The Tejano Conflict Read Free Page B

arizonica
.”
    â€œSo what?”
    â€œCommonly known as ‘Arizona cypress,’ the natural version is a medium-sized evergreen tree that grows to between ten and twenty-five meters in height. These have been genetically modified so that they achieve a height of forty meters, with a broader crown.”
    â€œUh-huh. It’s a fucking tree. Making it taller and fatter stops pradar and IR
how
? Are you gonna get to it or keep dancing?”
    Jo said, “Don’t let him give you a hard time, Gunny, we didn’t know it either until the guy from Tejas told us. It’s one of the reasons they hired us.”
    Gramps said, “Attend: Back in the day, there were a lot of revolutionary factions on Earth, peaking during the late twenty-first century. There were ecoterrorist groups, tax revolts, multinational corporate infighting. Some of them came and went in a hurry; some of them lasted a lot longer.”
    Gunny said, “Ah knew that. Primary ed stuff. Again, so what? Why the history lecture? You do it just to fuck with me, don’t you?”
    He ignored that: “You recall hearing about a group called Children of the Alamo?”
    Gunny shook her head. “No. Ah do know about the Alamo.”
    Formentara said, “The what-amo?”
    â€œA prespaceflight war,” Gunny said. “A small force of soldiers and civilians, somewhere around two hundred and fifty, were holed up in a makeshift adobe fort, an old religious mission, called ‘Alamo.’ The defenders gave a good account of themselves, but they were outnumbered five to one; eventually, they were overcome and slaughtered.
    â€œThe battle became a rallying cry of the Alamo’s defenders, whose armies went on to defeat their opponents: ‘Remember the Alamo!’”
    â€œThat’s the war,” Jo said. “The defeated group was forced to cede a lot of territory to the victors, which became part of a new country. There were some who never got over the loss, apparently. One faction determined to reverse their fortunes, to win back the lost real estate.”
    â€œDid they?” Wink asked.
    â€œNo, but not for lack of trying for multiple generations over several hundred years. They hold grudges a long time here on the homeworld.”
    Kay shook her head.
    Jo continued: “To shorten Gramps’s long story, the CotA group eventually became insurgent, tried to foment a revolution. It failed, but along the way, they did some things, one of which was to create and grow several forests of the local cypress tree throughout the region. The plants could be made to take up minerals and metals from the fertilized soil that would then concentrate in the wood and needles in specific proportions.”
    Gunny got it. “No shit? Organic shielding?”
    â€œGrow-your-own Faraday cage and chaff all in one.
    â€œIt had been done before, on a smaller scale,” Gramps said. Before Gunny could say anything else, he said, “I looked it up. Anyway, they were in it for the long haul, and once the trees were big enough, the revolutionaries conducted much of their business underneath the canopies. Simple, but effective.”
    â€œNobody noticed they couldn’t see through the trees from above?”
    â€œNot for a long time, there was no reason to. IR was mostly used for weather, and little forests don’t create much of that. Long-range pradar was expensive and used mostly for military applications, and dinky forests in the middle of nowhere weren’t considered a problem.”
    â€œHidin’ where nobody would look. Or could if they tried.”
    â€œSo it was,” Gramps said. “Eventually, the would-be revolutionaries fell apart, ran down, and went away, but the trees they planted were hardy, and they are mostly still there. Which brings us to us . . .”
    Gunny nodded. “Got it.”
    â€œSo Kay and I will make the first pass and record what we see.