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The mob came to a halt, the ones behind piling into the backs of the ones ahead in tangles of jointed legs and segmented bodies. Schaeffer’s suit was now linked to the embassy’s library AI; it would translate whatever he said into the principle ek-Cha’a language, clicks, glottal stops, and all.

  But the saurian was clattering forward, now, tossing the gate aside and grinding ahead of the crowd with a shrill chirping of road wheels and the clash of tracks.

  Schaeffer pivoted, pointing his sidearm at the machine. The pistol was a 12mm Colt-Blackhawk, nearly as much of an anachronism in the modern Marine Corps as an officer’s dress sword, firing solid slugs instead of light or plasma. He had eight rounds in the magazine, not enough to stop a mob of ten thousand…or to do serious damage to a light tank.

  But maybe they didn’t know that. “!Ah’ih!” the suit’s amplified voice boomed again.

  Abruptly, the saurian halted. A string of hoots, barks, clicks, and grunts thundered from the machine. The listening AI dissected them, and scrolled a running translation down the side of Schaeffer’s in-head display. Submit, human. I am Ga!gre’joooh of the Clan !Dakt’ji, and I claim your land and your habitations for myself and my cows.

  “Like hell!” Schaeffer snapped back, the pistol not wavering. “Under the terms of extraterritoriality, this compound is the sovereign territory of the Earth Confederation, and you have five seconds to get the hell out!”

  The translation echoed off the surrounding walls and buildings, as Schaeffer wondered how the AI was rendering such terms as “extraterritoriality” and “hell.”

  Arms spread wide, its torso bent forward and down, the saurian screamed and lurched forward.…

  Schaeffer didn’t bother firing the pistol. That had been for show only, with the hope that an aggressive stance might make the bastard back down. Instead, he flexed his knees, jumped, and cut in a quick burst from his meta pack.

  Meta—He64—was an exotic rocket fuel with an exceptionally high energy-density stored in the highly insulated tank on his back. It took tremendous amounts of energy, using high-powered lasers, to pack the helium atoms tightly together in a metastable configuration that came apart very easily when it was released into the jumpjet reaction chamber and heated. In Cernunnos’ sixth-tenths of a G, a single burst carried Schaeffer high into the air, then dropping toward the armored giant. For a moment, he feared he’d miscalculated; objects fell here at less than 600 centimeters per second squared—just five meters and a bit in the first second. From his adrenaline-charged perspective, it felt like he was hanging in the air, nakedly exposed. The flexible torso of the machine twisted about, as though trying to locate him, then angled up, and Schaeffer found himself looking down at the transparent dome located at the joining of the four outstretched arms. Twin ball turrets on the upper torso rotated up, and the saurian loosed two streams of 27mm high-velocity needles.

  Something slammed into his side as he dropped, jarring him. His dress armor was light and thin, but designed to distribute the kinetic energy of an impact across its entire surface. Schaeffer was clubbed to one side by the blow, but he managed not to tumble, managed to awkwardly grab hold of the alien tank’s upper body as he struck, managed to grab and hold tight.

  From half a meter away, he stared into the transparent canopy at the upturned violet eye of the saurian’s pilot.

  The machine’s torso jerked from side to side, trying to throw him off. He jammed his left arm into the mass of interlocking metal plates that served as shutters to protect the clear dome, which appeared to be made of some kind of thick plastic.

  He didn’t know if a bullet would penetrate that plastic, and ricochets might hit someone in the crowd. He wanted to stop these people, not start a war.

  Reversing the pistol in his right hand, Schaeffer brought the butt down hammer-hard against the dome. The force of the blow jarred him to his shoulder despite his armor’s dissipation of the energy, and the driver on the other side of the plastic flinched, but it didn’t look like he’d even scratched the bubble’s surface.

  He swung again, striking hard. And again. And again.…

  The machine was frantic, twisting, turning, and trying to claw at him with its arms. A chirping sounded in Schaeffer’s ear, an alarm triggered by his armor’s radar, and he let go, dropping onto the tank chassis as one massive, mechanical fist whipped past his head and slammed into the bubble. Another arm tried to reach him, but he swarmed up the twisting torso once more, using the segmented armor plates as hand- and footholds. Tucked in close, clinging to the torso and one shoulder, he wasn’t safe, exactly, but the clumsy thing was definitely having trouble reaching him.

