"Ooooooh shit! That's going to make a mess" like they've been rehearsing the line. Like they don't know that the mess is more than blood and brain. Like we're not all suddenly elevated by the murder of a similar being, elevated in our awareness.

Marines do call it being scared, but if you ask them and they are in Marine-mode, they'll say they are very aware now. Not scared. Very aware. Not fear: awareness.

I walk into a space locked away from you and I make the transition from human to cog, and I copy data, and I try to ignore the OOOOOOOH SHIT and I make no remark against the comments. The things people say to make themselves feel better. I become aware of humanity.

That was a Hellfire 2. You know what a Hellfire is? AGM-114 series 2, it's an air-to-surface missile designed to kill tanks back when tanks were the enemy. Man those Russians had tanks. Millions. We designed whole platforms to deal with their tanks. Whole atomic bombs. Whole reams of data. Gigantic amounts of effort to bankrupt those tanks.

We re-classified the Hellfire to make it useful for bunkers. And soft targets. Urban targets.

People.

That's an awfully big rifle you got there.

Our targets are people.

Terrible people.

And all of their friends.

And all of the people around them.

War doesn't care.