Linda Nagata - The Last Good Man

Placed among the cypresses are eight identical boxes. They are rectangular, around ten inches long, seven inches high, and seven wide. They have a recessed handle in the top to make them easy to carry. All around the handle, tiling the top of each box, are photovoltaic cells. Tiny camera lenses glint in each visible side.

The boxes are surely more than motion sensors. True suspects some kind of defensive system. She hasn’t seen anything quite like them before, and despite the projection’s excellent resolution, she can’t see any manufacturer’s mark.

Highlighting one of the boxes, she whispers a note, annotating the projection: Add task: Eliminate PV boxes before we go over the wall.

Khalid has had the house under surveillance for three nights. On each of those nights, two armed sentries stood watch within the compound on opposite sides of the house. In addition to the men, a tethered UAV circles three hundred meters above the compound. Its tether anchors it against wind gusting off the desert, ensuring it’s always in position to use its excellent optics to watch the streets around the compound. It would certainly observe their approach and sound an alarm the moment they start over the wall… if it remains operational. The mission plan calls for it to suffer a sudden, catastrophic failure just as the QRF arrives on scene. The PV boxes need to share a similar fate.

A new annotation pops up on the projection, color-coded to Lincoln. PV boxes are on target list.

“Hey,” True whispers to him. “It’s 0400 where you are. You should be asleep.”

His hoarse voice mutters in her ear: “I’ll sleep when all of you are safe and on the way home.”

Beetles still cling to the inner walls of the compound, hiding in plain sight thanks to their flat profiles and camouflage coloration. They upload images in intermittent, energy-conserving bursts. Lincoln studies each one, alert for changes.

By 1500 he has observed six different men taking turns standing watch at the gate. There is also a boy, maybe eight years old, who has come twice out of the house, looking bored.

At 1600 a local sheikh emerges from the house accompanied by four other men. They get into the two parked sedans, the gate opens, and they drive off. Only the two trucks remain.

He has seen nothing to indicate the household is preparing to move to a different location.

At 1620 he messages Chris and True: Conditions nominal. Final authorization is pending, but best guess is, we’re a go.

Khalid returns after sunset prayer. The apartment is cooling off rapidly, while outside the wind picks up, whistling through the alley. “Are we on?” Khalid asks.

“It’s looking good,” True concedes.

As night sets in, they grow restless. Rohan obsesses over his Fortuna, using a soft cloth to wipe every square millimeter of its surface over and over again. Juliet is alert for footsteps, voices, or an engine in the alley outside and whenever she hears anything she moves to stand by the door, listening, even though the beetle keeps a constant watch. Felice packs and repacks her gear. Jameson taps keys on a virtual keyboard, taking notes for a novel he swears he’s going to write one day. True covers her nervousness by handing out protein bars, double-checking everyone’s equipment, insisting that Khalid lie down to rest, and generally making herself annoying.

Three hours after nightfall, Lincoln speaks to both teams, his voice arriving over their TINSLs. “Authorization granted. Chris, initiate the operation.”

Red Team sets out first: Chris, Nasir, Ted, and Nate, strolling together in the dark wind-scoured streets, cigarettes lit, wearing the belted, sand-colored robes that have become the affectation of so many former holy warriors, mercenaries now, available for hire, odd jobs, no questions asked. The robes ripple and snap in the frantic wind. Each man carries a weapon, either a Fortuna or Triple-Y assault rifle, balanced casually over a shoulder or resting in the crook of an arm, and they speak together softly in foreign-inflected Arabic.

Sitting cross-legged on the mattress within Khalid’s apartment, True watches a projection of the streets, tracking Red Team’s progress. She is on edge, as she is before any mission. Her heart thuds in heavy, slow beats. A knot tightens her belly.

She listens to Red Team talk—about women and the terrible taste of the cigarettes they are smoking and the impossibility of ever returning home. It’s a convincing portrayal of the exiles they are pretending to be, common soldiers left behind when the cause that drew them to the TEZ spun apart and the promises made to them were forgotten.

They play the role too well , True thinks, disturbed by the nihilism behind their words. What future can there be for men like these?

Lincoln puts an end to her melancholy spiral when he announces over comms: “Your turn, Gold Team.”

True’s heart rate spikes. She leaves on her data glove and her TINSL, but she slides off her visor, carefully , so as not to displace her hijab. She slips the visor into an expandable pocket on the front of a lightly armored utility vest that she wears over a high-necked commando shirt. Stuffed into loops on the vest are two thumb-sized capsules containing miniature members of the origami army: mayflies in one, a spare beetle in the other.

The vest, the shirt, and her matching trousers all have an outer layer of flame-resistant adaptive fabric woven for nocturnal camouflage. The black abaya covers it all. Rising to her feet, she fastens the last of the abaya’s snaps. Then she fetches her weapon, checks the load.

“Right action,” Jameson whispers, holding up a fist.

True raises a hand and their gloved knuckles kiss. Jameson has switched from the Fortuna assault rifle he carried on the way in, to a Kieffer-Obermark like True’s, with an underslung shotgun. Rohan still has his Fortuna. Felice and Juliet both have KOs but without the shotgun, making them lighter. Like True, they wear abayas over their combat gear. The men wear loose gauze tunics and trousers as an outer layer. For now, the MARCs are stashed in hidden bags and pockets.

More fist bumps are traded, everyone murmuring, “Right action.”

They pick up their packs. True has stashed a couple of kamikazes in hers. Khalid grabs the suitcases, now mostly empty. He exits first. The cab is parked just steps away. True holds her KO close to her body, letting her robe’s wind-blown billows hide it. She gets into the cab’s backseat. Felice comes in behind her. Juliet gets in from the other side.

The doors close. The trunk slams shut. Khalid takes a few seconds to lock the apartment door, then he slips into the driver’s seat. Rohan and Jameson crowd in beside him, making no effort to hide their weapons.

True watches Khalid in the rearview mirror as he starts the engine. He looks tense, excited, eager. Khalid’s reputation is solid, but he’s the rookie on this operation. He’s done intelligence work for ReqOps, but none of them have worked directly with him before. She catches his eye in the mirror. “We’re not in any hurry,” she reminds him.

He answers with a short-burst smile. “Not yet.”

She nods tacit agreement, saying nothing else, reassured by the knowledge that Lincoln is in the loop, ready to talk him through any complications.

Khalid triggers the cab’s silent electric engine and they pull out.

True watches the street ahead, wishing she could observe it with the light-enhancing function of her visor. She relies on the headlights instead and the electric lights escaping the houses. Skidding trash and little whirlwinds of dust. The day’s foot traffic is gone, but knots of men still stand about despite the wind, three and four together, leaning on parked cars or in open doorways, the screens of their phones and tablets lighting up tired, bearded faces. Some look up, eyeing the cab as it rolls past. Jameson makes sure the silhouette of his KO is visible to discourage banditry and adventurism.