February, 2071, Chitamauga Commune
Liz Grant, are you the daughter of Robie Grant?”
I held the polished doorknob in my hand, straining to see the young trooper’s eyes hidden beneath the low brim of his cap. I nodded, my heartbeat knocking around my chest.
“Your father, First Class Medical Officer and Chief Geneticist Robie Grant, is dead.” He sped through the details of a gruesome killing at the hands of Nomads, speaking like an automaton, no emotion on his face, no inflection in his voice.
I stared at the badge on his chest until my vision swam and what was left of my heart sank to my knees, knees that buckled. The gleaming metal of his insignia winked when he turned toward the corridor. I stood in the open doorway, watching his retreat, tears spilling down my face.
“Lizbeth?” Mom called from behind me.
Bending in two, I retched, shoving an arm out to ward her off as her cautious footsteps came closer.
“Lizbeth?” She hurried forward, pulling my face around. “Lizbeth, what’s happened?”
Vomit stained the carpet, curdled under my tongue. I spoke the words I never thought we’d hear. “Dad’s gone.”
“Your father’s—” A tall woman with black hair, so elegant and refined she could sweet-talk any Company stuffed suit, Mom backed away from me, her hand shaking, her finger pointing. “Don’t you dare say that.”
“Mom?” I rose to my feet, and my stomach heaved again. “Mom!”
Stopping halfway down the hallway, she crumpled to the floor, wails breaking from her as she beat her head against the wall. “No, no, no, no. He said we’d be safe! He said he’d make sure. Rob told me not to worry.”
I crawled to her, sliding her head into my lap, my world falling apart with each of her fragmented cries. “Mommy?”
Jesus and Christ! A litany of swears sped past my lips as I jumped off the bed, hefting one of my Desert Eagles in a shaky grip. The sensation of all-seeing eyes watching my every move didn’t stop just because I was in the Freelanders’ Chitamauga Commune, somewhat safe from immediate danger. Scanning the moon-saturated surrounds of my borrowed caravan and coming up clear, I put the safety on, rubbing the barrel against my cheek. Sweat-soaked sheets pooled around my hips. My thin top clung to me, and perspiration slid in icy trickles between my breasts, brought on by the habitual nightmare of my dad’s slaughter.
I was a hard-ass. The Revolution, the deaths I’d witnessed, and the kills I’d caused, not even the Company itself, with its aggressive worldwide lockdown on so-called aberrant sexual behaviors, could break me. The only thing that terrorized me each and every night was my dad’s murder. He’d been mutilated, the blame placed on a Wilderness Nomad tribe, people we’d been brainwashed to believe were bloodthirsty savages. I didn’t buy that particular feed anymore either, not after I’d ended up in Chitamauga, where the people had proved themselves to be exactly what they purported: Freelanders, not vicious, ignorant Nomads.
I lay down on the bed, snuggling my pair of pistols under a pillow, close at hand, just in case. I kept my hand on the butt of a gun instead of the firm bottom of a petite blond spy who’d become my playful pastime and a fond friend far too quickly for my liking. Rolling onto my back, the smile gathered from remembrances of Farrow was replaced by a grimace when I shut my eyes, thoughts of my father spinning back to me.
Sleep off the roster for a second night running, I tossed the pillow aside and lit one of the old-fashioned lanterns, its warm glow nothing like the cool halos powered by Territory electricity. I ripped several pages from some ledger Farrow had left behind and located a stilo-pen. After my dad’s death, I’d ransacked the condo searching for his personal digi-diary, coming up empty. This was one connection I still had with him. Distilling my thoughts and fears into mere words on a page I’d later destroy meant I didn’t have to truly face them. Some hard-ass I was, all right. I gave a dry laugh and set the pen to paper, scribbling quickly.
Heading up to Beta in a couple days. My mind hasn’t been on straight since finding out about the cover-up on Dad. Eleven years and it feels like yesterday I answered that knock on the door in Beta. I expected a mandatory quarantine order because of the spread of the Gay Plague or another CO soiree invite for my folks. Judging from the sharpness of the knock, I should’ve known it was neither. The trooper outside couldn’t have been much older than me. The cap he wore shaded his eyes from view until he pushed it up, revealing scathing snapdragon-blue irises.
Looking down at the paper clenched in my hand, I saw the wet blotch of a tear making an even bigger mess of my words. That my father had been sent into the field should’ve been my first tip-off something wasn’t right with the bullshit palaver my mom and I had been force-fed. He was high ranking and a scientist, not a frontline medic. But I’d been only eighteen at the time, and watching my mom fall to pieces with the news hadn’t left me with a whole lot of thinking space.