  The dome had been brightly starred by the impact of the machine’s powerful arm. When Schaeffer climbed back into view, the metal shutters around it irised shut, protecting it. His suit’s radar warned him of another incoming swing and again he ducked, clinging tightly to the massive, armored torso. The saurian’s ball turret weaponry opened up, but Schaeffer was too close for the guns to bear, and with the shutters closed over the dome, the pilot appeared to be blind.

  “Commander Schaeffer!” Warner’s voice called over his command channel. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  The saurian snapped its torso left and right. He held on.

  “Having a discussion…with the…locals!” he replied, spacing his words between attempts to shrug him off. “Sir!”

  “You can’t stop that thing by yourself!”

  “Tradition…sir! Duty!” He could hear the AI translating, but that didn’t matter.

  “Your duty is to obey my orders, Gunnery Sergeant!”

  “My duty…is to…protect my people…and civilian personnel…sir!”

  “It’ll kill you!”

  “Then I suggest…you open up…the armory! Sir! Let my people…lock and load!”

  Schaeffer just hoped he could buy them enough time.

  A few of the more daring members of the mob were starting to clamber up onto the deck of the chassis.

  Twisting around, Schaeffer fired two shots into the air…then kicked at one particularly stubborn ek-Cha’a who hadn’t jumped off with the gunfire. The torso behind him twisted sharply to the right, the weapons still firing blind; rounds slammed into the crowd and several of the unarmored ek-Cha’a fell, writhing.

  Shit! But at least the rest began scattering. Schaeffer turned at another radar warning, ducked, dropped to the tank deck, then ducked again at another ponderous swing of an arm. He hit the pavement in front of the machine and rolled, coming up again on one knee. The alien machine loomed above him, its torso bent far forward, the arms spread apart as it reached for him.

  Needle-tipped bullets slammed past him, and three shattered against his chest armor and helmet, splintering, staggering him, but he kept his position. The driver’s dome was again open, and Schaeffer could see the ek-Cha’a inside, staring down at him with that single, unwinking purple eye.

  Still kneeling, Schaeffer brought his 12mm up in a two-handed grip and began firing, round after round slamming into the plastic bubble and shrieking off in wild ricochets. The star brightened; the dome cracked.…

  The shutters irised shut again, blinding the driver. The machineguns stopped, but four arms were descending on Schaeffer from above and from either side.

  An alarm shrilled in Schaeffer’s helmet, and he could smell the sulfur stink of SO2. His armor had been breached.

  Again, Schaeffer triggered his jumpjets, sailing up and onto the saurian’s forward deck, then clambering once more up the sharply bent torso. The saurian was firing wildly now, quick, sharp bursts that raked the pavement below or shrieked off the surrounding walls. The dome shields irised open as the driver tried to acquire his target.

  Schaeffer rammed his left fist down into the moveable armor plates, freezing them, while pointing the pistol directly at the driver’s eye. “You can do what you like to each other,” he shouted, “but this ground is mine!”

  For emphasis, he slammed
the butt of his pistol against the cracked plastic again, and this time he felt it actually give a bit beneath the blow. He pressed the muzzle of his sidearm against the plastic. “Get this damned thing off my perimeter!”

  For long seconds, Marine and ek-Cha’a warrior stared at one another. Two arms started to move, and Schaeffer said, “Don’t!” The armored plates surrounding the damaged bubble tightened against his arm, straining. “I said don’t!”

  If worst came to unthinkable worst, Schaeffer had one final card to play. If he released his meta tank, slapped its nanoseal surface against the tank chassis deck, and switched off the insulation circuit, it would explode within a minute or so as the He64 heated up. He didn’t want to do that unless he had to; he wouldn’t be able to control the explosion, and the saurian, he remembered, was powered by a small plutonium reactor inside the chassis. The detonating meta would not only take out the ek-Cha’a armor and a large number of the crowd, it would also scatter an unknown amount of radioactive plutonium across the heart of the city.

