The Scarlet Empress (22 page)

“What aircraft, as an opponent in a dogfight, was the toughest challenger?”

“Hmm.” She slid her fingers around the connectors where her oxygen hose and G suit plug-in would have fitted. “It’s hard to pick any one aircraft as the toughest challenger. A mediocre aircraft flown by a great pilot will almost always defeat a great aircraft flown by a mediocre pilot. But if I had to pick a couple, I’d say the F-18 and the F-15, the Hornet and the Eagle.”

“Have you flown any other jets besides this one?”

“Only in pilot training. I’ve had chances to fly in the F-15, F-18, and F-14. Nothing equaled the Viper,
though.” Quietly, she admitted, “What I wouldn’t give to fly it now.”

“I know,” Kublai said, even quieter.

Cam turned. “Thank you. For doing this for me. For bringing the memories back—good memories. I feel lost sometimes.”

“I know. I’ve been there.” The way he looked at her gave her chills.

“The loss of your father,” she murmured. He nodded. She lifted her arm to cup his face in her palm. “You know what it’s like to have to keep going.”

“When all you want to do is lie down and wallow in self-pity. To be honest, I don’t know if I’ve come through it all stronger, or only colder.”

She shook her head. “Oh, no. Not colder. Wary, yes; I see that in you. But you’re not cold, Kublai. You’re anything but.”

It seemed as though he wanted to say something but stopped himself.

“It’s those complications, right?” she teased.

He was already halfway down the ladder before she finished the sentence. She hoisted herself over the edge of the cockpit and climbed down after him.

He took her hand. “We’d better go.”

“Not yet.” Coming up on her toes, she caught his face between her hands and placed a tender kiss on his mouth. Kublai froze. She meant to pull away and let him recover, but she couldn’t, not quite yet. Again she brushed her lips over his, tasting him as she’d long wanted to, feeling the firm softness of his lips, the sandpaper roughness where he’d shaved. “Is this so horrible, Kublai? Is this so bad? Come on; the prince isn’t watching.”

“Not so. It was all captured by the security cameras. He’ll be watching it in the morn.”

She jerked back, her gaze going to the ceiling.

“Kidding,” he said. Then, to her shock, he drew her back to him. “If you call that a kiss . . .”

He folded her in his arms and took over where they’d left off, tasting and tugging on her lips, as if fighting the temptation to kiss her fully, yet drawing inexorably closer to doing it until, finally, something seemed to give way.

The instant his tongue slipped between her parted lips, the kiss went from tentative first taste to explosive decompression. Desire scorched through her. Kublai was rough enough to take her breath away, gentle enough to let her know he was aware he held a lady in his arms.

Mercy, what a kiss.
She put her whole heart into it. She never did anything halfway, never held back, and she certainly didn’t hold anything in reserve now.

It seemed to her that Kublai could tell, too. He gave a drawn-out groan, his arms molding her to his body. It had to be the most luscious kiss she’d experienced—ever. And it didn’t surprise her. She’d wanted to kiss Kublai for too long to have been mistaken about what he could do with that mouth of his.

They moved apart only after the choices had narrowed to stay conscious or keep on kissing and end up on a hospital ventilator. Breathless, she made fists in the fabric of his shirt. “Yowee,” she said, grinning.

He chuckled, his hands running up and down her back. She searched his face and saw nothing but happiness there. No regrets, no reservations. Sobering, she ran a hand over his thick, clean hair. “You can tell a lot about
the nature of a man by the behavior of his horse,” she murmured. “And by the way he kisses.”

“The same can be said about the nature of a woman.” He took her chin between his fingers and touched his lips to hers in a tender, lingering kiss. His uneven breaths told her just how hard he worked to hold back from doing more. Shuddering with some inner effort, he drew her into a powerful hug.

“We’re done for tonight, aren’t we?” she mumbled against his chest. Did he hear the disappointment in her voice?

She pushed away. “Make it easy on me, Kublai. Tell me to get lost.”

“Never!”

“It would be better than this. When you turn on the affection, it makes me think you want me, too. And then it’s this again. On and off. I feel like I’m forcing you into something you don’t want. Tell me to go away, and I won’t bother you anymore.”

