In His Command

by Rie Warren

  “You a queer, Commander?”

  “I could take you in for insulting a superior officer.”

  “I could take you down for sucking flamer cock, sir.”

  The beast in me dared him forward. I wanted to see him blown to bits. “Ever take it up the ass?”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  An underling hurried to his side. “Confirmed. Nathanial Rice, Esquire.”

  The smile that split the bastard’s face was a furlong wide. “Looks like we got us a two-for-one deal that’ll earn us promotions, men.”

  “You think?” I asked.

  “Are you fucking him?”

  “What’d it look like?”

  “But, sir, Commander Cutler ordered—”

  The scrawny-faced lieutenant whirled on his junior officer. “Don’t you think I know my orders?”

  Great. Looked like we’d just gone from shit list to hit list. I’d heard of my infamous equal up in Beta, CEO Cutler’s son. Medals up the ass, but probably not much dick. “You’re Beta boys?”

  “Affirmative. And you’re both coming with us.”

  To my right, the glint of a barrel was aimed at Blondie. Without turning my head, I whipped my Glock up, swung it over, and fired. One shot broke the youngster’s grasp, shattering his phalanges and dropping him to the ground, where he whimpered for his momma. Now, that was sharp shooting.

  “Stand down!” Lieutenant Cunt ordered through gritted teeth. “You pull another move like that, your transport will be a body bag.”

  I distracted them by holstering my firearm. “Ooh. See how much my hands are shaking?” When I straightened, I blew the fuckchop a kiss with my knife tearing into his ribs. Just enough of a love tap to take him off his feet and down ten pegs.

  Man, the resounding lock of bullets loading never sounded so good. All eyes trained on me, I moved out. Just a few more steps with them following hot on my heels, I’d get a firsthand look at Blondie’s booby-trap brainchild.

  The searing bonfires between the Corps crew cuts and me, their sights locked tight, their advance was hesitant. I knew why they didn’t open fire. They didn’t want to miss the chance to beat the queer out of me or collect their rewards for bringing in live outlaws for RACE rehab.

  Belligerent in my need to keep Blondie from the fray, I opened my arms wide and stood on the balls of my feet, doubling my mass. “COME ON, HOMO HATERS! You too pussy to engage?”

  “Pull back, Caspar. Goddamn it!”

  Not gonna happen.

  They moved forward, breaking ranks, not fucking subtle at all. Not like my company. If I were their commander, I’d have taken them to the brig myself for some strafing. But I wasn’t their leader. I was no one’s leader anymore. I had a new detail, one I embraced. Get them off the Freelander scent.

  True to form, Blondie went with his plan.

  The tinny click echoed around me.

  I looked at their faces as horror descended over smug Corps veneers. I had enough time to crow with delight at their entrapment before the ground exploded in a guncotton hail of my crafty arrowheads and spears spiraling through the air, piercing skin.

  The shock traveled in waves until the impact blew me off my feet. Flailing through the air, I reveled in the amount of force triggered by Blondie’s pyrotechnics. Hurtled to the ground, I flinched when a shard gouged my upper thigh. You gotta be fucking kidding me. I peeled apart the ugly wound…only a graze.

  Screams rebounded, barely reaching my ringing ears. Smoke infiltrated the area, smelling of charred flesh and spent charges. Wrenched from my sit-down by Blondie, I was hustled into the woods, his hand pressed to my shoulder. Looking back, I could tell he was shouting at me; his mouth worked at a pace matching our feet while a wrinkle creased his forehead.

  I lingered over the last muted shouts. It could’ve been worse. We should’ve returned the favor and outright killed them. Coulda, shoulda, woulda were the story of my goddamned life. We collected our packs, and I led northward over untouched land. We’d grabbed the recon troops by their nuts, cluster fucked ’em, and given ourselves a decent head start; now it was race time.

  Two kilometers in, I was still hard of hearing, but I lip-read well enough, especially when they were Blondie’s lips as he overtook me.

  “You dickhead!” He tackled me to the ground, an unusual emotion marking his features.

  Hmm, maybe life-threatening situations made him frisky.

  “Going out there half-cocked like that, what the hell?”

