The Fight for Peace by Autumn M. Birt Read Free Book Online

Plus there was another reason he wanted to leave now. Even though they’d brought separate horses and Arinna had left the manor first, Derrick was a pace behind her as they walked to the nearby stable.
    “Can I talk to you a minute?” Derrick asked Arinna as he caught her along the bare garden path.
    “Of course, Lieutenant,” she said, stopping to face him.
    Derrick flinched. “That isn’t ... actually that is exactly what I hoped to talk to you about.” Despite the wall of rank and formality she exuded, he stepped closer, attempting to bridge the emotional distance between them by shortening the physical one. Arinna shifted away.
    “That is how it will be then?” he asked, voice rough. “You’ve avoided me for the last week except meetings. I haven’t spoken a word to you.”
    “You, we, know the choices made when we swore the enlistment oath,” she said. “So yes, this is how it must be. That is the decision we made, and I don’t think you regret it.”
    “The only thing I’m not happy about is what it did to us,” he said.
    For a moment depth beyond the front of an officer flickered in her eyes. She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry as well,” she said in a rough whisper. “If that is all?” she asked, straightening.
    “Yes, Captain.”
    He let her walk crisply ahead, lingering so that she’d mounted and headed out before he arrived at the stable. Her answer, even if the one expected, wasn’t the one he wanted. He’d hoped for at least ... familiarity. Perhaps even friendship like she had with the other Lieutenants. Derrick told himself the situation was new to her as well. That maybe it would ease in time. But it left him very happy to have a mission with Captain Vries the next day, one away from Command and Prague.
    “I told you these weren’t so bad to fly,” Jared said as Derrick slowed the dactyl for a pass over the building, crowning a low mountain. “Set down in the opening between the woods and the front of the building to the north. Until we check this place out, I don’t want to land between three sides of a building where FLF could be holed up shooting at us.”
    “Until I remember how to land, I don’t want to drop in between three sides of a building,” Derrick returned.
    Jared laughed. “You’re doing fine.”
    “That is because the bloody computer fixes everything. Anyone flown one of these without its help?”
    Jared didn’t answer immediately. When Derrick flicked a glance at him, Jared looked thoughtful. “No, I don’t think so. That is a good point. We might have to do that.”
    Derrick groaned, although it was with humor. Wishing that this was the relationship he had with Arinna made him sigh. Jared glanced over but said nothing as Derrick powered down the dactyl.
    “Leave it on auto-defense. Just in case,” Jared said, leaving Derrick to remember how to do that. Playing with high tech, flying computers after years of fighting with swords was a challenge, one that he was slowly winning.
    Derrick met Jared on the ramp of the back hatch. Jared drew his gun, checking it quickly before heading across the snow-swept field to pause a few feet from the dactyl. “What do you think?” he asked Derrick.
    Derrick’s gaze swept the towering stone monastery. This was the proposed location for the peace talks, a place equally isolated, supposedly, from Europe and Crystal City. But it was in the Ural Mountains which was considered FLF territory, and they had suggested it.
    “No tracks in the snow, but the way the wind is blowing that doesn’t mean much. From what I saw flying over, there are two wings, which will make keeping the European contingent separate from the FLF doable. We’ll have to go in to see what type of security is possible and where the meeting room is located.” Derrick contemplated the upper floors. The place was at least three stories tall with a possible attic. He shook his head. “A place this old and with that many floors is going to have side