The Company, the CO—the Cunts—remain oppressive to the core. Pumping us with a dawn-to-dusk spin for the good of mankind during day-long doses of pro-CO promos filtered in on our handheld, government issued Data-Paks for two generations running. The thing is, I used to believe in them. It was how I’d been raised, all I’d had left. Now I feel sick about all I’ve done to keep them in power. This regime with their so-simple manifesto: Maintain order, recoup the InterNations population, and execute anyone who stands in the way of their brainless breeder politics.
Maintain order; that’s one thing I’m good at.
Too fucking bad for the CO a few million civilians teamed up with a massive wave of Freelanders from every InterNations Territory and the surrounding pockets of Wilderness to finally lay some beat-ass on their homophobic, homogenous hate-filled regime.
Too bad for them, but good for me, for us. I’d finally done the right thing, something I could be proud of, and I hoped my dad would’ve been, too. I’d dropped my first lieutenant rank, dropped out altogether from the Corps—the military branch of the CO—and skipped off their grid, joining up with the Revolution that had begun only seven months ago.
Blindly searching the bed where Farrow usually slept, I flattened my palm to nothing but a bunched-up pillow. She’d left two days ago, a spook for the Revolutionaries and the best babe around, care of her CO connections and the way she made me come, fingertips traipsing over my clit, her puckered lips slipping up and down my slit. I shut my eyes, my body pulsing with memories, far better memories than deaths dropped on my doorstep or bullet holes I’d plugged into possibly innocent tangos on both sides of the war. I should’ve been worried about Farrow, but she could take care of herself and so could I.
Shaking my head, smiling, I started writing again.
I’ve been taking care of myself since the minute that knock sounded on our door. Took care of myself in other ways, too, hardly lingering over a handful of infrequent lovers. Hitting It and Heading Out: a little insider Corps motto, and we’re not just talking about sorties. I’ve never been sweet to anyone but Farrow and she knows it.
My first affair with a woman and probably my last, since I’d figured I was incomplete in a way even she hadn’t satisfied. I’d never had the time or wherewithal to explore my femininity, my sexuality, and Farrow’s nightlong erotic escapades hadn’t filled the aching hole.
Jesus, if Cannon could see me now. I remember one afternoon in Alpha, the two of us sitting side by side on the pavement, tinkering with our motorcycles, spending silent hours on the endless maintenance he called “twat to tit.” He popped me on the shoulder. “Beats journaling, right?” Because we’d never be caught dead doing that. I came back with, “Maybe, but not as good as getting laid.” He turned so red, for a minute I thought he took my remark as a come-on. Nah, I was only digging for a little truth about the commander, even back then.
Ah, fuck this. Maybe I should blame my mental masturbation on him. Cannon’s infected me with his lovefest. It’s no joke he and Nate go at it like rabbits. I knew about his illegal activities long before he made a clean cut from the Corps, but I never let on until he gave me the send-off last September. Pulled from his duties as commander of the Elite Tactical Unit in Alpha, ordered to escort Nathaniel Rice, the Company head of technological acquisitions, to the Outpost, he didn’t deny my suggestions then, but he didn’t affirm them either.
I pressed the slim stilo against my temple as I had the barrel of my gun earlier. A grin tugged my lips. Cannon would murder me if he ever read this.
Nathaniel Rice, known to his lover as Blondie…I’m not even calling him Nate anymore, preferring Cannon’s fuck bunny. He’s proven himself a worthy asset, and more than that, the major mastermind behind the Revolution, setting off InterNations-wide assaults on the global water plants so the regime ran around with their asses to the wind, giving rebellious civilians a reason to incite war.
Cannon’s love for Blondie makes sense. He never had any women around, just his boyfriend, the Fist. It doesn’t matter to me which way he swings his club. But I wish they’d left their caravan—called the Love Hovel by Cannon, me, and everyone else within hearing distance—in its honeymoon position on the edge of the Chitamauga meadow because Blondie the Fuck Bunny is a screamer.
Eyeing the pages in my hand, I placed the stilo on a stand beside the bed. The potbellied woodstove in the corner burped out faint gusts of smoke as fire ate through wood, warming the one-room caravan. The small door whined when I opened it, ash blazing blue. I shoved in the papers, waiting for the edges to curl and combust. I burned the evidence of my late-night weakness. Leave no trail behind.
My head slightly clearer, I returned to bed. I checked my rounds, hilled a few quilts to buffer my body, and closed my eyes. This lying-low-and-hiding-out gig had gotten old. It wasn’t my style. I had some work to do, in the name of freedom…and for my father.
