by Susan Hayes
3013: RENEGADE
3013: THE SERIES
By: Susan Hayes
3013: RENGADE
In the aftermath of a war that almost destroyed Earth, the Alliance now rules, but not everyone chooses to live by their laws. Alayna is a rebel living by her own rules in the harsh badlands, outside the Alliance’s control. She is a thief, stealing from the wealthy to provide for those who cannot survive on their own, all while hiding the tattoo that marks her as one of the few remaining fertile women on Earth…making her a target.
Alliance Elites Nikolai Grekov and Colin Nielson are stationed at a neglected base on the edge of the badlands after years spent in space. Their orders are to track down an elusive thief that’s been plaguing the area’s outposts, but they also have their own agenda. Both men want to find and claim a fertile woman to call their own and fulfill their dreams of becoming a family.
When the men catch the sexy, headstrong, thief breaking into their home, they claim Alayna for their own. Nikolai and Colin may have claimed their chosen, but the battle for her heart has just begun. Can they find a way to win her trust or will their beautiful renegade’s need for freedom destroy their chance of happiness?
An Erotic Romance Novel.
3013: RENEGADE by Susan Hayes
Copyright © 2014 Susan Hayes
Amazon Edition
First E-book Publication: February 2014
Cover design by Sloan Winters
Editing by L. Watanabe
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental. It is fiction so facts and events may not be accurate except to the current world the book takes place in.
DEDICATION
To my parents, for believing.
To Karen, for her unwavering friendship and support.
And to Laurie, for inviting me along on this amazing adventure.
Thank you.
***
PROLOGUE
The year is 3013.
Earth barely survived the Alien Wars that have ravaged the planet, and an unknown virus had nearly wiped out the entire population. On the brink of extinction, humans struggle to rebuild their civilization, although nothing would ever bring back what once was.
Enforcing martial law, a new age of mankind is born, where warriors rule and women are the ultimate prize. Only the elite earn breeding rights and are granted leave to claim a woman in pairs. Men dream of the day that they will be able to claim a woman to love, but for those chosen being claimed means the end of their freedom and a beginning to a lifelong bond with two strangers. The warriors may have the choice, but the battle for their woman's heart has only begun…
***
CHAPTER ONE
One thing about this pair of elite soldiers, they were punctual. Alayna appreciated that trait in her targets. It made her job a whole lot easier.
In the week she’d been watching them, both men had kept to a near perfect schedule. In a few minutes they would drive down to the base to speak with the men just coming off patrol, receiving their intel firsthand instead of waiting for the reports to come in. It was a different way of doing things, but every rumor she’d heard since arriving in town last week indicated that this pair of Alliance elites was a very different breed than they were used to out in the badlands. They seemed to take their jobs seriously, which was good for those who looked to the Alliance for protection, but bad news for people like her, the ones they called renegades.
Not everyone wanted the Federation Command Alliance’s interference in their lives. Of course, Alliance status came with benefits, like food, medical care, even housing and protection. In return, those who joined were subject to mandatory testing to determine how they could best serve the cause. Children as young as ten were torn from their mother’s arms and sent away to military training schools
For the girls, there was a second test, fertility. The majority would have their faces marked by a degrading star that announced to the world they could never have children. For the handful of women whose bodies had escaped the ravages of alien diseases, there was a worse fate. They were given a scrollwork tattoo that marked them forever as Alliance property. A fertile woman had no choices. Deemed the most precious resource on the planet, they lived sheltered lives, protected by some of the harshest laws on record until the day they turned eighteen.
That was the day their tattoo darkened and they became commodities, available to be claimed by the only men on the planet permitted to father children, the genetically enhanced soldiers known as the Alliance elites. One of the rewards for exemplary service was the opportunity to one day gain permission to claim a woman to breed with. Two men, one woman, and only the men had a say.
It was slavery.
Alayna caught herself absently touching the star by her right eye, and silently swore to herself as she jerked her hand away. She knew better than to rub at that spot. She tugged a knife out of a well-worn boot, using the blade as a makeshift mirror to check for damage. In the dwindling twilight it was just possible to make out the star she had carefully re-drawn that morning. It was intact, and there was no sign of the scrollwork tattoo that was buried beneath yet another layer of cosmetic paint. Paint that cost Alayna a small fortune to obtain, but was the only thing that allowed her to stay free.
Her supplier, Gus, had promised her that this batch would last for days without smudging, but he’d made that vow before and been proved wrong. He was a wizard, brewing up all sorts of chemical compounds and substances from very unlikely materials, but there were limits to even Gus’s brilliance.
So, promises or not, every morning Alayna went through the routine of hiding the mark that proclaimed her to be a scroll, the slang term for a claimable, fertile woman. Once it was hidden, she covered it with the far more common star. That simple ruse had worked for years. Only a few people knew the truth, and they hated the Alliance too deeply to ever give her up. She stared at her reflection in the blade of her knife and the distorted image of her own jade-green eyes stared back at her. There were shadows beneath her eyes and she could see they were red with fatigue.
