The Hands We're Given Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Hands We're Given

  Reader Advisement

  Event File 01

  File Tag: Orientation

  Event File 2

  File Tag: Situation Assessment

  Event File 3

  File Tag: Raising Morale

  Event File 4

  File Tag: Situational Awareness

  Event File 5

  File Tag: Medical Assessment

  Event File 6

  File Tag: Base Function

  Event File 7

  File Tag: Comestibles

  Event File 8

  File Tag: ViperDrone

  Event File 9

  File Tag: Requisitions

  Event File 10

  File Tag: Reorganization

  Event File 11

  File Tag: Failure To Report

  Event File 12

  File Tag: Goods Acquired

  Event File 13

  File Tag: Report Preparation

  Event File 14

  File Tag: Debriefing

  Event File 15

  File Tag: Disclosure

  Event File 16

  File Tag: Expertise

  Event File 17

  File Tag: Operational Planning

  Event File 18

  File Tag: Operational Maneuvers

  Event File 19

  File Tag: Talent Search

  Event File 20

  File Tag: Valuable Skills

  Event File 21

  File Tag: Due Consideration

  Event File 22

  File Tag: Mission Pertinent Information

  Event File 23

  File Tag: Job Offer

  Event File 24

  File Tag: Induction

  Event File 25

  File Tag: Field Test

  Event File 26

  File Tag: Requisitions Foray

  Event File 27

  File Tag: Situational Awareness

  Event File 28

  File Tag: Corrective Measures

  Event File 29

  File Tag: Private Discussion

  Event File 30

  File Tag: Mutual Benefit

  Event File 31

  File Tag: Improvements

  Event File 32

  File Tag: Leisure Time

  Event File 33

  File Tag: Official Reprimand

  Event File 34

  File Tag: Adjustments

  Event File 35

  File Tag: Course Correction

  Event File 36

  File Tag: Reciprocity

  Event File 37

  File Tag: Weather Warning

  Event File 38

  File Tag: Fully Functional

  Event File 39

  File Tag: Security Breach

  Event File 40

  File Tag: Privileged Information

  Event File 41

  File Tag: System Reboot

  A Wildcards Playlist, Part 1

  About The Author

  The Hands We're Given

  Aces High, Jokers Wild Book 1

  O.E. Tearmann

  Copyright © 2018 by O.E.Tearmann

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2018

  Cover design by Germancreative, Fiverr

  Book design and production by Spine Press and Post

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All songs quoted are properties solely of their authors and have been quoted under Fair Use standards. All songs quoted are given a full citation in the back of the book.

  ISBN: 978-1724835499

  For my partner in this wild ride. Remember you rock. Always.

  Reader Advisement

  This book contains romantic and sexual scenes between people whose genders may not fit your expectations. If this offends you, consider yourself warned.

  Everyone else, buckle up for the ride.

  Event File 01

  File Tag: Orientation

  Timestamp: 0900-4-1-2155

  The ancient Humvee rattled as it hit another pothole.

  On the other side of the vehicle's window clouds of grit obscured the view, kicked up as they rumbled through the dry soil of the Dust. Tumbleweeds and rabbitbrush crunched like bird bones beneath the tires.

  Aidan flipped through his new personnel roster on the holographic screen projected from the tablet in his lap. The nails of his free hand scratched out erratic rhythms against the fabric of his pants.

  His eyes skittered over the flickering images for the third time, trying to memorize names and faces. He'd only needed one read-through of the attached disciplinary files. Those he wasn't going to forget in a hurry.

  Sarah Flesher. Skinny white woman with black hair and a smirk. Munitions specialist.

  Jim Crawford. Skinny black guy with a tired face. Hell, everybody was skinny and tired out here. Operations specialist.

  Yvonne Flesher. Muscly blonde woman. Runner, maybe? Requisitions specialist. Blake Frachette. The only pudgy guy Aidan had seen in a year. Finance officer. Figured, he would be the only one sitting still.

  Kevin McIllian. Red-headed guy, smiling just a bit. Cute. Logistics officer.

  Shit, he was never going to learn all this before he arrived.

  The big man across from Aidan laughed, pulling Aidan's attention away from his compulsive study. It was an honest sound, rare out here in the Dust. Hell, real laughter was probably rare all across America nowadays, on-Grid and off.

  "It's good you're nervous, Headly," Front Range Sector Commander Magnum observed. "Nerves mean you'll care about these people. That's what they need."

  "I'm not nervous, sir." It was a lie and they both knew it. Aidan switched his tablet to sleep mode, and its shivering screen slid back into the flat black pane. The truck's movement and the tightness in his gut was making reading impossible anyway. He might as well humor the sector commander.

  "I just want to make sure I know what you're dropping me into. The Wildcards have an insane reputation."

  Sector Commander Magnum laughed again. The dry leather creaked under his bulk. "Which is why we want to see how you do with them. They've been through two seasoned commanders in two months since Commander Taylor died. Figured it was time to see how they manage with one fresh out of training. We're hoping they don't chew you up and spit you out, too."

