The Last Hero: Book 2 of The Last War Series Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Dedication

  Front Matter

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Epilogue

  ebook backmatter

  The Last Hero

  Book 2

  Of

  The Last War Series

  For my three favorite admirals: Kirk, Adama, and Ackbar

  To be notified of future books in The Last War series, sign up here: smarturl.it/peterbostrom

  Peter Bostrom is the pen name of Nick Webb co-writing with other authors. The Last Hero is by Nick Webb and David Adams.

  Copyright 2017 by Hyperspace Media

  Other books by Peter Bostrom:

  The Last War, Book 1 of The Last War series

  Other books by Nick Webb:

  Constitution, Book 1 of the Legacy Fleet Series

  Mercury’s Bane, Book 1 of the Earth Dawning Series

  The Terran Gambit, Book 1 of the Pax Humana Saga

  Other Books by David Adams:

  Lacuna, Book 1 of the Lacuna Series

  The Polema Campaign, Book 1 of The Symphony of War

  Prologue

  MaxGainz Medical Steroid Plant

  Planet Zenith

  Tonatiuh Sector

  Six months after the events of The Last War

  Steve Bratta fumbled for his security card, keenly aware of the long line growing behind him. “Sorry, sorry. It’s here somewhere … hah, I always lose these things.…”

  The guard, his expression distinctly bored, waited. The people behind him waited. Everyone waited as Bratta’s fingers patted over his chest pockets.

  His briefcase? No. It wouldn’t be there. Left pants pocket. Right pants pocket. Back pocket—back pocket! Back pocket. His fingers closed around the thin plastic card and he withdrew it triumphantly. “Here. My ID card. Doctor Steve Bratta.”

  “I don’t need your name,” said the guard, swiping the card. “The computer will tell me.” The screen beside him lit up.

  DOCTOR STEVE X. BRATTA, PhD, MD

  MEDICAL TECHNICIAN GRADE I

  ID: XP-379-9951-532

  SPECIALISATION: GENETICS

  ENTRY: APPROVED

  “Doctor Bratta?” said the guard, checking the image of Bratta on the monitor to his face.

  Bratta tried his best to squint just like he was in the photo. Why did he always squint during photographs?

  The guard looked to him. Then to the screen. Then back to him. “This doesn’t look like you.”

  “It’s, uh, definitely me. I just got some new glasses. That might be it.”

  Nothing.

  Time for a joke. Bratta smiled as wide as he could. “Also,” he said, “I have a doctorate in applied genetics and I’m a medical doctor, so I’m more like, you know, a doctor doctor.” A pause. “Like, you know, doctor doctor, give me the news.…”

  Silence.

  “It’s my first day,” said Bratta, instantly cringing on the inside. Why. Why did he always mess up the simplest social things? “I, uh, only transferred to Zenith yesterday.”

  The guard blinked slowly. “Well, good for you, doctor. Next.”

  Bratta clutched his briefcase close to his chest, keeping his eyes down as he walked past the series of scanners that were probably bombarding his body with radiation—non-ionizing, he hoped—in the search for weapons. No weapons, of course. Just his phone. He preferred to call it a phone, rather than a communicator. Old school.

  He walked until he was far enough away from his embarrassment, and then Bratta looked up.

  The grounds of the MaxGainz complex were square and fenced in with razor wire, each corner a tall fortified tower topped with a twin-barreled gun that glinted ominously in the moonlight. Squat, prefab buildings lined the central thoroughfare, crammed in next to each other, with modest crowds moving from building to building, the whole area lit up with floodlights. It looked more like a military complex than anything else, but Bratta assumed there was a good reason for the security. Some of these border worlds could be pretty rough.

  They’d told him that days and nights lasted nine Earth days on this world, but the fact hadn’t really sunk in yet. He’d been here thirty-six hours and it was, technically, the same night. A faint throbbing in his head signaled something else he’d forgotten. Morning coffee. A caffeine-withdrawal headache made his temples throb—part psychosomatic, part chemical dependency. Black coffee had carried him through medical school, but the enduring addiction was a permanent reminder of all the sleep he’d missed.

  Fortunately, one of the prefabs was topped with a giant boiling coffee mug sign lit up in neon, and beside it, some Chinese characters he couldn’t read. But more than the monolingual signage and the steaming mug of joe, the smell—rich and creamy and bitter—tingled his nose with the promise of relief.

  Oh sweet Java, oh merciful Gold Coast blend, deliver me from my lethargy.