She needed to get this job over with and get some rest. Not more of the catnaps and light dozes that had sustained her since she had gotten into town. Alayna needed a deep, healing sleep in a place where she felt safe enough to close her eyes and actually relax. Fort Saken wasn’t even close to fitting that description. It was more of a collection of buildings than a proper town, with its borders and businesses defined by the Alliance base that gave the place its name. It was also crawling with Alliance officers, and that made it a very dangerous place for her.
They were deep enough into the badlands that the battle scars of Earth’s fight with the alien invaders were still visible. It had been decades since the surface of the planet had been bombarded, but it would take far longer for the world to heal itself. This world would never be what it once was, and neither would people who called it home. The entire face of the planet had been altered, and so had the political landscape. Now there was just one government and one set of laws. The Alliance was the savior of mankind, but it was not always a benevolent master.
The knife vanished back into its sheath the second Alayna heard male voices. Her targets were right on time. She settled deeper into the shadows that cloaked her presence as two of the sexiest men she had ever seen walked into view. Watching them had proven to be an unexpected pleasure. She had seen elite soldiers before, but these two were something special, drawing her interest in a way few men
and no elite had ever done before.
She had no love for the Alliance, or anyone who wore their steel-gray and black uniforms, but there was no denying that the two generals looked damned good in them. By her estimate, Ghost, who had sandy-brown haired and an easy smile, stood about six-foot four, while his dark haired partner, Griz, topped out somewhere around six-foot ten. Alayna had managed to learn their rank, and their nicknames, but that was all. The more questions she asked, the more likely someone was to remember her, and that didn’t work at all. They were both insanely fit, and she could almost make out the glide and bunch of muscle beneath their uniforms as they headed to their vehicle.
What little sleep she’d managed to get over the last few days had been peppered with dreams of what it would be like to peel those form-fitted uniforms off the two elites’ hard bodies and run her hands over all that male muscle. Her libido had been revving in high gear ever since she’d arrived in town and discovered that the man who had been in charge of this godforsaken place had been replaced by two sexy elites.
Alayna harbored no doubts that she was the cause of the change in command. Her alter-ego, the thief known as Wraith, had successfully worked a series of robberies in the area only a few months ago, then vanished back into the badlands before anyone could catch her. It was the third time she’d hit this base, and she guessed someone higher up the food chain had finally noticed.
Wraith was about to strike again, and she almost felt guilty that the responsibility for catching her would fall on the broad shoulders of the two sinfully attractive men. They were hot enough to make her wonder what it would be like to be with two men at once, which was something she’d never considered before. Not until she’d laid eyes on them.
It was a shame, but once Alayna had what she came for, she’d be gone again and they would be chasing a phantom. She wouldn’t miss much about this place, but she would miss her eye candy.
The two elites drove off, and Alayna headed for the back of the house. She hadn’t made it more than a few steps when the first raindrops pattered onto the ground at her feet.
Great.
By the time she made it past the gate and into the neatly manicured backyard, the rain had turned the dirt to mud. She needed to get in and out without leaving a single trace of evidence behind. That was going to be a lot harder to do if she was soaking wet and wearing muddy shoes. Fuck it, she was going to have to improvise.
One of the advantages to being a thief working on the outskirts of Alliance influence was the lack of technology in day-to-day things. The base itself had a fair amount of high-grade gear, but no one had seen the need to upgrade the security on designated housing assigned to the handful of officers who lived off-base. She typed a code into her wrist unit, activating a semi-autonomous packet of programs that began systematically altering the house’s onboard security systems so that it would not register her presence.
Within seconds, the locks on the back door disengaged, and a minute later the display flashed green, indicating it was safe for her to enter. Her wrist unit might look like normal, but it contained a host of programs and hacks that were as illegal as the break-and-enter she was about to commit. She’d bought some, traded for others, and programmed several of the bits of code herself. A thief was only as good as her tools, and she was one of the best.
The last thing she did before entering the house was to toe off her dirty shoes, leaving them at the door. She stepped inside and waited for a ten-count. If her hack had failed somehow, the house’s onboard systems would have activated the alarm. Nothing happened and she breathed a sigh of relief. This was her fourth time in this residence, but it seemed that so far, no one had thought to change the security codes. That meant no one had figured out that she was breaking in at all. It was the only off-base location where she could access the warehouse and transport data she needed to select her targets, medicine, food, and anything that she could sell on the black market so she could buy the rest of the things her people needed.
