Enemy: Part 11 (End)

We lay there a long time together.  Enemies turned lovers we stare out at the vastness beyond with the blanket wrapped around us.  I was spooning her now and feeling her silky soft blond hair against my cheek.

“Ohhhh my God.  I needed that.”  I whisper.  “I really needed that.”  

She pulls my arm tighter around her warm, soft body.  “Me too.”

“Do you know how hard it is to find a woman that will take control?”

“Or to find a man that will allow it to truly be taken.”  She says back.

“Where have you been all my life?”  I kiss the back of her head.

“Right here waiting.”

We descend into our comfortable silence once more and marvel at the beauty beyond and the blossoming love here inside our cocoon of safety.  As the minutes pass…reality begins to seep into our little bubble.

“Ashley…”  I whisper.  “…I don’t what will happen now.  But whatever happens, we face it together.”

“Mmm.”

“Maybe…maybe when we get back I can find a way to sign you out.  Before Elijah’s family can see you.  We could run off maybe…”

“Joseph.”  She says softly as she strokes my hand.

“Don’t give up Ashley.”  I hug her tight.  “We’ll find a way.  I swear.  I’ll do whatever I can…”

“Joseph.”  She sighs.  “I have to tell you something.  Something…terrible.”

“What is it?”

She turns to lay on her back, staring not at me but straight up into nothing.  “Haven’t you wondered why the pull out has been delayed for so long?”

“The warp gate’s got something wrong with it.”

She swallows, her voice barely more than a whisper.  “Oh yes.  Something is definitely wrong with it.”

“What?  What are you talking about?  Do you know something?”

“My planet knew the battle was hopeless the moment the Imperial ships arrived.”  She looks at me and looks away again.  “We decided to fight anyway.  To show the Empire that not every system would bend the knee.  That here, in our system, the Emperor would have to take it by force.”

“Such a waste of lives.”

“More than you know.”  She says.  “We wanted to be heroes.  Martyrs.  To show the other oppressed systems that surrender was not the only option.”  Tilting her head up she looks toward the circular sliver of the distant gate.  “I cannot imagine how, it was all ultra classified, but last month we somehow got a virus aboard your flagship.”

“A virus?”  I balk.  “Impossible.  The Empire doesn’t use top tech comp systems anymore.  Not since the A.I. uprising.”

“Warp gates are complex things Joseph.”  She says.  “The two ends must be perfectly aligned over the span of light years.  Every moving gravitational body, every passing comet, every solar event on both ends, and every traveling ship within the fold must be constantly calculated and corrected for.  Even the tiniest variation and gates decouple.  You cannot get that sort of precision without an A.I.”

“What are you saying?”

“When your flagship signaled to pass through the gate the hidden virus was embedded in the signal.”  She says.  “And at that moment…the lives of thousands of men were doomed.”

My face goes cold and my heart trips a beat.  “What!?”

She carries on, her eyes distant and her voice hushed.  “The virus shifted the gate.  Just a fraction of a fraction of a degree.  Enough to point the gate into…nothing.  A one way tunnel with no exit.”

“No!”

“Understand Joseph.  We were beat before the war even started.  But we would not let our loss go unavenged.”  Her beautiful face hardens.  “One defiant strike against evil.  The Emperor will think twice the next time he moves to crush a free people.”

“Oh my God!”  I look to the gate.  “How many ships went through?  Dozens?  Those marines!  All those men!”

“I’m sorry Joseph.  They’re gone.”  She closes her eyes and bites her lips as she struggles to say what she had to say next.  “And the ones left behind…are trapped.”

“What?”

“This whole system has been cut off…forever.  Or a dozen decades at the very soonest.”  She whispers.  “The only A.I. remaining in this system was the one isolated within that gate and its been irrevocably damaged.  Turned malevolent like the rest.  Without one the gate can never be realigned.”  She slowly opens her azure eyes, tears now glimmering in them.  Reaching up she tenderly strokes my cheek.  “I’m sorry Joseph.  You’ll never see your home again.  You’ll never see your Gran.  I am so sorry baby.”

The tears come swiftly as the personal cost of this terrible war hits hard.  Some part of me wants to rage and scream and choke the life out of my enemy.  But this was not her fault.  She was just a soldier like myself.  And she was not my enemy.  My enemy, my true enemy, wore the same uniform that I did but theirs had gleaming golden stars along the shoulders.

“Oh Joseph.”

I collapse into her.  Burying my face in her shoulder I sob bitter tears at the loss of my Gran and my brother.

***

“Hahhhh!”  I let out a great happy sigh as I open the door and feel the warm air and sunshine wash over me.  Stretching out in front of me are the perfect green rows of tea cascading down the steep mountain slope.  A dozen little auto-trimmers glide back and forth over the rows like ants navigating a maze.  Across the vast river valley a snow-capped peak pierced through the clouds the would be here by noon.

It hits me, as it still did every morning, how if that warp gate would have worked those six long months ago that I would back in the cramped and dirty streets of my home city.  That was assuming I somehow escaped execution for saving an enemy soldier of course.  With nowhere to go the remaining marine transports had no choice but to return to the planet.  With less than half of the soldiers and equipment left behind the remaining commanders realized that an attempt at military rule would have been brief and endlessly violent.  They soon opened negotiations with the battered remnants of the planet’s government for amnesty and naturalization of the soldiers cut off from their homes.  Ashley and I disappeared from base well before any agreements were reached.  Leaving my real identity and her false one behind us we escaped to her family farm where we had settled down.

Here in this bucolic mountain valley I found lasting happiness and I found a new home.  The scars of war had left their mark on me as it had the planet and every human walking it, but here in this peaceful place…there was hope.  There was healing.  And there was love.

I smile as I hear the oh so familiar low whir of a grav bike approach the house at a ridiculously unsafe speed.

“Hey baby.”  I say as hear the bike click into its charging bay just around the corner.

“Hey sleepy head.”  Ashley hurries around the corner, her prosthetic foot blades clicking off the cobblestone as she goes.  She throws herself into my arms and I wrap her up in a big embrace.  She takes off her riding gloves and tosses them to the ground, her new wedding band glimmering the morning light, then kisses me hard on the lips.  “Miss me?”

I laugh and look deep into her blue eyes.  “Always.”  I say as I stroke her long blond hair.  “I didn’t mean to sleep in.”

She smiles and winks.  “Wel,l I did wear you out pretty hard last night.”

“That you did my love.”  My happy bottom reminded me that the grav-bike wasn’t the only thing she rode right to the limit.  “That you did.”

“Still love me?”  She asks that silly little question she did every morning.

“More than can ever know.”  I pinch her ass.

“Ooo!”  She giggles.  “Don’t start something you can’t finish.”

“I love you Ashley.”

“I love you Joseph.”  She rest her head upon my shoulder.  “My hero.”

“My lover.”

“My partner.”

“My soulmate.”

We hug and we kiss, as in love as two people could be, before she adds.  “My cocksucker.”

I chuckle.  “What?  Now!?”

“You heard me big man.”  She steps back with a naughty grin and grabs her crotch through her leather pants.  “On your knees and open wide.  Wifey’s got a big hot load waiting for you.”

“I haven’t even had breakfast yet!”  I exclaim…before I, inevitably, give in.  “A husband’s work is never done.”

On my knees as I give her head I look up at the woman I love and marvel.  I could have never known then, when I’d found that fragile fallen angel among the burning rubble, that she would eventually lead me to heaven.

The End