  He drifted toward the coffee shop in a haze, eagerly anticipating that first sip. No doubt the prices would be criminal—it was a pr
ivately run enterprise with a wholly captive client base on a distant, remote world, hundreds of lightyears from Earth—but it didn’t matter. Anything for that sweet, delicious cup of life-giving caffeine. Any price for—

  A body landed on the roof of the coffee house, bones breaking with a sickening crunch. It rolled off the roof, crashing down beside him.

  Bratta stared in bewilderment. It looked like a Chinese marine. Poor guy had his whole lower torso crushed. Doctor mode kicked in: the patient wasn’t moving and the blood was fresh, body absent rigor, with lacerations of the face and scalp and an obvious fracture of the clavarium and skull bones. No obvious breathing. Gaping lacerations of the lower left abdomen and thigh with partial evisceration of sigmoid colon and small intestine—

  A shadow fell over the body. Above him, silhouetted by a floodlight, a warped, twisted creature stood on two legs, its back hunched and jagged, gnarled fingers clutching the roof’s edge like it was about to leap off.

  Bratta slowly reached into his pocket and withdrew his phone, still connected to his combination external hard drive and battery. His own invention. With shaking hands, he held it up and flicked it to record. The act seemed to disturb the creature; it glared down at the crowd.

  What the hell was that thing? Bratta kept his phone’s camera pointed at it, every frame stored on his external hard drive.

  And then the screaming started. All around him. The crowd, seemingly as one, began to run toward the gate. A distant burst of automatic weapons fire broke his trance; Bratta stumbled backward, turning and running, joining the crowd, his briefcase falling from his hands.

  Another burst of gunfire, this one much closer, targeting the creature on the roof. Bratta risked a glance over his shoulder—the twin-barreled guns on top of the watchtowers had fired, blasting chunks out of the top of the coffee shop. The creature was nowhere to be found.

  Which meant it could be anywhere. In amongst them. Picking them off.

  Do not die, he thought to himself. Do not die! You’ve got so much left unaccomplished!

  Bratta stumbled and nearly fell, but miraculously kept his footing. His glasses went flying, vanishing into the stampede of people. He kept running, past the gate—now unmanned—and into the car park.

  Everyone was looking for their cars. Bratta looked for his. It had been shipped in from Earth and everything. Model IX ESL, with the leather interior and auto-drive features. White. So many cars were white! It didn’t help that he’d lost his glasses.

  There. There it was, nestled under the scraggly tree, some kind of indigenous flora, crooked and gnarled. Bratta, wheezing, staggered over to it and jammed the key in the car door.

  So he didn’t see the creature in the tree until it leapt down on top of his car, crushing the roof.

  Bratta emitted a startled shout and fell onto his back. In the bright, fluorescent light of the car park he saw the creature fully for the first time. Its skin was black and blue, bruised with mossy green; it was falling off in places, peeling back like the skin of a rotting fruit. Its face was human, almost. It had blue eyes, unnaturally blue and almost glowing, and its face asymmetrical, with a mouth full of rust-colored teeth that were brown and misshapen. It was a woman—or it had been, at some point in the dim past—but it was bulkier than most men. Its fists, huge and gnarled like the tree it had leapt from, were stronger than any man’s should be. The monster reeked, almost like old cheese.

  It made eye contact with him, looking at him with those blue eyes that betrayed a cunning malevolence to them, an intelligence beyond the animal. Equal to a human.

  More than human.

  And it was angry.

  The car alarm went off, a wailing klaxon. The creature emitted a piercing scream, almost matching it, almost human in its tone and composition, and it coiled like a curled spring. Bratta froze completely; he mentally cried for his muscles to move, to take him away from this thing, this horrible monster about to kill him, but all he could do was keep his camera phone pointed at it. Filming his own bludgeoning death and storing it on the combination battery and external drive.

  Before it could pounce, another horrible creature identical to the first leapt out of the darkness, crash-tackling the first one. The two fell with combined roars onto the top of his car, their fists flailing, slamming at each other, howling like people play-acting at being monkeys. His windscreen shattered, the bonnet crumpled, and the alarm went ominously silent.

  The two monsters fell off, flailing and pummeling each other furiously.

  A spray of gunfire caught both of them, blasting chunks of green-blue flesh and blood all over the hood of his car.

  Five or six marines, a mixture of Chinese and American, had appeared from somewhere and stood behind the bodies of cars, their weapons trained on the monster. Their leader put another burst into both of the monsters, splattering their blood over the pavement.