According to the files, plenty of supplies were shipped to the base to be disseminated to those who needed it. In reality, much of it ended up being sold on the black market, lining the pockets of crooked Alliance personnel at the expense of the ones they were supposed to be helping. Alayna didn’t consider what she did stealing, per se, more that she was redressing the balance. The renegades and the people they protected lived hard lives, and Alayna had made it her mission to help them survive, just like they had once helped her.
She tucked her braid into her specially lined hood and pulled on a pair of delicate, plas-film gloves. If this went well, no one would even know she’d been here, but in case it didn’t, she had no intention of leaving behind stray hairs, prints or DNA for them to find. Her genetic code was on record with the Alliance, and the last thing she wanted was for them to know that one of their missing scrolls was alive, well, and breaking into houses out in the badlands.
The first boom of thunder startled her so badly she jumped and came down into a fighter’s crouch. She used the flashlight in her hand to scan the hallway in front of her and was pivoting to check behind her when it dawned on her that it was only the noise of the storm.
Take a breath and focus. There’s no one else here.
The enhancements that had been forced on her at the same time as her tattoo benefited her in times like these. Along with the usual strength and stamina, Alayna had developed traits that had made her a highly talented thief. Her reflexes were lightning fast, and she was far more agile than a normal human. Even her hearing was better than average, and she could move in almost perfect silence. Though she still resented what had been done to her, she took some joy in using her gifts to work against the very people who had given them to her in the first place.
Alayna’s previous visits to this house had allowed her to memorize the general layout of the simple, two-story structure. The former occupant had used one of the upstairs rooms as his office, so she went there first.
Shit.
Where the office had been was now a bedroom, granted a starkly furnished one. Alayna backed out and checked the next room, only to find the same thing. Dark carpeting, a big bed with dark blue blankets, a dresser, foot locker, and not much else. Didn’t these guys own anything? Where were their personal affects? Pictures, trophies, hell, there wasn’t even a stray sock on the floor.
The third bedroom had been a large master suite the last time she’d been inside. It was still a bedroom, but there was something different about it now. For starters, the bed was incredibly large and had a flower print duvet tossed over it. The curtains had a floral design as well, and the whole room seemed softer somehow, despite the way the massive bed dominated the space. She played her flashlight over the far wall and paused to stare at it for a second.
Pink walls? Strange choice for a couple of guys.
She didn’t have time to puzzle out why two single men had three furnished bedrooms. She needed to find where they’d set up their home office, find the files and get gone again before they came home. If the computer wasn’t upstairs, it had to be downstairs…somewhere. Two steps down the hallway, Alayna froze. It was hard to be sure with the thunder and the pounding rain, but for a moment she thought there’d been a sound like a car door slamming shut. Only that shouldn’t be, because the occupants of the house would be gone for at least ninety minutes. Longer if the storm caused any flooding.
The moment the word flooding registered, Alayna sprinted for the stairs. She knew exactly what had happened, and why her targets were home early. Now she had only seconds to get out. Fear of what would happen if they caught her had her nearly flying down the steps. It wasn’t prison that scared her. It was being identified as a fertile woman. She’d managed to escape from the Alliance once. Alayna doubted they’d give her a chance to elude them again...
She took the stairs at a dead run, clearing the last three steps in a single leap. Alayna was still in mid-air when the front door opened.
Fuck!
Face to face with the two men who had been haunting her dreams, Alayna did the only thing she could. She turned and bolted for the back door, cursing fate and the unexpected storm every step of the way.
* * * *
General Nikolai Grekov sat in the passenger seat of the transpo, his arms across his chest as he tried to get comfortable in the cramped space. “Will you pick up the pace? You drive like a little old lady. I have plans tonight, buddy. And they do not include Alliance business or sobriety.”
His best friend, General Colin Neilson, barked with laughter and shook his head. “My plans include surviving until tomorrow. Have a little patience, will you? The rain is coming down so hard I can barely see the road.”
“Pussy,” Nikolai Grekov taunted him as he slouched deeper into his seat.
“Was that an insult or another item on your list of plans for the night?”
He shot Colin a lop-sided grin. “Both. I was multitasking.”
“Shit, Griz, was that a four syllable word? Who are you trying to impress?”
Nikolai growled and flipped Colin off. “You need to get laid, Ghost. You’re getting cranky. Come with me tonight, and we’ll both blow off some steam.” They’d earned a little down time. Hell, if he didn’t get a chance to unwind soon, he was liable to hit someone. High on that list was the incompetent general they’d been sent out here to replace.
Colin ran a hand through his sandy-brown hair and groaned. “The last time we blew off some steam, we ended up assigned out here instead of a nice, cushy, planet-side job somewhere civilized. We were going to start looking for our chosen. Instead, we’re smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, hunting a thief so elusive no one has ever set eyes on him, and we’re surrounded by people who have no love for the Alliance. Oh, and there’s not an unclaimed fertile female within two hundred miles. I know, because I checked the records. Two. Hundred. Fucking. Miles.”