Free Armored Tears by Mark Kalina

we can tell
them the truth. This shit wanted to attack them, and we stopped him."
    One
of his gun-boys waved broadly, arms over his head. The others made a point of
slinging or holstering any weapons they were holding.
    "That
was well done, Lord Wang," said the new man. He called himself Ren, but
Wang knew that just meant "man" in Mainland Chinese.
    Whoever
he was, he was Han-Chinese, like Wang, and he talked like a pussy. But his eyes
were as hard and sharp as a good steel fighting knife and Wang was fairly sure
the man was a lethal fighter. It showed in the way the new man looked at
things, and the way he moved.
    "That
was nothing," Wang said. "My gun-boys do what I say, is all."
    "Discipline,"
the man, Ren, agreed. "Real discipline, not play-soldier nonsense.
Yes."
    "How
long," Wang asked, without looking at the new man, "till those crates
you brought start making us new guns?"
    "Soon,
Lord Wang. It's all a matter of power. Your camp's solar power array is in bad
repair. My men and I have done what we can, but with so little power,
production will be slower than we had hoped. Still, you'll have the first rifle
tomorrow. And the first rockets in a week."
    "It's
still fucking crazy," Wang said, "that you can make rockets from food
and human shit."
    "Chemistry,
Lord Wang. Just chemistry. The real question is, when the rifles and rockets
are ready, will your men be ready too?"
    "My
men..." Wang said. "Yeah, my men will be ready. You get me the
firepower, and I'll provide the men."
    Wang
was looking at the convoy and the tanks. They were moving again, slowly, their
machineguns tracking his boys as they rolled closer. But Wang barely saw the
tanks. In his mind he could see his gun-boys... changed. Changed into his men;
into trained soldiers with military grade rifles and anti-tank rockets; changed
from his gang into his army. And all the new man wanted for it was some help
killing the DFs and the Arckies. That made it better than free.

8.

 
    The
screening procedure at the UEN side of the Arcadian Tannhauser Gate was perhaps
the most onerous that Aran had ever dealt with. It seemed like half the UEN
security operatives didn't know what they were doing, and the half that did
didn't seem to be the ones in charge.
    The
facility itself was nothing like the ones that led to Elysium, or even to Mars;
those facilities were gleaming, bustling, full of passengers and commerce,
styled, like the most cutting edge airports, to give their passengers a sense
of the romantic and the exotic. This facility was more like a derelict
warehouse on a stupendous scale. Only the vast scale of the place, and the
delays caused by the seemingly endless, pointless waits, were impressive.
    The
delay was more than just annoying. In another few hours, the traffic along the
single rail line through the gate would switch directions, receiving from
Arcadia instead of sending to it. If that happened before he and Ulla had made
it through the gate, they would have to wait another week. The Tannhauser gate
to Arcadia was only open for ten hours, once a week; five hours for transit to
Arcadia and five for transit from Arcadia. The Arcadians didn't have the power
generation infrastructure to run it for any longer.
    "Why
don't they just run the gate longer?" Ulla asked him as they waited in yet
another short but utterly unmoving line.
    "The
Arcadians don't have any real power sources, except solar power. No nuclear
fuel, no fossil fuels either. I suppose they could try wind power, but I've never
heard of them doing it on a large scale; not economical."
    "So?"
    "So,
well, a Tannhauser gate takes an enormous amount of power. They have to charge
up banks of capacitors for a while to build up enough power to open it. And
when the capacitors are drained, the gate closes," Aran explained.
    "Why
not put the gate generator on this side, then?" Ulla asked. "They
still have reactors in the FSNA, don't they?"
    "Well,
that's a bit of a long story," Aran said. "Short version is,