Free The Transmigration of Souls by William Barton

a starship built with Scavenger technology would take forty years to reach Alpha Centauri.
    So the fuck what?
    We’re fucking immortal , God damn it!
    But we’re also fucking afraid ...
    Jug might not like it. Might come. Might kill us all.
    Brucie’s voice over the intercom: “Forty-five minutes, Sarge.”
     “Right. Thanks.” She picked the old communicator off her belt. Patch me into the comlink.”
    “Will do,” bluff, hearty words, little Brucie now in his technohero role. “Through the translator and out, on one freq in Arabic, the other in Chinese.” Unspoken: no sense wasting good English on them gooks. Though, of course, Brucie was probably a gook, most 21st century Americans had been gooks, made up now to fill his fantasy role...
    “Thanks.” A moment for thought, then, “This is Sergeant-Major Astrid Kincaid, USMC Lunar Expeditionary Force,” What a laugh, like Pershing’s Heroes landing in France, come to end the War to End War, “addressing all groups and individuals currently landed on the United States External Territory of Luna. Board your ships now. Begin making preparations for liftoff. If you do so, you will be permitted to depart in peace. If your vessel cannot make trans-Earth injection at this time, lift off to Lunar orbit. You will be taken in tow and returned to low Earth orbit for repatriation.” Long pause, then, “If you attempt to resist, you will be attacked by armed infantry. Sergeant-Major Astrid Kincaid, USMC, signing off.”
    Corky the Neanderthal Girl said, “Way tough, Sarge! Just like in the old TV shows.”
    Shit. Just like in the old TV shows ... She put the communicator on her belt and kept looking out the window, watching the Moon grow, wishing it was that bright blue moon she’d seen once, long ago, in a galaxy so damned far away they never did figure out just which one it was.
    o0o
    Consternation.
    Arabs gabbling to each other, big eyes even wider, like white European eyes now, probably saying, “Did you hear that ...” fat-faced scientist waving his arms, teetering off balance in the low gee, commander reaching out to steady him, muttering low.
    And confusion in me, as well, thought Ling Erhshan. Two voices in my ears. One a woman, snarling nearly-incomprehensible Arabic, a language I only studied for two years as an undergraduate, thirty years ago now. And another woman, hard, barbaric voice speaking Chinese, echoing back through the circuit from Ming Tian .
    Recognizably the same woman’s voice. Metallic, angular and deadly. Well. Not such a difficult trick. The UN computer in Singapore does just as well.
    Da Chai, speaking in his left ear now: “Ling...”
    “I heard.”
    “Maybe you’d better come back to the ship.”
    “I... think not.”
    “If there’s fighting...”
    Image of technogenic lightning bolts. “It would appear that it’s a manned ship we face, not a missile. I assume you will... hold your fire?”
    Soft static in the earphone, Arabs still snarling to each other, then Chang Wushi said, “The particle beam weapon will not be much use against infantry, once they’ve debarked. Other than that, all we have are our sidearms.”
    Ling was trying to keep consciousness his own little gun, with its pathetic little bullets, tucked away in the suit’s right knee pouch, suppressed. “Still. I think there’s no other choice.”
    “We’ll do whatever seems appropriate, when the time comes.”
    That cold hand again.
    o0o
    Alireza kept listening to Inbar, hearing his insistent, frightened plea, “Let’s just go back and get in the ship. Let’s wait . What harm can it do?” But the decision was already made, his arguments fading away. “Mahal?”
    “Here. What do you make of it?”
    Nothing. I make nothing of it. He felt a momentary urge to tell them to get out of the ship and come over to the dome, stay together , but, “Sit tight. Um. Maybe you’d better do a preflight.”
    Tariq: “We’d already started that. Even