@snakespinner: Port Moseby's moon being called Kiwi is canon,
so far as I can tell. Sources are distressingly silent on the number of New Zealanders there, however.
@mikecj: O0
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EPISODE 2-6: Prepared positionsWhy make rules for war? Like, ‘Don’t blow up the recharge stations,’ for example. Surely, ‘Do whatever it takes to win,’ is the only rule. Lot of people think that way, think they’re being all tough, Hard Men, not like the rest of us weak-kneed babies. Brother, I want to tell them, those rules are there to save you, not your enemies. Stop you from doing something you’ll regret, something you can’t take back. Ever.
The people who think that everything is a weapon, that nothing can be excluded lest your enemies use it first, those are the people who find too late they’re right. Use everything like a weapon, and everything becomes one. Use a nuke first, you can’t change your mind later, tell everyone they can’t use them anymore—you’ve already shown them they can. Can’t put a gun in someone’s hand, then tell them they can’t ever fire it. Doesn’t work that way.
There are other weapons, you see, just as deadly and long-lasting as a nuke, but just take a little longer to get around to killing everyone. Like insurgencies and civil wars. Like fanaticism. Learned that on Cronulla.
I’d just hit the local PRIC headquarters, turned their high command into bubbling pools of sizzling fat after knocking on their front door with a pair of high explosive armor-piercers. I was heading home, unbelievably still alive. I felt lucky, so very lucky. Then a kick, like someone hit me right in the tailbone, pain shooting right up my spine, and half the condition lights on my display turned red. Surface-to-air missile had taken off half the wing. Didn’t feel so lucky then.
Not enough headroom in the cavern to eject. Managed to get some thrust under me, just enough to make the belly-up landing bone-jarring instead of life-ending, the fighter coming to a splashing stop in the middle of the narrow river running down the cavern.
The pitch blackness saved me. Everyone in the whole cavern must have seen the plane go down, but once I popped the canopy and jumped out, it was just me and the shadows.
Didn’t have much on me: my custom Sunbeams, one on each hip, a medipack, GPS locator, timepiece and a communicator. Figured my best bet would be to make for the cavern wall, see if I could find one of the side tunnels leading to the surface, call for S&R when I got there.
The hunter squad found me just as I reached the wall. Half a dozen pairs of feet crunching through the scree and faintly bioluminescent lichen, throwing out pale beams from tac lights slung under their guns. One guy at the back with night vision goggles and a laser rifle, the rest dressed in civilian clothes and carrying submachineguns.
Ducked behind a boulder until they were almost on top of me. Then burst from cover, a Sunbeam in each hand, first shot punching a hole right through the heart of the night goggles guy, the second through the closest grunt. Confused shouting, lights jiggling and waving randomly as they tried to see who was firing at them.
Moving, shoulder roll, trying to stop them from getting a bead on me. Aimed for the lights, no sound but the hiss of superheated air around the laser beams, and two more guerillas went down, solid body shots, each drilled right through the chest.
Almost on top of the last two. Bullets spraying through the air over my head. A laser bolt torched one right through the neck. Last one. Point-blank range, so close I could see his face in the glow of his light.
A kid. A malking kid. Couldn’t be more than 14, 15 years standard. SMG pointed right at me but I froze. Couldn’t shoot a kid, not after, hell never mind after what. Hell if he didn’t pull the trigger. Hell if he didn’t try to kill me.
Click, click, click. His gun jammed. Locally-produced, cheap little thing, abused from being dragged through the dirt and mud, never properly cleaned. Damn thing jammed and the kid stood there, finger on the trigger, looking stupidly down at his gun.
A roundhouse kick sent it spinning from his hands, and then I had the two Sunbeams right in front of his face. “Not a word,” I hissed.
“Long live the People’s Front!” He shouted defiantly, and closed his eyes. Fumbled for something at his throat. I hit him with the butt of one pistol, knocking him off his feet. Holstered one Sunbeam and tore the thing from around his neck—a small clear vial, with a white capsule inside. Malking suicide pill. Threw it away as far as I could into the blackness.
“You want to die, I can shoot you in the gut,” I told the kid, brutally hard. “That’ll kill you sure enough. Take you all day, maybe. Nasty way to go, trust me. Option B is you keep your voice down and show me a way out of these tunnels.”
Kid looked mad but scared, all his courage gone with that little white pill of his. “The decadent League puppets and their mercenary running dogs are doomed,” he muttered, sullenly. “The people’s will cannot be denied.”
Ah, teenagers. You can always tell when they’re parroting somebody else’s words. He was so good at repeating meaningless blather, he would’ve felt right at home in the ACES. Hell, would probably have made squadron leader before me.