  Aidan swallowed hard. That comment wasn't exactly helping his roiling stomach. He had only finished Command training a week ago. This morning he'd been told that he'd been assigned. Only when he'd climbed into the transport for the three-hour drive had he been told which base he'd been assigned to.

  "Relax, Headly. I'm not asking you to turn these guys into a normally functioning base," Magnum added with quiet exasperation. "Fact is, I don't want them functioning like all our other bases. I want them functioning like the Wildcards on top of their game. Standard operation procedure isn't the objective here. Do what you need to do. Run them the way you want. The objective's to get them back on mission."

  "Yes, sir," Aidan agreed. He tried to breathe normally, but it wasn't easy.

  The loosely-organized insurgent bases collectively glorified by the name of Democratic State Force couldn't have offered a
new commander anything more terrifying. He wasn't ready to take on the most famous-well, infamous-base and their mess. How had he been crazy enough to accept this assignment? He should have opened the door and run for the hills, gone Fringe, anything but say yes.

  At least the base was a long way from the one he'd grown up on. He repeated the thought, trying to calm himself. A long way from anyone he'd known before. The odds of anyone recognizing him from his pre-transition life were slim.

  The vehicle pulled to a stop and the driver cut the engine.

  Aidan leaned forward to look out of the tinted windshield. The low, tan shape of the base complex sat baking in the sun beyond the window. Covered by its heat-shielding, sensor-disrupting slick tarp, it could be mistaken for angular rock formations at a distance.

  As he watched, a corner of the tarp peeled away to reveal a rusting garage door. A woman stepped out. He squinted at her, trying to place her face with one of the names from the base manifest, but she was too far away to make out her features.

  "Liza Carlan, if I had to guess," the sector commander said, jerking his cleft chin toward the woman. "Your personnel officer and second-in-command."

  Aidan nodded thoughtfully. Liza Carlan's record was peppered with disciplinary write-ups, though most of this base's personnel had checkered pasts. It was part of the reputation the Wildcards had created for themselves. Part of the reason Aidan really didn't want to get out of the Humvee.

  The sector commander elbowed his newest command officer. "Go on, Headly. You have your orders. You have your base. Go meet 'em."

  "Yes, sir." Aidan was relatively convinced he was going to vomit the instant his feet touched the dusty ground. But he popped open the door, grabbed his duffle from the floorboard, and climbed out into the hot, dry air.

  Behind him, the window rolled down.

  "And, Headly?" the big man called from the cool interior.

  Aidan glanced back into Magnum's dark eyes. "Sir?"

  "Remember what I said. We need this base back on mission. Make it happen."

  Aidan's stomach clenched. He threw a clumsy salute. "Sir. Orders received."

  The sector commander smiled grimly, his driver rolled up the window, and the vehicle's tires kicked up grit in its wake.

  Aidan swallowed hard and turned to the base.

  As he approached the lone woman outside the slick tarp, she gave him a crisp salute. She was as tall as he was-not much of an achievement-and it looked like her dun-colored uniform was two sizes too big for her, held on with a tight belt cinched around her waist. All muscle and no fat, Aidan thought. A classic Duster. In classrooms and press reports, they might be the Democratic State Force, but on the ground everybody knew they were Dusters.

  "Commander Headly?"

  He hoisted his duffle higher on his shoulder and nodded politely. "That's me."

  "Welcome to Base 1407."

  The woman held her salute. Her slightly oversized brown eyes studied him, cold and curious.

  Aidan sighed. He hated standing on formality. It had gotten him several lectures during his training. Technically, he knew all the arguments for the command structure. He'd gotten them shouted down his ear often enough. The only thing that had gotten him more tellings off was saying 'um' when speaking. But it still seemed like the strict military setup so many commanders used was against the essence of the Dusters' mission. They were fighting to break the rigid social structures the United Corporations of America had put in and return the country to freedom and equality, weren't they? So why did they try to force their own people to act like toy soldiers?

  But Personnel Officer Liza Carlan seemed insistent on holding that salute until he returned it, so he lifted his free hand to his brow for a moment and dropped it again.

  Liza held hers a breath longer before letting her hand fall. She nodded and turned toward the slick tarp. "If you'll follow me, sir, we'll get you situated in your quarters."

  Aidan cleared his throat."If it's all the same, I'd rather meet the rest of the unit first."

  Liza's step faltered. She wobbled a moment before regaining her balance and glancing over her shoulder, brows pinched above her hawk-like nose. "Sir?"

  "I'd like to give you all my condolences on Commander Taylor." Aidan nodded toward the black armband over Liza's uniform sleeve. When she stiffened, he realized he might have completely misread things and back-pedaled. "Unless you're mourning someone else. Um. I'm sorry. I assumed you hadn't lost anyone else lately, based on the reports, but I realize they might be-"

  "Why do you care?" Liza's voice was quiet as she began walking again.

