trying to do.
Rolleston had done a good job on me. I wondered how Rannu was holding up. I had betrayed these people once. I wasn’t going to do it again. It was my responsibility to them that kept me moving. That was how I dealt with it. Kept me crawling over the smooth stone between the mines and sensors. Concealment wasn’t required, as they had achieved near-total area denial. Or so they thought. Fortunately they hadn’t reckoned on anything as stupid as what we were planning.
I also knew that what the whanau were going to do had to count for something. I wondered how they could operate with the near total certainty of death.
Dinas Emrys, yesterday
‘They’ll know we hacked them,’ Cat said. This was good. This was her job – to come up with as many objections as possible so we could overcome them.
‘We need to make it look like something else and we need to knock out all visual surveillance in the lower boardroom,’ Annis said. As she did she expanded the part of the arcology that showed us the lower boardroom. It looked a long way from our point of entry.
‘Sabotage,’ I suggested.
‘Assassination attempt,’ Merle suggested.
‘We don’t even know if any of their command will be there,’ Cat pointed out.
‘Sabotage then. I think we should take any opportunity to fuck with their machine that we get,’ I said.
‘And take any opportunities for assassination that present themselves,’ Merle added. I had to agree.
‘Not at the expense of getting the data,’ Annis said, looking at Cat.
I glanced at Pagan. Even in his Druidic icon he looked subdued. I wondered who was running the Ungentlemanly side of the operation now.
Cat nodded. ‘Agreed. The info is our priority.’
‘Even though we’ve got no way to get it out?’ Merle asked.
‘Information always helps,’ Mudge pointed out.
‘And currently we know next to nothing,’ Annis added.
‘Okay, this is all pretty fucking slim,’ Cat said.
‘We’ve been out on hairier,’ I said. Rannu was nodding in agreement.
‘Okay. Let’s set up a full action plan and begin prep,’ Cat replied. There were smiles from all but the New Zealand contingent and Pagan.
‘There’s one other thing. We need to do this fast. We’ve got next to no solid intel but it can’t take them much longer to prep for the attack on Earth,’ Pagan told us.
Cat gave this some consideration.
‘All right. If we’re doing this then we are ready to go at 0500 tomorrow, understood? That means if we need more gear from Merle’s caches we get it today,’ she said.
Now we started to whinge. We were squaddies, that’s what we’re supposed to do. We whinged and then we went and got on with it.
We were close now after more than an Earth day of crawling. Our internal heating systems were running low to mask our heat signatures. I was cold and I ached. I’d had no sleep. Counteracting tiredness with amphetamines, which made me jittery, and then confusing my mind with downers to counteract the tension.
Twenty-five hours in, things had stopped making sense, which was good. This meant I could deal with the imminence of possible death. I could hear the soldiers talking now and smell their food. Soon we’d be trying to kill each other. Shame when we had so much in common. Pity we couldn’t just go after the leaders, on both sides.
At least Rannu and Pagan had had something to do. They had plotted a line of anti-armour mines from the mechs’ point of entry to the Citadel. The plan was for Rannu and Pagan to rendezvous just before the attack and use the palm interfaces on their smartlinks to swap information. Pagan would also be using his smartlink and internal targeting systems to passively plot firing solutions for the mechs. Most crucially they needed solutions plotted for the point-defence systems. Pagan was also looking at the main vehicle entrance on this side of the arcology and using his guncam to record details.
When he had all the information he required he sent it as a packet on a UV tight beam link to a transponder we’d set up at a prearranged location. That receiver was hard-wired via a cable run through a small hole drilled in solid rock to the whanau ’s position. Using tight beam communication meant that the Black Squadrons would have to have something interposed between the receiver and us. Also they had no reason to be scanning UV frequencies.
I checked the time displays on my IVD. One showed the actual time. The other was a countdown. I looked up at the large entrance to the vehicle bay. All that was between the entrance and us were three lines of trenches and then the terraced trenches above the door.
New Utu Pa, yesterday
‘I want two fireteams,’ Cat told us. We were in one of the smaller caves. Soloso and Big Henry were just inside the entrance discouraging people from paying attention to us. ‘Fireteam Alpha is me, Merle and Morag. Fireteam Bravo is Jakob running it, Mudge, Rannu and Pagan.’
I would have liked to turn over command to Rannu but I’d done that once and I couldn’t afford to be seen as a weak link again, as I suspected that Cat would actually drop me from the mission. I didn’t want to work with Pagan. I couldn’t trust him. Actually that wasn’t true. I knew he’d do his job, but I didn’t want to trust him.
‘Looks like we’ve got all the fuck-ups,’ Mudge said.
‘Shut up, Mudge,’ I told him.
‘Right, Rannu and I are going to start the killing before zero point. We’re going after officers, NCOs, heavy- weapon crews, but we’re going to be doing it quietly,’ Merle said. He seemed happier with Cat in command.
‘Then we move on my go and we are fucking quick or dead. Everyone understand?’ Cat told us.
We all nodded. I looked over at Mother and Tailgunner. They may as well have been carved out of mahogany. It was like looking at ghosts. After everything Mother had said I still couldn’t work out why. I’d spoken to Mudge about it. He’d said that sometimes you just had to draw a line against what the bad guys were allowed to get away with.
‘Is that my Void Eagle?’ Merle demanded. I looked down at the massive automatic holstered on my chest.
‘What, you want to argue about it now?’ I asked. We were just about to go operational.
‘I’ll be having that back,’ he snapped. Crucially Cat didn’t order me to give it back. In fact she was smiling.
‘There’s a reason the British army are called the Borrowers,’ Mudge told him. Rannu was laughing.
A new recruit had brought in a collection of antique weapons. Mudge had bartered with him for a pre-FHC assault shotgun for me. I’d added an external targeting system for the smartlink, which would be less than ideal, and I’d also had to make a few adjustments for the shotgun to fire caseless, but it would serve as a secondary weapon.
Watching the countdown I was shaking. When the klaxons and the red lights came on, for a moment I thought we were compromised but this was all part of the plan. I watched gunships laden with troops and exo- armour take to the air. The rest of Mother’s forces, along with whatever fighting elements of the resistance and Moa City gangs we’d managed to make contact with, had attacked targets in the city and its vicinity, hoping to draw elements of the Black Squadrons away from the Citadel.
I watched the gunships and flight-capable exo-armour head out of the big cavern. This helped but there was still a lot of men and hardware left. I knew we had to let them get to their targets. As soon as that happened our forces would pull back and hopefully melt into the background.
My breathing sounded impossibly loud in my ears but I didn’t dare risk a sedative now. I just wanted things to start – get it over with, break the tension. I was shaking quite badly now. Even under my camouflage I was sure I must have been visible as a quivering piece of rock, but nothing happened, though as a result of the alert the guards seemed more on the ball. The soldiers in the external defences were all New Zealand regulars.
I don’t think I noticed when the killing started. I knew that the others would be watching the synchronised countdown, getting ready to go. My heart was hammering at my ribcage. I didn’t hear the firing; I just saw an