He caught her hand and pressed it to his lips; it was a gesture she’d expect more from a nobleman than a bounty hunter who trolled the wilderness. It reminded her how much she didn’t know about him. And that there was a good chance she never would. “I do want this, Cam. I do want you.” His dark eyes were on fire, giving her no cause to doubt him.

“Then prove it,” she whispered. “Or forget about it.”

“I want you to know who I am before we make love. And to be honest, I don’t know quite how to make that happen.”

“How hard can that be? Just be yourself, and I’ll get to
know you.” He got that distressed look again. She smiled. “You’re so old-fashioned, Kublai. Such a gentleman.”

“Circumstances can make a man resemble something he is not,” he argued ruefully.

“Well, I respect that you’re being honest with me.”

Now he looked truly pained.

“You okay, Kublai?”

He opened his mouth to say something, but stopped. Instead he took her hand.

They retraced their steps to the roof. After replacing the loose facet, they walked back to the street. Kublai seemed filled to bursting with something he wanted to tell her, yet she didn’t have a clue as to what it was.

They crossed the large, windswept square in front of the palace that was by day filled with adoring subjects hoping for a glimpse of the acting emperor, the prince who’d kept his distance—and his knowledge—from Cam since the day she’d arrived. “I need him, Kublai,” she said in frustration. “I need the prince.”

The Rim Rider stopped and faced her. A cold, damp wind blew their hair across their eyes. “And he needs you.”

The intensity in his expression puzzled her. “Will you help me, Kublai? You’re the only one who can. You got me into the museum. Get me into the prince’s area of the castle. Then he’ll have no choice but to see me. And to help—something he’s withheld from me.”

“He has not withheld his help!” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “He brought you here. He’s given you shelter in the palace.”

“He has, and I am grateful, but he ignores me. Bree
Maguire was here in the palace. I’m her wingman; it’s my job to stay by my flight leader’s side. Whatever information he knows about her whereabouts, I want it.”

“I don’t think he has anything to tell you.”

“Then let him at least say as much to my face.”

The big Rim Rider closed his eyes for a moment, as if struggling with a tremendous decision. Then he brought his lips to her ear and breathed, “I will do it.”

“Thank you,” she whispered back.

“And I’ll better the offer, pretty one. Not only will I bring you to the prince’s private chambers; I’ll introduce you to the man himself.”

Inside the walls of Fort Powell a battle of wills raged. “Who is the Voice of Freedom? Where are those broadcasts coming from?”

When Bree didn’t answer the shouted questions, the interrogator pressed his fingertips into the skin of her jaw until he drew out a gasp. “You’re only making it harder on yourself, Maguire.”

“I told you—I don’t know who the Voice of Freedom is.”

“Then maybe you can help us with another matter. He’s been talking to you all along. He’s fanning the flames of revolt in Central, yet somehow he’s remained hidden from us, escaping our most technically advanced traces of his transmissions. How does he do it? How are the broadcasts accomplished? An easy question, Banzai. Answer and we are done here.” He brought his face closer. “Answer me,” he whispered. His breath washed over her mouth and nose, smelling faintly of smoked meat. She twisted away, afraid she’d retch. Shock, pain,
and the drugs they gave her kept her skating constantly on the edge of throwing up. How long had she been in this place? Days? Weeks?

The interrogator squeezed her jaw, forcing her to look at him. “Who is the Voice of Freedom?” he asked for the hundredth time.

“If I knew the answer, do you think I’d be here?”

He slapped her. Her head snapped around. Only a small explosion of pain this time. Had she grown so accustomed to being hit, and was her numbness a blessing in disguise?

“You’re going to die, Maguire.”

Her chin came up. “Not at your hands.”

“Overconfidence around here is a mistake. Too bad no one told you that.” His face was so close now that she could see the individual hairs where he’d shaved. When he smiled, his mouth filled her field of vision. “Let’s try a little more time on the cable.”

Bree’s heart sank.
Not again. Please
. The broken wrist she’d suffered during the pirate attack had been healed in typically accelerated, twenty-second-century fashion. Though still tender, it wasn’t what made the torture so excruciating; it was the almost-dislocation that hanging from the cable caused her shoulders, a position so agonizing that she never lasted long. God willing, she’d pass out just as quickly as last time.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Captain. Declare your allegiance to the UCE, say you’ll be our great nation’s loyal servant. Ask for mercy, and you shall have it.”