  Back down, you hormone-happy bastard! he thought. Back down!…

  The pressure on his arm relaxed. And the saurian began backing up.

  Schaeffer jumped off the front of the vehicle as it continued to back, one track skirt scraping against a gate post with a shower of stone fragments. The crowd behind it began backing up as well, uncertain, and when they collided with unmoving members of the mob behind they began panicking. Schaeffer stepped forward, following the armored vehicle, keeping his pistol steadily pointed at the driver. He halted at the gateway.

  The crowd continued to disperse. The armored saurian stood there for a moment longer, and Schaeffer was uncomfortably aware that the machine’s turrets both were aimed directly at him. His armor had deflected everything those weapons had thrown at him so far, but it couldn’t render him invulnerable. Another sustained volley might well deliver more kinetic energy than his dress armor could handle. His side and chest were aching—now that he could think about it—from the earlier impacts.

  Perhaps worst of all, the digital counter on the side of his pistol now read “0.” He’d expended all of his rounds moments ago, and the weapon was empty.

  The machine raised all four arms, moving them in a complex gesture.

  And then it turned on its tracks and rumbled away across the plaza.

  “Your actions,” Warner told him in his office later, “were…how shall I put it? Somewhat unorthodox.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Schaeffer stood at attention in front of Warner’s high-tech desk. He’d been summoned here immediately after the incident, fully expecting to be chewed a new one.

  Damned bureaucrats.…

  Warner studied him for a moment, his head propped on thumb and extended forefinger. “Tell me, Commander, just what made you think you could stop that vehicle by yourself, with a pistol of all things?”

  “Corps tradition, sir.”

  “Tradition. Commander Schaeffer, there is nothing in Marine Corp tradition—”

  “Excuse me, sir, but there is.” Schaeffer thoughtclicked a file in his own in-head, transferring it to Warner’s console. “This is a download from the embassy library. Corps history is a…a kind of hobby of mine, sir.”

  Warner pulled up the file on one of his monitors and read it. “One Marine with a pistol,” he said. He shook his head. “Against a column of three tanks.”

  “Yes, sir. He had them outnumbered. We call it the Johnson Maneuver.”

  Most Marines knew the story of Marine Captain Charles B. Johnson, just as they knew the fabled exploits of other Corps heroes—Dan Daly, John Basilone, Chesty Puller, Smedley Butler, and so many, many more.

  “You were gambling on the tech differential, weren’t you?” Warner demanded. “That bull-male couldn’t hurt you through your armor.”

  “Not really, sir. He did breach my armor once, though the nano systems sealed it off and purged my air. The thing is, I figured he was acting under both cultural and biological imperatives, assuming that if I was a male, I would fight for my territory and my right to mate. If I backed down—if we backed down, sir—we would have proven that we were submissive males, and would have to do what the bull-males demanded. It was simpler to just show them who was boss.”

  Schaeffer didn’t add that the armor and the technology had nothing to do with things. It was never about the armor…it was about the man inside. Always.

  “Apparently you did so,” Warner continued. “The Ambassador called me a few moments ago. It seems that thirty-five female ek-Cha’a have just applied for admission to the compound. According to ek-Cha’a tradition, they’re yours, now. Your, ah, ‘cows,’ won in single combat, fair and square.”

  “Well, the Ambassador is going to have to find a polite way of saying ‘thanks, but no thanks,’ isn’t he?”

  “Something of that sort.” Warner shook his head, but he almost smiled. “You know, I should write you up for insubordination, Commander, but Ambassador Tarleton is quite happy with how things have turned out. You appear to have defused a potentially serious diplomatic situation, and resolved it in our favor.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, sir.”

  But he hadn’t done it for diplomacy.

  “By the way, you might be interested to know. When the saurian broke off the fight, it moved its arms…kind of like this.” Warner’s two-handed attempt at a four-armed gesture was not nearly as successful as his attempts at the spoken ek-Cha’a language. “According to Ng’g’!grelchk, who was watching the whole thing…the bull was saluting you as a worthy fellow warrior, and as victor.”

  “We should respect the cultural traditions of the locals, sir,” Schaeffer said.

