Coward

by Gavin Smith

  Apakura’s 300mm mass driver broke the surface of the corrosive almost-water. Set behind and on either side of the massive barrel were two long-range missile batteries. Mother left the rest of the mech submerged. Seventy-two hours of being submerged for this. Seventy-two hours of breathing in acid, as it slowly corroded parts of her uniform, for this! Still, she thought, it wasn’t her buck and plasma was always pretty.

  Mother knew the flight was very quick but watching the arc of the three missiles’ contrails seemed to take forever. Her wired reactions made it look like slow-motion on a viz. The three staggered explosions blossomed into a beautiful living liquid fire that engulfed the entire of the smooth stone shore.

  “Well, that was a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars well spent,” she muttered to herself, but she took her time enjoying watching the fire flow serpentine around the cavern mouth. With a thought, after she had enjoyed the show, after she had left stone burning she pulled Apakura back beneath the surface of the almost-water. As she did she popped a remote and sent it towards the shore. She linked command to the feed from the drone as it flew over pools of still-burning stone that had been reduced to a liquid state.

  * * *

  Tailgunner, still feeling bruised, bloody and broken, a state he was not unused to, staggered to his feet in front of the corpse-like ruler of the night. Miru’s eyes were black. Not the hard plastic, unreflective black of a soldier’s eyes, but like black pools. They looked like they would ripple if touched.

  Tailgunner watched Miru warily. Miru could teach him makutu, sorcery, or keep him here forever, imprison his mind and make him a slave. Of all the ancestors he could have met, Miru was one of the more dangerous.

  “I am here,” the dry, scraping voice began. “So you know we do not have much time.” But enough time to have the lizard boys beat the shit out of me, Tailgunner thought, but held his tongue. He hadn’t lost a fight that badly since he was fifteen and two of the mine cops caught him stealing fuel.

  “A wave is coming.”

  “A wave?” Tailgunner couldn’t help himself. Miru merely placed his hand on Tailgunner’s chest. All Tailgunner’s makutu, all his armour and defence programmes were for nought, he felt coldness permeate his icon and knew that back in Apakura, in the so-called real world, the biofeedback from this ancestor was killing him.

  “Listen,” Miru hissed. “Focus. A wave is coming, a foreign god greater than all of us. We, the spirits in the underworld, must hide from it if we can. We must leave this place and our adopted children, go far away, perhaps back to Hawaiki.” Hawaiki was the Maori’s mythical homeland.

  “You’re leaving us?”

  The pain from the cold hand on his chest was agony, and this time he cried out.

  * * *

  Tailgunner’s cry made Mother start. She glanced around from her couch and what she saw shocked her. Tailgunner was pale, covered in cold sweat, and his breathing was shallow. Mother called up his vital signs on her IVU. It didn’t look good. She had seen this before. This was the readout of a hacker receiving dangerous levels of biofeedback.

  “What are you doing?” she muttered under her breath.

  “Bossman to Mother, advance on the shore armoured recon,” Major Martins sub-vocalised over the tacnet.

  “If you’re sure it’s safe,” Big Henry said over the patrol tacnet. Mother smiled despite the worry. The feed from her remote had showed a complete lack of Them in the near vicinity.

  Strange’s Steel Mantis class scout mech Atua Kahukahu was out of the water first. The small, fast-moving mech moved with its oddly off-kilter, jerky movements up the smooth stone shore. Strange sent back more detailed footage and passive scan info as she quickly moved from cover to cover. Her mech’s advanced reactive camouflage system, which had been further improved by Dog Face’s tinkering, made it difficult to pick the mech out on the low-resolution image from Mother’s ad-hoc periscope.

  Apakura and the two Landsknecht class mechs, Whakatau and Kopuwai, moved forward in support at the same time, but because of the size of Apakura it was the huge Bismarck-class heavy mech that broke the surface first.

  The quadruped mech rose from the corrosive almost-water with smoke pouring off it, a result of the salt-acid attacking the Mech’s corrosion-resistant finish. The barrel of the huge mass driver swept left and right as one huge reinforced leg, followed by another, broke the surface. All mechs used on Lalande II had to have a considerably stronger superstructure than similar models used on the other colonies due to the tidal locked planet’s high G.