Leaving my caravan behind the next morning, I hastened through the snowy network of the wagoneer neighborhood. The caravan itself was another surprise I liked more than I cared to admit. Its brightly patterned fabrics put me in mind of the Alpha digs I’d filled with colorful, luxurious black-market finds. Works of art, books that were banned, the feminine touches had been more than decorations to me. They’d been cherished treasures speaking to a side of myself I tended to ignore and kept hidden from all others, except for that nosy sumbitch Cannon.
Once freed of the forest, I crossed onto the commune’s main street, crunching snow beneath my high-laced boots, securing my Corps cap to my head. I passed the mess hall, the trade stands, and the schoolhouse. Inside every silver-wooded structure, fires blazed and men, women, children, and animals milled, working off the winter’s cold in this thriving back-to-the-earth community.
The usual undaunted mutt hightailed it after me, his owner’s gray bleak face and growly voice the same as his dog’s when he snapped an order to the mongrel and a slightly less irate G’mornin’ to me.
Brought up a Corps brat, I preferred the war room—aka the meeting hall—to the women’s hour that took place every morning, noon, and night within the open-air kitchens. Stepping into the town hall proper, I was greeted by a round table filled by the usual group of down-home councilors including Hills, Hatch, Darke, Eden, and Fuck Bunnies one and two.
Maps were splayed on the table, real paper things we could touch and handle. Before exploring the commune’s well-maintained archives, I’d never seen a nondigital representation of the Territories, thanks to the CO destroying our history and replacing it with neat and tidy readouts easily digested from our D-Ps. Around the table, Hills and Eden carried on a murmured conversation while Nate winked at me and Cannon perfected his fear-inducing glare from deep brown eyes. One day before I departed for Beta Territory, he wasn’t happy. Surprise.
Cannon’s finger struck the green landmass at the upper-right quadrant of the InterNations map of the former United States, an area just outside Beta. He didn’t even wait for me to take a seat before high-handing me. “Tell me what happened again.”
Fuck. I mutely went about making myself a cup of coffee from the fixings in the center of the table, ignoring the hulking giant across from me.
“I won’t stand for your insubordination, Grant.” Cannon addressed me with a growl in his voice.
Holy hell. Clearly someone woke up on the wrong side of the caravan this morning.
“I don’t think you have the brass to tell me what to do anymore, Caspar.” Smiling sweetly, I took him down a notch by refusing to address him as Commander, Cannon, or sir. I loved Caspar Cannon like a brother, but sometimes he needed to be slapped, and Nate was probably too soft on him to do it.
Leader of the commune’s well-organized militia, Darke matched Cannon’s size kilo for kilo and came in a couple years older at an even thirty. From down the table he didn’t seem too fond of listening to us spar. “Now, I know y’all two don’t need to fuck it out—pardon me, Miss Eden.” He apologized to the fair-haired healer, Nate’s mom. “You need a fighter’s ring to square your pube hairs away, we can sort that out right quick. I’m sure Micah would be more than happy to call our people in from the fields for a little Corps entertainment this morning.”
I guessed he’d rather watch us duke it out.
“Jesus.” Cannon pressed his knuckles to his temples.
“Christ.” I sank into the last open chair.
We grinned at each other.
“I’m not shitting you, Liz,” Cannon said as his grin evaporated and his expression became troubled.
“I know. I get it. Have my back, I’ll have yours. I just didn’t think you’d be riding my ass the whole way, too.” Mug of hot coffee in hand, I took a sip before launching into an abbreviated version of what went down during my evacuee-escort detail from Alpha to Beta at the outbreak of the Revolution for the umpteenth time.
Still a hundred and sixty kilometers from Beta with a ragtag group of refugees, our supplies rapidly dwindling as winter approached and our trucks’ fuel cells funneling low, I’d been all about hustling. “We were on Alpha-Beta Route Two, pushing the numbers, hoping to make it to Beta before we became frozen vulture food when either our supplies or gas tanks ran out. We were cutting it real close to those mountains.” I nodded to the map.
“That’s the home of the Catskills Commune,” Hills commented, the presiding Elder of this democratic society.
“Right. Our fleet was engaged at nightfall. A freak early winter snowstorm had wiped out any hope of further travel during the afternoon, and we’d hunkered down inside the trucks, using body heat to keep out the cold. I must’ve dropped off. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. My tits were practically iced over, so I’m not even sure how I managed it. I was woken by the screaming whistle of bullets tin-canning our trucks.”
Darke leaned forward. “They gotta have superior firepower and a lot of warriors to go at a Corps convoy.”
“I can attest to their resources and resourcefulness. We were engaged with no warning. I shouted for the civilians to stay inside the trucks and take cover while the unit and I took the heat and sent it back. I knew how close we were to Beta. I knew this was the commune my dad’s attackers came from. Taking down a Corps medical officer would’ve been big news. One of them had to remember.” I glanced at Cannon, his face grim. “I lost my lid a little.”
