In His Command (4 page)

Holy fuck.
I hardened my expression until my jaw didn’t even tic. “We gotta get to Command.”

“Affirmative.”

“Where are the rebels?”

“Converging on the Quadrangle.”

“And the infantry?” I asked.

“Holding pattern.”

“Someone’s behind this besides plain old rebels.”

“Yes, sir.”

For half a century, people had been pretty accepting of the regime. It was amazing what you put up with when your basic needs were met after teetering on the brink of extinction.

Noble in the abstract but clumsy as fuck in action, dissent had been fermenting recently. Last time there’d been any excitement had been the surprisingly well-oiled assassination attempt on CEO Cutler eight weeks ago. Backed by my troops, with Liz at my side, I’d busted into his swanky apartment to find him swathed in a towel from the waist down, hand clutched to his neck, and fury mangling his mouth. Of all the goddamned things, he’d been attacked by the stand-in masseur sent to service him. Massage him. Whatever.

No sign of forced entry, no love note from the would-be assassin. No matter how deeply we scoured the streets, we’d met only closed lips and blank looks from our usual cache of canaries.

The only reason he escaped with a nick on his neck instead of bleeding out all over his thick, white carpet was because we’d been tipped off just in time from the head honcho in charge of hack jobs, some CO kid called Rice.

The renegades were becoming more organized, less stupid. This water workup smelled similar to the kill-Cutler attempt, minus fair warning.

Armed, in uniform all the way to the cap sitting on top of her head, Liz was ready to move out. Meanwhile, I stood in nothing more than a towel, rather like Cutler. Called to action, I hauled dark blues up my legs and over my arms. Firearms were the only accessories required. Double cross-chest holsters snuggled my SIG P229s and were joined by a set of matchy-matchy Glock 40s at my hips. A nice even four guns—I was ambidextrous, as I’d been about to demo on my dick—and my pointy friend, a KA-BAR knife, strapped to my thigh, for more delicate work.

When I flicked on my handheld D-P, I got a shock. Hell, I should be used to that; it was only the third pube-curler of the night. I expected to be called into Corps Command along with Liz. Instead I was to be briefed by CEO Cutler.

My first reaction of
so ass-fucked
showed.

Liz scowled. “What?”

“I’m reporting to Company HQ.”

She shook her head, turning pale. Nothing good ever came of that place. It was where those in the Corps were sent, at best, for a severe strafing. More likely it was for impersonal interviews of the most personal kind.

“No.” Her voice was injected with the correct amount of fear.

“It’s standard protocol in this case, remember? Executive roundups and evacs.” I reasoned with her and myself.

“Yeah, but—”

“Don’t but me, Lieutenant. This is textbook: Maintain order, split the executives, and appoint each of them a handler from the Corps. The only reason Cutler is calling me in is to give me my mission.”

Unless he’s figured out I’m not just a Corps commander but also an ace cocksucker.

Exiting my apartment building, Liz asked, “You think you’re headed to the Outpost?”

“No other explanation.”

“That place is bullshit.”

The secure regrouping point for Company assets ranked with old-timey tales about a so-called Area 51. It was myth. But right now I wanted to believe in it, especially after I’d let my guard way frigging down at the Amphitheater.

“Let’s hope not.”

She nodded. “You lead. I’ll follow.”

“Always,” came my gruff reply.

Throttling my bike again, I took a swift jump over a craggy crop of debris. My Harley was one of the last hangers-on. With gas hard to come by, vehicles were few and far between. My bike was fast, loud, obnoxious, and about the only possession I loved, besides my weaponry.

A goddamn rebellion?
I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea the rebels had gotten their shit together enough to pull something of this magnitude off, InterNations wide. It lent a heady taste to my lips, lips I still wanted wrapped around Blondie’s cock.

I had zero time to savor either off-limits flavor because shit went from bad to FUBAR the closer we got to the Quadrangle.

Usually a trip like this would be almost scenic, if you considered pockets of poverty overshadowed by the supershine of money to be something you wanted to take a picture of with your multifunctional D-P. The straight gridded roads were glossed to a high polish nearing City Center, care of the litter-uppers. On any given day—in the event of heavy foot traffic, since most citizens couldn’t afford a car—I simply gunned onto the sidewalks, because I liked to raise a little hell once in a while.

At this time of night, dawn approaching, the roads were supposed to be quiet due to the mandatory curfew. The Company was really into oppression for our own good like that, because that scary boogeyman of sexual liberation was most likely to spread after dark.

