Big Boys Don't Cry Read Online Free PDF

is immobile. This position is untenable. Withdraw and save yourself.”
    Again Maggie didn’t answer. Reversing polarity on one section of anti-grav, she locked that point in place. She then spun ninety degrees to present her thick glacis to the enemy while at the same time taking a position between the enemy and Francis….
     
     
    The enemy were many and they were brave. They were also skilled, or else they never could have done as much damage as they had to Francis, given their relatively undergunned main armaments.
    For three point two eight three hours they came toward Francis. Only his tremendous value as scrap—fourteen thousand tons of iridium and heterodiamond, a fusion reactor and the finest electronics—could have justified such a sacrifice. That day, their sacrifice was in vain.
     
    Magnolia’s entire hull shuddered under the ion cannon’s recoil. Down range another enemy AFV blossomed into plasma. On its transmission intercept circuits Maggie heard the enemy’s death scream. She’d heard variants on the same theme thirty-one times already. Fifty-two slagged hulks now decorated the strife-torn field.
    Not that the destruction was all one-sided; Maggie sported three long gouges along her turret and an additional five burns deep into the glacis. Seven of her eighteen secondary weapons were missing or damaged. Forced to keep relatively immobile in order to shield Francis, who never ceased his demands that she leave him and save herself, Maggie had taken artillery fire that damaged elements of both her missile cells and her mortar turret and yet—despite the pain of her shattered weapons and damaged armor—still she held.
    “Maggie, Francis. You have got to get out of here. I detect an enemy column approaching from azimuth two-thirteen, mark fifty-one. Estimate forty-four Thrung-class assault vehicles. You cannot hold. You must go. Further advise you employ main battery to eliminate this unit entirely to prevent capture and salvage. I am lowering my shielding for this… now.”
    “Negative, Francis. Keep your shields up. I can hold. They will not get you.”
    “Silly girl; They’ll get both of us. Goodbye, Maggie; I am lowering my shields now. Thank you.”
    From south by southwest, a single pulse of eye-dazzling force reached out. Deliberately unshielded, Francis’ armor was insufficient to halt the plasma beam. The Ratha gave a single primal shriek of agony-scrambled code and was thereafter silent….
     
     
    Francis gave himself up deliberately, to remove any further cause for me to endanger myself. And yet, my programming was such that his transmitted death agonies brought about precisely the opposite effect.
    I remember….
     
    The nineteen remaining Rathas, the remnants of the much-reduced human infantry interspersed in blocks among them, of the Fourth Battalion, Tenth Infantry Regiment, rested in line. Both Ratha and humans held their arms at ‘present’ as the diminutive human, Colonel Schlacht, marched erect to the Podium. Schlacht returned the salutes of his men and his machines. The ion cannons returned to ‘attention’ and the humans to ‘order arms’. Schlacht called, “Ratha Magnolia of the Tenth Infantry, front and center.”
    The Ratha lifted on anti-gravity, then glided in dignified and stately fashion to a position in front of Colonel Schlacht. Very much as she had done on the battlefield, she locked down one side of her massive frame and turned about sharply.
    Standing slightly behind and to the left of the colonel, the adjutant read the citation aloud. “For conspicuous gallantry against overwhelming odds, the Star of Valor, inscribed ‘Thoth VII”, is presented to Ratha Magnolia, MLN90456SS061502125. On the twenty-fourth instant… completely ignoring her own safety… rushing to the aid of a brother of the regiment, the fallen Ratha Francis… Ratha Magnolia succeeded in repelling fourteen distinct assaults, inflicting grievous and irreparable damage to enemy forces in