Simon Hawke: Hellfire Rebellion

Clearly. Delaney was a problem, but unlike many other senior officers. Forrester had known that a man’s worth as a soldier could not be measured by how snappy his salute was. Some of history’s greatest fighting men, such as George Patton. Benedict Arnold, and Julius Caesar. had personalities that were ill-suited to military discipline. Patton had been egotistical and insubordinate: Arnold’s unchecked ambition had led him to turn traitor: Caesar had been overly familiar with his troops and had seized power by turning his legions against Rome, but each man had been an unquestionably brilliant soldier on the field of battle. Delaney had a mercurial Irish temper and a contempt for what he called “military assholes.” but with a commander such as Forrester, who knew the proper way to handle such a man, he had steadily risen to the rank of captain and his disciplinary problems had fallen off dramatically.

Creed Steiger, on the other hand, was the son of soldier whose appearance would find favor with the most nit-picking commander. He was blond and gray-eyed, hook-nosed, slightly cruel-looking, and solidly built. Like Lucas Priest, he looked like a model officer, but there the similarity ended. While Priest’s record was absolutely spotless. Steiger was a maverick. As the former senior field agent of the T.I. A.. he had often bent the rules, only unlike Delaney. he was adept at covering himself. His mentor in the agency had been none other than the late Col. Jack Carnehan, a legendary temporal agent codenamed Mongoose, who had instructed him in the complexities of being a professional chameleon. Carnehan had been virtually uncontrollable, with an unshakable belief in the correctness of his actions, regardless of what his orders were. But Steiger had learned the hard way that in an organization as complex and devious as the T.I.A., with agents that were so deeply buried under cover that there was often no record of their existence, orders from the top were frequently not to be trusted.

The corruption in the T.I.A. ran deep. Steiger had never wanted any part of it, but when even the former director of the agency had been a secret member of the Network, there was no way of knowing if an order had been given legally or not. Yet now that Forrester was in charge. determined to root out the corruption and break up the Network, Steiger was finally able to do his job as he sawfit. Forrester had appointed him to organize and lead a special unit, the Internal Security Division. whose sole function was to police the agency and ferret out corrupt agents of the Network. It was a formidable task. Over the years. the Network had spread through the agency like a cancer. with its members both concealed within the agency bureaucracy in the 27th century and scattered throughout time. as well. Dealing with the threat posed by the parallel universe was difficult enough without having to battle enemies within their own organization. Both Steiger and Forrester had already survived several attempts upon their lives, in one case by a man Steiger had known and trusted for years. And many agents of the T.I.A. deeply resented having the I.S.D. constantly looking over their shoulders. Lucas did not envy Creed his job.

As for Andre Cross. seeing her now, it was hard for Lucas to believe that the first time they had met, he had thought she was a man. Born in the 12th century. she had been orphaned at an early age and had survived a life of almost intolerable hardship. While still a child, she had learned to pass as a young boy in order to decrease her vulnerability and as she grew older. she had perfected the disguise. In her early teens, she had fooled an English knight errant so completely that he had taken her on as his squire and trained her in the arts of warfare, so that by the time she reached adulthood. she was the equal of most any man in fighting ability and strength.

Her appearance was deceptive. Some young men were handsome to the point of being almost pretty and she had passed for one of those. She had worn her hair as men did and she had a compact and powerful athletic frame. She wrapped her chest to conceal her breasts, took the name of Andre de la Croix. and became a mercenary knight. It was in that guise that Lucas first met her on a temporal adjustment mission in medieval England. in the lists at the tournament of Ashby. In full armor and on horseback, they had jousted with each other and it was an experience he would never forget. When he thought of it, he could still feel the incredibly jarring impact of her lance. By the time they met again, several centuries had passed.

She had become a member of the Temporal Underground and was taken from her native time to 17th-century France. where their paths crossed once again. She had helped Lucas and Finn defeat a group of temporal terrorists who called themselves the Timekeepers and they had brought her back with them to the 27th century. where it was determined that her temporal displacement would not have a disruptive effect on history. She was given a cerebral implant, programmed with an education, and made a member of the First Division. Since then, she had been a valued member of their team and she and Lucas had grown extremely close.

They had become as intimate as two people could be without ever physically consummating their relationship. They had never said, “I love you.” to each other, but it was not something that needed to be said. Both of them knew it. felt it deep down in their souls, and yet they had always hesitated to take that final step. It was something neither of them ever spoke about. In fact, the curious nature of their relationship was that it went largely unspoken, as if they unconsciously desired their love to be idealistically platonic, and were hesitant, even frightened, to take it any further. Instead, they cloaked their feelings for each other in military camaraderie, in awkward brotherly and sisterly affection, and in hard-drinking fellowship, not unlike two male friends who were emotionally repressed and expressed their feelings for each other in punching one another’s shoulders and hearty slaps upon the back.

Perhaps part of their problem lay in the fact that Andre never had an opportunity to be raised as a girl child. She never had a female role model and she was inexperienced in relationships, unable to express her deepest feelings.

And though Lucas would never admit it to a soul-not even to his best friend, Finn Delaney, who knew it just the same-he had been painfully shy around women all his life. He could hide it well up to a certain point and he was not sexually inexperienced. yet in almost every case, it was the woman who had taken the initiative. often in exasperation. And those sexual relationships had been just that-primarily sexual. Stated simply. Lucas Pried, a soldier who had been decorated many times for bravery, was an abject coward when it came to love, as paralyzed with shyness and indecision as a young boy sitting alone in tortured agony for hours. trying to summon up the nerve to make his first call to a girl he had a crush on.

There were times when Finn Delaney wanted to take them both and shake them, force them to come out and admit their feelings for each other, hut he was enough of a friend to both of them to know where to draw the line. There were some things that went beyond the bounds of friendship, some things people simply had to do all by themselves. Sooner or later, it would have to happen for them, because the tension was increasing. When she had thought Lucas had died. Andre had been grief-stricken beyond words. When he came back, she’d been so overjoyed to see him alive that she’d responded with her feelings before she had a chance to think and had thrown her arms around his neck and kissed him.

Afterward. Delaney found it almost comical to see their mutual embarrassment, but a large chunk of the barrier between them had been broken through and Finn knew that It would only be a matter of time before the remainder of their inhibitions fell away. Privately. he hoped they’d hurry up and get around to it, because lately they’d been using him as a reluctant chaperone, a convenient third party to keep them from being alone together. It made him feel uncomfortable and he wished to hell they’d both grow up and act their age Two grown people, unable to express their feelings. He simply didn’t understand it. But then, being an Irishman. he wouldn’t.