Free The Clone Redemption by Steven L. Kent

about conquering Earth when I should have been saying sweet nothings in her ear. She thought I was married to the Corps. She was right.
    â€œHow did you get in here?” I asked as I entered the room. Officers’ quarters were supposedly as secure as prison cells.
    She stood about ten feet away from me, swaying slightly and looking nervous. She wore a wrinkled yellow dress, and her hair and makeup needed tidying, but that couldn’t be helped; her clothes, makeup, and brushes would have gone up in smoke when the Avatari fried Terraneau.
    â€œA sailor let me in,” Ava said.
    â€œThey’re not supposed to let passengers into officers’ quarters,” I said.
    â€œHe thought you’d be glad to see me,” she said.
    I’ll bet he did, I thought, and his respect for me had probably doubled. “He was wrong,” I said. I was lying.
    I wouldn’t have described Ava as top-heavy, but she had a notable figure. Fire smoldered in her wide-set olivine-colored eyes. She knew how to smile at a man and dismiss him at the very same moment. I did not know if she could read every man, but she always seemed to know what I was thinking.
    â€œWayson, I need to be with you,” she said, sounding so damned sincere. She pressed herself against me, trusting that I would wrap my arms around her. When I did not respond, she took a step away from me.
    She usually referred to me as “Harris,” but she did it in a way that was informal and endearing. When she became brassy, I was “Honey” and when she was angry, I was “Dear.” And now, having seen the destruction of Terraneau, she added “Wayson” to her vocabulary.
    â€œYou need to be with me?” I asked. “You moved on, remember?”
    â€œEverything changed yesterday. I don’t think I ever understood your world,” she said. “Yesterday it became real.” Here came the tears. Right on time. God, I hated dealing with women.
    It wasn’t the crying that bothered me. I’d seen grown men cry. Hell, I’d seen Marines get weepy. Who would not cry after seeing an entire population cremated. What bothered me was the way women cried, like they weren’t embarrassed about it ... like they expected you to do something about it.
    â€œI don’t see how that changes anything,” I said.
    â€œWayson, they killed my girls.”
    â€œGo tell it to . . .”
    â€œI don’t love Kyle. I never did,” Ava said as she stepped back in my orbit. She reached out and placed her hand against my chest.
    She might have been acting or sincere or possibly she was acting but thought she was sincere. I believed her.
    I did not know if she was my roommate or my girlfriend, but we spent the next few hours together.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Location: Planet A-361-F
Galactic Position: Solar System A-361
Astronomic Location: Bode’s Galaxy
    Only the captains of the four ships saw the video feed; Admiral Yamashiro would not risk showing it to anyone else.
    They met in a conference room on the command deck of the Sakura , Yamashiro’s flagship. First they watched the mission through Illych’s eyes—video feed recorded by the camera in his visor. The master chief petty officer had not known it, but the commandLink broadcasted his entire mission to the transport. Communications transponders on the transport relayed the signal back to the fleet.
    The captains saw the bleak landscape and the giant silos. They watched in silence as Illych scraped ice and analyzed it. A timer in the corner of the screen showed that the SEALs had been on the planet for ten minutes and seventeen seconds when the light appeared in the sky.
    Yamashiro stood at the front of the room. He said, “Matsuda thinks the aliens detected the infiltration pods the moment they entered the atmosphere.” Matsuda Takashi ran Fleet Intelligence.
    â€œHow could they have done that?” asked Captain Yokoi Shigeru.