In a matter of two years, the aliens spread throughout the galaxy, occupying only planets deemed habitable by U.A. scientists. The Unified Authority has lost 178 of its 180 populated planets when it makes a final stand on New Copenhagen.
During this battle, U.A. scientists unravel the secrets of the aliens’ tachyon-based technology, enabling the U.A. Marines to preserve Earth and New Copenhagen.
PROLOGUE
With the ion curtain sealed around it, Terraneau looked more like a small star than a living planet. Before this mission, I had never gotten a firsthand look at a “sleeved” planet from the outside. From space, it looked like it might have been plated with white gold.
I could not see so much as a trace of the land or water through that ion layer. With the curtain around it, the planet was as featureless as a ball bearing.
Until four years ago, Terraneau was the capital planet of the Scutum-Crux Arm. Of the 180 populated worlds, this rock had the fifth largest population—1.2 billion people. But Terraneau was an early casualty of the Avatari invasion. The aliens wrapped their ion curtain around the planet, and no one had heard anything since. At least they had not heard anything until one month ago, and they didn’t hear much then.
We still didn’t know if we would find survivors behind the curtain. We might find the planet covered with alien soldiers. We might find a hollow ball populated only by alien miners. The only message we received from the planet was brief—just the words “Go away.”
“I have a fix on the target zone,” the pilot told me. We sat watching the planet from the cockpit of a military transport. We had to use computers to calculate the location of the target zone on the planet; the ion curtain rendered our sensors useless.
Kelly Thomer, the third man in the cockpit, asked, “Do you think that was what New Copenhagen looked like from outside, sir?”
He and I had fought together on New Copenhagen, a planet not much different than Terraneau. The aliens “sleeved” the planet with their ion curtain, cutting us off from the rest of the universe. Once the curtain was up, no ships could enter or leave the atmosphere. The ion curtain disassembled light waves and absorbed energy. The aliens who created the curtain also used its tachyon particles as building blocks for creating an army of remotely controlled soldiers.
That was their strategy, isolate and attack. First the aliens wrapped the planet in their ion curtain, then they invaded.
“I’ve never thought about it,” I said. When pedestrians were hit by a car, did they wonder what the accident might have looked like from across the street? Did shark-attack victims wonder what the attack looked like from shore?
“Captain, what if the aliens are still down there?” the pilot asked.
“They’re gone,” I said, trying to sound confident even though I had my doubts. “They don’t have time for sightseeing, not with an entire galaxy to destroy.”
“Do you have the torpedo ready?” I asked the pilot.
As a rule, military transports flew unarmed, but this particular bird had been modified. Our engineers had attached a tube below the cockpit armed with a nuclear-tipped torpedo—the key we would use to unlock a trapdoor through the ion curtain.
If it worked, we might have a one-minute window to penetrate the curtain and land on the planet. If we didn’t get through the curtain quickly enough, the electrical systems on the transport would fail while we entered the atmosphere. If the ion curtain proved impenetrable, our fleet would be stranded in space with no port for food and supplies. Even if the torpedo got us in, and we landed safely, we might run into aliens. We might also enter an atmosphere so saturated with toxic gas that our ship would dissolve around us.
“Ready to go, sir,” the pilot said.
“Do you think this will work?” Thomer asked. He didn’t usually ask so many questions. Nerves.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I said; though, in truth, I thought we had a good shot. We were firing our torpedo directly over the spot where the aliens had landed. Assuming our calculations held up, and the spheres from which they emerged were still down there, the radiation from our torpedo would tear a hole in the curtain.
I didn’t feel as confident about what would happen next. Once we made a hole through the curtain, we had to enter the atmosphere before our hole closed in around us. If we successfully entered a breathable atmosphere, then we had to land without running into aliens. If we landed safely, we would need to evict the aliens. The odds grew longer with every step.
For Thomer, though, my first answer was good enough. I said, “We’ll know one way or the other in about five seconds.” Then I told the pilot to fire the torpedo.
He reached up and flipped the trigger. I caught the quickest glimpse of the torpedo as it sped off from under the ship—just a flash of dull white casing and bright orange flames—and the torpedo was gone.
The official reason for liberating Terraneau was to use it as a base for the Scutum-Crux Fleet, the largest fleet in the Unified Authority Navy; but I had reasons of my own. I wanted to wage a war against mankind.
The Pentagon had sent us out to the farthest corner of the galaxy and stranded us here. Back in Washington, they thought they could leave us out here to rot. The politicians and generals thought they were sweeping their clone problem under the carpet, but I would show them. I knew something they did not know, I knew a backdoor that would lead to Earth.
Clones have ghosts, and this time their deceit would come back to haunt them.
PART I
THE WORKINGS OF WAR
CHAPTER ONE
“Ava, this is Lieutenant Wayson Harris. I told you about Harris.”
“The big hero,” Ava said, her voice betraying a distinct lack of interest. “Didn’t you say he was a Liberator clone?”
I had been talking with three of the men from my color guard detail, and now found myself speechless.
Colonel Theodore Mooreland stood before us with his date, Ava Gardner—Hollywood’s brightest star and the subject of more debates and fantasies than any woman of her time. Mooreland casually threw his arm around her tiny waist. Maybe it was my imagination, but his expression reminded me of a dog marking its territory. Most of the men in the room would have died happy if they could have placed one of their hands where Mooreland now had his.
“He’s the one,” he said. “Lieutenant Wayson Harris, the toughest man in the Marines.”
Ava threw back her head as if about to laugh. Her lips spread in an inviting smile. Trying to keep from staring at the neckline of her dress, I studied the gentle cleft in her chin.
“How’s it hanging, Lieutenant?” Mooreland asked.
It wasn’t hanging at the moment, but I answered, “Fine, sir,” just the same.
I had never paid much attention to Ava Gardner; but now, seeing her up close, I understood the Ava obsession. She exuded sensuality the way officers exude arrogance and politicians exude snobbishness. She inspected me with her olivine eyes, her gaze both appraising and dismissive. I got the feeling she found me inadequate; but coming from her, even feelings of inadequacy were strangely erotic.
Her hair, a deep and lustrous brown with just a hint of red that only showed in the light, hung over her shoulders in a wave of curls and tresses that somehow managed to look both wild and organized at the same moment. The hair, the eyes, and the body all did their job, but I think it was her indifference that got my blood pumping. The aloof way in which she viewed the world around her came across as a challenge, like the slap of the gauntlet before the duel.