The Mammoth Book of SF Wars Read Online Free PDF

she asked.
    “It gives us breathing space while we each try to talk our superiors into making it permanent.”
    “My superiors will assume you are lying to us,” said the priestess.
    Suddenly Petersen smiled. “When we stop talking war and start talking negotiations, now we are in my bailiwick,” he said. “I propose a trade.”
    “A trade?”
    “I want you to come back to Earth with me as a goodwill ambassador of your race, someone who can confirm what I have to tell them. View it as a public display of friendship and mutual trust.” He turned to me. “And Sergeant Colford here will stay behind in the same capacity and speak to your people.”
    “Why me?” I demanded.
    “Because you lost a sister in this war, and were incarcerated for some months. If you can forgive them and point to the real enemy, I think it will bolster the arguments of whatever s’ndar is speaking to his people on our behalf.”
    I considered. Could a ceasefire agreement – made in a sewer pipe between a staff sergeant, a priestess and a senator who were light years from Washington – actually have any legs?
    We’re now in the process of finding out.
    I hope my sister didn’t die for nothing. I hope my months of being chained in solitary served some purpose. I hope the priestess can sway her people and the senator can sway his. I even hope that someday I find out what the Conglomerate wants, and that I stop thinking of them as the enemy.
    Mostly, though, I hope I can stop being a peacekeeper …
    … and start being a peacemaker.

FROM OUT OF THE SUN, ENDLESSLY SINGING
Simon R. Green
The second of our stories original to this volume is cosmically lyrical and legendary in the way, perhaps, of Cordwainer Smith, while it deals death lavishly, as might be expected from the author of eight novels in a Deathstalker series, not to mention twelve Nightside books and other series; “trilogies are for wimps,” says Simon R. Green. Born and based in Britain, which explains his devotion to tea and his acting in open-air productions of Shakespeare, to which he travels by motorbike, his novelization of the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves sold a third of a million copies.
     
    T HIS IS THE story. It is an old, old story, and most of the true details are lost to us. But this is how the story has always been told, down the many years. Of our greatest loss and our greatest triumph; of three who were sent down into Hell for ever, that the rest of Humanity might know safety, and revenge. This is the story of the Weeping Woman, the Man With the Golden Voice, and the Rogue Mind. If the story upsets you, pretend it never happened. It was a very long time ago, after all.
    This goes back to the days of the Great Up and Out, when we left our mother world to go out into the stars; to explore the Galaxy and take her fertile planets for our own. All those silver ships, dancing through the dark, blazing bright in the jungle of the night. We met no opposition we couldn’t handle, colonized every suitable world we came to and terraformed the rest, remaking them in our image. It was a glorious time, by all accounts, building our glittering cities and proud civilizations, in defiance of all that endless empty Space. We should have known better. We should have sent ahead, to say we were coming. Because it turned out we were trespassing, and not at all welcome.
    They came to us from out of the Deep, from out of the darkest part of Deep Space, from far beyond the realms we knew, or could ever hope to comprehend. Without warning they came, aliens as big as starships, bigger than anything we had ever built, and far more powerful. Endless numbers of them, a hoard, a swarm, deadly things of horrid shape and terrible intent, blocking out the stars where they passed. They were each of them huge and awful, unknown and unknowable, utterly alien things moving inexorably through open Space on great shimmering wings. They came from where nothing comes from, and they thrived in