Her name was Valentina. It was not the name she had been given at birth, and she had gone by many others in her life. Those few who knew her true identity called her only by her old codename, Scarlet. But Valentina was her chosen name, the one she planned to carry with her to the grave.
A year of agony, sweat and tears had passed since she had awakened from her coma to endure a brutal physical therapy regimen designed to rebuild her body and recover her strength. Beyond the psychological trauma from the implants, she had been hit five times at point blank range by an assault rifle, and only the implants she had been given as a special operative, the ones that could inject painkillers, adrenaline, and hormones into her blood stream, had kept her alive.
As her body mended, so did her mind. She had brought under control the soul-numbing coldness of the machines that she had merged with, that had nearly driven her insane. She had not banished the frigid darkness entirely, for it still haunted her dreams, but it no longer ruled her mind.
Now, her dark brown hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and her face was dripping sweat as she hammered at a well-worn punching bag with her hands and feet. Where she had once cried with joy at being able to hold her arms up from the bed for an agonizing thirty seconds, she now worked out hard every day for at least two hours, kicking and punching the bag with lethal moves taken from a variety of martial arts before she went running through the surrounding woods. She was not as strong or as fast as she had been before she had been shot, for there was some damage to her body that the surgical team had not been able to fully repair. Even at that, once again she was a lethal weapon, even though there was no one for her to kill.
Her days were spent with Dmitri and Ludmilla Sikorsky, her adopted parents, in peaceful pursuits on their horse farm in what had once been the American State of Virginia. During the days and in good weather they were mostly outdoors, working the garden, tending the horses and riding, and enjoying the beauty of the surrounding woods. Inside, especially during the winter, reading had become a favorite pastime. The Sikorskys had grown up on a world where the only books allowed were those published by government-approved authors, and with their sudden immersion in a society where they could read whatever they wanted, where authors could write whatever they pleased, reading had become an instant addiction. Valentina had always loved to read, but never had the time, and had happily gone along with this new family tradition.
Valentina - Scarlet - found that she was, for the first time in her life, at peace.
She had just landed another low kick against the bag, a hit that would have shattered the leg of a human opponent, and was about to follow up with an open-hand strike when her wristcomm chimed.
“Security alert.” It was the soft female voice of the house’s central security system. It had been installed by the CIS to protect Valentina and the Sikorskys from anyone who might have somehow learned her true identity and come to take revenge for her previous operations. “An unidentified vehicle is approaching.”
Valentina immediately went from the workout room to the front door. Next to it was a cabinet on the wall. Opening the cabinet, she pulled out a large-bore pistol that could put a hole through centimeter-thick armor plate. She and the Sikorskys had some local friends who periodically came to visit, but no one ever came to the house unannounced. While she considered herself out of the death-dealing business, she would never hesitate to defend herself or her adopted parents, and there was an impressive arsenal hidden throughout the house.
Taking a look at the video monitor that was tracking the vehicle’s progress along the lengthy driveway toward the house, she did a double-take.
It was a Marine utility vehicle.
“What the hell?” She wondered who it could possibly be. While she had been in a coma, she had received a pile of get well cards and flowers from the Marines she had helped to save from the Saint Petersburg debacle, but none of them had ever stopped by to see her. Most of them, she knew, were either still in combat zones or had been killed in action. Very few had been able to return home, and most probably never would.
The dark green- and brown-painted vehicle, an ugly, angular beast on four oversized tires that could drive through or over virtually any terrain, pulled to a stop in front of the house, about a dozen meters from the front door.
The driver side door opened, and a big, broad-shouldered man with close-cropped dark blond hair stepped out. He was wearing a Marine dress uniform that was a stark contrast to the dark forest colors of the vehicle’s camouflage paint: a dark blue coat with polished brass buttons and crimson piping over slightly lighter blue trousers sporting a broad crimson stripe down the leg, with the bright red and gold stripes and rockers on the sleeve proclaiming him a first sergeant.
He carefully placed his white “wheel” cap on his head with his white-gloved hands, the black visor shielding his eyes from the bright sun, before he headed toward the house.
With a warm smile, Valentina opened the door and stepped outside to meet him.
“Mills.” She was unable to keep the tears from her eyes. “Roland Mills.”
“Valentina!” His handsome face turned up in a devilish grin. “Bloody hell, woman,” he said in his public school English accent, “but you’re looking good!”
She wrapped her arms around his muscular frame, hugging him. He returned her embrace with rib-cracking force.
“It’s good to see you.” She pulled away, looking up into his intensely green eyes.
“Were you, ah, expecting someone?” He cocked his head at the pistol she was still holding.
“Well, a girl can’t be too careful these days.” She set the safety on the pistol and hooked an arm through his and led him into the house. “Come on. Let me make you some tea.”
