I opened the first set and saw it was mine. The helmet had a discreet cluster near the collar identifying it as command gear. I pulled out the leg shield and chest. Sure enough, they fit me perfectly. I could fit into arm shields and leggings made for general-issue clones, but they were short for me.
I had no trouble spotting the modifications on the second suit of combat armor. The boots had three-inch-thick soles. The arms were short. The chest plates were designed to compress and conceal a woman’s chest. Ava would find them constricting, but they would make her look like a man.
“Somebody went to a lot of trouble putting this together for you,” I said.
Ava took the armor, and said, “Honey, if they wanted to put themselves out for me, they should have put me up in a guest cottage back in Bel Air.” She looked at the chest plates, turning them over so she could see them inside and out. “This part fastens over my shoulders, right?”
I nodded. “It’ll be a tight fit, and the boots are going to be heavy,” I said. “But once you put this on, you’ll look like every other clone in Clonetown.”
I thought Ava would have a smart answer, but she didn’t. Without saying a word, she placed the armor on the table. She looked around my little one-room shit hole and her eyes started to tear up. “We’re really going to leave,” she said.
“Soon,” I said.
“They’re going to open the gates, and we’re going to walk right out.”
“That just about sums it up,” I said. “We’ll be on our way to the Scutum-Crux Fleet.”
“Do the ships have showers with hot water?” she asked.
“You’ll still be confined to my quarters,” I said.
“Yes, I know, but will there be showers with hot water?”
“You’ll still be in hiding.” Even as we spoke, I tried to figure out our living arrangements. Until I assumed command of the fleet, I would live in the Marine complex. I’d have private quarters. They wouldn’t be huge, but they would be larger than my Clonetown digs. I might even be able to scrounge up a second rack. “You’ll still need to eat in my quarters.”
“Yes, but will you have a shower in your room?” she asked. “Do officers take warm showers?”
“Yeah, there will be a shower in my billet,” I said.
“I’m not sure what a billet is; but if it has warm water, I think I’ll love it,” she said.
“Quarters, your billet is where you stay,” I said. “And it will have warm water.”
Ava sat down on the bed and put her face in her hands. She started to sob.
“What is it now?” I asked. This was not the first time I had seen a woman get emotional. Normally I walked away from the relationship when their emotions started to show; this time I couldn’t. Having just given her good news, I could not understand why in the hell she was crying.
“I’m happy,” she said, both laughing and crying at the same damn time.
That night, after I’d emptied the waste bucket, Ava and I finally tested the springs on my rack. We were both hot, and our bodies were slick with sweat. It would have been nicer if a storm had broken; but she was willing enough, and it seemed like a good way to end the evening.
PART II
THE BATTLE FOR TERRANEAU
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I looked around the cabin of the transport. We called this area the “kettle” because it was shaped like a teakettle and had thick metal with no windows. The Unified Authority built these sturdy birds for durability, not comfort. We would fly the transport to a self-broadcasting cruiser, and the cruiser would carry us to the farthest arm of the galaxy.
They packed a hundred Marines in this kettle, two platoons’ worth. Since we were not flying into battle this time, most of the men wore Charlie service uniforms. A few of the veterans came in armor, preferring the air-conditioned comfort of the undersuit to the climate in the transport. I had all of my noncommissioned officers wear armor. Ava came wearing her armor as well. Counting Ava and me, there were forty people in armor. That gave her a reasonable chance of fitting in. Even so, I had her sit in a crowded corner so that no one would notice her short arms. I sat beside her.
Thomer dropped down to my right. We were on the bench that lined the wall of the cabin. We kept our helmets on. Thomer sat on one side of me, Ava sat on the other.
“What’s wrong with him?” Thomer asked on a private frequency.
“Who?” I asked.
“Rooney.”
“Rooney?” I asked.
“The guy to your left,” said Thomer.
The gear in our helmets broadcast virtual dog tags, which showed on our visors. Ava’s armor identified her as Corporal Mike Rooney.
She did look nervous, sitting absolutely still with her hands primly folded on her lap, her back ramrod straight. Had he not known we were a load of Marines, Thomer might have guessed there was a woman sitting inside that armor.
“He says he’s never been on a transport before,” I said.
“Want me to talk to him?” Thomer asked.
“No, let him work it out on his own,” I said. Then, hoping to change the subject, I added, “You seem peppy today; did they up your prescription?”
“Speck you, sir,” Thomer said. “We’re out of specking Clonetown, and I’m back in combat armor.
“You sailed with the Scutum-Crux Fleet before, didn’t you, sir?”
“Yeah, this will be my second tour,” I said.
“Did you ever land on Terraneau?” Thomer asked.
“I never did, but I hear it’s a nice place,” I said, recalling my conversation with General Smith. “At least it used to be nice. There’s no telling what condition the Avatari have left it in.”
The first major battle of the Avatari invasion took place on Terraneau. Four years ago, the aliens spread one of their ion curtains around the planet, and no one had seen or heard anything since then. Presumably, the atmosphere could still sustain life. It occurred to me that the Pentagon could have lied about the message from Terraneau. That would be one way to solve the clone problem—a quick lie, a hearty salute, and a ride to some distant corner of the galaxy. The pieces fit, but I believed Smith.
The bastard didn’t even tell us what the message was. It might have been a call for help or a planetwide obituary. Hell, for all I knew, they might have been calling out for a pizza.
We were expected to establish a beachhead on the planet. If we found aliens there, we were supposed to attack; and once we liberated the planet, we would declare martial law. Smith made it sound simple.
“What do you think we’ll find when we get there?” Thomer asked.
“It’s not going to be like New Copenhagen,” I said. “We know how to unsleeve the planet. Once the ion curtain is out of the way, we should be able to hunt the aliens down with fighters and battleships. They won’t be able to fight back if we hit them from space.”
Borrowing a trick from Smith’s playbook, I made it sound simple.
“Hit the Avatari from space, that sounds good,” Thomer said.
Thomer was part of a select group who knew the term “Avatari.” Only a handful of politicians, the top brass at the Pentagon, and a few survivors from New Copenhagen knew the name.
The transport had a top speed of one hundred thousand miles per hour. It lumbered along at about three thousand miles per hour until it left the atmosphere, then picked up speed as it flew out to dock with the self-broadcasting cruiser. The cruiser would take us to Scutum-Crux space, where we would rendezvous with the U.A.N. Kamehameha, an old fighter carrier that served as the flagship of the Scutum-Crux Fleet.
We’d been in the air for less than thirty minutes when the pilot of the transport gave the signal to prepare for docking with the cruiser. For Ava, those thirty minutes must have been a long and lonely time. Not taking a chance on one of my Marines striking up a conversation with her, I had crippled the interLink interface in her armor. She could listen in on open-channel communications, but she could only speak to me. The last thing I needed was for my men to hear a woman’s voice over the interLink.