Brigends (The Final War Series Book 1) by Russell Krone Read Free Book Online Page A

mug and smoking a cigarette. He already knew she was in there just by the smell filling the corridor. Only she smoked those foul-smelling French stinkers. No other crewman had the audacity to use anything made by a country comprised of smug bureaucrats.
    She smiled and waved him over. As he sat down across from her, she shoved the mug at him. He picked it up and without hesitating, drank from it. Like he suspected, it was her special brew of burnt coffee beans.
    “I see your domestic skills haven’t improved,” he said over the soreness in his throat.
    She exhaled smoke. “I’ve never heard you complain before.”
    “Complain? No. Fear? Yes.”
    She grabbed the mug and went to refill it from the coffee pot. He examined her behavior.
    “How did you know where to find me?”
    Adi twitched slightly to the question. To him, her reaction might as well have been a jump. She poured more of the roasted battery acid into the mug and returned to her seat.
    “We were looking for you the whole time.” She took another drag off the cigarette. “It wasn’t easy.”
    “I would imagine. I was never in one place more than a few months. So, how did you find me?”
    Adi flicked ash on a tin plate. She knew he was probing her.
    “We captured Major Koloff. He led us to you — after some vigorous cajoling.”
    “Koloff? How did you get him alive?”
    “His shuttle came under fire during Prague and crashed just outside the city. He was making a run on foot when we caught up to him.”
    “Prague? Did we retake it?” He hoped the tide of the war had shifted during his absence. He could see from her expression, it had not.
    “Haiduc, I’m sorry.”
    “About what?”
    “Prague was three months ago. We took the city a year before that, but couldn’t hold it. When they regrouped, the Alliance pushed us back to the Reine.”
    He slumped in his seat. The Reine? That meant the enemy overran the Vanguard central command. “What about the War Council?”
    She sipped from the mug and smoked.
    “Adi?”
    “You are the only one left.”
    He absorbed the enormous news. The Vanguard Resistance was broken and most of Europe was undoubtedly under Serov’s control. As the lone surviving council member, leadership now rested upon Emil’s beleaguered shoulders. To the grunts in the field fighting the losing war, he had to be a bastion of faith no matter the outcome.
    How could he inspire hope in others when he didn’t have any left in his own heart?
    Atlas be damned.
    She coughed to get his attention. “The War Council had forbidden us to search for you. They didn’t want to spare another ship, especially this one, for just one man. Cine alergi dupa doi iepuri, nu prindi niciunul.”
    “So, what did you do?”
    “I told them to kiss my ass,” she said without skipping a beat.
    “Well, I appreciate your disobedience.”
    “I learned from the best.” Adi winked. “It was a good thing we disobeyed orders. We’re the only ship still flying.”
    “The American expression — out of the pan and into the fire — I suppose.”
    Him mentioning America provided the needed segue.
    “Sir, why are we going to New York?”
    He expected her curiosity, but he wasn’t ready with an answer. He trusted Adi more than anyone else in the world, but this time, things were different. It was difficult to read her expressions as she sat there waiting for his trust.
    “It’s a mission.” It wasn’t a great answer, but he didn’t have another one to give.
    “Mission?” Her face was straighter than a detective’s poker-stare. “You’ve been in prison. How can you be on a mission?”
    “I’m returning to the one I was on before my incarceration.” He hoped she would buy the lie.
    Adi puffed one last drag from her cigarette and snuffed it out on the plate. She reclined and sipped coffee. “What is this mission?”
    Yes, what was the mission? It wasn’t simple to lay out the melody when he was playing by ear.
    Minsk stepped over the hatchway,