“Well, good for them.” I grabbed the night goggles off the leader, then hauled the kid up by the scruff of his shirt and half-dragged, half frog-marched him towards the nearest tunnel. More search parties would be headed this way, homing in on the sounds of our gunfight. “Though last time I saw your high command, they were looking pretty damn denied. If not deep-fried.”
“You will suffer for that.”
“Oh no, please, anything but that,” I said deadpan. Slipped on the goggles and adjusted the band. “Now move, before I show you how much suffering is involved in getting both your legs blown off.”
“Your cause is doomed,” the kid recited, but he shuffled along the tunnel all the same, a white blob in the goggles. “The corrupt nobles cannot resist the might of the righteous proletariat.”
“Sure, sure,” I agreed. “Keep moving. And Max Liao, the
hereditary ruler of the Capellan Confederation and the
Duke of Sian, will fix aristocratic corruption, will he?”
“What Cronulla needs is a strong leader.”
“Oh Unity,” I shook my head in the darkness. “Kid, a strong leader is literally the worst thing that could happen to you at this point. You never wonder why you never hear about successful revolutionaries on other planets? First, because 99% of rebellions fail, and in the incredibly unlikely event that they don’t, the first thing the arriving Capellans will do is round up you and your friends, and every other revolutionary cadre or green brigade they can find and liquidate you. Understand? Shoot, execute, murder you. Being a ‘strong leader’ is about control, kiddo, and the last thing a strong leader wants is a bunch of civvies who have learned they can overthrow any government they don’t like.”
“I hate you,” he sniveled to himself as he shuffled through those tunnels. Over and over again. “I hate you. I
hate you.” Somehow, I don’t think my little speech had much effect on him.
So we trudged on. Darkness does strange things to your vision, you know? Like staring at yourself in the mirror for too long, your eyes get bored of looking at the same thing, you start hallucinating, start seeing that face warp and change until it’s unrecognizable. Same with pitch nothing. Inky shadows start to move, making shapes out of memory. Of other kids, other dark places, places you’d rather not think about again.
Two hours later we stopped for a break. Me slumped on a big, slimy rock, goggles pushed up on my forehead and a Sunbeam held loosely in one hand. The kid huddled in the fetal position on the ground. Blue-green glow of lichen all around. The GPS was pretty useless this far underground, but the compass stopped me from going in circles and the auto-map feature could at least show where I’d been, if not where I needed to go.
“Are you going to kill me?” The kid asked, voice gone real quiet. All the revolutionary fervor drained.
“I dunno,” I said, careless and tired. “You want me to?”
“I will be a martyr.” Poor sap, trying to convince himself. Tears running down his face giving the lie to his bravado.
“You will be forgotten,” I corrected, shaking my head. “Some nameless kid dead in some nameless tunnel on some nameless border world. Hell kid, you’re still a teenager. Live a little. Plenty of time to die, later, if that’s what you want.”
Hell of a thing, taking a kid like that an turning him into a killer, a fanatic. Everyone likes to talk about how the Ares Conventions saved the race from extinction, but you’ll notice they’re silent on the issue of child soldiers. Others worry the Conventions made war too palatable, too easy to use as an instrument of policy. Unity. Look at insurgencies like the one on Cronulla. Look at them, look at this kid, barely old enough for pimples, and tell me banning nukes was the reason we had so much war.
Hard Men, patting themselves on the back for how Hard they’d been, how ruthless, leaving no weapon untouched, not even little kids like this one. And there was the real war crime. Huddled in the blue-tinged blackness at my feet.
People sometimes ask me why I became a mercenary, why I didn’t believe in anything other than myself, my wingman and my paycheck. Well, really. Look what belief gets you.
“I’m not gonna kill you, kid,” I said, heaving myself back to my feet. “Not gonna let you go, either though. For your sake. Only survivor of a patrol that let an enemy pilot escape? Kid, you’ll be facing a firing squad before sundown. Fact is, escaping with me is pretty much the only chance you’ve got.”
That was cruel, but it was the truth. Kid knew it. Did start crying then, silent heaving sobs, rocking back and forth, all his friends gone, his family gone, nobody to go back to until this whole damn stupid bloody pointless revolution was over and done with. Hell of a thing, making kids fight. Some lines, we just shouldn’t cross.
We broke the surface an hour later. So good to feel sunshine on my face again, throwing off the goggles like a lizard shedding its skin. A dozen uniformed figures waiting for us outside the cave mouth. Camouflage fatigues, assault rifles, grim faces. Rotors of two VTOLs behind them slowly stirring, like restless dragonflies.
“Glass!” shouted a voice I knew. Max’s. One of the figures pushed back its helmet, and there he was, my old wingman. He frowned at the kid. “Who’s this then?”
“Tour guide.”
“Oh.” A puzzled shrug. “See anything interesting?”
“No, not really,” I admitted. “Just a lot of darkness.”