‘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 amp;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.