  Just so long, he thought, as the locals learn to respect our traditions as well.

  USMC HISTORY

  CEREBRAL IMPLANT DOWNLOAD [EXTRACT]

  On february 2, 1983, Israeli forces were testing the resolve of 1,200 U.S. Marines in southern Lebanon, part of a UN peacekeeping force in the area. Seeking to discredit the Marines in order to impose their own military control over the area, Israeli infantry and armor probed Marine positions and, in one case, sent a column of three heavy Centurion tanks toward a Marine checkpoint. Captain [Charles B.] Johnson stood in the middle of the road, pistol drawn, forcing the tanks to stop. “You will not pass through this position,” Johnson said. “If you go through, it will be over my dead body.”

  Two of the tanks broke from the third and attempted to rush past Johnson. The Marine jumped on top of the lead tank, put his .45 pistol to [Israeli Lt. Col. Rafi] Landsberg’s head, and ordered the man to stop his tanks.

  Landsberg complied and, after a hurried exchange of radio traffic with his headquarters, the Centurions withdrew. The Israelis tried to downplay the incident, calling it a misunderstanding on the part of the Marines.

  But Captain Johnson’s actions were in the highest traditions of Marine Corps commitment to honor, fidelity, and duty.

  Ian Douglas is the pseudonym of William H. Keith, the author of over 100 novels, mostly military SF and technothrillers. His work includes the Marines in Space trilogy of trilogies, Legacy, Heritage, and Inheritance, written as Ian Douglas. Under the name H. Jay Riker, he wrote the long-running SEALs: The Warrior Breed series, a lightly fictionalized look at the history of Navy special warfare. More recently, he collaborated with author Stephen Coonts on three bestselling spy thrillers in the Deep Black series: Arctic Gold, Sea of Terror, and Death Wave, while his short fiction has been extensively anthologized by the late Martin H. Greenberg.

  Hel’s Half-Acre

  Jack Campbell

  The armor isn’t too bad too live in once you get used to being confined in a sort of obedient iron-maiden for days, weeks, and sometimes months on end. After a while, it feels normal. That’s why in the mobile infantry we joke “Just bury me in my armor so I’ll be comfortable.”

  There’s padding where padding needs to be, and an interior that flexes and adjusts to fit, b
ecause the last thing you need is a sore you can’t reach for a few weeks. The air recyclers do a decent job, once your nose gets used to your smell, that is. After a few weeks in armor, you can’t smell anything—including yourself—and we’re all very grateful for that in the Heavy Mechanized Infantry.

  We’ve got tubes that provide stuff that needs to go in, like food and water, and other tubes that handle what needs to go out afterwards. There’s not much solid waste, since battle rations are concentrated as all hell, and the liquid gets recycled, which you learn not to think about when you’re thirsty. If you run low on anything, packs can be swapped out on the outside of the armor for resupply. You can get music, video, just about anything when you’re not on active ops. There’s even a long-standing rumor that there’s an Easter egg hidden in the programming that will activate different functions in those tubes below the waist to handle the one physical need the armor doesn’t take care of and that young soldiers tend to miss pretty serious as time goes by. No one’s ever found that egg, but looking for it helps pass the time.

  I sat amid a tumble of big rocks that we had nicknamed “the fort,” surrounded by the rest of the platoon. We call ourselves Hel’s Half-Acre on account of Sergeant Hel. Lieutenants come and go, usually coming with a brand new, shiny uniform and usually going in body tubes not long afterwards, but Sergeant Hel stays. “I’m gonna outlive all of you,” she predicts when we haven’t done something as good as we should have. “Because you’re all idiots! I’ll be safe since the Canaries will use up all of their ammo killing you! That’s assuming you get that far, which you won’t, because if any of you low-grade excuses for soldiers ever pull that again I’ll shoot you myself and save the Canaries the trouble!”

  The Canaries don’t look like little birds, of course. It would feel kind of stupid fighting to the death against little birds. But the way they talk sounds like canaries, and for noses they’ve got these hard beak things on top of their mouths. I don’t know much else about them, because the only ones I’ve ever seen up-close were dead.