Tonight was a different story, one quickly progressing to Armageddon proportions. The blare of sirens added to the violent commotion. This was a vastly different scene from the one I’d returned to an hour earlier.

The sector flew past, my head whipping left, right, and to my rear to check Liz’s position on my tail, dodging fast on her dead black bike. Each block in more disarray than the one before. Coming from S-4 and S-5 at the back of us, columns of belching black smoke rose, chimneys taken to the sky, buildings licked by fire as revolt became hell on earth.

Sector Two, where I lived, butted against S-1, home to central operations and all it entailed. The roads narrowed for basic herding tactics and the utilitarian housing became subsidized businesses rising in needlelike buildings with sleek reflective surfaces and tiny slits for windows, manufacturing shit most citizens didn’t need, couldn’t afford, but longed to buy. Looming sky-high condos soared into the air, lording it over the gen pop with their expensive expanses of terraces complete with plants and outdoor lounging furniture. Housing for Company hotshots.

Here, in the heart of Alpha, chaos swarmed, the CO cannibalized by its own children raised to kneel at its despotic altar. I planted a blank look on my face instead of shouting out the cheers bubbling up the back of my throat.

As always in City Center, there were more patrols—had to keep the assholes safe, after all—more cameras perched on building corners. The once-thriving metropolis consisting of over 155,000 square kilometers had been reduced to an area of 16,000 kilometers over the past half century. Easier access to resources for the scaled-down population, the Company claimed. The reality? It all came down to controlling the animals in the zoo.

Worst-case scenario happened side by side in the seething, writhing mass of bodies from which screams rose, blood gushed, and bullets whistled. I hunkered over my motorcycle and trammeled through the flailing bodies, spinning off groups of Nomads going at it beside homegrown rebels, both factions giving as good as they got to Corps troops.

I homed in on the wild Nomads. Hefting bows, axes, sharpened farming implements, they put the archaic tools to good use, hacking, sawing, and garroting. Their homespun clothes covered in patchworks of foraged armor, their hair longer, they looked exactly like the brutal barbarians they were rumored to be.

They’d breached the gate or been let in.

Beside me, the sound of flesh meeting flesh made a pulpy squelch. Blood cascaded across my arm. A kick and a crunch, the shrieking rebel’s foot dangled like a chew toy from the string of his ankle tendon. Staring ahead, I revved through the fallen bodies and the pound of boots as more troops infiltrated the area.

By the time we reached the Quad, the fog of smoke bombs ghosted across a pink-tinged dawn. And I was barely holding in my shakes to go back to the fray, join the agitators.

Dismounting, I caught Liz’s eye as she headed in the opposite direction. She stopped, giving me a full salute, fucking finally. The smirk on her mouth faded before it reached her eyes.

I went due north to the Company headquarters, the government seat. To my left stood Corps Command; to the right was the hospital now on five-alarm status, casualties from all quarters being wheeled in, and squat at my flank was the Tribunal. Court and prison and where RACE executed gays in inglorious numbers. The three-meter-tall walls surrounding the whole of the Quad kept the dissenters at bay.

For the time being.

I waited while the prestigious doors of HQ opened after my retinal scan. At the desk, I stated, “Commander Cannon for CEO Cutler.”

An extra iris imprint, a D-P check, and I put my weapons on safety before heading to the bank of elevators in the black marble hall that swallowed the sounds of my boots and spat them back at me.

The elevator whizzed from the lobby to fifty-five in the blink of an eye, depositing me onto a plush carpet that hushed my footsteps. I didn’t have far to go; the fifty-fifth belonged solely to Cutler. I smelled like smoke, tasted blood in my mouth, and still heard the groans from outside, embedded in my think tank.

Walking into the well-appointed office, I came face-to-face with…Blondie.

Jesus Christ.

This was an oh-shit moment of the highest magnitude, and I almost gagged on the hunky-dory I’d told Liz earlier about this meeting.

Except this version of Blondie didn’t resemble a snitch. Not at all. His sleepy blue eyes were sharp. Angular jaw clean of sun-hued stubble. His hair was pulled back, revealing a little bit of hotness I’d missed before. Buzzed with a number-two razor guard, his hair was close on the sides of his head in two wide swaths, with that long, grade-A Mohawk pulled back in a ponytail. Add the double-helix piercing through the cartilage of his ear and he was straight-up sex, modeling a suit that probably cost as much as filling my tank for five months.