Lost my lid was an understatement. When I got close enough to a group of them, I’d ditched my guns and gone for hand-to-hand, nothing as satisfying as bloodying my knuckles. I must’ve been screaming the whole time. I’d never been so crazed before. I remember laughing, half hysterical, thinking I was as wild as the Nomads who’d murdered my dad.
Cannon nodded, pressing me on.
“I was restrained eventually, all of us detained, those who had survived the hail of bullets. They went for the big fish first, the full lieutenant of the operation, questioning me. I had a few questions of my own.” I backhanded my eyes, blinking away from the sympathetic stares around the table. “I didn’t believe them at first. Why would I? Corps to the end. Right, Cannon?”
“Shit.” His hands scrubbed down his face.
“Yeah, a steaming load is what it was. Their elders gathered, and surprise, surprise, no one had heard of Robie Grant. None of them recalled a murder of that magnitude. He hadn’t been sent to the front. It was all a wash job.” I peered around. “Not a single one of them was lying. I’ve been lied to enough. I can smell it a kilometer away.”
Taking a long drink of coffee, I swallowed down the anger and sadness that had been my constant buddies for more than a decade. “They let us go. I thought it was damned foolhardy. But they were Freelanders. What are you gonna do, huh?”
His long ears peeping through clouds of white hair, Hills imparted a nugget of his wisdom. “We don’t believe in taking innocent lives.”
“Should’ve told them that before they opened fire in the first place. Besides, no one’s innocent in a war.” That included me.
Cannon’s voice echoed around the room, “You could’ve taken a bullet.”
“I’d take a rain of them to know the truth.”
“Liz.”
“Cannon.” I grasped his hand. I knew he thought I was headed on a reckless mission. “For once, don’t be a pigheaded shitheel.”
Nate took his hand from me, clasping Cannon’s white knuckles in a gentle hold. “What happened then, Lizbeth?”
Lizbeth was the name only my mother and father had called me before him…and Farrow. Popping my knuckles and rolling my neck, I sat back, letting a grin slide across my mouth. “Then your friend Farrow showed up, right about the time we were approaching Beta, when I was pretty damn sure I’d be put into action for your brother Linc and his Beta Corps. That was a close one. I thought I’d have to kill Revolutionaries and Nomads—Freelanders—whose vision I was starting to share.” I nodded to Cannon. “The rest is good as Old History, sir.”
Cannon was no longer officially my commander and would never be part of the Corps again, not after blowing his cover sky high about his sexuality, which was as good as a death sentence in the eyes of the CO. But old habits die hard.
Nate turned to Hatch, the resident inventor who monitored transmissions to the commune. “Any word from Farrow?”
“Not yet. It’s too early,” Hatch replied.
Farrow was a family friend to Nate and his estranged brother, Linc, working all sides of this FUBAR situation with a feminine aplomb no one could pull off but her. She was to be my eyes and ears once I reached Beta. “My rendezvous is set up with her anyway.”
Cannon snorted.
“You got a problem over there?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’ve got a problem. In fact, I have issues with the whole stinking thing. For starters, I don’t see how a forty-five-kilo woman is gonna keep you walking the straight and narrow.”
I gave a snort of my own. “I’m surprised you’d know anything about being straight, lover boy.” Cannon blushed, making his hard and handsome visage appear sweet and boyish. I plowed on before he could stutter his way through his only vulnerability…Nate. “She’s not tasked with being my damn babysitter.”
Cannon’s face cooled with his tone. “Someone needs to keep a leash on you.”
My sidelong smirk slid to Darke. “The only one who’d know about the proper way to handle a leash is Darke. Let’s leave that to him and Leon.”
That was a direct hit, too. The brawny man’s crush on Leon was as obvious as the telltale russet flush under his smooth brown skin. I couldn’t even make another quip about their flirtation because his longing for the pretty-faced, twenty-year-old street hustler and his self-enforced denial was too painful to be comical. The man had lost his two life partners last autumn, casualties of this brutal war. I could only assume Darke had willfully decided not to put his heart on the line again, although it looked like he wasn’t being too successful with his emotional lockdown.
A few days before Farrow had left, Leon moseyed up to us, saying he was ready to sign on and join us in Beta. The sweet, sexy boy was getting his heart beat up and broken every day from Darke’s hot and cold emotions.
I figured that wouldn’t go down well between the overprotective pair of Darke and Cannon, both of whom had a vested interest in Leon, but I listened with mild amusement as he tried to con his way into our operation. Idling on the edges of our discussion, Darke appeared not to be listening, but his big shoulders had turned rigid as rock.
