Dusk (Dusk 1) by J.S. Wayne

waited for it to sink into his skin.
    Just because he felt like roadkill didn’t mean he had to look like it in front of someone below him in pay grade.
    * * *
    Pete tugged at the collar of his dress blue jacket. The eagles at his shoulders still looked strange, alien, gleaming silver from their lofty perch on his collar. He felt strangely out of place, as if someone had swapped out his uniform with the pips that denoted his real rank for a joke. Like most small details, that one tiny addition made a great deal of difference. It made him feel odd, like a kid playing dress-up with his dad’s suit.
    In the past two weeks, he’d been forced to deal with a lot of things he didn’t like. This was just one more, he reflected ruefully.
    Tugging the patent-leather belt at his waist, he pulled the buckle to the regulation attitude, straddling his “gig line.” The ceremonial saber hanging at his right hip formed a comforting counterbalance to the holstered sidearm on his left. Both weapons looked archaic, befitting the history and tradition of every element of the uniform from the bird, ball, and hook emblems at his throat to the “hash marks” denoting his years of service down the sleeves to the blood stripes running vertically down each leg of his pants.
    Neither was.
    The saber, although it was almost a precise replica of the Mameluke sword that had famously been awarded to First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon during the First Barbary War over a millennium previously, carried a cutting edge that would have given the ancient Devil Dogs an unquestionable advantage over any opponent. The edge, contained in a magnetic flux field, was actually a fine line of plasma, roughly one-third as hot as the surface of Sol. The sidearm, on the other hand, had been cunningly crafted to look like an ancient Colt Model 1911. In actuality, it was a modern and utterly lethal plasma blaster, containing one hundred charges in the drop magazine within the grip. Although he wore the weapons secured with their straps to demonstrate peaceable intent, he could have either clear of its case and ready to go in less than half a second with either hand and you call it.
    Despite the resplendence of the gleaming black shoes, belt, and brim of his cap, he felt far less snappy than his outward demeanor suggested. There were so many ways he could fail at this mission, so many things that could go horribly wrong that had absolutely nothing to do with him, or that had everything to do with him.
    Part of the problem was a natural antipathy between himself and Ambassador Al-Aziz. The ambassador was unhappy that Pete was coming along for the ride, while Pete was disgusted by Al-Aziz’s idea of diplomacy. “If they do not give us the gallartium,” he had declared more than once, “we will simply take it.”
    Pete had made the mistake of observing that one diplomatic away party, even accompanied by a Marine colonel and his retinue, was unlikely to make much of a dent in Dusk’s forces if they decided they really didn’t care to play ball. Al-Aziz simply fixed him with his burning anthracite eyes, beetled his bushy black brows at Pete, and said, “Then it is your job to make sure we do make a dent.”
    Pete didn’t pretend to be a world-class negotiator, but Muhamed Quadri Al-Aziz was about the last person he’d have chosen to head up a negotiation. Not only did Al-Aziz hold to a very rigid and largely discredited interpretation of the Qu’ran, which said that women were to be seen and not heard, but he was generally boorish and impatient, both dangerous traits in a diplomat. Knowing the new senior ambassador for Dusk was a woman, Pete couldn’t help but anticipate stormy weather ahead for the negotiations.
    Oh, well. If Al-Aziz screws this up, it’s not on me. I just have to keep his sorry ass alive; I don’t have to like him or invite him over to watch powered armor combat. Of course, it would be nice if he’d make my job a little easier by behaving