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The Hoplite" by Robert Reed This could be Persia. These wide river valleys are fertile and irrigated, home to groves of fruit trees and date trees standing between broad flat fields of golden grain. The sky is a fierce blue, while distant mountains stand tall enough to hold their snows into the fire of summer. Every wind feels obliged to lift the dust high, and when the wind stops, the taste of the land falls into my happy mouth. There is majesty to this country—a sense of ancient epics refusing to end. Even the natives remind me of those long-vanished Persians—darker people than I am, with peculiar clothes and indecipherable customs, wielding a language that still baffles me, even after a year of fighting among them. My orders bring me to a modest home surrounded by wheat. A gun emerges from the shuttered window, and a single shot welcomes me. But the bullet is short on mass and velocity. My shield extends, laying out sheet upon sheet of plasmatic barriers that melt and then shatter the fleck of angry lead. No harm is done. In these circumstances |
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