  All attempts and stealth were now redundant as the quadruped mech made its ponderous way towards the shore. Powerful spotlights stabbed into the gloom. On Apakura’s knee joints, ball-mounted point defence lasers rotated, looking for incoming projectiles. As the mech waded towards shore the four belly turrets were revealed with their multi-barrelled rotary rail guns, searching for light armour and personnel to fire at.

  In the mech’s cab Mother cursed Tailgunner again, now more worried than angry, as she tried to juggle the sensor and weapons data.

  On either flank the heads of the two bipedal Landsknechts broke surface, marching towards the shore, revealing more of their scarred armoured hides with each stride. Dog Face and Big Henry had their plasma cannons raised high out of the water. Their mechs held them like oversized assault rifles. More powerful searchlights stabbed into the darkness and found nothing. Or at least, none of Them.

  Strange found it first. She beamed the feed to Mother. Mother closed her eyes. She was worried that she did not even feel horror anymore. She had known what to expect. Apakura, flanked by Whakatau and Kopuwai, made their way through the naturally arched cavern entrance towards New Dunedin.

  “Christ,” Big Henry said over the tacnet. Dog Face let out a little whimper. Strange, as ever, said nothing.

  “Target is secure,” Mother said over the company tacnet, and forwarded the feed of what they had found on the outskirts of new Dunedin. They played the powerful lights from the mech over the field they had found with its strange crop.

  * * *

  The pain warred with a cold numb sensation that made him feel–no–that made him know he was dying. Miru leant in towards him, his breath smelt of raw meat.

  “Yes, we are leaving,” he hissed in Tailgunner’s ear. “We are leaving lest we are swept away. We are leaving before we become it. We are leaving before the secrets of heaven and the underworld are laid bare. You are all alone. You will be all alone. You must not come back into the spirit world. You must sever all links or the wave will take you. Do you understand?” Tailgunner nodded, as his previous attempts at verbal communication had gone badly for him. Miru wanted him to stay out of the net. He wanted to ask why. Was it them? But he was pretty sure that Miru – whether he was a spirit in the net, a complicated programme, another hacker with god-like power, or some kind of evolved AI – would kill him.

  “Keep all our people out and separate from the spirit world, but you must be the last one out. For you I have a task.” Miru kept one hand on Tailgunner’s chest. Wouldn’t want to not cause agony, some dislocated part of Tailgunner’s mind thought. With his free hand Miru unwrapped an eel net from around his waist. He handed the net to Tailgunner. Tailgunner tried to close his hand around the net’s material form but failed. Miru took his hand away from Tailgunner’s chest. Tailgunner collapsed to the ground, fighting for virtual breath, which was odd. Heat returning to his form was such a contrast it caused him to cry out in pain. He scrabbled on the dirt floor for the net.

  “Be last out of the spirit world. Face the wave and cast your net into it before you leave.” Miru said staring down at Tailgunner with the unfathomable black pools that were his eyes. “Now go before I make you my last feast and eat of you as the meat of the pig.” Tailgunner finally grabbed the net and stood up. Pain aside, he was remembering now who he was and what he was about. Eyes blazing, he stared back at Miru, but the Ruler of the Night had turned his back on him.

/>   Tailgunner turned and stalked from Miru’s house, past the guardians to the rope that lead him back to his Sanctum.

  * * *

  Big Henry had somewhat laconically described Martins’ charge as “Awesome”. As soon as their commander had known it was safe the Infantry contingent, in assault hovercraft, had sped from their hiding place and performed a by-the-book amphibious assault on an area they knew to be safe already.

  Mother and the rest of the whānau did not blame the infantry guys. They knew them well and had fought beside a lot of them for years – the survivors, anyway. After all, the Infantry did not even have the benefit of being surrounded by tonnes of armoured German-made mech.

  Once the area had been secured, again, Mother, Strange, Big Henry and Dog Face had dismounted. Tailgunner was still jacked in but his life signs had stabilised. Mother was looking out over the field, her arms crossed. Dog Face was first to join her.