When they reached the kitchen, Valentina made some tea from an ornate samovar perched on one of the counters. She smiled every time she looked at it, thinking of how excited Dmitri and Ludmilla had been when they had come home one day and found it there. They had always wanted a nice samovar, which had long been used by Russians to boil water for tea, but had never been able to afford a good one. Valentina had this one custom made for them in Tula, Russia, where samovars had been made since the late sixteenth century. It was ridiculously ornate by modern standards, with an intricate floral design in silver over a bright blue enamel surface, and had cost her a small fortune. But it had been worth every credit for the joy it had brought to her adopted parents.
She turned around to look at Mills, who now sat at the cozy wooden table where the Sikorsky family normally ate breakfast. Having taken off his hat and gloves, he was giving her an openly appraising look.
“I’m not in the market, Roland.” She frowned at him as she handed him the glass of hot tea.
“Pardon?”
She stood there, hands on hips, and stared at him. “If you came here looking for some female companionship while you’re on shore leave, you came to the wrong place.”
He sat there for just a moment, dumbfounded. Then he covered his face with his hands, and she could see his shoulders begin to quiver. She thought he was crying until he threw his head back and roared with laughter.
Valentina, unable to help herself, started laughing, too, as she sat down next to him.
“No, girl.” He finally brought himself under control, wiping tears from his eyes after laughing so hard. “Christ, no, I’m not here to try and crawl in your knickers, although Lord knows a lad could do worse.”
She took the complement for what it was, and knew that plenty of women would gladly have welcomed the attentions of Roland Mills. He was unarguably good looking, with a ruggedly handsome face bearing a mouth that could light the room when he smiled, and a scowl that could make hardened Marines shrink away in fear when he was angry. Nearly any man would be frankly envious of his body. He was big, tall and broad-shouldered, with a tight waist and powerful arms and legs, his muscles perfectly defined under his lightly bronzed skin. While he often enjoyed giving others the impression that he was an ignorant ape, he had a keen mind and a big heart, a heart that she knew had been gravely wounded when the woman he loved, Emmanuelle Sabourin, had been killed by the Kreelans on Saint Petersburg.
Valentina had only met him briefly before she had been shot during the battle, but he had been one of the few visitors she had received during her recovery from her coma. He had been on temporary duty to Earth and had made special arrangements to see her, appearing in his dress uniform, just as he had today, to thank her in person for what she had done to get him and his Marines to safety.
She had still been bedridden then, her muscles so atrophied that she could barely lift up her hands to hold his. They had talked for a long time, and even managed a few jokes, but she could tell that the pain he felt inside, just like her own, would take a long time to heal. They had become friends that day, and she still remembered the feeling of his lips on hers as he had gently, like a shy schoolboy, kissed her goodbye before starting the long trip back to the ongoing battle for Saint Petersburg. They had exchanged emails since then, but getting anything other than military communications into or out of the spreading war zones was hit or miss, at best.
Looking at him now, she could tell that he had come a long way from the last time they had spoken, despite what must have been an incredible strain from having been engaged in nearly non-stop combat operations. She knew there was still a reservoir of pain under the surface, but he could smile now without forcing it, just as she herself could.
“Seriously, Valentina,” he told her, “you’re looking fantastic. When I came to visit you that first time, I...I didn’t think you’d ever even be able to walk again. You were a bit of a fright, you know.”
She laughed. “Thanks for the compliment! You really know how to impress a woman, you know that?” Then, more seriously, she asked, “And how about you? How are you doing?”
He shrugged, an uncomfortable look on his face. Like most men, she was sure he hated talking about his emotions, but he hadn’t shied away from it when he visited her last time, or in their correspondence.
“Okay, I suppose.” He looked down into his tea as he slowly spun the glass around on the table. “Still in one piece, as you can see.” He was silent a moment, then went on softly, “I still think of her, Emmanuelle, but I guess I’ve moved on, mostly. Combat has a way of focusing your attention on more immediate matters.” He sighed. “But for most of us there isn’t much beyond that now, is there?”
Valentina had a sudden premonition that his last words were more significant than he had meant to let on. Understanding the truth behind a casual statement was a talent she had honed into a useful skill that had saved her life on more than one occasion.
After taking a sip of tea, she set the glass down and looked the big Marine in the eyes. “All right, Roland, you didn’t come here just for another social visit, did you?”
Mills had to look away for a moment, a feeling of guilt knotting up in his stomach.
Bloody idiot, he cursed himself. You should have just gotten to the point right from the start. She’s not a damn fool.
He turned back to her, once again stunned by the transformation she had undergone in the months that had passed since he had last come to visit her. Where there had once been a bullet-riddled body housing a tormented mind, he now saw a strikingly beautiful woman in superb physical and, from what he had read from her files before he had come here, mental shape. With muscles that were lithe and strong as any champion athlete, even without the additional strength her implants might offer, she remained profoundly feminine, with a full bust and invitingly curved hips, her features accentuated by her tight black workout clothes. Valentina’s face was graced with sensuous lips and deep brown eyes that were now locked with his own.
