Linda Nagata - The Last Good Man

Their oldest son, Diego, said the same thing. I’ll be back, Dad. Don’t worry. That was eight years ago. Sergeant Diego Delgado, twenty-four years old. He was shot up in a firefight in Burma, and then captured, and executed—slowly—the ordeal recorded on video and released to the world.

But Alex is not to worry.

Not to wish ill on anyone, but as he opens the kitchen door and steps out into the garage, he hopes things aren’t too quiet tonight. Better to keep busy and not think too hard about where True might be and what she might be going through.

True climbs into the backseat of a passenger van, still feeling the weight of Alex’s disapproval. He objected to her frontline service when she was in the army, and he doesn’t like her participation in the QRF now. The pressure has been worse in the years since Diego’s death. She understands where it’s coming from. But this is what she does. It’s who she is.

For now .

She’s still strong, still agile, but no denying reality. Sooner rather than later, age will put an end to her deployments. She won’t be able to pass the physical qualifications and she’ll have to stand down.

Until then, she doesn’t plan to stop.

She slides across the bench seat to the window.

Experience has taught her that the best way to handle goodbyes is to keep them short, then put the guilt and the doubt away so that she can focus on the mission and what is required of her and of her teammates to meet their goals and come home safe.

Chris and Rohan slide into the seat in front of her. Chris hasn’t trimmed his beard since the interview with Yusri Atwan, and he’s looking scruffy. Rohan always wears a full beard, and he always looks scruffy. They both turn around to trade fist bumps with True.

“Right action,” Chris says quietly.

“Right action,” she echoes.

Rohan treats them to a wolfish grin. “Gotta love Lincoln. We are going to lose so much money on this operation.”

“Truth,” Chris mutters, shaking his head at the profligacy of it all, as if to shore up his reputation for fiscal prudence.

Hypocrite , True thinks wryly. He is just as eager to undertake this venture as any of them.

As Chris turns to face forward, Juliet Holliday climbs into the van. She takes the seat beside True and they trade the traditional fist bump—“Right action.”

Juliet is only thirty-five, married just two years to a game developer whose only experience with the military is through first-person shooters. She leans in close, whispers in True’s ear, “I lied to him. I told him this is a training mission.”

True rolls her eyes. From the seat in front, Rohan says, “A fucking live-fire training mission.”

Rohan lost most of his natural hearing during an extended firefight in Ukraine. Now he uses cybernetic enhancements wired into his auditory nerve, giving him a range of hearing far greater than the human norm, and with components that can be easily swapped out if his ears ever get blown again. Juliet punches him lightly in the shoulder. “Stop eavesdropping,” she warns while Lincoln opens the driver’s door and slides behind the wheel. Jameson takes shotgun.

The other four members of the QRF—Felice Farr, Nasir Peters, Ted Vargas, and Nate Gilbert—are in a second van.

It’s a twenty-minute drive from the ReqOps campus to a private airfield. When they get there, no one barks orders. All are experienced; they know what they’re doing and they don’t need instruction. Moving quickly, quietly, they board a chartered business jet that will fly them in stages to Cyprus.

Lincoln boards last. He will not be going with them but wants this chance for a few final words. There will, of course, be continuous communication throughout the mission, but it’s his belief, his experience, that it is easier to forge a deeper connection, a more unified purpose, when words are spoken in real time, face to face.

The team works quickly to stow their gear in cargo closets and in overhead bins while Lincoln waits at the head of the aisle.

The idea of organizing a quick reaction force was born out of a spirited discussion in a bar at a conference in DC. Lincoln can’t remember who first proposed it. It might have been Chris or True. Hell, it could have been him. He’d had a few drinks. He remembers sketching out an organizational structure on the screen of his tablet, outlining the necessary equipment, the number of personnel, the potential market, and then following that with a rough and dirty budget calculation to show it could never be profitable.

But all three of them grew up in a tradition of service—they wanted to do it—so they went ahead anyway and the team has done good work. They’ve saved lives. That matters.

The bitter ambivalence Lincoln feels is because he has to stay behind. His burn injuries and his hand make him a weaker man than he used to be, and his bionic eye does not come close to replicating his natural vision. It lets him see only in gray scale, a monochrome world on his left that blends into a color spectrum where his good eye takes over. And it’s a low-resolution interface—enough to distinguish objects on his left but not to see them clearly. Despite his experience, he would be a liability on this mission.

So instead of going himself, he is sending his soldiers. Enabling them, encouraging them to take on a potentially deadly task without any authority behind them, just their own will to do it.

More than any of the rest, Lincoln is aware that Requisite Operations is challenging a century-old tradition of national authority in which it is the duty of the state to protect its citizens. That tradition is collapsing in a world of failed states and ungoverned territories. When legitimate governments cannot or dare not intervene to protect the welfare of their citizens, or when no legitimate government exists, then hiring a private military company—a company of mercenaries—becomes the only realistic option for corporations, NGCs, or individuals who find themselves in trouble.

Someone’s got to do the dirty work.

Lincoln waits for the team to settle, his prosthetic fingers tapping restlessly, thumb to index, middle, ring, and pinkie. It’s a nervous habit. No predicting the direction events will take. But Chris is an excellent commander and Lincoln will follow virtually, offering any assistance he can.

Seat belts click. The rustling subsides. Nine faces look up at him, alert, expectant. They know what’s at stake, but Lincoln wants to hammer it home. In his raspy voice he impresses upon them: “The first goal of this mission is to extract Fatima Atwan and return her to her home and family. But the lives of four other hostages also depend on your actions. I want every one of them extracted.”

This earns him a low chorus of yes, sirs , serious faces all around.

He nods to acknowledge this and continues. “The mission plan you’ve been given is preliminary. Be assured we will continue to surveil the site and gather the intel needed to carry this off. As you are aware, the situation is live and evolving. Don’t expect a final go/no-go determination until you are present in the region.” He senses the copilot behind him, and the passing seconds. They cannot risk any delay. “Good luck,” he tells them. “Make us proud.”

Then he turns and descends the stairs.

The western TEZ is guarded, though not by a central authority. It’s the local militias that hold power. The borders between their domains are fluid as they skirmish over the right to collect taxes and tolls. But it’s not all treasonous deals and bloody death. The checkpoint guards, especially, are an open-minded crew, more inclined to grant passage than to ask questions, so long as the requested fee is paid.