“We’re goin’ for a little walk,” Koda growls into his ear, wrapping her free hand around his neck and pulling backwards. Given the choice between strangulation and having his brains blown out, the man wisely decides to get his legs in motion. Kirsten silently follows, also walking backward as she eyes the murderous glares being thrown her way by the group now safely behind the compound fence.

A mile or so down the road, Dakota finally stops and pushes the man against the tree with a spine-rattling thump. “We’ll be coming back this way, maggot, and when we do, your little wacked out religious commune had better be gone.”

“Or what?!” he shoots back defiantly.

The smile he receives would have looked perfectly at home on a shark. “Trust me, little man,” Koda replies, patting his furred chest, “you really don’t wanna go there.”

“I don’t trust no women,” he spits, narrowly missing Dakota’s face. “Especially dirty, heathen squaws.” He looks past Dakota, leering. “And their pretty little play toys. How ‘bout it, squaw-lover? You like what this Injun does to you? You make me sick, defiling your race with this dirty, stinking….”

“That’s quite enough out of you, little man,” Koda replies smoothly, pulling him up by his matted chest hair.

“Or what?!” he gasps around the pain she’s causing.

“Or…this.”

Dakota’s right fist lands squarely on his chin. His eyes roll up until only the whites are seen as his knees buckle, dumping him to the ground, out for the count.

“Damn,” Kirsten mutters.

“What?”

“I wanted to do that.”

“I’ll let you have the next one, alright?”

“Deal.”

*

Darkness has fallen when Dakota finally leans back against a fallen log, looking over their weaponry by the light of a small, smokeless fire. It’s a meager lot—a few hand grenades, six guns with five boxes of mixed ammunition, assorted knives, and a bow and arrows. Barely enough, she thinks wryly, to knock off a bank, nevermind trying to storm a well-guarded compound. With a soft sigh, she glances over at the closed tent where Kirsten has ensconced herself almost from the moment they had set it up. The young scientist had been unusually quiet since they left the religious killing ground behind; no amount of small talk had been able to spring her loose from whatever dark hell she’d gone into and, after a few failed gambits, Koda decided to give her what she most seemed to need: space.

“Guess it’s just us tonight, guys,” she murmurs to the dog lolling by the fire and the hawk perched comfortably on her shoulder. “I hope you have full bellies, cause I’m not in the mood to cook anything.” Asi and Wiyo don’t appear to be worried overmuch by the statement and, with another sigh, Koda picks up a cloth and oil and begins cleaning their tiny arsenal.

In less than an hour, she’s finished and the small stash of weapons gleams mellowly up at her by the light of the small fire. With a quick shake of her head, as if flinging off unwanted thoughts, she carefully repacks the weapons and ammunition into the bag she’d appropriated for this purpose. Once the bag is packed safely away, she pulls another one free, opening it and dumping out two battered cups and two cloth-wrapped bundles of tea-leaves. Kirsten prefers her tea with a bit less bite, and so Koda has taken to keeping their stashes separate. Taking the small pot from its place on the rocks next to the fire, she pours water over the leaves, then sits back, crossing her long legs and stretching her arms out over the log-cum-backrest as the tea steeps.

Her sharp hearing takes in the sounds surrounding her, knowing she’ll never tire of nature’s music even if she lives to be a hundred and ten. Crickets chirp out the temperature from their hidden beds. Nearby, a shrew scuttles for food, emitting a high-pitched squeak of alarm as the triumphant cry of an owl sounds overhead. Hearing the cry, Wiyo lifts her head from its nest under her wing, sharp eyes scanning the sky before dismissing the threat and tucking her head back down. Asi continues to do his impersonation of a dead cockroach, four paws splayed and all.

With a small chuckle, Koda sits up, grabs another smallish sack and pulls out part of a honeycomb, which she dunks in Kirsten’s hot, steeped tea. She still bears the marks of the bees as they expressed their displeasure in disturbing their hive—part of her is quite convinced that it is a sign from her mother—whose name, in English, is Bee—about what she might expect arriving on the doorstep, a very white, very blonde, very WASPy Kirsten King in tow.

