Authors: Gavin Smith
She stopped and turned to look at me. I saw her in green, illuminated by my lowlight optics.
‘Yeah, I’m getting good at killing people,’ she said.
‘That’s not the way to think about it. Think about it as helping keep Mudge, Pagan, Cat and Merle alive. Well maybe not Merle. Besides, I’m pretty sure they were members of the Black Squadrons.’
‘And that makes it all right to kill them, does it?’
I gave this some thought.
‘Yeah. They knew exactly what they were doing when they chose to work with the really bad guys. They’re no better than Rolleston and Cronin.’
She just looked at me. I don’t think she liked what she was seeing.
‘Okay,’ she said carefully. ‘Maybe it’s not about them; maybe I just don’t want to be that person. Get that comfortable with it.’ She left the ‘like you’ unsaid.
‘Morag, you didn’t have to be here. You could have helped in other ways that didn’t put you at the sharp edge.’
‘Is there a difference? Directly or indirectly responsible for killing?’
That stumped me.
‘Fucked if I know. Less dangerous and I reckon the distance makes it easier to get to sleep at night.’
‘I meant morally?’ She sounded a little exasperated.
‘What are you talking about? Look, I don’t want to be doing these things either, but here we are doing them. You’ve got to put that stuff to one side until we’re done. Those are things to worry about when we’re not hiding from the Black Squadrons hoping we don’t get shot.’
‘I wish I had your moral relativism.’ I wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or not. Moral relativism?
‘You have to stop spending so much time with Pagan. I’m not used to killing, I don’t like doing it …’
‘You do it very well.’
I was starting to get angry.
‘Morag, we killed some bad guys. The fact that they were bad doesn’t matter because I can guarantee before we’ve finished we will have killed a lot of people who were just doing their job and got in our way. People that in other circumstances we would have been happy to have a drink and a laugh with. People not unlike all the guys back at the
pa
. People not that unlike us. You will have to kill them because they’ll be shooting at you. If you can’t deal with that then say so now because I will fucking drop you, because you put us all at risk if your hand-wringing causes the slightest hesitation. Do you understand me?’
Her expression was unreadable. For a moment I had the feeling that this was some kind of test. Then she turned away from me angrily.
‘Did it occur to you that I’d be fine and that I just needed someone to talk to about this?’ she demanded, but she didn’t sound as angry or as upset as I had expected. I, on the other hand, was. Our talk wasn’t going well. It seemed that all we could do now was tear at each other.
‘I’m serious, Morag. You need to put these thoughts out of your head. Find a way to deal with it, to forget about it until you’re in a safe place to process it, because even talking to the rest of us about it fucks us up. Starts us doubting.’
‘So we isolate ourselves?’ she asked emotionlessly.
Again I had to give this some thought.
‘I don’t think so. I don’t think that you’ll ever be closer to anyone than you are to the people you fight with. Maybe not even lovers, because how could they understand?’ She didn’t answer. Didn’t look at me. ‘I need to know. Can you do this?’
She swung round on the rope to face me. Defiance in green.
‘Why don’t you say what you mean? Can I kill? Can I be a killer?’
Okay, I hadn’t been thinking about it in those terms. Can you fight maybe? Can you be a soldier?
‘Can you?’
‘You’re an utter bastard.’
‘NCO,’ I said by way of explanation.
‘What’s that? A non-commissioned officer?’ I nodded. She looked me straight in the eyes. ‘I can do what’s necessary.’ She meant it. I’d heard that resolve before.
There was something in this conversation, something that I didn’t get. Mudge would call it subtext. Morag didn’t get as angry or as upset as I thought she would. Maybe she was getting harder but I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow the conversation had been for my benefit.
Below us I heard the sound of the massive mine elevator moving up towards us. It was designed to move the largest of mining mechs. I could see the glow of
Apakura
’s lights on the elevator as the monstrous Bismarck-class mech rose up out of the darkness to meet us.