She thought of Ty.
I’m fighting for you, babe. For all you wanted and never got to see.
“I’ll never ask for lenience from a nation that knows none,” she whispered.

“String her up!”

Bree heard the heavy footsteps of one of the guards, a bulky woman in her forties with a salt-and-pepper mustache and the coldest eyes Bree had ever seen. The commandant, Bree called her. The interrogator walked away, and the commandant took his place. Quiet and oh-somethodical, she clamped cuffs around Bree’s wrists and connected them to a cable hanging from a meat hook in the ceiling.

The guard yanked on the cable. It whizzed through the pulley and jerked Bree’s arms above her head. Hand over hand, the guard pulled on the cable until Bree’s feet swung an inch or two above the floor. There the guard left her to casually tie up the slack on a hook somewhere out of reach.

Bree hung, sweating and shaky. The pain moved in, dull at first, then consuming her shoulders and back in molten fire.
God, help me get through this.

“ ‘I am an American soldier,’ ” she whispered. “ ‘I serve in the forces that guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense. . . .’ ”

She prayed a lot lately, sometimes to God and sometimes to her country. Reciting the Code of Conduct was one way of bringing some semblance of comfort, of distraction, to the nightmare that was Fort Powell. She’d lived by those articles as an air force officer, and, by God, in the memory of every man and woman who ever fought to be free, in America and around the world, she’d live by them now. . . .

She blacked out, came back, bouncing between excruciating pain and hallucinations. Her dreams splintered, and she was back in the cell again. Her head had sagged back as
she hung in the restraints. What were those brownish spots splattered across the ceiling? Old blood they’d forgotten to clean. Or maybe they left the stains on purpose—for its effect on the prisoners here. It worked, she acceded, because every time she glimpsed the spatters, she wondered what had happened to the person, if they’d hurt as much as this. If they’d felt as abandoned as she did now.

Forsaken . . .

Without warning, her throat constricted. Her nostrils flared, and she wished she could take back the tear rolling down a sweaty cheek. “Where are you?” she entreated the Voice. “We’re supposed to be in this together.”

We must all hang together or assuredly we will hang separately.
Benjamin Franklin’s quote had been one of the Voice of Freedom’s favorites.

A horrible sound of frustration tore from her throat. “If that’s what you believe, then why am I the only one hanging?” The sense of abandonment, the pressure, the fear—it all threatened to collapse in on her. “Talk to me! Tell me if we’re still in this. If I’m doing any good from in here. Damn it, give me a sign.”

Her voice carried from the concrete chamber, down the long, underground hallway to a six-foot-thick titanium door built to withstand far more than the roar of the protests inside. Or out.

She drifted in and out of consciousness. When she opened her eyes again, Ty was there, watching her from the shadows. Was he real or just imagined?

She made a soft cry of joy, her chest swelling with love. “Oh, my God. You’re alive.”

Ty’s pirate rags were gone, and he wore the uniform of a UCE officer. The flag on his upper arm was as foreign as
the expression on his face. “We chose the wrong side, Bree. But we can go back.”

“Go back? To where?”

“To the side of virtue. Of peace and stability. We belong to the UCE, Bree. Come with me. We’ll command a future that is the
right
future.”

“I don’t want to be in command.”

“I meant it figuratively. I want what you want: a home, a family, and peace.”

“None of it means anything if you don’t have freedom, Ty. Nothing.”

He shook his head as if giving up on her.

“Aren’t you going to help me?” The alternative was too painful to contemplate.

“Help you, Bree? I don’t know you.” He turned and walked away. . . .

She closed her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. The turning point. She could capitulate now and swear allegiance to the UCE. She could deny who she was so she could stay alive. Then she and Ty could escape this hell and have their future.

But what kind of future would it be?

A coward’s future.

As sharp as her grief was over losing Ty, she sensed that part of her life was over—the personal,
human
part. It didn’t matter what she wanted anymore.
You belong to the people now. The people of Central
. What was, and would someday be again, she hoped, the United States of America.