Big Boys Don't Cry Read Online Free PDF Page B

so doing… at length, with Francis fallen, Magnolia conducted a gallant one Ratha assault upon no less than forty-four enemy Thrung class assault vehicles, destroying fifteen of these and causing the rest to scatter and flee for safety. Magnolia’s conduct reflects great credit upon herself and her comrades, human and Ratha, and the Tenth Infantry Regiment… by order of Aloysius Keeling, Lieutenant General, Seventeenth Expeditionary Corps, Commanding.”
     
     
    I remember that—even as the men welded the small medallion to my turret, causing discomfort but no real pain—I felt so proud that day.
     
    ******
     
    “Watcha got there, Carmichael? A Ratha medal? Now THAT will make one helluva souvenir.”
    Carmichael snorted in derision. “Nah, screw that. I know a scrap metal dealer that follows the fleet that will give top credit for refined iridium. Big boy here won’t cry over it. It’s just a machine. What does it care? Besides,” he said, holding up a small ocular device with loose, thin wires dangling from it like so many nerve endings, “I have this here camera for a souvenir.”
     
    ******
     
    ‘Big boy here won’t cry.’ Two lies in a single sentence. I am not a boy. And I will cry….
     
 
    Excursus
     
    From “Why We Fought: The Quang, Enemies of Man”. Approved for distribution for grades four through six by the Imperial Counsel for Primary Education.
     
    Into the void around the Loki system emerged twenty-seven Ratha assault transports, each carrying two Rathas of the Tenth Regiment, with full platoon of infantry between them. The transport fleet was well guarded by one dreadnought, seven cruisers, and thirteen lighter escorts. The target was Loki IX and the enemy were the treacherous Quang.
    Rathas and Quang were old enemies. One war between Quang and the human’s armored champions had already been fought. Despite losses, sometimes severe losses, by humanity’s forces, the Quang had been thoroughly drubbed, their outlying planets occupied, and a fitting schedule of reparations imposed.
    It had not been enough. As every man and Ratha in the assault force knew, reparations were never enough to prevent another war although they were sometimes enough to cause one. So it had been in this case: a Quang request for a delay of the scheduled payments coincided with a political campaign within the Terran sphere. Recognizing the Quang menace, one candidate for the Imperial Senate shifted her platform to a more properly defensive one in order to warn Man of the threat. In response, the incumbent had then pushed through a call for more punitive measures against the Quang.
    The devious Quang pretended to beg for peace. Thinking to gull a credulous humanity with their lies, they had purported to offer everything in their power for peace. Wisely, politicians and media alike ignored their false pleading.
    Finally, the Quang struck. Their fleet emerged unexpectedly, and without declaration of war, from hyperspace to catch a complacent human peacekeeping blockade over a mining planet off guard. Thinking to gain an unfair advantage through the manipulation of some traitorous bleeding hearts within the Imperial intelligentsia, the lying Quang claimed that the blockade had left the populace of the nearly barren mining planet of the verge of starvation. Taken by surprise, innocent human ships and crews flared like small suns amidst the black depths of space.
    Then came the inevitable revenge against Quang perfidy. Humanity struck back with ships and Rathas beyond counting. Not content with re-imposing a peace, the insidious aliens were to be made unable to pose a future threat to mankind. Quang planets were scoured of life, their civilizations were destroyed. Only the presence of substantial resources were cause enough to prevent Man, in his just wrath, from exerting the fullest possible retaliation on a Quang planet.
    Over Loki’s sun, the Ratha’s assault transports took up a safe orbit just outside of the