Jailmates

by Lesli Richardson

  Mohrn smiles back. “Part of me wants to make you howl, and part of me never wants to move,” phey say.

  I chuckle. “I did get the better end of this deal earlier, didn’t I? You didn’t come.”

  “It does not matter.” Phey look down at the egg inside which our child is growing. From the outer covering, we can tell phey will be partially ishblane. It’s mostly a dark, brownish green, kind of mottled, but with several swirls of mottled pink mixed in. H’looder gave us the option in the beginning of tweaking things so phey weren’t ishblane, but we declined.

  So did Olarte and Davies.

  Because none of us give a flying fuck if our babies are ishblane. Phey’re ours and will be loved. We’ve got the resources to take care of phem, and Mohrn’s office to protect phem. Olarte and Davies are going to come work for us and help run the estates.

  Me? I have a new job—full-time dad.

  Maybe we’ll even have more kids.

  I know Mom’s down for that plan. She’s been dying to be a grandmother ever since she learned what we were trying, and she’s adopted Olarte and Davies as sons.

  Eh, children.

  Seriously, what-fricking-ever.

  We learned last week that Cloohdlin’s been seeing an ishblane and wants to enter a mate contract with phem. Cloohdlin talked to us to ask if we’d be okay if phey asked phem to move in, since Cloohdlin lives in a smaller house not far from ours, provided for phem by the estate.

  Of course we said yes.

  Maybe there will be more babies running around. I can only hope. I’ll be a dad, an uncle.

  I’m a kept man now.

  Not getting my ass shot at.

  Sleeping as late as I want to. Well, for now.

  Until we have a little one to chase after.

  I’m not totally lazy, though. I’ve been studying, too. To date, I’ve taken certification tests in ten languages so far, and can conduct official coalition translations for business and government.

  Including Pfahrn.

  I’ve also become an expert on Pfahrn contract law, and have sort of become a celebrity in my own right on Pfahrn for helping others navigate their way through the system.

  We’ve pissed off a few people, sure, but fuck them. There will always be dinosaurs wanting to hang onto old, useless ways that benefit them and few others. Look what happened to the dinosaurs on old Earth—a comet wiped them out.

  Well, we’re the fucking comet.

  In the wake of destroying the old we’ll build something better for the future. Mom’s talking about maybe starting a school for fine arts on Pfahrn and giving ishblane scholarships. If she does, we’ll front the money for her.

  All this because I was too fucking tired and lazy to read an information packet. I gotta say, I think it worked out okay for me.

  And I wouldn’t change a thing about any of it.

  Well, maybe one thing—I wish Dad was here.

  But he’ll live on in me, in Hells, and in our children and the stories we’ll tell them.

  Mohrn leans in and kisses me. “Love you.”

  I smile. “Love you, too. Bastard.”

  That trilling chuff, once again threatening to harden my cock right now. “Slippery.”

  “Only for you, dude.”

  Mohrn sighs, contented, and stretches pheir arm out to embrace me. “Only for you, too.”

  The End

  http://www.LesliRichardson.com

  Keep an eye out for future books set in the Maxim Colonies universe!

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  About the Author

  Author Lesli Richardson, who is better-known by her more prolific wild-child Tymber Dalton pen name, lives in the Tampa Bay region of Florida with her husband (aka “The World’s Best Husband™”) and too many pets. She writes a wide variety of heat levels and genres, from mainstream sci-fi all the way to scorching ménage.

  The two-time EPIC award winner and part-time Viking shield-maiden in training loves to shoot skeet and play D&D with her friends. She’s also the bestselling author of over one hundred and fifty books and counting, including The Reluctant Dom, Cross Country Chaos, the Bleacke Shifters series, the Governor Trilogy, the Determination Trilogy, The Great Turning Trilogy, the Suncoast Society series, the Love Slave for Two series, the Triple Trouble series, the Coffeeshop Coven series, the Good Will Ghost Hunting series, the Drunk Monkeys series, and many others.

  She lives in her own little world, but it’s okay—they all know her there.

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  Free Preview: The Great Turning

  The following preview is chapter one of The Great Turning (The Great Turning, book 1) by Lesli Richardson.

  * * * *

  Description

  [111.2k words, science-fiction, post-apocalyptic, futuristic, dystopian, GLBTQ fiction]

  It’s almost one hundred years since The Great Turning, the catastrophic meteor strike that changed the world forever. Russell Owens is a recently discharged New North Americas Army sniper who only wants to return to his home just outside of Yellowstone to resume life with his gentle husband, Ted. Russell doesn’t want to re-up and hates that he had to kill for a living.

