Read Online Semper Mars by Ian Douglas - Free Book Online
Authors: Ian Douglas
Tags: Science-Fiction, Fantasy
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money talking. Maybe rich kids like you can contemplate with equanimity losing a couple thousand bucks on a canceled SCRAMjet fare, but I can’t. I’ve been saving up for a trip to Japan ever since I was old enough to rake leaves, and I’m gonna be on that Star Raker next Thursday, whether you’re there or not.”
F OUR
Friday, 11 May
United States Embassy
Mexico City, República de México
1453 hours local time
Sergeant Gary Bledsoe, USMC, stood at his sandbag-encircled post on the portico outside the Embassy Residence, watching uneasily as the crowds gathered in the plaza beyond the front gate. Many carried signs, some in Spanish, most—displayed for the reporters and vidcams—in English. YANQUIS HANDS OFF MARS! one read. ALIEN TREASURES ARE FOR ALL! read another. Some of the demonstrators evidently were voicing their support for Aztlan, an Hispanic homeland to be carved out of Mexico’s northernmost states—and the US Southwest. Tensions with Mexico had been at the boiling point since 2038, ever since the UN declared a plebiscite to be held in August of this year; the United States had already announced that it was not signatory to the agreement that had called for a vote on independence within its own territorial boundaries.
Occasionally, a rock or bit of garbage sailed over the high stone wall that fenced off the embassy compound. Someone, Bledsoe could hear, was haranguing the crowd in Spanish over a shrill and feedback-prone PA. He couldn’t tell what was being said, but the crowd evidently approved, judging from the full-throated roar that followed each emphatic statement.
“Man, what’s bitin’ them?” Corporal Frank Larabee, standing at Bledsoe’s side, said nervously.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you download the netnews?” Bledsoe said, his tone bantering. “They’re afraid we’re out to loot the Ancients’ ruins on Mars and get all the good stuff for ourselves.”
“Yeah? So what’s that got to do with us?”
“The Ugly American, guy. Haven’t you heard? We’re getting uglier every day.”
“Ugly?” Larabee patted his M-29 assault rifle. “I’ll show ’em ugly.”
“Easy there, Bee,” Gary said. “I haven’t heard a weapons-free, yet. You just be damn certain your toy’s clean.”
Both Marines were wearing their Class-Threes, low-tech, camouflaged helmets and kinevlar torso armor. Normally, of course, they’d have been in their Class-As, the full-dress blues with red-and-white trim that had been the uniform of Marines on embassy guard duty for well over a century now, but as the Mexican crisis had exploded into this ongoing riot, the orders had come down to go to battle dress.
The orders had also allowed them to carry loaded weapons, though they still had to wait for a release order to lock and load or open fire, even if they were fired on first. For a while there, a couple of weeks ago, the embassy Marines had been going around with unloaded rifles. The joke going the rounds at the time had been that the boxy, plastic M-29s weren’t properly shaped to serve as decent clubs, so if a Marine was attacked, his best bet was to give his rifle to his attacker, then kick the bastard in the kneecap while he was still trying to figure out how the adtech weapon worked.
The M-29 ATAR, or advanced-technology assault rifle, was a direct-line descendent of the German-made G-11s of the last century, firing a 4.5mm ablative sabot caseless round with a muzzle velocity of over a kilometer and a half per second. With each bullet embedded in a solid, rectangular block of propellant, there was no spent brass with each shot, and no open ejection port to foul with dirt, sand, or mud. The weapon was loaded by snapping a plastic box containing one hundred rounds into the loading port in the butt, a “bullpup” design that resulted in a rifle only seventy centimeters long and weighing just four kilos. The ’29 looked like a blocky, squared-off plastic toy with a cheap telescope affixed
F OUR
Friday, 11 May
United States Embassy
Mexico City, República de México
1453 hours local time
Sergeant Gary Bledsoe, USMC, stood at his sandbag-encircled post on the portico outside the Embassy Residence, watching uneasily as the crowds gathered in the plaza beyond the front gate. Many carried signs, some in Spanish, most—displayed for the reporters and vidcams—in English. YANQUIS HANDS OFF MARS! one read. ALIEN TREASURES ARE FOR ALL! read another. Some of the demonstrators evidently were voicing their support for Aztlan, an Hispanic homeland to be carved out of Mexico’s northernmost states—and the US Southwest. Tensions with Mexico had been at the boiling point since 2038, ever since the UN declared a plebiscite to be held in August of this year; the United States had already announced that it was not signatory to the agreement that had called for a vote on independence within its own territorial boundaries.
Occasionally, a rock or bit of garbage sailed over the high stone wall that fenced off the embassy compound. Someone, Bledsoe could hear, was haranguing the crowd in Spanish over a shrill and feedback-prone PA. He couldn’t tell what was being said, but the crowd evidently approved, judging from the full-throated roar that followed each emphatic statement.
“Man, what’s bitin’ them?” Corporal Frank Larabee, standing at Bledsoe’s side, said nervously.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you download the netnews?” Bledsoe said, his tone bantering. “They’re afraid we’re out to loot the Ancients’ ruins on Mars and get all the good stuff for ourselves.”
“Yeah? So what’s that got to do with us?”
“The Ugly American, guy. Haven’t you heard? We’re getting uglier every day.”
“Ugly?” Larabee patted his M-29 assault rifle. “I’ll show ’em ugly.”
“Easy there, Bee,” Gary said. “I haven’t heard a weapons-free, yet. You just be damn certain your toy’s clean.”
Both Marines were wearing their Class-Threes, low-tech, camouflaged helmets and kinevlar torso armor. Normally, of course, they’d have been in their Class-As, the full-dress blues with red-and-white trim that had been the uniform of Marines on embassy guard duty for well over a century now, but as the Mexican crisis had exploded into this ongoing riot, the orders had come down to go to battle dress.
The orders had also allowed them to carry loaded weapons, though they still had to wait for a release order to lock and load or open fire, even if they were fired on first. For a while there, a couple of weeks ago, the embassy Marines had been going around with unloaded rifles. The joke going the rounds at the time had been that the boxy, plastic M-29s weren’t properly shaped to serve as decent clubs, so if a Marine was attacked, his best bet was to give his rifle to his attacker, then kick the bastard in the kneecap while he was still trying to figure out how the adtech weapon worked.
The M-29 ATAR, or advanced-technology assault rifle, was a direct-line descendent of the German-made G-11s of the last century, firing a 4.5mm ablative sabot caseless round with a muzzle velocity of over a kilometer and a half per second. With each bullet embedded in a solid, rectangular block of propellant, there was no spent brass with each shot, and no open ejection port to foul with dirt, sand, or mud. The weapon was loaded by snapping a plastic box containing one hundred rounds into the loading port in the butt, a “bullpup” design that resulted in a rifle only seventy centimeters long and weighing just four kilos. The ’29 looked like a blocky, squared-off plastic toy with a cheap telescope affixed
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