Despite his earlier joking about not wanting to get into her knickers, he couldn’t deny the attraction he felt toward her. He hadn’t been with another woman since Emmanuelle had died, and he felt a warm shiver ripple down his spine.
Now’s not the time, you fool, he counseled himself. She’d kick your arse.
He couldn’t suppress a grin at his own foolishness. Valentina cocked an eyebrow at his change of expression, but she didn’t offer up a smile in return.
“Fair enough.” He let out a sigh. “You caught me. The truth is, I did come here to pay a social visit, but it’s...business, as well.” His grin disappeared and his expression grew serious. “I’m putting a team together, Valentina. It’s a special recon team that’s tasked to go in ahead of an assault force to scout Kreelan positions and report back. The Kreelans keep defeating our technology, or at least selective bits of it, and they completely bugger every kind of technical reconnaissance, seemingly at will. Satellites, drones, even the stealth microsats the CIS has come up with. They just stop working. Poof. The boffins don’t have a clue how the blue girls are doing it.”
“All of them fail?” Valentina leaned back as she considered the dreadful implications of what Mills was saying. Any combat force that was blind to what the enemy was doing was already halfway to being defeated.
“No.” Mills shook his head. “That’s what makes it even stranger. Sometimes they work fine, but if they seem to touch on something the enemy doesn’t want them to see, the sensor or weapon just dies. Drones fall from the sky. Satellites just stop working. Guided missiles lose their guidance and merrily sail off course.
“And sometimes things don’t really go dead, but just stop working for a while. Data-links will drop, then come back on sometime later. It’s like the Kreelans just wave some sort of magic wand when they don’t want us peeping in on them or don’t like the weapons we happen to be using,” he snapped his fingers, “and we’re bollixed.”
“Jesus.” Valentina hadn’t fought the Kreelans on Saint Petersburg, as she had been injured before the aliens had attacked. She had heard of their seemingly supernatural powers, but that had only been rumor. Until now.
“Ships can help a bit from orbit,” Mills went on, “as the Kreelans don’t seem to hamper them so much, but our Navy is usually too busy trying to beat back Kreelan warships to help much with the ground battle. But on the ground, our boys and girls are dead without decent battlefield intel.”
“So what is it that you have in mind?”
“We need boots on the ground,” he told her firmly, “people who can put eyes and ears on the target area, sort out what’s going on and report back, and who can move quietly and quickly through enemy territory without being seen. I also need people who are good enough to fight their way out of a tough scrap if things turn–”
“I’m not going back to Saint Petersburg.” She said it before he could finish, a haunted look shrouding her face. She would never go back there.
Mills shook his head. “It won’t be Saint Petersburg. The target for the first operation hasn’t been announced yet, but I know it won’t be there, or any of the six other worlds the enemy attacked in the first round after the invasion of Keran.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” he went on grimly, “those worlds are as good as lost. That’s obviously not being trumpeted from the Presidential Complex, but it’s the truth. The fighting will probably go on for some time yet, maybe even a few more years, but the Kreelans are too well entrenched on the ground, and the Navy can’t prevent the enemy from bringing in reinforcements.”
He took a sip of tea, noting Valentina’s shocked expression. “Every so often a Kreelan task force appears and drops another big load of warriors to the surface. The big transports jump out, while their warships rough up the Navy until our ships finally wipe them out. Meanwhile, the warriors they leave behind continue hacking and chopping away at us on the ground.
“Don’t get me wrong. We kill them in droves, even without using the really high-tech weaponry that they somehow bedevil. But there are always more of them to kill, and they have to be killed, because they don’t surrender. Ever. We haven’t had one single prisoner, Valentina, in all the battles being fought now across over a dozen worlds. Not one. And we haven’t been able to break them psychologically, get them to rout or retreat in a single battle. All the things we’ve always taken for granted as part of warfare amongst humans,” he flicked his fingers in the air, “is good for nothing at all. They come at us like they’re berserkers and just go on fighting until they die. Then more come to replace them.”
“This operation you’re talking about, is it part of the strategic offensive that President McKenna has been alluding to?”
Natalie McKenna was the first president of the newly formed Confederation. Working under incomprehensible pressure and driving herself mercilessly, she had managed to forge a working interstellar government amidst a massive alien invasion, using the industrial might of Earth and the worlds of the Francophone Alliance to forge an arsenal that could defend humanity.
“Yes.” Mills nodded. “It was originally going to be launched months ago, but the second wave of attacks set back the timetable. And now there’s been a third.”
“How many colonies have been hit so far?”