  Unfortunately not.

  He jumped up and slammed my backpack into my chest. Yanking on my hand, he pulled me to my feet and threw my pack out of the way so he could grab my face and kiss me hard and fast. He let go with a sharp nip to my bottom lip before he dove at my mouth again, moaning.

  When he finally slumped against me, my grin widened against his taut jaw. “Worried, lover?”

  “You got a serious hero complex. You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

  I licked the sweet spot beneath his ear until he panted. “You’re sexy when you’re pissed at me.”

  His biceps bunched to punch me, but I calmed him, sliding my fingers over his muscles. “You’re really hot when you think you can tell me what to do.”

  “Don’t screw with me.”

  I rocked into him. “I wasn’t half-cocked.”

  He exhaled fast. “You never are.”

  Freeing himself, he set to work with more wires, his back bent over his deluxe D-P.

  “You going online?”

  “I’m scramblin’ their D-P’s so they can’t send or receive any coms.”

  “Smart.”

  “I had my moments before I hooked up with you.”

  “Cute.”

  When he finished fiddling, the bright green screen sent a ghastly glow over the hollow of his cheek, the one decorated in new blood.

  “Let me look at you.”

  “Get off.”

  “You’re bleeding out!”

  “Jesus Christ. It’s a scrape; that’s all.”

  “So you can take care of me, but I can’t see to you?”

  “Fine.” He sat on a rotting log and lifted his chin.

  I foraged around the forest until I came up golden with those pointy-leaved herbs Eden had used on me. Wetting the foliage, I plastered them to his cheekbone. His sigh was worth my trouble.

  “Feel good?”

  “Yeah. You oughtta be a nurse, big man.” He took my hand, linking our fingers. “C’mon. Won’t take ’em long to re-form.”

  “Hope we hobbled a few.”

  “Would be good if we blinded some too,” Blondie said.

  I looked over at him, his swelling cheek causing a fresh pulse of anger. “I should’ve killed a couple point-blank.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  My head in my hands, my elbows on my knees, I muttered, “Don’t know what I mean anymore.”

  * * *

  Several days later, the far-off snow-capped mountains became our latest campground. Straining uphill, we broke through a foggy layer to come out on top. Valleys, lakes, and chains of mountains stretched beyond anything I’d ever imagined. The Wilderness was unengineered. Armies of forests in nature-made formations gained my admiration. Birds looped above, sending out song, not calls of alarm. No roads, no tenement buildings, no Territories, no terrorizing.

  Our arms around each other’s shoulders, I wondered who else had the honor to see this majesty. Probably only a handful of Freelanders since the Purge.

  It was breathtaking.

  And piss freezing cold.

  Blondie was majestic, too, silver from the moonlight and so goddamn handsome. “The Appalachian Mountains.” His arms opened as if gathering the whole damn vista in an embrace. “That right there’s a bird’s-eye view, big man.”

  “Glad I had the chance to see it.” With his smirk in my side view, I hugged him closer and whispered into the cool shell of his ear, “With you.”

  We saw everything
below us, including the Corps troops lagging behind by a good three clicks; their fires dotted the distant dark cliffs. Those fuckers weren’t scared about being caught.

  With the wildlife few and far between the farther we fled into the Wilderness and its onset of winter, hunger set upon me with two different demands. The kind I knew how to deal with—the one that sat in my gut, asking for food and knowing none was forthcoming—and the new painful pangs brought on by Blondie. It had started as straightforward lust but had somehow gotten tangled inside my heart, the screws tightening the longer we lasted out here on our own. Distrust melted away like the wintry ice from a creek.

  We took down a rare doe and dared to start a fire. A little bit of screw-you-fucksticks attitude went into the kindling. Venison was dinner that night, the rest of the meat saved for something called brunch, whatever the frig that was.

  Blondie’s lips were a tasty feast when I leaned over to lick them. He made freezing his sweet ass off look comfortable and too damn tempting for my own good.

  “We just gotta keep this up for four more days.” He pulled his knees up for an armrest.

  Icicles gashed my heart when his words sank in. “That all?”

  The Outpost was only the first hurdle. I was banking on Blondie to keep me off the scaffold. I had to believe, and I wasn’t much into blind faith.

