Dark Edge of Honor

  Dark Edge of Honor

  By Rhianon Etzweiler and Aleksandr Voinov

  Sergei Stolkov is a faithful officer, though his deepest desires go against the Doctrine. A captain with the invading Coalition forces, he believes that self-sacrifice is the most heroic act and his own needs are only valid if they serve the state.

  Mike, an operative planted within Cirokko’s rebels, has been ordered to seduce Sergei and pry from him the Coalition’s military secrets. His mission is a success, but as he captures Sergei’s heart, Mike is tempted by his own charade and falls in love.

  When the hostile natives of the planet Cirokko make their move, all seems lost. Can Mike and Sergei survive when the Coalition’s internal affairs division takes an interest in what happened in the dusty mountains of Zasidka Pass…?

  96,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  I feel as though it was just last week I was attending 2010 conferences and telling authors and readers who were wondering what was next for Carina Press, “we’ve only been publishing books for four months, give us time” and now, here it is, a year later. Carina Press has been bringing you quality romance, mystery, science fiction, fantasy and more for over twelve months. This just boggles my mind.

  But though we’re celebrating our one-year anniversary (with champagne and chocolate, of course) we’re not slowing down. Every week brings something new for us, and we continue to look for ways to grow, expand and improve. This summer, we’ll continue to bring you new genres, new authors and new niches—and we plan to publish the unexpected for years to come.

  So whether you’re reading this in the middle of a summer heat wave, looking to escape from the hot summer nights and sultry afternoons, or whether you’re reading this in the dead of winter, searching for a respite from the cold, months after I’ve written it, you can be assured that our promise to take you on new adventures, bring you great stories and discover new talent remains the same.

  We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to generalinquiries@carinapress.com. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  www.carinapress.com

  www.twitter.com/carinapress

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  Dedication

  To VPK

  For the unlived lives.

  For every person who ever struggles to be.

  To discover and embrace their true, authentic self.

  Don’t stop fighting.

  Life is not for the faint of heart,

  Nor love for the weak.

  Acknowledgements

  AV: My thanks goes to Rhianon, who let me hijack her idea and then brutally move it into the far future and a galaxy away. To Gwyn, who shared her pain to make Sergei’s more real. To Deb, who gave us enough tough love to make the story shine (more). And finally, to every one of my readers—I’ll catch up with my email one day, promise! But at least you guys know what I’ve been doing while incommunicado.

  RE: I would like to thank Aleks, first and foremost, for giving me the opportunity to tell this story with him, and for providing the inspiration for it (and for letting me monopolize so much of his time in the execution). My undying gratitude as well, to Audra for her skill with claymores and hand grenades. To my sisters, always, for their unwavering belief. And finally, a special thank-you to the soldiers whose willingness to share their sacrifices and life experiences greatly influenced and enriched the content of the text. Welcome home.

  War is the father of all things.

  - Heraclitus

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Planet Cirokko, mountains outside the planetary capital Rhada

  Spring

  Mike never thought there’d come a day when he’d be thankful for his childhood. He saw much of his home planet—it had been Hades in all but fucking name—in the harsh landscape around him.

  The fucking sun, for one. She was a merciless, stone-cold bitch.

  “Why couldn’t the Doctrine make a grab for something more hospitable? This planet reminds me of holidays at the in-laws.”

  Mike tugged at the cloth wrapped around his head and barked a laugh. The local dialect didn’t sound as strange to his ears as it had six months ago. He and Pat had spoken nothing else from the time Alliance CovOps Command had started planning this operation. Didn’t know how long ago that was. Or how long they’d been freezing their nuts off in the mountains. Mike swore his were finally beginning to thaw out. Not that he had any real use for them, currently. Didn’t know why he was bothering to complain, even inside his own head. In another couple months, his nuts would be cooking instead.

  “There.” Pat growled the word and twisted on his side, aiming digital binoculars at a faint smudge on the horizon. The dust plume kicking up into the cloudless sky was unmistakable. “Just what we’ve been waiting for. If that’s not a sizable troop movement, my name is river mud.”

  “Rivers don’t have mud around here, jackass. Just rocks,” he muttered, not even moving his lips. Long moments and a few rock bruises later, the plume discharged its source into sight.

  “Breaker, breaker, looks like we got ourselves a convoy!”

  The sudden injection of Alliance standard, spoken in a heavily accented drawl that reminded him of home, was so disjointed and foreign to Mike’s ears that he just shifted his gaze and stared at his fellow CovOp in disbelief.

  Thank the gods they were out alone on this little venture. It was rare; usually the local resistance fighters eagerly served as guides. Even something like six months wasn’t enough to know this geography as well as the natives. Or eight months. Or however fucking long they’d been here. He’d lost track of when exactly the Doctrine had begun massing troops on the neighboring planet—a sure sign their rhetoric about invading Cirokko would be turned into reality.