  Aidan scrambled to keep up. They ducked under the corner of the slick tarp and into the motor pool garage. The smell of oil and engine exhaust nearly made Aidan gag. He forced back the impulse and tried to answer Liza's question while he took quick stock of three tired vehicles and a motley herd of all-terrain bikes lined up side-by-side, tools and spare parts used to maintain them covering every inch of wall space.

  "I'm not here to shove you around, Liza. I'm here to help try and get this base back on track. Far as I'm concerned, that starts with respecting my team and their past."

  They were out of the garage and halfway down a narrow corridor walled in pockmarked pre-fab plastic before Liza spoke again. "Let's get you settled first, sir. Then you can listen to our sob stories if you have to."

  Aidan considered calling her on that and decided against it. No sense being the bad guy in his first five minutes. He could put his foot down when the issue mattered. Besides, he could use a second to breathe.

  This base was a lot smaller than the sector hub he had trained on. After all, down here large bases with large footprints wouldn't last a day. Only the sector hub and the R&R bases hidden up in the mountains had the luxury of getting bigger without being picked up by search-and-destroy drones. Aidan wished he could go up to a Rest and Retirement base right now. The days he'd spent up there recovering from injuries were the only times he could remember being relaxed.

  The halls were laid out roughly the same way as the base he'd trained on: common area with the canteen and the rec room in the center, barracks down the left hand hall, work rooms and offices down the right, garage up front. The pre-fab buildings were easy to assemble and organize any way you wanted, but most Duster units used the same general base plan. It made it easy for transfers to find their way around. Poles jutting from the roof at crazy angles secured the slick tarp overhead, holding the nanomesh fiber so that it broke up the outline of the base as it masked the building's EM signatures and showed a rock outcropping or more desert to visual scans. As a bonus, the paper-thin protective tarp kept the base cool and somewhat shaded.

  It felt odd to be led to the commander's quarters at the back of the dormitory wing instead of to a smaller personal barracks room. "Commander" had been written on the door in black marker, and someone had tried to rub away the name "Taylor" underneath. It hadn't really worked.

  Liza shoved the door open and stepped back. "Sir."

  Reluctantly, Aidan moved into the room. It was still small-barely big enough for the thin mattress in one corner and a tiny chest for his clothes-and one pre-fab wall didn't quite meet the ceiling. For the first time in a long time, Aidan was glad he wasn't in a relationship. He didn't want to worry about making noise and waking up his neighbors in the middle of the night. But it had been years since he'd had a boyfriend. No worries there. He didn't let anyone get close enough for even a casual fling these days. He dropped his duffel on top of the small dresser and turned back, but Liza was already gone. Without asking if she was dismissed. Passive-aggressive insubordination already. Great.

  With a sigh, he unzipped his bag and moved his small collection of clothing into the top drawer of the chest. Might as well unpack while he waited for Liza to decide he could meet the rest of the unit. Not that there was much to unpack: his clothes, data tab, a small collection of metalworking and engraving tools, several vials of t
estosterone with a micro-injector and a printout of a sketch a friend had made of his sister ages ago. He settled the tools and med gear in the drawer beside his clothing, set the data tab on top of the dresser, and tacked the sketch to the wall opposite the thin mattress. It wasn't much, but it helped make the room feel slightly more like home.

  He glanced at the room's cracked mirror, nervously adjusting his jacket. He'd gotten lucky, actually finding the coloring agents for the official uniform colors: khaki coolant-lined jacket, grey shirt for his new rank underneath, khaki pants, American star pin on his lapel. Considering most people scrounged any camouflage-worthy pigment their base's 3D printer would use on cloth, it wasn't really a uniform anymore. Their Force was barely surviving against the Corps. Details like strict uniform regulations had gotten dropped a long time ago. But making the effort felt right.

  Glancing in the mirror, he ran his fingers through his dark blond hair. As far as a first test of his leadership went, this was about as difficult as they could get. And he had to get it right. The Force needed the Wildcards up and running again. Magnum had been clear on that.

  By the time Liza returned, Aidan had taken to pacing the room in tiny steps, measuring it from wall to wall. He looked up at the sound of footsteps in the hallway and greeted her at the door.

  "Base's ready, sir," she said shortly. She looked at a place over his shoulder instead of meeting his gaze, her hands clasped behind her back. She was every bit the military woman, from the tilt of her chin to her severe bun. That stance made Aidan tense, but he swallowed it as best he could. This was his base now. He could deal with the attitude once they all got more comfortable with each other.

  "Well, let's get going."

  She nodded curtly and turned on her heel.

  Aidan sucked in a breath and followed.

  Sixteen people were gathered in the small base canteen, making it feel crowded. It should have been noisy with this many people in one place-including four children ranging from a baby to two pre-teens-but none of them made a sound. Every single one of the adults had their eyes fixed on him. Every single one of them wore a black armband over their uniform sleeve.