In His Command (28 page)

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.”