Farrow had smiled gently at Leon. “You’re gonna have to let me think about this now, Leon, but you might-could prove useful.” I had to agree. The kid was wily as hell as well as easy on the eye. “Ah reckon you’d be good company for mah brother.”
That comment had sparked Darke into action. Making the barest of excuses, he’d pulled Leon away from us, parked him against one of the outbuildings, and proceeded to kiss him with such heat, his hands running along Leon’s lean waist to settle on his hips, it was a wonder the building didn’t go up in flames. We’d walked away when Leon arched into the embrace, his loud groan carrying across to us.
Now, as then, Darke mumbled a few excuses and strode out of the meeting hall. Tipping my chair back, I looked out the window and, sure enough, he’d snagged Leon by the hand and was leading him down the dirt road.
Hills tugged on one of his long earlobes and cleared his throat. “Let’s talk strategy.”
I didn’t know what the old goat knew about strategy, but I’d go with it. “We’re planning a three-prong, long-term attack.”
Nate pulled his chair forward. “Infiltration first.”
“I’ve got that covered. Then I need to dig out the missing intel on my father, convince Linc to give up everything he’s ever worked to attain, and take Beta down.” All without letting on that I knew Beta Commander Linc Cutler’s identical twin and his mother closely, or that I was on friendly terms with the Freelanders and a Revolution sympathizer. In the civil war of the Rice/Cutler family, Linc had followed in his notorious father’s footsteps while Nate had finally freed himself from that man’s reins to return to his mother’s roots.
I couldn’t let any cracks show from the time I landed in Beta to the time I left, hopefully in a blaze of glory instead of with my carcass carried out in a body bag.
I decided to play it down even more when Cannon’s glower re-formed on his face. He didn’t need to know that I was feeling a few nerves, or that I hadn’t been sleeping, or that I was scared the truth would turn out to be uglier than the lies I’d been eating all these years.
I was a soldier after all.
“Just a day in the life, Big Papa.” I played his familiar line about our messed-up situation back at him.
Fist pounding the table in front of him, Cannon got ready to let loose when Eden cut in. “I want Lincoln out of there.”
I joined Cannon in grumbling under my breath while I thought, No added pressure or anything.
Rubbing his mom’s hand for a moment, Nate swiveled to his man, calming the beast with a few quiet words and a quick brush of his lips until Cannon’s shoulders relaxed from their punched-up place near his ears.
Brushing his finger along Nate’s jaw, Cannon whispered, “I know, baby.”
Their apparent affection for one another would’ve given me another round of the sweats, except, if any two people deserved to be together, in love, it was them. They’d been through hell and back a few more times than anyone rightly deserved. Hounded on their trek from Alpha to the secure Outpost bunker, working through attraction, suspicion, sabotage, betrayal—you name it—just to end up with Cannon being arrested for wanton corruption of a Company officer. Not to mention finding out Nate was Alpha CEO Cutler’s son must’ve been a big kick to Cannon’s nuts.
But they’d come through it.
Aside from his blatant snit about my self-imposed assignment, I’d never seen Cannon so happy. A day in the life was never gonna be the same for him, nor should it be. He’d found contentment, joy. Hell, seeing Cannon like this made me wonder just how much pain he’d been in, hiding his sexuality all those years and fighting to maintain rigid laws that went against his very nature. It also made me wonder what I was missing out on. After my mom committed suicide, unable to cope with the fallout of a family torn apart, the Corps and Cannon had become my family by choice. I’d since given up on one and watched another move on while my past was littered with those hitting-it-hard hookups. I envied Cannon and Nate’s intimacy, craving companionship born of enduring emotion.
But thinking was for pussies, and I wasn’t one of those, even if I had one.
Cannon jerked his seat back from the table to loom over me. “It’s too risky.”
I stood up, too, forcing him back a step. “You’ve made your objections clear, sir.” I tacked on the sir just to placate his stubborn ass. He’d made his point clear, all right, about a hundred times in the past few weeks since finding out my plan to vacate and infiltrate. But no way in hell would I let Cannon risk his life fielding this operation. He had too much at stake. Displaced, transient, I didn’t have anyone waiting up for me at the end of the day, so it made perfect sense to go in alone.
“Fuck’s sake, Liz. You’re going in there with your balls hanging out.”
I looked down my body and back up his. “Good to know you think Linc will be more distracted by my hard-core gonads than by my feminine charms.” Charms I’d only just discovered.
Commander Linc Cutler was my starting point in Beta, my only link to the Corps. I hoped to get close enough to either him or his father, CEO Cunt Cutler, to hack into their high-clearance D-Ps, where I could search out info on my dad and the InterNations plans for the Revolution. Linc, well, his name is fitting anyway. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Letting me pass before him out of the building with a wry twist of his lips, half fond smile and half simmering sneer, Cannon caught up to me in two strides. We walked down the single road cutting through Chitamauga Commune side by side, falling into an easy, companionable march. Just like old times.