  Zola Wright is the most skilled assassin the NNAA has ever had. She was tricked into re-upping—once. When the burned-out Red is sent to find Russell to talk him into returning, what her commanding officer doesn’t realize is that she’s not coming back. Her conscription time is up, and she wants out. She’s also reluctantly falling for Russell.

  Now the sniper and the assassin are the ones being hunted, on the run from the army they just finished serving. Their former CO has secrets he’ll kill to keep. But Russell and Zola have more in common than their killing skills. And when Russell and Ted both fall for Zola, she knows their only option is to stand and fight together for the happiness and peace they yearn for—or die trying.

  * * * *

  Chapter One

  Russell Owens no more noticed the noontime heat of the mid-April sun beating down on him as he hiked than he’d noticed the stifling humidity in Houston after his first month stationed there.

  It just…was.

  Nothing to be done about it, except to keep moving.

  Moving.

  Always moving.

  He’d opted for an easterly trek instead of a more direct northern and westerly course, following the skeleton of what remained of Old Highway 10 toward the shipping yards of Baton Rouge.

  It could possibly take him weeks longer to reach his final destination, depending on the condition of the roads between there
and home, but it would keep him well clear of the wastelands of the New Mexico and western Texas territories. He hoped he might be able to hop a boat to take him up the Mississippi, at least as far as New St. Louis, which would put him squarely in the heart of the Midwest Territory.

  From that point, it should be easy to join a caravan heading northwest toward Rapid City, or farther. If his luck held, maybe he could find a caravan going all the way to the Seattle Stronghold, which would take him even closer to home. He’d listened to the radio chatter during his five-year conscription at Houston. He’d kept up with scuttlebutt. He’d studied the weather patterns. He’d followed the ShiTr reports, as they called them—Shipping and Transportation.

  Late spring and summer meant caravans traversing the high passes and cutting weeks—sometimes months—off transport times.

  Someone would be able to help him get to Montana.

  Home.

  To Ted.

  With that thought firmly gripped in his mind, Russ kept moving.

  Moving.

  Always moving.

  Overhead, the sun slowly swung across the sky until it was beating on his back instead of directly against his battered floppy lid, one of the few things from his conscription period he didn’t mind holding on to. The beige canvas hats were practical, durable, and came in handy.

  He’d burned one of his uniform shirts the first night he’d camped out. Just pulled it off and set fire to it. In retrospect it was a foolish move, one which could give anyone who might be following him a clue to his route, but he didn’t care.

  It felt good to do it. Not like he needed it any longer.

  Despite unofficial requests by Colonel Craige and Major Hicks to reconsider opting out and to please speak with them one last time before filing, he hadn’t.

  They hadn’t issued orders to speak with either of them.

  So once Russ’ filed his opt-out, he’d been issued a civvie ID card, and his chip code had been updated, Russ had packed his ruck and bugged out of Houston before anyone knew he’d actually departed.

  Gone.

  Out.

  Free.

  And now, back to Ted.

  Maybe if they’d tagged him for a different role he would have reconsidered, if Ted had been for it. Go for corporate status, a lifer. Or even a wonk. If there were no available transfers to the Bozeman barracks, he could have easily afforded to pay Ted’s passage and been assigned digs on base and lived a boring, humdrum life as a fleet mech, or a clerk, while Ted made a decent living as a civvie sol-ec tech.

  Hell, Russ wouldn’t have minded being a cook.

  But no. That wasn’t possible. Not with what they wanted him to do.

  He’d despised every second of it. He hated being shipped out on midnight air runs to territories foreign and domestic to back-up other Red units or ground grunts doing enforcing, rooting out bands of thugs, or calming Fundie rebel skirmishes.

  And he wasn’t good enough at kissing ass—or willing to engage in dirty tricks—to step on the backs of his fellow Reds to get a promotion higher than the rank of captain. And in Craige’s command, you pretty much had to be like that to advance any farther up the food chain.

  Russ might have been the best sniper the New North Americas Army ever had, but each shot he took, each kill he made, it chipped away at a piece of his soul until he knew the only good thing left inside him was his love for Ted.

  That’s where the rest of him still lay.

  And that’s where he’d go, home to Ted, in Montana.

  Or he’d die trying.

  * * * *

  His second night on the road, Russ made a nest for himself in some thick, tall brush a few dozen yards off the old roadbed. He ate a protein bar for dinner instead of popping open one of the MREs he’d purchased on base before he left, or starting a fire and hunting something. He definitely didn’t need a fire. The gentle, warm breeze felt pleasantly mild, and a nearly full moon gave him plenty of light to see by. Not to mention staying dark in his position kept him safely hidden from anyone who might pass his location.