  Dog Face’s mother had been killed after the exoskeleton she had been driving had malfunctioned and thrown her into a crevice. He had been fostered out to a family that had connections to the biotech black market. Their warehouse had a problem with rats. The rats had stowed away on colonial ships and somehow, without genetic engineering, had adapted to the high G environment. Dog Face’s stepfather replaced his eyes with cyber eyes, increased his olfactory capability to the rough equivalent of a hunting dog’s and used the boy to control the rat population. This had gone on right until Dog Face started to run with Ngāti Apakura, and then Mother and Tailgunner had gone to speak to the man.

  His foster father may have got him started but Dog Face had done the rest himself. The surgical steel claw-like fingernails, the surgical steel teeth replacements and the pronounced, power-assisted jaw. His dreds were tied back in a loose ponytail. He wore the black and red stylised demon face patch with the rolling eyes and outstretched tongue on a sleeveless leather jacket worn over his inertial armour fatigues. Mother knew he had ceramic armoured plates sewn into the jacket. The only visible ta moko patterns on Dog Face’s skin bridged his forehead and ran down his cheeks.

  Dog Face looked over the field and growled. Mother just nodded. Big Henry walked up to them. He had a peculiar waddling gait that belied how quickly he could move when he had to. The squat, hugely muscled looking man had his long thick hair in an elaborately braided ponytail. His beard was equally elaborately braided. What little of his skin that could be seen was also covered in ta moko patterns. He was wearing his battered bowler hat and, like Dog Face, he wore his patch on leather over his inertial armour fatigues.

  New Dunedin was, or had been, a series of squat low industrial complexes with both the commercial and dormitory buildings built with a similar disregard for any kind of design aesthetic. Framing the buildings, nearly two mile high by a mile wide, was the dirty grey ice of the Dunedin Salt Glacier. Either side of the Glacier the smooth hard rock had been quarried into regular terraces. The mine workings had been left where they lay after Their initial assault. After all, They didn’t seem to care about resources. Just killing.

  The river was a sewer of mine pollution and the city was ringed with heaps of gravel that the people of the city had tried in vain to use defensively against Their onslaught. But it was the field that caught everyone’s attention.

  More than anything, the field worried Mother because she was used to it. It did not shock or unduly surprise her. The cold ball of anger in the pit of her stomach was comforting. Her wishes for utu, not revenge, more reciprocity, to balance this, made her still feel human. Despite all the metal and plastic in her. Despite that she was starting to think of Apakura as her true form, her real body.

  The field was row upon row of severed heads on the ends of sticks. Many of them had ta moko on their faces. All of them had an expression that told Mother they were well aware of what was about to happen to them.

  “Well, they’re neat,” Big Henry finally said. He took off his bowler hat and scratched his scalp through his braids.

  “The entire city,” Dog Face growled. The torsos were piled behind the field of heads. They had tried to fire them. Turned them into human slag heaps that mirrored the heaps of waste from the strip mine. Powerfully-built rats moved amongst the heaps.

  Strange almost seemed to be dancing amongst the regular rows of heads. She was as slender as you could get on this world without your spine breaking from the weight. Her skin was pale. She had long straight black hair that constantly got her into trouble with command. Her lips and chin were tattooed. Every so often she would stop and caress one of the heads. Dog Face and Big Henry watched her uneasily but said nothing.

  “Where are they all?” Mother asked. Why had They abandoned Dunedin?

  “Heads up,” Dog Face growled. Mother glanced away from Strange’s somehow hypnotic dance amongst the heads. Martins was heading towards her. He looked red-faced and out of breath. He was fleshy and soft-looking. Mother did not understand how you could look soft on this world. Sure, Big Henry might be carrying a few more pounds than he strictly needed, but he had fought for that.

  “Beat it,” Mother said. Both of them made to protest. “Now.” Hard men or not both of them knew this was not a time to argue with Mother. Big Henry and Dog Face left as Martins arrived.