It was cold as a bitch out here, and Cannon’s ears, nose, and cheeks quickly turned pink. The Freelanders were preparing for their midday meal in the mess hall, and we stepped to. It was a large, brightly lit wooden structure with long tables sided by benches, where all the families and newcomers, refugees and Revolutionary stragglers, ate together. Most mealtimes were so noisy with chatter and laughter it was hard to hear myself think, which was always a good thing.
“Fucking hell.” Cannon grunted.
Peering past his shoulder, I looked into the open barn door of Smitty’s iron forge. The insides were as red as fire. It must’ve been hot, too, because Leon and Darke were stripped down to their pants, glistening male chests on show.
“What’s going on in there?”
“Darke’s getting a tribute to Tammerick and Wilde. What they used to call a moko, a skin tattoo made with a bone awl and black dye.” Hands running across his short black crew cut, he said, “It’s a testament of his love for them.”
“And he’s making Leon do it? Jesus. I didn’t think he was cruel.”
“Leon’s done it before on others, and he wouldn’t let anyone else. He’s too fucking headstrong for his own good. Maybe we should’ve let him rot in the brig back in Alpha when he was arrested.”
Darke tenderly cupped Leon’s face, giving him a long, slow kiss. They were so beautiful together, Leon’s sinewy build and tawny gold skin against Darke’s rich brown body. Bits of their conversation drifted across to us, Darke’s rumbling voice counterpoint to Leon’s higher-pitched accent marking him for what used to be the Cajun people.
Darke pulled away. “You don’t have to, angel.”
“Mais, I wan’ to, cher. Let me do dis for you.”
When Darke lay down with his face buried in the muscle of his biceps, tears stood out on Leon’s lashes, glittering in the hot red light.
A sharp spear of sympathy for the two men twisted through me. “Leon’s getting his heart slayed over there.”
“Doesn’t have enough smarts to put that tattoo tool down and walk away.” Cannon turned his brown eyes to mine. “Which is why I’d prefer him to stay out of the Revolution.”
It was too intimate a scene to watch. One man devoted to his lost lovers, the other determined to give whatever he could. Their plight reinforced what this Revolution was about. Lives were not the only thing at stake but the freedom to choose whom you loved, how you loved no matter what gender. Freelanders, their very name was a call to arms.
Ambling on, Cannon asked, “Getting an early start in the morning?”
“Sure as the cock crows.” I winked at him.
He barked out a laugh before getting his serious face on again. “Blondie and I are flanking you, at least part of the way.”
I started to interrupt when he shut me up, pulling me into his arms, and through his strong embrace I felt him shaking. A giant tower of power and strength, he’d always been my steadfast comrade. Now I was getting ready to go it solo.
“Caspar.”
“Keep that damn mouth shut and let me hug you for once.” His gruff voice ruffled the short tufts of my black hair.
Surprised by the suddenness of his emotion, tears burned the back of my throat.
He leaned back and attempted a grin. “There. Now when Blondie and I have to turn you loose, no goodbyes.”
“No goodbyes, Caspar.” I kissed his cheek and spun away.
Still in the grip of winter, March’s icy wind ripped through my flak jacket, eating through any warmth the torn material had afforded me. I’d made it through Beta’s four-meter-high walls fortified by bayonet-sharp razor wire, sneaking in through the west gate Farrow had promised would be open. I owed her some flowers or something when this was all over.
The northeastern gale howling in my ears, I’d hustled to Sector One without any mishap. This was one time I was thankful for the Company’s strict adherence to homogeneity. Each of the sixteen InterNations Territories was gridded the same, so I didn’t need my decommissioned D-P’s navigation system to lead the way. I’d lived here before, too, and not much had changed except from the destructive forces of war. The poorer sectors hugged the outskirts so the select didn’t have to hobnob with their poverty-stricken citizens. Closer in, tenements for civilian and Corps grunts alike transformed into shiny high-rises and affluent businesses toward City Center and the heart of operations, the Quadrangle.
I’d gone rogue, been reported MIA, and was presumably wanted. Now I was getting ready to walk back into a Corps stronghold. Maybe I am a little reckless.
Clusters of soldiers roved the streets like packs of hungry dogs. It seemed like the curfew was well in effect and the fighting held at bay, at least on this night, but the ragged war-torn evidence was everywhere. Rubble lining formerly pristine streets, buildings with blast holes, sandbagged trenches, and armies of tanks screamed the Revolution was alive and well. On the other hand, the barred gates, the impenetrable fortress of the Quad, the wire, watchtowers, and giant building-wide Data-Paks spewing the latest CO promos all looked like an unstoppable iron fist.