  At least winter was over now, and for the next month or so they’d be able to feel like semicivilized humans, while green things grew not only in the lowlands but also in the mountains, and it might actually rain. Knowing that the current weather patterns wouldn’t last long did nothing for his mood.

  Those were infantry transports. Hovercraft variety, most likely. Easier on rough, unpredictable terrain, negating the impact of minefields and booby traps. Cirokko was littered with them, its history rife with sociocultural unrest. And invasion attempts. One thing about Cirokkans—they definitely learned from their past.

  “That’s a roger on the supply-line route.” Mike felt the grin on his face—it was cracking his lips. He took a moment to suck the abused flesh into his mout
h, enjoying the painful sting of sweat burning the wound before his saliva washed it away. Sweat was a luxury they’d be doing without before too long. In another couple months, moisture would evaporate before the skin could even register its presence. The metallic tang of blood sang against his taste buds, and he chewed on his tongue to distract himself. “And if that isn’t enough good news, I’m seeing what looks like a security detail leading the way.”

  Pat lowered the flat-black sighting device to share a cheesy, shit-eating grin with Mike. “Boo-yah, baby.”

  Anything was a change from endless meetings with local leaders. Even bullshit-spewing Doctrine forces moving in for occupation. This wasn’t the first military convoy to come out of Rhada, the planetary capital, but it was the first with a notable presence of command personnel. Headed toward the provincial capital Dedis, no less.

  It was what they’d been waiting for. Mike eased the slim videofeed link from his buttpack, fumbled with the shoddy uplink connection and aimed it at the encroaching line of vehicles. CovOp Command would be toasting with champagne when they got this upload. In a few hours, given the lag time.

  He could see right into the vehicle at the center of the security detail. Backseat occupied with a rough-hewn older man, silver heavy in his hair, the glitter of medals and flashing color of ribbons decorating the crisp uniform. He tightened the frame and followed the officer for a few seconds, making sure the image was as crisp and clear as he could manage through the screen of dust.

  Nobody else in the car, except the driver. Mike captured the man just for reference, and was about to dismiss him.

  But then the man turned, head canting down, that gaze hard over the top edge of the polarized shades, and Mike swore the young Doctrine officer was looking right at him.

  Zzzzzzzzzzzt. His finger depressed the zoom control instinctively, the same clench-response that made a falling soldier pull the trigger. The driver’s image filled his vision, larger than life. Young, but not lacking intensity for it.

  Shit. He lowered the digital cam and secured the complete feed for upload, purely on instinct, his brain unaware of what his fingers did.

  Things were about to get interesting, to say the least. He hadn’t caught sight of any forward unit, but no use risking it. Time to move before they got flanked.

  “Let’s go earn our hazard pay,” Mike muttered, stashing the cam in his pack. They reverse belly-crawled off the ridge, until well below the line of sight, an uncomfortable experience that invited grit and dirt and sand into places on a human body where such things just should not be. But they did it anyway. Partially habit, but that driver’s eyes were too sharp for comfort. Mike wondered if the guy had cybernetic ocular implants or something.

  Oblivious to Mike’s discomfort, Pat sucked on his teeth, gave a vigorous snort and pulled the cloth back up to cover the lower half of his face. “Best thing I’ve seen since that back-issue of Exotica ten months ago.”

  “Makes you want to light up, yeah?” He didn’t care much for holo-porn, but Pat was one person he understood well enough even if the reverse wasn’t true. They retrieved their kits from the small rock outcropping and turned back toward the insurgent camp. “What I’d give for a bit of nicotine right now.”

  The locals preferred to grow hallucinogens instead. He wouldn’t mind settling for a long, hot, old-fashioned soak.

  “Don’t remind me,” his partner grumbled. “At least you’ll have a shot of scoring when you get into Dedis. Lucky me, stuck up here in the mountains with the hillbillies and their goats.”

  Right, because tagging and bagging a Doctrine officer was going to be a cakewalk. “What exactly is it you think I’ll be scoring? A quick lay? A hit?” Mike laughed, the sound harsh in his dry throat, and swigged on the tepid water in his canteen. Didn’t stop scanning the area, nerves strung tight. Any other time, he wouldn’t have dared to turn his back to a threat, even at this distance. Gave him the heebie-jeebies. He was trained better than to attack when at such an obvious disadvantage.

  What he’d seen on the feed, though. Yeah, that was definitely a threat.

  He saw that face a hundred times on his trek down out of the mountains toward Dedis, following the Doctrine invasion.