  “Sergeant…” He stopped to watch Strange’s dance. “What’s she doing?”

  “Dancing, sir,” Mother answered, keeping her tone neutral. Martins still got irritated.

  “Obviously. Why is she desecrating the dead by dancing amongst them?”

  “I don’t know why she’s doing what she’s doing but she’s more likely to be honouring than desecrating,” Mother said through gritted teeth.

  “She’s disturbing the men,” Martins said. By men he meant men and women. Old habits died hard in the military.

  “No,” Mother said.

  “No what, sergeant?” Martins demanded. Mother shifted her body, made its language just a little more intimidating. Just in case there was any doubt that she could break him in two if she wanted.

  “No sir, she is not freaking the men out. They may be wondering what the fuck she’s doing, like the rest of us, but they’ll let it pass because they know her and they know what she does for them. If, however, it’s freaking you out–” like everything seems to, she did not add, “–then I can ask her to stop. Is there anything else, sir?”

  “You can’t speak to me…”

  “Is there anything else, sir?” Mother asked, shifting her posture again slightly, trying to communicate how this worked. Bad officers got fragged. She had killed three herself. She had no problem with that; it was either them or her and her people.

  “Where’s Tailgunner?” Martins asked. “He was supposed to be running comms.”

  “I was running a diagnostic on the tacnet. I found a glitch. I was trying to sort it before the action started.”

  Martins jumped; even Mother flinched. For such a big guy he could be so quiet.

  Tailgunner walked up to them. He was tall, for Lalande, and heavily built. Next to no body fat, his muscle was a mixture of hard won and enhancement, but he still moved gracefully and when he wanted to, quietly.

  Most of his head was covered in the hardware of his integral computer. The ware was made of squat, ugly utilitarian components made for the military by the lowest bidder. Tailgunner had augmented the military ware with whatever higher spec components he had managed to find, beg, borrow or steal to keep up in the Darwinian world of the signalman hacker.

  Like all the others in the whanau his skin told his story in ta moko, lines and scar tissue. He also wore his patch over his inertial armour fatigue suit.

  “You should have told me, Corporal,” Martins said. He was apparently unaware of how petty he sounded.

  “Sorry sir, but I thought, comms discipline.”

  Martins was trying to make up his mind if he was being made a fool of. He looked Tailgunner up and down and then turned to look at Dog Face and Big Henry standing some way off and f
inally Strange dancing amongst the heads. He turned back to Mother.

  “Your men are a disgrace, Sergeant.”

  “So are the women.”

  “Look at you all – non-regulation haircuts, non-regulation uniforms, I understand that you have previously been given leeway on account of…”

  “Being able to do our jobs?” Mother asked. Martins coloured. Tailgunner put his hand on Mother’s shoulder, trying to signal her to calm down, to not push so hard.

  “Who do you think you are, special forces?” he demanded. Mother grabbed him and pulled him towards her. Tailgunner moved between him and where the other officers were standing. He gave her a warning look. This was way too public. Mother had practically picked Martins up off the ground by the front of his fatigues.

  “You know how this works, motherfucker?” she hissed. Martins looked frightened.

  “I’ll have you on a charge…” he started.

  “They won’t even find your fucking body where I leave it,” she spat.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Tailgunner said softly. Mother’s head whipped around to glare at him angrily but she let go of Martins. He almost fell over, stumbling away from her.

  “Remember what she said,” Tailgunner warned the Major as he backed away from them. Martins all but fled.

  “Thanks for backing me up,” Mother said bitterly.

  “The guy’s stupid enough to do something. He’ll force your hand.”

  “That’s pretty much inevitable. Where the fuck were you?” she demanded.

  “I saw Miru,” Tailgunner answered. Mother gaped at him for a moment.

  “You went on a spirit quest? A fucking spirit quest! Now!” she was shouting now.

  Others, including Martins, were looking over at her.

  “Will you calm down?”

  “Don’t fucking tell me what to do, Corporal!”

  “Oh, this is about rank now, is it? Sorry, I thought we were having a domestic. I’ve told you before, this shit is important. This is about who we are, what we are.”