I realized now that she was in control. Ava, with her perfect body, green eyes, and gentle touch, knew what she wanted and how to get things done. I did not think she loved me, but she gave herself over to me that night in a way that seemed more lasting than before.
When my alarm woke me the next morning, I found her lying beside me wide-awake. She took my hand in hers and held it against her breast.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.
“Me?” she asked. “I’m not the one going out to fight the aliens.”
“You’re going to need to hide for a while,” I said.
“You just come back to me,” she said. She teared up as she said this. Maybe I was being cynical, but it reminded me of a scene from a movie. I did not know if Ava loved me, but I absolutely knew she was an accomplished actress.
“We’ll find other women on the planet. You’ll be safe once you’re not the only woman on this side of the galaxy,” I said.
“I have to admit, I would be so glad to talk to another woman. God, Harris, you have no idea.”
“For now, you have to stay hidden. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I promised.
“No problem,” she said. “I’ll just hang the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign outside your door.” She rubbed her naked body against mine. I knew I would be a few minutes late arriving at the docking bay, but some things cannot be helped.
Admiral Thorne did not come to see the transports off, but he did wish us luck on the mission. As I dressed in my armor, I noticed the message light flashing on the communications console beside my desk. Instead of a steady flash, the light blinked three times, paused, and blinked three times. That meant the message came from Fleet Command.
I vaguely remembered ignoring a call while Ava and I were in the throes. Not entirely sure there was anyone in Fleet Command I wanted to hear from, I played the message.
“Good luck on Terraneau,” said the reedy voice, and that was it.
“Who was that?” Ava asked.
“Admiral Thorne,” I said.
“That’s it? That’s the entire message?” she asked.
“It would appear so.”
“It’s a bit on the terse side, don’t you think?” she asked.
“Well, he is an admiral. Maybe he’s too busy running the fleet for mushy farewells,” I said.
I kissed Ava. We had kissed more over the last twelve hours than all of our other nights together combined. “Stay hidden,” I said.
She put a hand on the crook of my arm, and asked, “What do you think will happen if they find me?”
“The sailors on this scow have not seen a woman in four years, what do you think will happen?”
“I see,” she said.
“So don’t get caught.”
Ava hid her fear well. She was, after all, the clone of an actress. She looked at me, her green eyes scanning my face. “Will I ever be safe?” she asked.
“Sure you will,” I said. “There will be women on Terraneau. I’ll smuggle you down and release you into the flock.”
“Will I still be yours?” she asked.
She had not had time to fix her hair that morning. Her lipstick and rouge had not survived the night. I probably had more of them spread on my skin than she did on hers. Somehow she had replaced last night’s glamour with simple beauty. She looked less like a starlet and more like a beautiful housewife—the prettiest woman on the block.
Looking into her face, I silently asked myself if I loved Ava Gardner. At the moment I felt sexual satisfaction more than anything else, but I could grow to love her.
“I have a planet to capture,” I said.
She stood up, gave me a long, luxuriant kiss, and scampered into the bathroom. The last I saw of her was blue panties covering cream-colored cheeks as she slipped through the bathroom door.
“Stay hidden,” I said.
“As if my life depended on it,” she said.
“It does.”
“You be careful, too.”
I turned and left the room.
I had not suited up for a mission in more than two years, not since New Copenhagen. It felt good to wear a shell. Combat armor was not bulletproof, though it would deflect shrapnel. Under my armor I wore a skintight bodysuit, which was airtight, climate-controlled, radiation-resistant, and pressurized. There were limits as to how much it would protect me; but it stood up well to heat, radiation, and chill. If I found myself at ground zero during a nuclear explosion, the percussion would crush me, and the extreme heat would cremate me, but my bodysuit would shield me from the radiation.
Our armor was light and bodysuits impressive, but it was our communications and surveillance technology that enabled the once-powerful Unified Authority Marines to conquer the Milky Way. The list of tools built into the visor of our helmets included a communications network called the interLink—video lenses that let us see in the dark, read heat signatures, and view distant targets. We had radar/sonic detection equipment for locating traps and surveying battlefields. Our visors also housed a memory chip that recorded everything we saw and heard in battle. Officers could transmit live visual feeds or read images from their subordinates’ visors. All of these tools were controlled with an ocular interface. Only Marines wore this combat armor. Soldiers fought in fatigues, and sailors …well, you could say they wore their ships when they went into battle.
Inside the docking bay door, 250 Marines in combat armor waited beside transports, lined up and ready to go. These were the men with whom I had trained for the last week. Some had come with me from Clonetown, the rest were veterans of the Scutum-Crux Fleet.
We had five transports, enough room for 500 men; but each transport also carried two armored jeeps. We were a small force traveling light. Even if the aliens had withdrawn from Terraneau, there was no way we could take control of the planet with 250 men and ten jeeps.
“Captain Harris, the men are ready to board, sir,” Thomer, very much the sergeant in charge, said as I approached.
“Load ’em up, then meet me in the cockpit of the first bird once we are under way,” I said.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
I walked to the front of the queue and proceeded up the ramp of the transport with the torpedo. A jeep waited at the top of the ramp, its headlights facing out toward the dock. I stood beside the jeep and watched as men boarded the dark, vaulted space of the kettle. The cabin was dark, with a high, curved ceiling. Metal floor, metal walls, metal ceiling, a metal booth with a cold metal seat for a head, and a wooden bench lining the wall that sat thirty men—kettle comfort was the military equivalent of being sealed in a can.
I climbed the ladder at the far end of the kettle and entered the cockpit. The pilot behind the yoke was a clone—brown hair, brown eyes, the works.
“Are we ready for takeoff, sir?” he asked as I entered.
“Just loading the men,” I said, as the distant rattle of armor boots walking across a metal floor carried to the cockpit. On some level, I still did not believe clones could run their own fleet; it hardly seemed possible. We were the grunts, the cannon fodder, the drones. Natural-borns threw us into the line of fire, and we held to the last man, never questioning orders. Seeing a clone in the pilot’s seat and the confident way he checked the controls made other possibilities seem more real.
The pilot radioed the other transports, and we rolled out of the staging area, riding on “sleds”—wheeled vehicles that carried transports through the various atmospheric locks. We passed through the first lock, then the second, and finally the third. Once past the third, the artificial gravity ended and a simple thrust lifted us into space.
As the pilot dropped us below the fleet where we could safely maneuver, I watched ships pass above us and felt like a minnow in a sea filled with whales. A frigate, the smallest of the capital ships, crossed over us. The frigate was thirty times larger than our transport; but when it sidled up beside a battleship, it looked no bigger than a flea.