LITMIR.BIZ

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sending a trio of orange fireballs into the intense blue of the late afternoon sky.

      All of the Marines along the northeastern sector of the perimeter were firing now, along with robot sentries and gunwalkers. Warhurst switched his weapon to burst fire; laser rifles had to recycle between each shot, so true full-auto wasn’t possible, but he could trigger up to six bursts at a cyclic rate of two per second before the weapon had to take a three-second pause to recharge. Another truck exploded.

      Dozens of KOA troops were falling, caught in a devastating fire from the Marine positions and from directly overhead. The front ranks wavered, hesitating in the face of that deadly wind as those farther back kept pressing forward. In another moment the attack had dissolved into a bloody, thrashing tangle of people, some holding their ground, most trying desperately to flee to the rear and the imagined safety waiting for them back across the Nile.

      “Cease fire!” Warhurst called over the command channel. “All squads, cease fire. They’ve had it.”

      The attackers continued to flee, leaving several hundred dead and wounded in the desert; none had come within twelve hundred meters of the Marine lines. Most had fallen well beyond the range of their own weapons. No Marines had been hit.

      “Good old Yankee high-tech scores again!” Private Gordon called over the tac channel. “They didn’t even touch us!”

      “Belay the chatter,” Warhurst warned. “Keep alert. Petro? Anything in front of you?”

      He had to assume that the brash, frontal rush had been a feint, something to pin the Marines’ attention to the northeast while the real attack was staged from another quarter.

      “Negative, sir,” Gunny Petro replied. She was in charge of the northwest sector. “No targets.”

      “Rodriguez?”

      “All clear, Skipper.”

      “Cooper?”

      “Nothing on my front, sir.”

      The robot sentries out in the desert were very sensitive, fully able to detect the approach of a single man by his body heat, his movement, his radar signature, even his scent. When Warhurst called up a tactical overhead view of the perimeter, he could see his own troops huddled in their fighting positions … but no sign of enemy troops closer than three kilometers.

      But there would be another attack, and soon. He looked up into the early evening sky and wondered what the hell was happening to their relief.

       Esteban Residence

       Guaymas, Sonora Territory

       United Federal Republic, Earth

       1545 hours PT

      “The Marines?” his mother cried. “Goddess, why would you want to join the Marines?”

      John Garroway Esteban stood a little straighter, fists clenched at his side. “You had no right!” he said, shouting at his father, defiant. “My noumen is mine!”

      “It’s my house, you’re my son!” his father shouted back, raging. The elder Esteban had been drinking, and his words were slurred. “I paid for your implant, and I can goddamn do anything in, to, or through your goddamn noumen I goddamn want!”

      “Carlos, please,” John’s mother said. She was crying now. This was going to be a bad one.

      They’d had this argument before, many times. John’s Sony implant created the inner, virtual world through which he could access the World Net, communicate with friends, and even operate noumenally keyed devices, from thought-clicked doors to the family flyer. Noumenon was the conceptual opposite to phenomenon; where a phenomenon was something that happened outside a person’s thoughts, in the real world, a noumenon was entirely a creation of thought and imagination, a virtual reality opened within his mind … but the one was no less real than the other. As the saying went, just because it was all in your head didn’t mean it wasn’t real.

      It was also personal, keyed to John’s own thoughts and implant access codes. His father, however, insisted on supervising him through the implant, and the almost daily invasions of his privacy gnawed at John constantly.

      Lots of kids had implants with parental controls, if only to monitor their study downloads and keep track of the entertainment Net sites they visited. Carlos Esteban went a lot further, eavesdropping on his conversations with Lynnley, reading his private files, and now downloading his conversation with the Marine recruiter three days ago. Every time John managed to assemble a counterprogram, like the yellow warning light, his father found a way around it … or simply bulled his way right in.

      And his father was, of course, furious at his decision to join the Marines. He’d expected his father’s anger but had hoped his mother would understand. She was del Norte, after all, and a Garroway besides.

      “No son of mine is going to be part of those butchers,” his father was saying. “The Butchers of Ensenada! No! I will not permit it! You will join me in the family business, and that is that!”

      “I don’t want to be a part of the damned family business!” John shot back. “I want—”

      “You are eighteen years old,” his father said, his voice rich with scorn. “You have no idea what it is you want!”

      “Then maybe this is how I’ll find out!” He swung his arm angrily, taking in the quietly sophisticated sweep of the hacienda’s E-room and dining area, including the floor-to-ceiling viewall overlooking the silver waters of the Sea of Cortez below Cabo Haro. “I won’t if I stay here the rest of my life!”

      A tone sounded. The house was signaling them: someone was at the door. He wanted to snatch the excuse, to pull up the visitor’s ID through his implant and go open the door … but his father was glaring into his eyes, furious, and the brief wandering of his thoughts would have been immediately noticed.

      “You have here the promise of a good education!” Carlos continued, shouting. If he’d heard the announcement tone, he was ignoring it. “Of a place in the family business when you graduate. Security! Comfort! What more could you possibly need or want?” Carlos Jesus Esteban took another long sip from the glass of whiskey he held. He’d been drinking more and more heavily of late, and his temper had been getting shorter.

      “Maybe I just want the chance to get those things for myself. To get an education and a job without having them handed to me!”

      “Eh? With the Marines? What can they teach you? How to kill people? How to shed whatever civilized instincts you may have acquired and become an animal, a sociopathic murderer? Is that what you want?”

      The house butler rolled in. “Excuse me,” it said. “There is—”

      “Get out!” the elder Esteban screamed.

      “Yes, sir.” Obediently, the robot spun about and glided out of the room once more, as though it was used to Carlos’s violent moods.

      “You just want to go with those worthless gringo friends of yours,” his father continued. “You think military service is some sort of glamorous game, eh?”

      “Have you thought about joining the Navy, Johnny?” his mother asked helpfully, with a worried, sidelong glance at his father. “Or the Aerospace Force? I mean, if you want to travel, to go offworld—”

      “All of the services are parasites!” Carlos shouted, turning on her. “And the Marines are the worst! Invaders, oppressors, with their boots on our throats!”

      “My grandfather was a Marine,” John said with more patience than he felt. “As was his father. And his mother and father. And—”

      “All your mother’s side of the family,” his father snapped. He drained the last of his whiskey, then moved to the bar to pour himself another. He appeared to be

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