Shock?
More like shell shock at this point. Blondie knew I was gay, yet he was a Company exec or else he wouldn’t be here. I was his butt boy in the worst possible way.

When I squinted at him, he gave nothing up. Neither did I. I had shit on this newly minted man too.

Double fucking jeopardy, jackass.

M
y nerves steely as ever, I turned to CEO Cutler. Last time I’d seen him, he hadn’t been all that pleased with my performance, but apart from hanging any old culprit for a crime not committed, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot I could have done.

And now this.

Cutler had the appearance of a bald eagle from his white crested hair to his regal nose and strong, streamlined torso. He exemplified the same predatory aura too, at least when he was dressed in more than a towel. The birds were extinct now, but I’d seen one a long time ago back in Epsilon. My pop had pointed it out, explaining the majestic American symbolism of the eagle.

Cutler missed the majesty part by the cruel curl of his lips.

Making with the howdy-do, he scrutinized the tension televised between me and Blondie. “Commander Cannon, welcome.”

I managed some sort of response.

“This is Mr. Rice. Head of technological acquisitions.”

Mr. Rice. The hacker with the all-the-best gen. The hunk who’d sucked my cock.

Major Head Fuck, more like.

I figured I had a couple minutes’ reprieve before being fisticuffed, face-punched, and hauled over to the Tribunal, so I put on the dog-and-pony show.

Taking a seat, Blondie Rice watched the proceedings with as much interest as choosing a new tie from a rack of hundreds.

“We’re under attack.”

“Yes, sir.”
State the obvious, why don’t you?
“What do they want?”

“Freedom, I presume.” Cutler sneered.

Can’t allow that, can we?

He clasped his hands behind his back. “That’s neither here nor there. The ingrates will be dealt with. You’ve got something else to worry about, Commander. Assuming you’re ready to prove yourself after the last cock-up?”

From the cushy lounge, Blondie’s eyebrow rose.

Cock-up. I’ll give him one if he doesn’t watch it.

“At your service, sir.”

“You know the strategy, then.”

“Top Corps to escort Company execs to the Outpost.”

“Exactly.” Cutler took a seat, leaving me standing. I widened my stance and considered discreetly fingering my guns off safety, just in case.

“You are charged with the safety of Mr. Rice. Escort him to the Outpost and I’ll wipe the gigs off your record. Shouldn’t take more than four weeks to reach it. You can keep your head on straight that long, can’t you?”

Which one?

“Yes, sir.”

He went on about the Outpost, aka the Brier, the legendary place that didn’t exist. Unless you were top-level clearance, apparently. All I could make out through the droning anxiety deafening me was that it had been a bunker built when the defunct United States was embroiled in a Cold War.

Things were about to heat up.

Blondie relaxed like he was prepping for a vacation while the details were hashed out about how I was going to guide him. Alone. He even stretched out on top of the sofa and linked his hands behind his head so his shirt and jacket strained over his chest.

This smelled like a case of crotch rot and total setup. In fact, the whole situation was ludicrous, including the one rising in my pants because being pissed off made me horny, obviously, and he wasn’t helping with that highly unprofessional slow lip lick of his.

As if I didn’t have enough worries, I planted my size-fourteen boot in it. “With all due respect, this mission is bogus. I have command of my infantry. Here.”

“Are you implying you have no faith in your second, Lieutenant Grant?”

Right. The motherfucker made it look like I questioned Liz, putting her in jeopardy. “No, sir. She is completely capable of leading our company.”

“Then you will complete your assignment to rendezvous at the Outpost where the leaders are convening to regain control of the Territories. Meanwhile, the remaining infantry will quell the uprising…or level the city.”

Did I say mother fuck?

“I’ll leave you to formulate plans. Make full use of the maps.” Cutler rose to his feet, gripping my hand. “Your transport will be readied by twelve hundred tomorrow.”

I thrust my contaminated palm into my pocket when he sent back, “I trust you’ll be fully armed, Commander.”

He had no idea.

The door closed behind him.

I pulled out maps, pinning the location of the place. Isolated, its position couldn’t have been worse. What should’ve been a straight two-week shot north looked like a freaking mine had exploded all over the landscape. Checking measurements, I reckoned hundreds of meters of inhospitable vegetation in every direction stood between me and the Brier. What an apt name.