After the commune with its colorful glory even in the dead of winter, with its celebration of life even when they’d suffered harsh losses of their own, Beta was freezing cold, not just because of the minus-zero temperature. I might’ve been raised a city girl, but I’d been shaken and taken by the Freelanders ideas, and I wouldn’t ever be the same.
Keeping my head down, I fell in step with a patrol, laughing along when they traded jokes about the shit-smelling wildling Nomads and too-dumb-to-fuck Revolutionary rejects. I didn’t let my hands shake or my shoulders stoop, thankful they must’ve thought my less-than-stellar uniform was due to a hard day slogging it out on the warfront. I’d spent most of my career learning how to blend in and stay off the radar, shining only in my role as first lieutenant.
Anonymity was second nature, but damn, I was feeling twitchy.
It’d taken two weeks to cross the Wilderness—land left to Mother Nature’s hands and husbanded to fresh fertility by the Freelanders—from Chitamauga located in the lower Appalachians to this northeastern colony. We deviated from Alpha-Beta Route Two, and it would’ve taken a lot longer had it not been for the bitchin’ snowmobiles Farrow had delivered for me, Cannon, and Nate, thanks to her family’s scrip, which she siphoned off to help fund the insurgency. That ride was as sweet as my motorcycle left behind months ago in Alpha.
Seemed I’d left just about everything by the wayside since this war started, perhaps long before that. Family, friends, thoughts of a fulfilling life…
Caspar Cannon. True to his word, he and Nate had kept pace with me, our snowmobiles running on fancy fuel cells only the elite could afford. Turning back three days ago, Cannon had maintained his “no goodbyes” policy while Nate gripped me in a long hug.
“I want you to know, Lizbeth, you’re not obligated to bring my brother back.”
“Nate, I’ll—”
He’d rocked me side to side, his gentle arms and gentle drawl quieting me. “Hush up now. You have a mission of your own and a duty to the Revolution. If anythin’ happens, you make sure to get yourself out. You are priority number one, darlin’.”
“Fuck.”
“Now, now, none of that language. You know what my momma would say.” Pressing away from me, he’d swiped a tear clinging to my cheek before Cannon could see it.
“Take care of that big bastard for me, will you?” I’d asked.
He’d nodded and stepped back, linking hands with his husband, whose somber features were too familiar for me to look at. I’d raised my hand, a salute me and Cannon shared, before speeding away through the snowy nation.
The commune—Nate, Cannon, and Darke—had become Central Ops for the entire Revolution, but only Darke could answer my call for help henceforth. Cannon and Nate had been branded enemy number one. They’d be killed on sight. In addition to the cool warrior who would be my point man when shit got ugly in Beta, I had Farrow as my liaison to the commune and the other side of the war, because I was about to go deep cover. My rendezvous with the woman was scheduled for tomorrow night, and I was cutting it close, especially if Commander Cutler decided to stick me in the brig for being AWOL. I had to make sure he bought my story.
By now I was downright itchy.
The double-reinforced steel gate in the sky-high barricade of the Quad opened before me and the other soldiers. My pulse pounded as I squared off with the four cornerstone buildings where InterNations business was beaten out: Company HQ, the hospital, the Tribunal—home to RACE, Repopulation and Civilization Enforcement, the court, jail, and killing grounds for those who committed homosexual crimes—and my former home away from home, Corps Command.
Walking into another one of CEO Lysander Cutler’s lion’s dens, the flat titanium heels of my lace-ups rang on the polished marble floor. My cap in place if a little filthy, an unemotional mask on my bruised face, I canvassed Beta Corps Command, waiting for my retinal scan from the outer doors to send up the expected alarms. Wearing a shredded uniform more dirty than dark blue, my first lieutenant insignia smudged and hanging off the breast of my shirt, I looked like I’d had an orgy with about a dozen dynamite sticks.
I’d figured the surest way to get Commander Cutler’s attention was to serve myself up. It might not have been the smartest move in my arsenal, but I waited for my latest date with disaster without a nervous tic on my body.
Not until the rapid-blast guns—pathetic pieces of shit compared to my pair of Desert Eagles—of the five troopers I’d clocked lounging against the black pillars locked on my location. I strived not to flinch when their sights found me. Cannon may have been my commander in the Elite Tactical Unit, but he was the hothead while I’d been his cool, severely controlled second in command. Unless my mouth ran away with me.
Gun muzzles met my temples, their cold barrels promising chambers of pain if I so much as twitched as I was marched wordlessly through the halls into a soundproof gymnasium. I knew immediately what the strategy was. Lock her up; then make her sing for her momma.
