“Hey Joe. Well as you know the war is sort of over. As you see I am at last out of a space suit. I have just had a bath in real water in my own en suite bathroom. I am on board the Zheng He. It’s parked just above High Trewhitt as an accommodation block. Not for long though, because the owners want it back. That means big contracts for whoever gets to build barracks and stuff on the surface. It’s going to cost Earth a fortune to stay here, but they can’t really leave after having fought for the place.
It’s a bit embarrassing me being here. I’m sure everyone on board sees me as a porn queen who’s suddenly going to strip off and render some poor bloke a gibbering idiot.
So here is my naked body. Take a good look because I’m going to change it. That way I can hide. I just want to make a new start with a new body. People wont look on me as a famous freak.
And I’m tired with being black.
There’s a hospital at Lun near Ulaanbaatar that does a great colour. It’s a sort of deep copper. But the skin shines so the copper changes colour slightly with the light. That’s as well as the usual light and shadow, you know. Have you seen anyone like that? It’s quite a new idea. Anyway I rather fancy the thought of that. I think my curves would look great. Well you know.
Anyway, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be flaunting myself on camera this way. I suppose I want to think that you still find me attractive. Despite knowing what I do. What I did. Anyway I shall stop dancing about in the nude and put a gown on.
There. I’m now respectable. Or as respectable as I’m ever going to be.
Well I suppose you want to know about the war. Know what excitement you missed. Well there wasn’t much of that. Just mistakes and deaths.
I told you what happened after your arm got blown off. We got all the prisoners scanned and shipped out and we carried on tidying the place up. There were a few new arms dumps we discovered buried in the ice and those wrecked shuttles had to be made safe.
Any way I went to Silverside with the 55th. It was fairly uneventful. We flew over. We took up positions round Silverside. The Mirco conscripts ran so we took their positions. Then they ran further and we took more positions. Eventually there was just the Main domes left with us wondering what to do next.
So we got on to all their frequencies and asked them to surrender. Then we got a reply from the officers. The Mirco Colonel wanted to surrender in style with a procession of his men onto the ice and him giving orders to lay down their weapons. He wanted to be dignified. I think if he’d had a band and banners and flags he’d have been really happy. I guess he joined the army for the pageantry, not to kill people.
Well, we let him do all the marching and saluting and stuff. Then we told ‘em to march past and dump all their hand weapons in a big heap. Then we lined ‘em all up and we rendered them all unconscious and started loading them onto shuttles. Then we thought there was some sort of trick attack because there were still loads of them inside the domes. Well I spoke to them. Normally. No trickery in case you wondered. It seemed these people didn’t have suits. They did have suits to begin with but they stopped working and they were breaking these suits up for spares to keep their other suits going. They hadn’t brought any spares from Mirconium. Or if they did they were still stuck at High Trewhitt.
It was then your friend Dorothy phoned. She said she had a friend at Trewhitt Steads and all the Mircos had pulled out of Trewhitt Steads. Well that made some sort of sense to consolidate their positions at High Trewhitt. Anyway I told FLEET. They sent over the Vengeance to collect me. The Sarge and I went to talk to the locals at Trewhitt Steads and we found it was true. The Mirco’s had all left. Left all their usual rubbish behind them as well.
So the Sarge and I laid out beacons in a landing pattern.
Well as you will have seen on the News it all went wrong.
I think The Marines
were in a hurry. You know what they’re like. Very competitive. And
I suppose they wanted to land unopposed in case the Mircos came back.
The thing is they landed before FLEET had set up a fighter screen.
And the Marines’ infantry landed before the ground-based screen was
running. I mean they landed the missiles and lasers but they hadn’t
got the network set up properly. Another half hour and we would have
slaughtered the fighters. But as you know the fighters appeared from
nowhere. Well, out of the rings actually. They came in low and they
hit the liners. And a destroyer.
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