After adjusting the guidance system on my D-P, I approached the slit of a window overlooking the Quad walls and wished I hadn’t. Reeling back from the volcanic fountains of artillery, smoke, and fire outside, I hit a solid wall of male body. Blondie’s scent drifted over me.

“Not gonna talk to me, then?”

I swiveled around. “Not into chitchat.”

“You were pretty chatty a few hours ago.” A lean smile pursing his cocksucking lips, he looked me over. “Four weeks is a long time, you know?” He’d dropped his Company-composed veneer, becoming the fantasy man I’d fist-banged in my shower.

“Got nothing to say to you.”

His hands whispered to my shoulders, sending thrills through my body. “Had a lot to tell me earlier, Cannon.” He tugged my earlobe, his teeth biting, his lips healing.

“Is this foreplay or foul play?”

“Gettin’ to ya, am I?”

Peering at the high corners of the room where I guessed one, if not two or three, recording devices spied on us, I hissed, “Why don’t you keep your hands to yourself. Eyes and ears, asshole.”

“Got the cameras on loop.” His fingertips brushed the back of my neck.

I shoved him off. “You’re a cunt’s hair from getting your head shot off—”

“Don’t I know it.” He watched the crotch of my fatigues stretch to obscene proportions.

“The head on top of your neck, Rice.”

“How about a name?”

“Commander Cannon.”

He cajoled, “Given name?”

“Caspar.”

“Commander Caspar Cannon.” The way he said it made me want to throw him over the desk, rip his pants off, and sink into that rosy bud of his. Immediately.

He knew it too.

“A soldier.”

“Correct.”

His prowl toward me had my breath trapped in my windpipe, my mind scrambling for even footing.

I did not fucking swoon.

I crossed my arms over my chest, ignoring the fatal thud of my heart. “You gonna capitulate? Because I’m not calling you ‘sir.’”

“That so?” His fingertips brushed across my belt, then tugged me closer.

Walking my fingers down his tie, his shirt buttons, his jacket, I found his cock, and he was impossibly hard. “Affirmative.”

I palmed him with rough strokes, the feel of him so fulfilling in my hand, no matter how damned I was for giving in.

When he sighed against my shoulder, “Nathaniel Rice,” I relinquished him.

Now I had a name, one I could curse at will, sparing a few choice swears for myself. “Landowner.”

“Yeah.”

Great. His surname denotes him as a spoiled, living-the-high-life Company exec from a privileged background.

The reports and maps gathered up, I not-so-gently knocked past him.

Calculation quirked the side of his mouth. “You’re wonderin’ if this is the real me. Or am I the man who had your delicious cock down my throat”—he stopped to look at his heavy gold watch—“four hours ago.”

“I’m wondering how long I have to deal with this bullshit before I can brief my troops. Oh, and I gotta feed my goldfish. Let’s get this straight, Blondie—”

“Blondie?”

“That’s an insult, not a pet name.”

His eyebrow arched.

“You’re an assignment, not an assignation. Soon as I get your pretty-boy ass through the Wilderness and deliver you to the Outpost, you’re no more than a stain to spit shine off my boots.”

He slinked forward, invading my space. I feinted left and he blocked me with his forearm to the wall, backing me into a corner. That shit made my blood boil. I could chop my hand down, probably break a bone or two in the process. I was contemplating the smarts of that move when the bastard brought his palm to my neck, his fingers dipping in to the throbbing pulse, measuring how much he affected me.

“Yeah. What if I’m on the Executive Committee, huh, Caspar? You wanna know if I was takin’ names and faces at the Amphitheater? That’s what got your heart pounding?”

“You got it. Congrats. You win a furlough with me.”

“Maybe you’re still thinkin’ about how much you want to slide that gorgeous cock of yours into my ass?” He lifted his hands, halting when he realized his hair was tethered back. He settled for pulling the ends of his ponytail, the one I wanted coiled around my fist when I yanked his head back for my kiss while I fucked him slow and deep from behind.

“Or maybe you wanna rush off to report me.”

I sent him an evil grin. “Thought had crossed my mind.”

“Good. Don’t trust anyone.”

“Double that.”

Mutual distrust, a nice little bed warmer.

He had me turtle-up. My hard shell cracked when I thought about his words, his mouth, his tongue. I cranked down on those memories, filed ’em away in a lockbox stored in a safe, hidden inside meter-thick vault walls.

