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.What would we have then?”“Equality!” Evan said, surprising himself.Cheers and a smattering of applause greeted his outburst.“There are other ways to accomplish this.Some of you have already earned your citizenship.Others are working in that direction.If you truly support the Governor’s example, you should work within the system.”“Where you will continue to stack the deck against us,” another cadet said, her voice breaking.Michaelson stepped forward and placed a comforting hand on her arm.“Legate,” he spoke carefully, choosing each word with great care, “I have… suffered through a great deal in service to The Republic.I have fought and bled for it, and I’ve made my share of mistakes.I have also seen for myself the trials Liao has endured over the past twenty-two years.These people are frustrated.They are simply asking for a forum.How can this be a bad thing?”Ruskoff visibly winced at the mention of mistakes made in service to The Republic.Perhaps the Legate was not so immune to the overbearing weight often brought against Liao.He recovered quickly.“Perhaps if Governor Lu Pohl were to introduce measures during the next world campaign…”“No!” Evan banged his hand down on the table.Michaelson started to speak, but Evan silenced him with a gesture.The veteran’s calm words were not what they needed.“No more promises, no more delays.We’re tired of feeling afraid on our world, in our towns and around our campus.”Everyone stared at him.After two years of working in the dark, attention was hard for him to bear.He took a calming breath.“It is time for The Republic to step back and exercise a measure of the grand tolerance it preaches.Devlin Stone is watching us: that’s what the politicians throw in our faces.Do you realize how much that sounds like a threat? Well, Stone is gone.He left.It’s The Republic’s eye always on us to decide if we’ll toe the line.Well, we won’t.I won’t.” More cheers, many with a bright edge that could cut if he was not very, very careful.“You don’t have a choice.” Ruskoff appealed to the assembled group.He found only Michaelson.“Major, help them understand.This solves nothing.”“And walking away now?” Evan asked.“That’s in our best interest?” He shook his head.“We know that our military careers are over, Legate.We realized that the next day, and we accepted it.You’ll never trust us with troops.You’ll never give us a voice.And you know what? Most of us have embraced the idea, and so have troops from under your own command, who are on campus to support our position.We also have a fairly large and growing tent city of local civilians presenting themselves for service.Because this is our time.Now.”Evan pulled his appointment of citizenship out of a pocket.“My citizenship, finally offered when The Republic is desperate enough to need me.” Evan held it up.Some cadets watched with admiration, some envy and then shock.Jenna stared at Evan with sadness welling in her eyes as he ripped the appointment in half, lengthwise, slowly, so that the sound of tearing paper filled the room for several long and painful heartbeats.“It’s too late, Legate.It was too late when I came to this school.”He tore another stripe.“It was too late when I joined the Ijori Dè Guāng.”Another.“It was too late the day I was born.”He laid the scraps of his citizenship onto the table.“Take this back to Lord Governor Hidic, with my compliments.”Ruskoff stood.He nodded to his lieutenant who moved for the door, opened it, and stood aside for the senior officer.The Legate leaned in toward Evan, speaking very calmly.“You are going to force me into doing something that I truly do not want to do, Evan Kurst.You and all of your comrades.This may be the only round of diplomacy you get.Eventually, I will have to come back.And if I have to pull this school apart again, stone by stone, I will.Who wins then, Evan?”Ruskoff left on that, striding for the door and out into the hall.Michaelson followed, and Hahn.Others filed out after them with a few pausing to place a hand on Evan’s shoulder and giving him a reassuring squeeze.They left him there, alone with his thoughts and with their silent approval.Jenna was last to leave.“You did not have to do that,” she said.“But I did, Jen Lynn Tang.I did.For me, if for no one else.” He stared at the shredded page, where Ruskoff had left it.“Either I believe in what we do here, or…” Or else he accepted that Liao would never be free.“Or, I do not.”She bent down, and kissed him on the brow.His skin burned where her lips brushed him.Then she, too, left.Evan glanced around the empty room.Some cadets and students would slip away tonight, he knew.More, he hoped, would steel themselves for the trials yet to come.How many would be left, he wondered, to be remembered as heroes or tried as traitors?Who wins?“The people,” he whispered to the departed Legate.“The people win.”And he truly believed it.17ConvergenceHeavy fighting continues on Algot and Menkar, on Shensi and Gan Singh.Tsitsang has been abandoned to the Confederation, while Hunan and St.Andre remain heavily garrisoned against attack.And as The Republic Armed Forces rotate through New Aragon, refitted to be thrown back into the fight as soon as possible, one wonders what Prefect Tao hopes to accomplish against such a determined foe.—Jacquie Blitzer, battlecorps.org/blitzer/, 27 June 3134XiapuHuáng-yù Province, Liao30 June 3134ATriarii company had thrown itself into the path of McCarron’s Armored Cavalry.The battlefield was less than three hours old when the Zahn Heavy Transport lumbered over a small rise, the truck rocking wildly back and forth as it powered its way over a rare patch of pristine field.Its massive wheels crushed down the tall grasses and dug twin furrows into the wet soil.Mai Uhn Wa sat in the front cabin, holding himself back into his seat with arms braced on the forward panel.He stared out through wiper-streaked ferroglass.When the truck braked to a muddy halt he shouldered open the door, leaving the vehicle and its reckless driver behind.Whit Greggor and another resistance fighter clambered out of the Zahn’s back.Even the burly tough looked a bit pale after the ride.An icy drizzle pattered down, dousing a few stubborn fires, washing the haze and smoke from the air into oily ground cover.Rainbow puddles stood inside of giant footprints and half-track scars.The cordite smell of burnt gunpowder and solid-fuel missile exhaust lingered over everything.Mai Wa heard the distant chop of rotors, scanned the heavens, and counted five VTOLs thundering their way southeast toward the nearby city of Xiapu.Smoke-contaminated rain trickled down his brow, stung his eyes.Mai grabbed the longer strands of his graying hair back into a loose horsetail, and then tugged a service cap over his head to hold it away from his face.The older man stood in his basic camouflage fatigues, surveying the wreckage laid out over the golden range.The corpses of two BattleMechs lay facedown on a gentle slope nearly a kilometer distant, one of them obviously a Firestarter from the shoulder profile that stuck up above the rise.It explained a large swath of burnt grasses that stretched a black, smoldering hand over several square kilometers to the east.Closer up were the gutted shells of a Scimitar, a MASH vehicle.An overturned Regulator II, which might see combat again, and a Po II, which had thrown a track, but otherwise looked fine.The Po was painted in dark metallic blue, trimmed in green, and proudly bore a dark knight emblem crested with a red plume, the crest of McCarron’s Armored Cavalry [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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