  Later, he returned from a piss break, and I opened the slim shell of my sleeping bag, warming him within my arms. He kept sliding his fingers under the leather cuff.

  “That bothering you?” I withdrew my arms. The least he could do was stop acting like it was burning a brand into his wrist. I was the one carrying around a tattoo on my heart.

  Bringing me back against him, he rolled his eyes. “You are so quick to jump to conclusions.” I opened my mouth, but he strolled a fingertip across my lips before I could speak. “The wrong ones.”

  He shut his eyes and smiled, running the suede band between his fingers. “Not botherin’ me at all, Caspar. I just like feelin’ your words.”

  He opened his eyes, opened my jacket, tugged my shirt up, and flattened his tongue from the brush of black hair escaping my pants to my nipples. It was so fucking cold outside, but he was hot on my skin, lining every muscle. I spread my thighs, dug into his hair, and held him near.

  We couldn’t sleep; we shouldn’t fuck.

  Diving into his pants, I palmed his ass, those round globes spilling through my fingers. I spliced him with my fingers. So tight. He bucked in my clasp, his kisses vicious on my mouth, on my cock that he uncovered.

  I grabbed him, our bodies striving for more. “Can’t get close enough.”

  Pants at our ankles, legs wrapping, torsos twisting, we fought with this starving need.

  “Shh. Shh.” He rose over me, the tendons in his arms pulled tight. Our bodies were painted in bites and marks and wetness. Slowly, he lowered. “Shhh, honey.”

  I shouted when his cock turned against mine. “Aaah.” Shushing be damned.

  Our hips rounded, the columns of our dicks butting from balls to ballast.

  His hair sweeping over my face, he straddled me, stroking our cocks together in his fist. Stretching our penises and leaning over to add the sting of his tongue to his hands.

  “Oh yeah.” Flexible motherfucker. I liked that.

  The glide of his fingertips and the suction of his mouth, the turgid thrust of his cock rolled against mine. Our groins swiveled, groans merged.

  Come fountained over our abs and chests, hitting my chin.

  Nuzzling. Warm. Satisfied…sort of.

  In a damn sleeping bag on top of a mountain with the threat of death ready to deepthroat us at the Outpost.

  And yet I wanted more of him.

  * * *

  Down the other side, into the valley that had been pretty from above, daybreak was the usual backbreaking full-out run. They weren’t slackers, that was for sure. Labored shouts trailed us, heavy boots finally falling away. We’d earned a respite, but not really.

  The second night of the last leg, I woke to tickles, my sleep-deprived swollen eyelids parting. In the gloomy light, Blondie sat cross-legged in front of me. Tucked next to my face was a bouquet of winter bulbs, their blooms nodding closed.

  I reared back. It was the same stuff we’d laid over Freelander and Revolutionary graves. I didn’t like flowers so much anymore. “They smell like death.”

  “They didn’t die in vain, Caspar. Flowers smell of hope; that’s why you like ’em.”

  “I don’t need you to analyze me.”

  “Don’t be so defensive.”

  “Don’t be so annoying.”

  “Annoying?” Crouching over me, a small smile played on his lips. I brushed the hair off his cheek, rubbing my thumb along the short shaved side above his ear. “Cheerful, whatever.”

  “You think I’m cheerful?” Nestling in to my hand, he enjoyed my comforting caress.

  “Hell of a lot more easygoing than me.”

  He sat back, eyes twinkling. “Probably a good thing. One moody motherfucker’s enough.”

  Launching into a playful punch, I ended up wearily snuggling him and planted a kiss on top of his head. “I’ll watch; you sleep.”

  An hour later, the stars shrouded in wispy clouds, I heard him mumble my name.

  “Mmm?” I burrowed in to his body, taking advantage of his slumbering heat.

  “Can’t sleep.”

  With a little smile, I said, “Want me to tell you a bedtime story?”

  “Nah, but I’ve got a story to tell.”

  I went completely still. If Blondie was gonna talk about his past, I was all ears.

  “It ain’t a fairy tale, though.”