“You’re gonna need to spiff down before I take you anywhere,” I said.

His smile broadcast across his face, playing up some serious dimples. Bet he had a matched pair on his ass. That smile made a massive misinterpretation of my words, filling me with a
before I take you out on a date
kind of vibe.

I headed out in front of Blondie because (a) it was impossible to hide my hard-on and (b) having a front-row view of his ass in those perfectly tailored slacks wouldn’t help. At fucking all.

Great way to inaugurate the rebellion. Getting screwed from the inside out.

Not if I turn him in first.

I clicked right, toward Corps Command.

A hand clasped my shoulder, making me blow my wad because one more suggestive comment in his southern
c’mon, boy
voice, I was gonna fuck him until he couldn’t walk anymore, or I was gonna pull my Glock out and—

Jesus Goddamn Christ.
I saw why Blondie had stopped me. Dead in front of me stood Leon.

Stood was a poor choice of words, but it was Leon all right. Looking one hundred and eighty degrees different from the last time I’d seen him.

Held up between two military police, his hands were cuffed behind him, his shoulder stretched back. His face was a mass of swollen tissue in shades of purple with ugly greenish yellow mixed in, a thread of bloodied spit dangling from his lips. His mesh vest was torn to shreds, revealing slender muscles bruised by fists and metal-capped boots.

When I marched up to the troopers dragging his floppy body by the elbows, Blondie kept pace.

The traitor better not mess with my operations.

I addressed the grunt closest to me. “Where are you taking this man?”

At the sound of my voice, Leon drew his head up. His hair hung in sweaty clumps over his eyes, but he recognized me—the little shit had had his hands on my crotch only a few hours earlier. More cunning than I suspected, he maintained the same blank look Blondie and I adopted, with a hate-filled sneer for added emphasis.

MP Coombes had a face like the sole of a boot and about as much charm. He and his hard-liner cohort were the opposite of the recruits I’d sent ass-backward at the never-ending beginning of this night.

“He’s not a man; he’s a faggot,” Coombes spat.

Being a ruthless bully, he grabbed Leon’s chin, digging his fingertips into one of the fresh cuts. Leon didn’t flinch when he jeered, “Ain’t you, boy? Like it up the ass. Fuckin’ dog. The queer’s implicated in the rebellion. Arrested him at that gay rave, the Amphitheater. All dolled up, wasn’t he, Jenoah?”

The Jenoah in question was a bleak-featured bitch with eyes that held all the emotion of steaming shitholes in snow, except now there was a sick gleam to them, because she’d caught one of us.

Landing a blow on Leon’s cheek, she agreed. “Sure was. Had to mess up that pretty face. The body too. Unnatural is what this shitpacker is. Bet he won’t get much action anymore.” She beamed at me, her superior, expecting a reward.

Taking very deep breaths, I barely held in my hotheaded temper.

“MOVE OUT!” A fresh wave of troopers deployed to the left of us, reminding me there was a lot more going down than just Leon, but he took top spec in my mind. Damned if I was going to let another good man end up with a rope around his throat.

“He’s headed for the stockades for now,” added Coombes.

“Under whose orders?” My hands curled into fists, ready to do something seriously stupid. Blondie touched my shoulder, murmuring something too soft to hear, but his light assurance delivered instant calm.

“The XO.”

No way around that.

Leon’s eyes stopped spinning long enough to pierce me. “What you be lookin’ at, Corps cunt?” His insult came out gargled with fresh blood.

That earned him another ball-kick before they hauled him away.

His barb salted the open wounds from the entire messed-up night. There was only one way to deal with the duality of what I was—cut out all the emotion from my life.

Another blast shook the ground. That would be the electrics grid shorting out.

Blondie staggered into me with the earthquake hilling under our feet. For a second, I let myself be the fulcrum to his body.

My D-P went off. I barely heard it through his low words, the rat-tat of gunfire, and the buzz of generators starting from scratch, relighting the Quad first and then
hum-hum-humming
halos outside the compound. Their weak illumination joined the rising sun barely visible through black entrails of fire and the rain of fat ashes.

Leon was at the doors of the Tribunal.

The acrid smoke choked me, stung my eyes.

When Blondie said something about seeing what he could do for my moony-eyed boy, I figured my ears were still tinny from the explosions until he clasped my hand, holding it firm and tight and letting go to say, “I know you feel responsible for him. Not sure why.”