  The uplinked cam burned a hole in his lower back, straight through the pack. When it chimed the completion alert, he all but jumped out of his skin. Stumbled on the loose scree, managed to catch himself on a rough outcropping of rock, avoid some bruises. Or a couple broken bones. That gaze haunted him every step of the way, staring back at him from every moon shadow—hard, scarred, calculating. As dark as the well-hidden corners of his mind.

  Chapter Two

  Mike sank into the hot water and sighed, eyes closed and muscles lax. His knees jutted out of the water, the tub too small to accommodate his legs completely, but the sensation of stress vacating his body, of ingrained dirt dissolving from every crease, made it a good trade-off. Beat the sonic cleansing stalls they used shipside.

  His embedded intel contact had taken his report in silence, downloading the contents of the datachip with the finesse of a professional hacker. Dark-skinned, black-haired and whipcord lean, Herschel melded into the native populace like hundred-proof alcohol in orange juice. Perfect for moving information back and forth between CovOps and the Alliance’s closest planetside base of operations for this mission. The neighboring planet Arrif was as close as they could get without being detected, even though its western continent swarmed with Doctrine military. The numerous islands in its eastern ocean weren’t worth the bother for them, and the CovOps personnel weren’t large enough numbers to draw attention.

  Herschel’s dark gaze was nothing like what had stared back at him through that camera lens. Mike couldn’t distinguish the nuances, though. It was just gut. A split-second, visceral reaction the likes of which he’d never experienced before. That residual awareness still pinged through his veins.

  “I’ll get you names and profiles, as much as I can.” The harsh rasp of Herschel’s voice grated Mike’s nerves, every bit as calloused as the face weathered by the elements. “The main force of troops is massed east of Dedis, but I expect they’ll set up a command post and barracks somewhere more comfortable, probably in Dedis itself. Maintain the surveillance. That officer is going to be our best opportunity for intel. Touch base with your local contacts, and keep your finger to the pulse. I’ll meet you here in two weeks’ time to swap notes.”

  That had been the debrief, in its entirety. A few images of convoys, taken from shipside, land craft winding out of the mountains like ant trails, heading straight for them. Mike studied the details closely, memorizing every line and speck. The detailed imagery flashed through his mind’s eye, one after another like a slideshow. Snow-capped peaks, green-flushed passes crammed with activity, armored war machines and innumerable infantry. No doubt the mining equipment and endless streams of workers would follow by summer’s end.

  It was an endless flow, would overrun the immediate area within a week. For points south and east, thankfully, but that would put him firmly entrenched behind enemy lines by the time summer rolled in.

  Nothing less than he’d expected, though.

  Mike paused for a moment, replaying that last thought in his head. He was starting to think in Cirokkan. Took long enough.

  Time to brush up on his Doctrine standard, though. He had to, if he wanted to lip-read conversations with any accuracy.

  His photographic memory might have once felt like a curse, but reciting entire passages of Sacrifice & Triumph in its native language went a long way toward soothing his nerves.

  He lifted his arm from the lip of the tub long enough to take a long drag from his contraband cigarette. No filter, and the hot tobacco burned his throat, but the buzz was welcome. His handler had left him a small stash of luxuries, priceless commodities in this backwater hole. Most of it would serve as bribes, passed off to local contacts to grease the wheels. Being an ideological dissident beneath the onslaught of encroachi
ng Doctrine occupation was far from settling.

  That damned driver’s face kept haunting him, eyes darkened by distance, gaze remote and hard over the sunglasses.

  With a grunt, Mike levered himself out of the tepid water, took one last drag off the smoke before dropping it into the bathwater. It gave a hiss as he stepped out onto the cool stone.

  It took him the better part of the afternoon to work through his local contacts and get a bead on the command post. The phrase Doctrine aggressors was getting horrendously threadbare, by then. Not that he didn’t sympathize with the mind-set of the locals. Some days, though, it seemed they had as much originality as they did road-building talent.

  Which was to say, none at all.

  He lost track of how many cups of tea he drank, but the urge to piss gained momentum. The conversations all blurred together—he cared not a whit how well the local crop was looking, and if it was destroyed by the encroaching forces…well. It wasn’t like they were growing food.

  Granted, losing an entire growing season’s crop would make things difficult for the local economy, but he wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Drugs and guns feeding each other was a familiar symbiosis, and some nights Mike entertained the thought that they were going about this all wrong. That was Pat’s priority, though, not his.

  His was the Doctrine officers.

  Leaving his last contact behind with a grin and a warm farewell, he wandered aimlessly through Dedis, past the local marketplace, heading in the general direction of the diplomatic quarter. The large building his contact had pinpointed was impossible to miss, and he took a leisurely route. Turned down a walled alley catty-corner from it and paused to take piss, his gaze trained on the flow of activity.