One of the greatest engineering feats of the pre-war era, a great deal of survey work, modelling and experimentation had gone into the city’s planning. An enormous stalactite hung from the cavern roof. It was about three miles high and its tip hung about half a mile above the Garden District. Engineers had decided that the stalactite could support habitation, and the city had been cut out of the stone and existing caves with lasers and microbes. It was designed to be a dormitory city for the mineworkers, while those who could afford it lived in the Garden, among the lush vegetation below.
After They had attacked, the wealthy who survived moved up into the stalactite. Initially thought to be a weak point in the planet’s defences, the giant stalactite proved to be a veritable fortress and much of it was given over to the military. The rest of the people were pushed into already crowded parts of the city and left to fend for themselves, particularly when the mines were abandoned by the human forces.
The stalactite filled much of the view through the scarred and pockmarked armoured-glass windscreen of the cable car. It looked like there was not a single inch of it left undamaged. Some of the rock was covered in a patchwork of armour plate. The plates looked thick enough to have come from mechs, or cavern-sea battleships; much had rusted due to the environment. Wart-like artillery, anti-aircraft and point-defence batteries grew out of the stone in numerous places.
‘Was the siege as bad as they say?’ I asked.
Both Tailgunner and Merle laughed humourlessly.
‘Mother’s first memory was of her mother cooking meat from her father’s corpse for the children to eat. He’d killed himself to provide food,’ Tailgunner said and then turned to fix me with his lenses. ‘Yeah, it was bad.’
I swallowed and nodded. It sort of put into perspective what we’d been through. We’d grown up in an impoverished war economy on Earth but it was way worse on the sharp end. Just trying to live long enough to be an adult was a challenge and meant you had to do bad things just to survive. And this had been done to them on purpose. I was pleased that Mudge was back with Pagan at the whanau base. I wouldn’t have liked him to remind Tailgunner about the proud cannibal heritage they’d claimed. I was also wondering why my world had suddenly become all about cannibalism. Morag was staring at Tailgunner, appalled. She was still sporting cuts and bruises from the FAV chase. I wasn’t; I’d healed quickly.
The cable car took us high up towards the cavern roof, towards the thickest part of the stalactite. We passed a broken lighting rig hanging down from the cavern roof. The light was flickering on and off, sending sparks cascading down. Just past the lighting rig we docked with the fortified gatehouse that was the cable car station. We tried not to move too enthusiastically as the mass of exhausted miners plodded off the car. I ignored the sense of vertigo as I stepped from rocking cable car onto stone platform.
To my heightened senses it seemed like there were lenses everywhere and all of them were pointed at us. Regular soldiers with the bored disinterest that came from garrison duty checked the fake IDs we’d fabricated in Limbo and let us through.
What got me most about Moa City was how quiet it was for a place so crowded. They may not have been starving, but the inhabitants looked hungry, drawn and exhausted. Hard times were etched into the lines on their faces.
The streets were smooth tunnels that seemed to always spiral down. The houses were cut out of the stone itself, but everywhere I looked I saw lean-to huts and other shanty-style dwellings. Off the main thoroughfares this part of Moa City was a densely crowded, tangled warren of alleyways. Like the outside of the enormous stalactite, the inside showed extensive battle damage.
‘What’s that humming noise?’ Morag asked.
A pair of armed surveillance drones floated by over the crowds of people.
‘The catapult is just above us. This was the scene of some of the worst fighting in the last ten years,’ Tailgunner said once the drones had passed.
The enormous mass-driver catapult was used to throw heat-shielded ore cargoes into orbit for collection by tugs before being loaded into freighters for export.
I felt a stab of anger as I walked past a holographic projection of Cronin. I could see his enormous bodyguard Martin Kring just behind him. Kring looked more metal and plastic than man. The headline on the news piece was F REE E ARTH G OVERNMENT WARNS OF POSSIBLE FIFTH COLUMN TERRORIST CELLS. I wondered if they meant us specifically. I wondered how many more operators had made it to the ground and were still free.
A patrol went by in a six-wheeled light combat vehicle. They were more alert than the guards in the cable car station as they scanned the crowd. I felt their eyes on us but they showed no sign of suspicion or recognition as we moved away from the main thoroughfare and deeper into the warren of alleyways.
‘This is the Rookery,’ Tailgunner said. ‘I grew up here.’
I was worried that despite his disguise he’d be recognised, but he kept his head down and avoided eye contact. Cat, Merle, Morag and I got stared at a lot. We were obvious outsiders. The deeper we went into the Rookery, however, the less surveillance lenses and remotes we saw.
When I had to run the gauntlet of a line of begging vets who’d had their implants removed, I almost felt at home. Everything was so cramped. Sometimes it felt like I was walking through people’s homes. We got more hard stares from men and women carrying weapons and wearing gang colours. They were mostly older vets. Younger gang members would be serving in the military. I guessed something about the way we carried ourselves made them leave us alone.
‘Do you know anything about this Puppet Show?’ I asked Merle.
We’d reached the external wall of the stalactite and were working our way up on narrow paths cut out of the stone.
‘I’ve had a few dealings with them. They’re different. Seem to be reasonably trustworthy in a scary, don’t-fuck-with-us kind of way,’ he said.
I was trying to hide that I was gasping for breath. Merle could have been out for a stroll despite having spent the last six months in a hole.
Tailgunner disappeared into a gap in the rock just above us. Morag followed and then I reached it. I had to crawl through into a small cave. The cave mouth looked out over the cavern, giving us a view of the cable car run we’d come in on. We were above the lighting rigs now and I could see clusters of smaller stalactites, many of them with windows and entrances. Below us on the lighting rigs I could see tents and houses made of packing crates and other scavenged materials. Connecting them all was a web of strong-looking metal cable.
Tailgunner was kneeling down and pulling a modified climbing harness out of the bag he’d been carrying. Attached to the harness were two pieces of rope ending in a metal sleeve that contained runners. We got out the harnesses we were carrying and Tailgunner showed us how to clip the sleeve onto the web of cable. The runners gripped above and below the cable, as did the brake pads when you wanted to slow down.
‘When you get to a junction, you clip on the cable head you have free and unclip the one you were using. Clear?’ Tailgunner asked.
Oh yeah. Sounded simple, if you weren’t three and a half fucking miles up. Still, maybe I’d be lucky and land on one of the lighting rigs. That way I could die by electrocution.
It looked like Tailgunner had fallen out of the cave but he’d just kicked backwards and slid down the cable. Morag followed. She was grinning. It looked like she was going too fast to me. It felt too fast when I kicked off after her. I was using the brake a lot until I burned myself on the sleeve and noticed smoke rising from it. My legs felt too light as they dangled over the drop. My body felt too heavy. The high gravity made me think the ground wanted me back in a bad way.