispers to Colt.

He responds in a defeated voice, “You think you’re going to be a hostage. Roger that.”