Steeling myself for the blows, I sucked in a breath as I was disarmed. The breath exhaled with a whoosh when the first fist hit my stomach. Doubling over, I bit my lip, just stupid enough to stand tall, meeting the second and third knocks with my face.
What with the unending lashings from five pairs of hands and boots, I didn’t get a good look at my assailants. Their questions came on repeat, ringing in my ears with no rhyme or reason. What’s your name, slut? You got a rank, soldier girl? Who are you working for? Where had I been for five months? My answer to every accusation was a gob of blood splatted at the closest beater-upper.
They obviously hadn’t been trained in the fine art of interrogation, or fighting, by Commander Cutler, or if they had, it’d been a slapdash operation. But that didn’t matter. A punch was still a punch. And that shit was starting to hurt, especially since I’d made sure Cannon had roughed me up so I looked like I’d been done-over recently so my cover would be airtight before he sent me on my merry way. He’d probably enjoyed it too.
Not as much as these untrained shit stains, though. Except when the door crashed open and one tall wall of barely leashed man strode into the room. They all dropped their punching-bag fists before he said a single word.
“Who gave you the order to interrogate this prisoner?”
“The c-command came from CEO Cutler, s-sir,” the little rat bait with the truncheon fists stuttered.
“The CEO is not in charge of this or any other Corps operation. They fall under my jurisdiction.” Crackling blue eyes leveled every rookie in the room until the smell of fresh sweat coming off his soldiers joined the iron tang of my spilled blood. “Does it look like she was anywhere near snitching to you?”
The dumb nuts stupid enough to answer in the first place replied, “No, sir.” His red hair was a total match for his red face.
“Where are you from that you learned such sloppy tactics, soldier?” Sir asked. His back to me, shoulders stretching his uniform, he grilled his insubordinate.
When no answer came from any of the troops, Sir pivoted toward me. His jaw snapped as he scanned me top to bottom. I made sure the beat-ass didn’t show in my precise military bearing, unlike the unlucky mugs who answered to him.
With his finger pointed in my face, he gazed around the room, settling on the jar-faced cunt who’d commandeered my beating.
“I didn’t hear your answer, soldier.” His words were drawn out like silk over the edge of a sword. He waited long enough for the trooper to start flapping his gums; then, before he had a chance to get any more irate, he simply whipped out his fist, flattening the redheaded blunder boy.
He galvanized the rest of them with, “Have I been sent any other ninety-day wonders?”
“NO, COMMANDER, SIR!” went up the deep chorus.
Fucking Linc Cutler. I should’ve known it. I’d never seen anyone control a room of fuckwits like that except Cannon. I sized him up while he seemed to mull over whose ass to kick next.
He didn’t look like Nate apart from their irises, but Linc’s were storm-ridden blue, not fresh as fucking flowers. And like a thunderstorm, his earlier look had hit me with lightning force. He was built slightly larger, a fresh shave clearing every single whisker that dared to appear on the straight line of his clenching jaw. His dark blond hair was shorter, his shoulders wider.
Linc’s powerful presence caused a delicious spiral of heat between my legs, and beneath my ripped shirt, my nipples tightened. Thoughts of his big body against mine pressed the air from my lungs. My immediate attraction to him was unexpected, and worse, unsettling as the sensual line of his mouth became a single neat slash while he watched my perusal. One eyebrow cocked—in interest or disdain, I couldn’t tell. I inhaled silently and slowly, training my sights on my Eagles spun out across the floor.
“Good, clean up this mess. And bring Lieutenant Grant to my office.” Neither did Linc speak like Nate, whose southern patois was a soft and passionate song. He hadn’t once raised his voice or broken a sweat.
And he sure as hell didn’t worry about getting his hands dirty.
“Sir, yes, sir!”
Unimpressed by their late show of rank and file, he swept a steely appraisal over me a second time, springing a new leak in my formidable armor. This time it was derision paired with a hint of admiration, or maybe I was just headed for a concussion. Dizzies from getting my face punched in would be easier to brush off than feeling breathless and kneeless because Linc had found me interesting enough for a twice-over.
He kicked my twin Eagles to me, saying, “Make sure those stay on safety, and get her a goddamn clean uniform. She looks like someone pissed all over her welcome-home parade.”
Stalking from the room, he jammed the elevator button, his gaze swinging to mine and holding for several pounding heartbeats before the doors closed between us.
Everything about him denoted coiled power, and I made no mistake about it: Commander Linc Cutler was a man made of deadly detachment. I got the distinct impression he was gonna blister my ass from one end of Beta to the other, and if I thought Cannon was bad, Linc was about to introduce me to a brand-new level of suck.
I’d wanted to get his attention. Mission accomplished.