I placed the last of the detonators into the PEC and Morag and I kicked off the rock and rappelled down to meet the rising elevator platform. This close to the Bismarck I felt awe looking up at its armoured bulk. There was a lot of violent tonnage contained in its reinforced superstructure. Our battered FAV was parked under the giant mech’s four legs. It would never be hermetically sealed again and the armour had taken a profound beating, but some of the Kiwis had got the tough little vehicle working again.
The light above us was like a harsh artificial dawn as we rose out of the lift shaft and onto one of the terraces in the Moa City cavern wall. Time to play soldier again. I put the butt of my H&K SAW into my shoulder and moved forward and to one side. I knelt down by a pile of rubble. Morag was doing something similar on the other side of the mech, her laser carbine at the ready. Ostensibly we were providing a picket. We were looking for anything in the vicinity with hostile intent. Soon everyone in the cavern was going to know we were here.
Five hypersonic bangs shook the ground in rapid succession. Even with our dampeners they sounded impossibly loud. Anyone without dampeners would have been immediately deafened. The noise rolled back and forth across the enormous cavern. It was like being in close proximity to the source of thunder. Only the dead in Moa City could have failed to hear us, though I had my doubts about that.
This wasn’t the way I was used to fighting but it was an awesome display of firepower. The five 300-millimetre, tungsten-cored projectiles were designed for penetration. They arced high across the cavern and into the stone close to where wall became cave roof on the opposite side. I magnified my vision to see rock powdered to dust as they hit in almost exactly the same place. Each round drove into the rock, kinetic force creating friction and leaving a tunnel of smoking stone in its wake. Hopefully penetrating deep enough to break into the Mag Lev tunnel we knew was there behind a thick layer of rock.
Fire lit up the top of the
Apakura
as it launched a salvo of long-range missiles at the same place. The sound of the missiles was like a whisper compared to the impacts of the mass driver rounds. I split my time between scanning the nearby area and watching the fires of the rocket engines burn across the cavern. Flames blossomed as the conventional explosive, shape-charged warheads blew out more rock and hopefully added to the damage to the Mag Lev. Unfortunately, right now we had no way of telling if it had worked.
Or at least that was what I thought until I saw the Mag Lev train. It shot out of the hole the barrage had made and fell, and fell, and fell. It was long train but was dwarfed by the size of the cavern. I was running towards the elevator now. I didn’t want to see it complete its downward journey. I heard the impact. Even from the other side of the valley. I imagined the screams.
I reached the lift platform and triggered the mechanism just as the combat drone came into view, rising over the terraces. I raised the SAW to my shoulder to fire but
Apakura
beat me to it. I flinched involuntarily as the rapid-firing railgun closest to me fired a short burst from its rotating barrels. The drone disintegrated.
I could see the burn of missiles coming towards us, fired from a battery on the huge stalactite city, as the lift platform began descending into the shaft. They were too slow. That said, I still felt like getting into the FAV.
We were further down the shaft when the missiles hit. Our world went orange and the overpressure battered us to the ground.
Apakura
had protected us from the worst of the blast and the rain of debris. Try not to think about the train.
Morag staggered to her feet, blood pouring out of her nose. I felt blood running over my mouth as well. She climbed into the FAV. We’d left the engine running. The downward journey seemed to take for ever. There must be someone up there by now, a Black Squadron rapid response force of some kind, but nothing bad was happening to us yet. Maybe we deserved something bad. Try not to think about the train falling.
After an eternity of waiting for some kind of death to land on us from above, we reached the base of the elevator. I sat on the bonnet of the FAV as Morag drove me towards the control box for the explosives. This would have been a lot easier with wireless detonators but we couldn’t take the chance so we were doing it the old-fashioned way. I just hoped none of the wires had been damaged by the missile strike. Don’t think about the train.
Apakura
shifted off the lift platform and away from the base of the shaft, moving more like a spider than any quadruped I’d ever seen. When it got to us it crouched down, providing more cover as I got down behind the FAV. I could hear the sound of vectored-thrust engines in the shaft now – poor timing on their part. Don’t think about the train. I opened my mouth and triggered the explosives.