“Fifteen,” Mills told her. “The Empire attacked seven, including Saint Petersburg, in the first wave of invasions after Keran was wiped out. A few months later, while you were still in a coma, they attacked six more. And just last week they attacked two, Alger’s World and Wuhan. The couriers came in this morning with that news.
“McKenna’s tired of letting the blues having the initiative, and she’s given the green light for a full counteroffensive to take back one of our worlds so we’ll have some good news. So we can give people hope. Because frankly, love, we’re getting our arses pounded.”
He took a long sip of tea, then set the glass down. “Now we’re just trying to put the last pieces together. I’m to lead one of the recon teams that’ll be first on the ground.” He paused, looking at her pointedly. “I have one slot on my team left to fill. I need a sniper, and God strike me dead if you’re not the best shot I’ve ever seen, with that circus shooting you did on Saint Petersburg.
“On top of that, you know all about intel, and I know you’ve had extensive training in first aid and communications. Plus,” he added with a playful leer, “you’ll bring up the average for good looks on the team by quite a few points.”
“How much do you know about my background?” Valentina narrowed her eyes at the mention of her background in intelligence. Only two people had ever seen her complete file and knew everything about her. One was Vladimir Penkovsky, the Director of the Confederation Intelligence Service. The other was her controller, Robert Torvald. There was information in there that she would never want anyone else to know, information that was dangerous enough that she would kill someone, even a friend, to keep it secret.
Mills held up his hands toward her, seeing the change in her expression and the sudden tension in her body that he knew could erupt into lethal violence. He was far larger than she was, but despite his size advantage and experience in close combat against the Kreelans, he wouldn’t have wagered money on his own survival in a fight against her. From what he had been told and seen in her file, she could tear him to pieces without breaking a sweat.
“Hold up, Valentina. Your old friend Torvald briefed me on your training and abilities that were pertinent to our mission needs. That was all. Nothing about your past or what you’ve done; nothing about any of that spooky stuff from your former life. I don’t care, and I don’t want to know. Confirm it with him if you like.” He chuckled. “Director Penkovsky had to order Torvald to talk to me, and even then it was like pulling teeth to get the bugger to tell me anything useful. He’s a bit of a constipated sod, isn’t he?”
With that, Valentina relaxed. She would double-check what Mills had told her with Torvald, with whom she’d kept in periodic contact, but she could tell Mills wasn’t lying. And thinking about his ribald description of Torvald, she couldn’t help but chuckle herself. It was too close to the mark.
“All right. I guess I won’t have to kill you. This time.”
“Whew!” Mills puffed some air through his lips and theatrically wiped a hand across his brow, but inwardly he was relieved. Torvald had warned him that if he lost “Scarlet’s” trust and she thought Mills knew too much about her past, she wouldn’t hesitate to kill him. “So that brings us to the big question of the day. Will you do this?”
Valentina looked out one of the kitchen windows at the woods beyond, considering. She had given up everything for her career with the CIS. She had traded away her true identity and had made a profession of spying on and killing other human beings. Sometimes it had been justified, sometimes it had simply been necessary.
But with every life she had taken, she had felt like a piece of her soul had been carved away and cast into Hell. Even now that she was no longer officially in the employ of the CIS, her past guaranteed that she would never be able to live the ordinary, normal life that so many others took for granted. She was still young, and often wished for a man to share her life and her bed, but that, too, had been something she had decided could never happen. She could never expose anyone else to the risks that she and the Sikorskys already lived under, the perpetual fear that her identity might be compromised and the demons of her past deeds would come to claim their vengeance. She did not have to worry about such threats to any children she might have, for the bullets that had ravaged her body at Saint Petersburg had put an end to that possibility.
She had more than paid her dues to the Confederation government, she knew, and to the Terran government before that. She had even paid the price for getting Mills and his fellow Marines away from Saint Petersburg, spending months in a coma that wasn’t dreamless, but had been a never-ending nightmare until the day she finally awakened. She owed nothing more to humanity.
But the threat now was not from another group of human beings with which her star nation was in competition or conflict, but from an alien menace that seemed determined to wipe her kind from the Universe.
Turning her eyes to the beautiful samovar on the counter, she realized that everything good that humanity had ever done was now at risk. Humanity had a dark and ugly side, and she had seen far more than her share of it. But she believed there was far more that was good, that was worth saving. Things of beauty like the samovar, and things that money could not buy, like the love and devotion of Dmitri and Ludmilla as they waited for her to wake from her coma.
If the Kreelans had their way, all of that, and so much more, would be erased, gone forever.
She knew that she couldn’t prevent that from happening single-handed. But standing on the sidelines, comfortably tucked away on this little horse farm in the deep woods, wouldn’t help win the war.
And Mills was right. There was probably no one, anywhere, who was more qualified for what he needed than she was.
With a deep sigh, Valentina turned back to him. “Okay, Mills, I’m in.”