Ian Douglas - The Complete Heritage Trilogy - Semper Mars, Luna Marine, Europa Strike

“Did you know that something like this might happen? I mean, I thought the deal was that you would complete your studies before going back into the service.”

Yukio had finished his lunch, box and all. He picked up a small stone and began carving into the dirt at the base of the tree. “You say, ‘going back into the service.’ But, Kaitlin, I have never left. I am a chu-i in the Space Defense Force—you would say a ‘lieutenant’—and I have always been under orders. I must follow those orders and fulfill my duty.”

“Funny,” she said, brandishing a dessert roll at him. “I always thought of you as chocolate creme, not chu-i.”

Either he did not catch her pun, or he ignored it. He took a deep breath and looked straight at her. “We will have to cancel our trip, or at least postpone it. Perhaps you can come out later, when I know—”

“Why?”

Yukio looked startled, and then his face went cold and expressionless, and Kaitlin bit her lip. He seemed so Westernized, so…American, most of the time that she often forgot that he was still obedient to shikata, the way of doing things that is so distinctly Japanese. Interrupting a speaker when the two are equals was more than rude, it was disruptive of the wa, or harmony, that all Nihonjin strive for.

“Sumimasen, Toshiyuki-san.” She bowed her head, instinctively turning to Nihongo for her apology. The two of them spoke a mixture of English and Japanese with each other, but some things just didn’t come out right in English. “O-jama shimashita.”

“Daijobu, Chicako.” He reached out and stroked her cheek. “I try to be open to Western ways, but sometimes I still just…react. After living here for a year I see much that is good in your openness, in your willingness to try new things, to change, but I find sometimes that I am still tied to the old ways. And the old ways must change if we are to take advantage of all the future has to offer.”

“But there is good in the old ways, Yukio.”

He nodded. “Yes. We must find a way to continue the growth of the past one hundred years without losing that which makes us what we are. It is…difficult.

“When we planned this trip, it was with the understanding that we would be traveling together, that I would introduce you to my family, yes, but also that I would show you around the country. This I can no longer do. I will probably be free from duty most evenings, but Tanegashima is six hundred kilometers from Kyoto. Even traveling by hydrofoil and maglev, it would be impossible for me to come home for anything less than a weekend.”

“But couldn’t I meet you there?” Kaitlin countered. She polished off the last of her package and washed it down with a slug of kiwi drink. “You’re right, it’s a long way from Kyoto, but your home’s not the only possibility. If I couldn’t actually go to the base, maybe I could meet you at Kagoshima or Miyazaki. There are probably youth hostels there, same as there are in Kyoto.”

“But still I would be working, and I do not even know if I will have evenings or weekends off.”

“When do you have to report? What day?”

“A week from Monday.”

“Well, then we’d still have three days together, I’d get to meet your parents, your family, and after that…You seem to have forgotten that I have my own reasons for wanting to go to Japan.”

Yukio picked up his stone again and continued his scraping. “You truly wouldn’t object to being on your own in my country?”

She raised one eyebrow. “Is my Nihongo that bad?”

He grinned and tossed the stone at her. “You speak it fluently, and you know it.”

“Precisely. So we leave next Thursday as planned. Right?”

“One final question. These are…dangerous times. Do you really think it will be safe for you to travel to a country allied with the UN?”

“The idea of war over Mars is ridiculous, Yukio. Mexico, I’ll grant you, is a problem, with the Aztlan question and everything, but even if that flares up, I can’t see Geneva putting Japanese troops on American soil to deal with it. Look, I know our countries are technically on different sides, but Japan has resisted the UN-sanctioned embargoes. We’re still trade partners. I just can’t see that there would be a problem. It’s not as though we’re talking about going to Colombia or France!”

Yukio shook his head. “I did not want to prevent you from going to Japan, but I wanted to make sure that you knew what the situation was.”

Kaitlin grinned. “Yukio, my love, you couldn’t have kept me from going to Japan if you’d tried, and that’s not my Western individualism talking. That’s money talking. Maybe rich kids like you can contemplate with equanimity losing a couple thousand bucks on a canceled SCRAMjet fare, but I can’t. I’ve been saving up for a trip to Japan ever since I was old enough to rake leaves, and I’m gonna be on that Star Raker next Thursday, whether you’re there or not.”

FRIDAY, 11 MAY

United States Embassy

Mexico City, República de

México

1453 hours local time

Sergeant Gary Bledsoe, USMC, stood at his sandbag-encircled post on the portico outside the Embassy Residence, watching uneasily as the crowds gathered in the plaza beyond the front gate. Many carried signs, some in Spanish, most—displayed for the reporters and vidcams—in English. YANQUIS HANDS OFF MARS! one read. ALIEN TREASURES ARE FOR ALL! read another. Some of the demonstrators evidently were voicing their support for Aztlan, an Hispanic homeland to be carved out of Mexico’s northernmost states—and the US Southwest. Tensions with Mexico had been at the boiling point since 2038, ever since the UN declared a plebiscite to be held in August of this year; the United States had already announced that it was not signatory to the agreement that had called for a vote on independence within its own territorial boundaries.

Occasionally, a rock or bit of garbage sailed over the high stone wall that fenced off the embassy compound. Someone, Bledsoe could hear, was haranguing the crowd in Spanish over a shrill and feedback-prone PA. He couldn’t tell what was being said, but the crowd evidently approved, judging from the full-throated roar that followed each emphatic statement.

“Man, what’s bitin’ them?” Corporal Frank Larabee, standing at Bledsoe’s side, said nervously.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you download the netnews?” Bledsoe said, his tone bantering. “They’re afraid we’re out to loot the Ancients’ ruins on Mars and get all the good stuff for ourselves.”

“Yeah? So what’s that got to do with us?”

“The Ugly American, guy. Haven’t you heard? We’re getting uglier every day.”

“Ugly?” Larabee patted his M-29 assault rifle. “I’ll show ’em ugly.”

“Easy there, Bee,” Gary said. “I haven’t heard a weapons-free, yet. You just be damn certain your toy’s clean.”

Both Marines were wearing their Class-Threes, low-tech, camouflaged helmets and kinevlar torso armor. Normally, of course, they’d have been in their Class-As, the full-dress blues with red-and-white trim that had been the uniform of Marines on embassy guard duty for well over a century now, but as the Mexican crisis had exploded into this ongoing riot, the orders had come down to go to battle dress.

The orders had also allowed them to carry loaded weapons, though they still had to wait for a release order to lock and load or open fire, even if they were fired on first. For a while there, a couple of weeks ago, the embassy Marines had been going around with unloaded rifles. The joke going the rounds at the time had been that the boxy, plastic M-29s weren’t properly shaped to serve as decent clubs, so if a Marine was attacked, his best bet was to give his rifle to his attacker, then kick the bastard in the kneecap while he was still trying to figure out how the adtech weapon worked.