  Yes, he was once again a legally free citizen of the New North Americas, whatever that meant. He’d done his five years of mandatory conscription time, earned enough coin to help him and Ted expand their compound the way they’d always talked about, and he could theoretically live out the rest of his life in peace.

  If the nightmares would ever stop.

  Russ never slept well or deeply. Not anymore. Especially when out in the open.

  Add to the list that he was still far closer to Houston than he’d like to be.

  A few hours later he startled awake, his fingers closing around the grip of the 9mm he’d purchased for his own use as a sidearm during conscription.

  Listening, he waited, body tensed. He knew what had awakened him—all the normal sounds of crickets, birds, and other nocturnally active denizens had gone silent in his immediate vicinity.

  Usually, that meant a predator.

  It took a while until his ears heard what his instincts had already picked up—the footsteps of several people walking along the crumbling tarmac of the old highway. No one spoke.

  He didn’t move, kept his breathing slow and light through barely parted lips.

  Still, his pulse raced. From the sound of it, many or all of the people in the group wore boots similar to what he wore on his feet, military-issue tactical hiking boots, thick and waterproofed and made for keeping troops vertical and mobile as long as possible. They made heavy, unmistakable footfalls to the trained ear.

  Especially when the troops wearing them made no effort to stay quiet.

  Russ didn’t spot any telltale lights and suspected they were using the moon for illumination, conserving precious batteries so they didn’t have to resort to loud hand-crank chargers. He didn’t dare move or lift his head over the brush to see how many there were.

  Craige and Hicks had both been off-base when Russ left, not due to return until the next morning. He hadn’t responded to their requests to speak with them one last time before his opt-out forms were formalized, and he wasn’t hanging around to wait on them, either. His chip code had already been changed to reflect his freeman status. Sure, he could have spent one last night at the barracks.

  As a civvie, he didn’t owe them shit.

  Still, he wouldn’t put it past Colonel Craige to send someone after him “just to talk.” To try to coax or haul him back in by whatever means necessary so they didn’t lose the best sniper they’d had in over twenty years.

  Hell, the best sniper the Nanners ever had, period.

  Russ was no idiot. He’d heard the rumors during his conscription. About how Craige had the highest overall re-opt numbers of any Red commander, Houston’s specialty re-opt numbers higher than any barracks in general. Low-level wonks or people without specialized skills, no one cared. Those numbers ran along the average of other barracks.

  But the specialists, the techs, the Reds—there was definitely a spike in Craige’s re-opt numbers in that bell curve when compared to other barracks.

  Numbers reportedly obtained by bribing or coercing people into re-opting, if the scuttlebutt was true.

  Dead Reds didn’t count.

  Russ didn’t plan on boosting their numbers, much less dying.

  As Russ remained motionless and listened, the footfalls passed his location without slowing. Either they weren’t looking for him, or they were but weren’t equipped with one of the precious few night-ops glasses the Houston barracks had for just such an occasion.

  If they were looking for him, he suspected they weren’t looking very hard.

  Or weren’t very good at it.

  Either option was fine with him.

  Russ remained invisible in his nest in the tall brush. He’d started to relax when something else pinged his attention. Still on high alert, he held his breath again until, yes, he sensed someone else. This one moved far more stealthy than the first batch. Much lighter on their feet, possibly even a woman
.

  There were more men than women in the Red units overall, but the second-best sniper in the NNAA was a woman, as was the best assassin, both of them stationed out of the Houston barracks. Russ knew the sniper, because she was in his squad, but he had never personally met the assassin, Captain Wright.

  The unseen presence slowly worked their way down the old highway, pausing now and again as a night noise apparently caught their attention.

  Then they stopped, not too many yards from where he’d entered the high grass off the highway. In daylight, a trained eye would easily pick out his trail. At night, however, even with the bright moon, they couldn’t. Not without a light.

  Eventually, Russ heard the person continue on until, once again, he was alone and the only noises surrounding him were the usual nighttime sounds of this sparsely inhabited region.

  Still, he knew his sleep was shot for the night. Instead, he chose to think about Ted, about how he’d soon be reunited with him. Be able to hug him again. At six-one, his partner was only two inches shorter than him, with blond hair and blue eyes and a snarky sense of humor, combined with a gentle soul, a combo which never failed to get Russ’ motor running. Russ wanted to do nothing more than hug that man, hear his laugh.

  See him smile.

  Russ knew it’d be too easy to close his eyes and let his mind wander, but he didn’t want to be distracted. It’d be too easy for someone to sneak up on him. Knowing there were other people out there in the dark, unseen, meant he couldn’t let his focus slip that much.

  Instead, he smiled as he stared up at the sky and fantasized about getting home, where he belonged. To getting on with his life. To reconnecting with friends.

  To reuniting with Ted.