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Necahual by Tobias Buckell
We drop out the wormhole towards a mess of a planet by the ochre light of a dying sun. From the cant of orbit, upside down and even then through virtual portholes we can see tiny spots of white light blossom in the atmosphere.
We're liberators.
Each one of those little blossoms of light is an impact. A chunk of rock with a controller vane on it, predestined for a certain point. It clears out the enemy's ability to hit back above the stratosphere.
I know from past experience that sunsets here on New Anegada won't be the same for a long while. As I a child I'd sat on porches near the coast to watch the magnificent sunsets of my own world for many months after The League came to liberate us.
"Man we're dropping the hammer on this backwater shithole," the man across from me says. His white and blue exoskeleton wraps around his body. He looks like a striped mantis. Right now it's plugged into the convex wall of the pod, charging and keeping him from bouncing around as we skate atmosphere.
A single bead of sweat floats loose from his bulbous nose and hangs in the air between us.
"You know much about the target?"
Everyone wants to know juicy details about them.
"Historical info only," I say."The Azteca of Mother Earth never even called themselves that. They were the Mexica."
I wonder if the black man caddy cornered to right of me has skin-flauge painted on. Hard to tell under the blue and white he's wearing. It's hard not to look askance at him. No one like him on the home planet. But at least he's human, real human, and The League today will be adding another human planet we're t