It had taken three nights to wire. The shaft and every tunnel connecting the Moa City cavern to our vicinity blew. Overpressure rocked the mech and moved the FAV across the tunnel floor and knocked me over. Rubble avalanched into the mine from what used to be the elevator shaft. Then it went dark in a way that lowlight couldn’t help with as dust filled the air. I felt my way into the FAV and Morag drove us out of the mine,
Apakura
following.
I could see it in their faces when we finally made it back to the
pa
, having taken a circuitous route and checked and then double-checked we weren’t being followed. I climbed out of the FAV covered head to foot in rock dust.
The belly hatch on the
Apakura
opened, Mother and Tailgunner climbed out. They looked stricken. Horrified by what they’d done. It’s one thing to destroy part of the enemy’s infrastructure; it’s another to kill some poor sod who was just taking the Mag Lev back home, or just worked there. I was pretty sure there’d be more of this before we were through.
The thing was, after I’d managed to clean myself up, Morag found me and took me deeper into the caves. Where we could be alone. Where we could make love or have sex or fuck, I wasn’t sure which. I still wanted Morag, needed her, even loved her, but she was becoming more and more alien to me.
Despite the prep, despite the waiting for it to start, you’re never ready for when it does. Without comms, separated from one another, you’re left with nothing but going over the plan again and again. Where did we fuck up? What have we forgotten?
I felt like I stuck out a mile. I didn’t belong in the Rookery and the people here knew it. I didn’t meet their eyes and they ignored me, but I think they knew my presence here meant trouble for them.
Cat, Merle and Tailgunner were on roofs on either side of the main thoroughfare. Morag and I were on the same side of the street but separated, with Mother and Strange, who were our drivers. Mudge and Pagan were on the other side of the street, again far apart, with Dog Face and Big Henry as their drivers.
I saw the Ground Effects Raider leading the convoy. I watched it wind round the bend on the spiral roadway and head towards my position. The GE Raider was the bigger, better-armed and better-armoured older brother of the GE fast-attack sled. Almost as heavily armed as a main battle tank, it used four low-level vectored-thrust engines to provide propulsion and manoeuvrability. Hopefully they wouldn’t help much in the cramped streets of Moa City.
Behind the first GE Raider were four civilian trucks that had been up-armoured for military use. Each of the cabs had an armoured turret with an autocannon. These cannons were tracking from side to side, looking for targets, intimidating the street. Maybe the gunners in the cabs were in control, maybe Demiurge was. It must have been pre-combat nerves but to me the autocannons looked eager. Why hadn’t I taken some drugs? Just to even out the mood a little. Bringing up the rear of the convoy behind the trucks was another GE Raider. There was a lot of firepower in the convoy for just eleven guns. The four combat drones in the air above the convoy were a further unplanned-for complication.
I was standing on one of the alleyway corners, next to a lean-to that was half home and half a third- or fourth-hand used-tech stall. Its inhabitant kept on giving me dirty looks. I knew that as we watched the convoy street kids working for the Puppet Show were blacking out security lenses all over the Rookery with spray paint.
It was Mother’s job to start the show. I was used to being out on my own fighting armour; she was used to fighting from inside hundreds of tonnes of mech so God knows how she must have been feeling. I checked the time on my IVD, looked away from the street and started pulling the balaclava that I’d been wearing as a hat down over my features. I hoped Mother’s nerve didn’t fail, otherwise I was going to feel really stupid wearing a balaclava and not doing any crime.
The tech salesman in his little packing-material stall/house saw what I was doing. He watched me with a kind of helpless resentment. He could see what was coming. I reached into the duffel bag with my left hand and gripped the smart frame inside. My right reached up under the armoured combat jacket and I took hold of the Benelli assault shotgun slung under my arm. The jacket was fine but I missed my long coat. Also it didn’t have a break-open flap for my shoulder laser, making me a weapon down.