  Bratta mutely kept filming.

  “Tangos eliminated.” The marine reloaded and, possibly for the first time, saw Bratta. And saw his camera. “Sir, give me that.”

  Strangely, the idea of having his custom-made phone taken away frightened him more than the monsters. “No.”

  That, apparently, was not the correct answer. Now the marine’s rifle was pointed at him. “Sir, your device. Give it to me. Now.”

  Slowly, Bratta removed the plug from his phone.

  “Slide it to me.”

  He stared. “That will scratch the surface.”

  “Do it!”

  Without much alternative, Bratta slid the device across the ground. Sparks flew up from the metal, making a horrible screech as it came to rest by the marine.

  That would be expensive to fix. It would need a new case, which would be fine, he could fabricate it with a—

  The marine bought his boot down on the phone, smashing it into a million pieces. He ground his heel into it to make sure.

  “Hey!” said Bratta.

  “No pictures,” said the marine.

  Bratta’s eyes drifted back to the pair of dead creatures, still bleeding and riddled with holes, their green vital fluids dripping onto the asphalt. They looked almost human, vaguely, and the more he looked the more truly human they did appear in bone structure, in the way their joints were arranged. But their behavior….

  Had he been hired to fix these creatures?

  Or create them?

  “This,” he said, staring at the bloody corpses, “was not what I signed up for.”

  “No pictures,” said the marine, again. Then he and the rest of them walked off.

  Bratta shifted into a sitting position, the combination battery and external drive digging into his hip.

  At least he still had the pictures.

  Now what he needed, were answers.

  Chapter One

  USS Midway

  Shuazzen System

  Four weeks later

  Six months. For six months the Midway had been executing Z-space translation after Z-space translation, jumping to distant border worlds, serving as the first line of defense against further attacks by the aliens.

  Aliens.

  Admiral Jack Mattis knew they were not aliens. Knowledge he was forced to keep to himself. In truth, not even he was sure the explanation made sense.

  Time-traveling mutant humans from the future. Even just thinking it made him feel like an idiot. Like he’d been had.

  But their effectiveness was undeniable; whatever they were, the invaders had thrust into human space, smashed Friendship Station, wrecked the Chinese ship Fuqing, sailed on to Ganymede and bombed it, then made their way to Earth.

  The butcher’s bill for that battle was enormous. They—the combined American-Chinese force—had barely made it.

  And some didn’t. His thoughts strayed, just for a moment, to Commander Pitt. He’d been a good man and had died a noble, heroic death. For a brief moment Commander Pitt was the CO of his own ship, until fate had conspired to take it away. Now all that was left was the memor
y. …

  And the distractions. Mattis snapped back to the present, maddening situation.

  Why was he here? Out on the edge of nowhere, on the other side of the sector?

  Why was he being kept away from the action?

  “I’m just saying,” his XO, Lieutenant Commander Stewart Lynch, was arguing with Commander Oliver Modi, a conversation that Mattis was only dimly aware of at the edge of his hearing, “it’s more complicated than that.”

  “The position of the Confederacy seemed clear,” said Modi, his slight Indian-British accent pleasant to listen to. “The southern states wanted to secede. They were opposed to abolition. The economies of the Union states relied upon slavery. It was a simple war of economics.”

  A flash of frustration crossed Lynch’s face. Even hundreds and hundreds of years later, the American Civil War was a contentious issue. “Listen, you living dictionary, I’m from Texas and I’m telling you—you’ve been reading too many Northern history books. The War of Northern Aggression wasn’t just about slavery.” He leaned forward in his seat. “Look. Take the tariffs issue. The North imposed trade taxes to pay for so-called internal improvements. But hey, shock-horror, those internal improvements only benefited northern shipping interests and not southern ones. Take, for example, the lighthouse network. The Northern shipping companies demanded more lighthouses in the South. When state governments said no, the North nationalized existing lighthouses and started building new ones with the tariff income.”

  Modi squinted. “Are you telling me that the American Civil War was fought over lighthouses?”

  “No, you damn fool! I told you, it’s more complicated than one simple issue. But that lighthouse thing is directly out of the Georgia Causes of Secession document. You can take that to the bank. And another thing—”

  They went back to nattering on about a war fought hundreds of years ago that Mattis honestly had minimal feelings about. He was too busy thinking about their current problem. And where the next attack was coming from.