Star Corps by Ian Douglas Read Free Book Online

“So what are you going to do?”
    â€œWhat can I do? I already thumbed the papers. We’re Marines now, Lynn.”
    She laughed. “Well, not quite. There are a few minor formalities to attend to first. Like basic training, remember?”
    He walked to the side of the deck, leaning against the redwood railing and staring out over the glistening waters of the Gulf of California. La Hacienda Esteban clung to the summit of a high hill overlooking the cape. The sprawl of thetown of Guaymas, the harbor crammed with fishing boats, the clutter of resorts along the coast, provided a bright, tropical splash of mingled colors between the silver-gray sea and the sere brown of the hills and cliff sides. God, I hate it here, he thought.
    â€œHaving second thoughts?” Lynnley asked.
    â€œHuh? Hell no! I’ve got to get out of here!”
    â€œThere are other ways to leave home than joining the Marines.”
    â€œSure. But I’ve always wanted to be a Marine. Ever since I was a kid. You know that.”
    â€œI know. It’s the same with me. It’s in the blood, I guess.” She moved to the railing beside him, leaning against it and looking down at the town. “Is it just the Marines your dad hates? Or all gringos?”
    â€œHe married a gringo, remember. And she was a Marine’s daughter.”
    â€œHell, the war was over twenty years before he was born, right? What’s his problem?”
    John sighed. “Some of the families down here have long memories, you know? His grandfather was killed at Ensenada. He doesn’t like the government, and he doesn’t like the military.”
    â€œWhat is he, Aztlanista?”
    â€œI don’t know anymore. Some of his drinking buddies are, I’m pretty sure. And I know he subscribes to a couple of different Aztlan nationalist netnews sites. He likes their ideas, whether he’s a card-carrying member or not.”
    â€œS’funny,” Lynnley said. “Most of the Aztlanistas are poor working class. Indios, farmers. You don’t usually see the big landowners messing with the status quo, joining revolutionary organizations and all that.” She tossed her head, indicating the hacienda and the surrounding hilltop lands. “And your family does have money.”
    He shrugged. “I guess. We don’t talk about where the money came from, of course.” His father’s family had become fabulously wealthy in the years before the UN War,when parts of Sonora and Sinaloa—then states of the old Mexican Republic—had furnished a large percentage of several types of illicit drugs for the huge and wealthy northern market.
    â€œBut it’s not just the money,” he went on. “There’s still such a thing as national pride. And all of the big-money families around here stand to come out on top of the heap if Aztlan becomes a reality. The new ruling class.”
    â€œHuh. You think that could happen?”
    â€œNo,” he replied bluntly. “Not a snowball’s chance on Venus. But the possibility is going to keep the locals stirred up for a long time.”
    Baja, Sonora, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua were the newest dependent territories of the burgeoning United Federal Republic, a political union that included the fifty-eight states of the United States plus such far-flung holdings as Cuba, the Northwest Territory, and the UFR Pacific Trust. Acquired during the Second Mexican War of ’76–’77, all four north Mejican territories were in line to be granted statehood, as the fifty-ninth through the sixty-second states, respectively, pending the outcome of a series of referendum votes scheduled in two years. Heavily dependent both on Yankee tourism and on northern markets for seafood and marijuana products, the region of old Mexico surrounding the Gulf of California had closer ties to the UFR than to the Democratic Republic of Mejico, and statehood was likely to pass.
    But