  “Tell me, baby.” The moonlight lined the frosted grasses in silver, flirting with his hair when he lay down inside my arms. My fingers flickered through his polished locks, cupping his neck.

  “Back when my momma came of age, there wasn’t the overruling hate for the Company. They were the saviors of our race, the stewards of the earth’s resources, you know? My father was sent to decommission her family land, and since the Freelanders and last Landowners weren’t yet a threat to Company dominion, it was easier to strike a bargain than a flintlock.

  “He’d come knocking down the door of the plantation, acting as if he owned it. But one step inside the foyer, he pulled up short. He fell for a pretty girl.” Blondie’s face was sketched in hard planes, too much like mine, distancing himself from his past, relegating it to Old History.

  “Cut him a deal, he did. Allowin’ Granddaddy to keep his land for the privilege of courting his daughter. Beautiful, innocent, different Eden was so unlike the contrived Territory women of his approved matings. She wasn’t unaffected either. Infatuation, youth, maybe the idea of adventure, made her agree. My father was a good-lookin’ sumbitch. That was all heady stuff for eighteen-year-old Momma, that and the thought she was saving her daddy’s land.

  “It was just after their Validation of Union that he announced the plantation had been incorporated into InterNations holdings. Helluva wedding present. See, he had no problem breakin’ his word. Still doesn’t.”

  Eyes blazing, his drawl turned tight and clipped. “That killed Granddaddy, givin’ his daughter to a scumbag like my father. It didn’t make a damn dent in my daddy’s agenda, although he very generously gave Momma leave to bury Granddaddy in the plot outside Alpha walls.”

  “Holy shit.” Those grave markers, the ones he took a moment to honor our night at the Amphitheater. The letters came back to me: HARM.

  “Hamme and Harmony Rice, my grandparents. Never did get to meet ’em.”

  “Baby.” I tried to cut in, but he turned away.

  “You wanna know the really sick thing? Father loved her. He still loves Momma. I think he would’ve done anything for her so long as it didn’t interfere with his plan for InterNations domination.”

  I grabbed his hand, softly swiping my thumb over knuckles flexed bony white.

  He
blew out a breath. “She didn’t really have a choice after that, with nowhere to go, especially not with her position so well-known. She was the wife of a hotshot executive and had become pregnant.” Drawing his hand from mine, he dragged his hair forward. “Hurts like a bitch, talkin’ about this, Caspar.”

  I remembered how Miss Eden closed down when I’d asked about her Territory past. I cradled Blondie’s cheek, already worried about how this would end.

  “I mean, there’s no way she could love him, not after what he did, right? Who would? But he was oblivious. Maybe because he was away so much cleanin’ up Company crap, maybe ’cause he was an obtuse motherfuck, or just plain old wishful thinking. When he was home, he spoiled her, us, anything to win her affection. After a spell, things got ugly. And when the verbal abuse got him no gains, well, it took only one punch in the face to knock her out. He was a pretty big guy, and she’s so small. I was eight.” He squatted, arms doubled over his knees, keeping himself together through sheer will.

  I saw the little boy he must’ve been, making himself as small as possible, wishing he was big enough to stand up for his mother.

  Speaking in a daze, he didn’t even notice me rubbing my palms over his shoulders to comfort him. “He was contrite. ’Course he was. He loved her. It was disgusting, watchin’ him apologize, listenin’ to his excuses.

  “Once the bruises faded, she told him he wouldn’t ever get the chance to hit her again. Damn, it was good to see her stand up for us. It was goddamn great to watch him cower, fucking coward that he is. For once he had no choice. She asked for land, the rightful property stolen from her family. He gave it to her. Rich, fertile acres. Chitamauga Commune.”

  He shook himself back to the present. “Of course there was a price for leavin’. She would vanish—her death faked so he wouldn’t be known as the CO cuckold or, worse, get demoted. She had to disappear and give me up. Give us up.”

  “Who’s us?”

  “My twin brother, Linc. He’s top-level Corps. We’re a little bit”—he grimaced—“estranged. He fell in step with Daddy’s new regime once Momma was gone. I found ways to keep in contact with her, but he put her on radio silence.”

  An itchy feeling of unease crept up my skull.