“You’ll just have to deal with it, Ina,” she grumbles, stirring the tea with the melting bit of honey until it is all dissolved. Taking the two mugs, she rises gracefully to her feet and looks down at her two friends. “Be good tonight, you hear me? No running off on badgers, wolverines, squirrels, pheasants, or anything else that strikes your predatory little fancy. Got me?”

Asi rolls his eyes and groans before flopping on his belly and putting his snout on his oversized paws, giving her a look that would have shamed any other human. Dakota simply grins and turns to her feathered companion, who is so unimpressed by the speech that she hasn’t even deigned to remove her head from its warm nest beneath her wing. “Alright, then. Sleep well, both of you, and we’ll see you in the morning.”

*

Stopping just inside of the tent-flap, Koda straightens to her full height and stands motionless, content to simply take in the sight of her beloved who is currently scowling at something displayed on her laptop monitor as her fingers dance over the keys. With a soft sigh of frustration, Kirsten yanks off her glasses, then rubs her free hand over her face, muttering incoherently to herself. Dakota catches a few choice epithets and bites the inside of her lip to keep from giving vent to the grin she can feel tugging at her lips and cheeks. Crossing the small space silently, she eases in beside her lover and hands down one of the steaming mugs. “Thought you could use some of this,” she says, her voice a low, rumbling purr deep in her chest.

Kirsten’s delighter smile is the shaft of sunlight that breaks through a thick scud of stormy black clouds at sunset. Koda can’t help but respond with a quirky grin of her own. “Looks like you’re really burning the midnight oil here, Ms. President.” She glances over at the glowing kerosene lamp hanging from the tent pole. “Literally.”

Mug cupped in her hands, Kirsten takes a healthy sip, humming with pleasure as the sweetened liquid slides down her dry, scratchy throat. “Mm,” she says finally, voice slightly hoarse from hours of disuse, “just what the doctor ordered.”

“The doctor has a couple of other things in mind as well,” Koda purrs, coming behind her lover and lowering her long frame until she sits against the back tent wall. Kirsten, facing front, is comfortably ensconced between her legs. Setting her tea to one side, Dakota lifts the hair from Kirsten’s neck and brushes moist lips against the skin so pleasingly exposed to her view.

“Oh, yes,” Kirsten groans, arching her neck into Dakota’s attentions. Goosebumps break out along her arms and chest as she feels the tip of her lover’s tongue trace upward along the muscle there. Heat curls in her belly as the shell of her ear is teasingly outlined, then gently bitten. That heat is trebled as Koda runs her left hand slowly down the front of Kirsten’s T-shirt, then tucks under and comes back up, laying her palm flat against the newly burgeoning muscles of Kirsten’s abdomen, long fingers brushing against the undersides of her breasts, then lazily circling responsive nipples. “Very nice,” Kirsten whispers as fire races its merry way along her nerve endings, completely obliterating the pounding headache she’d been suffering through not a moment before. “I…“she gasps as her nipples are gently tweaked, “love your prescriptions, Doctor.”

“Mm,” Koda growls, slipping her free hand into the waistband of Kirsten’s cargo shorts. “I think you’ll like this one even better.”

Their tea, lovingly prepared, grows slowly cold.

*

Several hours later, Dakota returns to the tent, new mugs of tea in tow. From her place sprawled across their joined sleeping bag, Kirsten grins up at her tall lover, taking in Koda’s state of dishevelment with a sense of giddy pleasure. Her hair, normally immaculate, is wild and her T-shirt, the only article of clothing she’s wearing, is both inside out and backward. An arrogantly raised eyebrow is the response to her giggle. Quickly rolling herself up to a sitting position, she reaches out to grab the tea mug thrust in her direction. She sips her drink as she watches Dakota remove her shirt and toss it indifferently away, almost giving her lungs an impromptu shower as she watches that magnificent body revealed once again.

“You okay?” Koda asks, lowering herself to sit crosslegged on the sleeping bag and cradling her own mug in her large hands.

“Uh…yeah. Good tea.”

“Secret family recipe,” Dakota replies, smirking.

“Mm. It appears,” Kirsten retorts, giving her lover’s bee-stung hands a significant look, “your ‘secret family’ didn’t appreciate their hive being raided.”

Koda shrugs, unrepentant. “I’ve had worse.”

“I’m sure you have.” She lifts the mug in tribute. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure. So…what were you scowling about earlier?” She gestures to the laptop which is currently displaying a colorful aquarium scene.

The question earns another scowl as Kirsten uses her free hand to nudge the touchplate on the computer, erasing the screensaver and replacing it with sets of lines that look very much like…

“Blueprints?” Koda asks, impressed.

“Yeah. Westerhaus’ offices. For whatever good it’ll do us.”

“How did you get a hold of them? Your other computer was trashed, wasn’t it?”

“Wasn’t that hard,” Kirsten replies offhandedly. “The idiot hasn’t shut his servers down, and since I’ve been known to hack into a box or two in my time….” Though her words bespeak pride, the expression on her face is anything but. She sighs, staring at the diagrams on the screen. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

“Have you been there before?”

“Once, yeah. Publicity tour, all the way. Shiny happy people building shiny happy robots using shiny happy equipment. It was like touring the PJ factory in Paterson. I needed a Dramamine just to make it through the presentation.”

“I take it you weren’t impressed.”

Kirsten barks out a laugh. “That would be putting it mildly, yes.” She lifts a hand, pointing to the screen. “These are the specs for the first floor, the only place anyone who isn’t in Westerhaus’ back pocket gets to see. The real work goes on below ground.”

“How many levels?”

“Eight,” Kirsten replies, flipping rapidly through the sets of prints. “Computer central is on six. The juice that one floor alone pulls in one day would light up San Francisco for a year.”

“How is it protected?”

“Doors every ten feet. Solid steel. Cameras every couple of feet. He has a security force of two hundred androids and a few dozen worker bees just staring at the video. The only way through is to be cleared by a visual, retinal and DNA scan.”

“Doesn’t pull any punches, does he.”

“Not even in his dreams.” She turns slowly to her lover. “Dakota, there’s no way in Hell we’re gonna make it through all that.”

“We’ll find a way.”

“How?”

“These blueprints are a start.”

*

Dakota bolts upright from her place on the makeshift bed. Her heart is racing to beat Wiyo, and her bare flesh is greasy with sweat. Breath leaves her lungs in steam-engine puffs as she raises a less than steady hand to her brow, wanting to wipe away images far too realistic for a simple nighttime dream. Steadying her breath and willing her heart-rate to calm, she turns her head slightly to see Kirsten curled beside her, still deeply asleep. Her hand is more steady now as she lowers it to stroke a wisp of tousled bang from her lover’s forehead. Her thumb lingers, tracing the unlined, warm, and silken skin with a light, tender touch. Dawn’s light has touched the tent’s interior, and in it, she looks at Kirsten, memorizing her features; the beauty of her golden hair, the innocence of her sleeping face, the newly-born muscles that curve and stretch the soft, tanned skin.

Lowering herself slowly, silently, she brushes a kiss against her lover’s lips, then pulls away, wiping a single tear that trails down her cheek. “Cante mitawa,” she whispers. “My heart. I love you. Never forget that. Never.”

CHAPTER SIXTY TWO

KODA KNEELS ON the gentle slope of the hillside, her rifle braced across one thigh, binoculars sweeping the opposite side of the small valley. Dusk has begun to gather about them, the cooling air drawing tendrils of fog from the stream that cuts its way through the rolling landscape. Scattered through the grass like roundels of ancient bronze no more than an hour before, the poppies have furled their petals against the oncoming dark. Already the eastern sky shows the first stars; in the west, a deep crimson lingers, fading through purple to ultramarine at the zenith. Just over the edge of the hills, a sickle moon rides low, and from somewhere up in the trees that march along the crest of the rise comes the deep hooting of a horned owl, answered a moment later by his mate. A chill runs down Koda’s spine, and half-forgotten childhood fears with it.