5
Darius
* * *
A Scythe fighter appeared out of nowhere and dived toward Lily.
Queen Raya’s fighters were small, fast, and nearly impossible to evade from the ground. I screamed a warning as the fighter fired on Lily’s position.
“Lily! Watch out!”
My heart seized in my chest, the pain like pinchers tearing the organ in half. No air. I had no air. My vision blurred. Just like last time.
“Lily!” I willed myself up the cliff wall, using boosters to half crawl, half fly up the side to reach her. Nothing else mattered. Nothing.
Lily held on to the rock with one arm and swung her entire Titan body wide as the Scythe fighter’s blasters reached the rocks and exploded, sending debris raining down on my head.
A large rock hit me. I slipped. Lost my grip. Fell.
Caught hold.
I looked up. I was still too far away.
“Lily!”
“Darius, cool your jets. I’m fine.” Her voice came through clipped and a bit loud. “What is your problem? This isn’t half as hard as most of the missions in the training simulation. Leave me alone and go do your job.”
Leave me alone? Go do your job?
Fuck. Now she sounded exactly like my big brother, Tycho, had before…
No. I wouldn’t think about that. Nothing was going to happen to Lily. I was here. I would protect her, even from herself.
Firing my boosters on full, I let go of the cliff wall and flew up and over the cannon Lily had been climbing toward. Turning my boosters off to conserve fuel, I landed with a heavy thud on the ground just behind the turret.
The cannon rotated, the open-end square on my chest.
The cannon’s energy built, the slight hum in the air alerting me to the imminent strike.
“Darius! What the hell are you doing?”
“Saving you.”
Lily appeared on the opposite side of the cannon, her Titan body crawling up and over the edge of the slight ledge. I scowled despite the fact that she couldn’t see my face.
“Get out of here. I’m about to destroy this thing, and the blast will burn through your armor.”
“And your armor?” she asked.
“I’m not worried about me.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“You’re still here.”
“I had this under control. What are you doing?”
“Go! Get out of here! Now!” I leaped up, firing my boosters, the cannon’s targeting system following my every move, the length of the cannon rising as I did.
“Darius, you bloody idiot. You’re not doing this.”
Lily leaned forward, her Titan arms wrapping around the base of the cannon. With a loud screech that was half scream, half groan, she tunneled under the base and lifted.
“No!”
My protest fell on deaf ears as Lily lifted the entire cannon from the base. It was too heavy. I could have told her that.
The ground beneath her feet crumbled.
She shifted, sliding down and backward with a jolt of movement, the heavy cannon still in her arms as the ledge broke into pieces under the weight.
“I said, I’ve got this.” Lily’s voice was a roar in my head as she bent her knees and arched her back, flipping the heavy cannon onto her chest, then moving it to her head. Then over.
She fell as the cannon fell, just a few meters behind as they both raced to sure destruction on the ground below.
“Lily!” I saw the future. Broken bones. Blood. Lifeless eyes.
I couldn’t do it. Not again.
The cannon hit the ground and exploded in a ball of flame that engulfed my pair-bonded mate completely. I saw nothing but fire.
Without fuel to burn, the flame flickered and died within seconds. I searched the ground, used the last of my booster fuel to fly down to the ground and find her. My mate. My pair-bonded mate. My life. My future. My everything.
I landed to find her in a crouch, waiting for me. She was unharmed, her Titan in perfect condition. She had flipped, used her boosters and landed in a crouch with perfect, Elite Starfighter timing.
“Lily? Are you all right?”
“Do. Not. Speak. To. Me.”
That was the last thing she said before rising to her full height. Standing toe to toe, we were of equal size. Equal strength. Our Titans identical except for the names etched in the exoskeletal armor and the warrior controlling them.
“Lily?”
Turning on her heel, the Titan Athena and her warrior driver ran into the battle raging behind me. I followed. I would always follow.
Lily
* * *
How dare he?
How dare he?
If I weren’t using my giant metal fists to punch the rocky base of the last cannon into dust—Darius’s cannon, the one he’d been assigned to take out, the one he’d ignored to chase after me like I was a helpless child—I would be beating the hell out of that man instead.
Had I been nervous to drop onto an alien world? Yes. First out of the gate? Bigger yes. But the moment my Athena’s feet hit the ground, something had happened.
I’d become the badass fighter in the game again. I wasn’t Lily the Librarian; I was Elite Starfighter Lily in Athena, her Titan goddess of war, and I was ready to kick some ass.
“Lily? Are you well?”
Of course he had followed me.
His Titan’s fist landed near mine, and the stone base the ground cannon was mounted to crumbled on one side.
Darius reached back to punch it again, but I shoved him out of the way.
“What are you doing?” he yelled.
“What am I doing?” I yelled back, so furious I could feel my pulse pounding in my temples. I had a raging headache, and I tasted blood in my mouth from biting my cheek. “What am I doing?”
Back home, I didn’t have a temper. Such a display was unladylike. My mother had made sure I knew how to control myself, hide what I was feeling, from a very young age.
Somehow, being in this Titan fighter on another planet ripped every emotional Band-Aid from my modest, quiet, mouselike heart and turned me into a beast.
Yes, that’s what I felt like, an Atlan beast, filled with fighting rage. Huge. Powerful. Unstoppable.
Jumping up onto the top of the cannon, I wrapped my Titan arms around the firing tube, braced my feet against the base, and pulled. Twisted. Hard.
The cannon’s metal screeched with a fingernails-on-chalkboard rending sound as the firing bit tore away from the base.
“What. Am. I. Doing?” I whispered the question, and Darius backed up a few paces to look at me, his hands out in front of him as if warding off an attack.
Oh, he was going to get an attack, all right.
“Analysis of your tone indicates you are angry. I have been allowing your communications to Elite Starfighter Darius to broadcast on your private comm frequency.”
“Good.” I wanted him to know I was furious with him and his lack of faith in me. His overprotective bullshit.
Lifting the cannon piece, I threw it in his direction, not to hit him, but as a message. He avoided the large chunk easily. “Lily, talk to me. What is wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Was he actually asking me that? And why was I suddenly on the verge of tears? Fucking brilliant.
The other Titan teams took down the last of the ground assault cannons, and I looked up as alarms blared in my helmet. Scythe fighters incoming. Lots of them.
“Move, Titans!” General Romulus’s voice jolted me from my own thoughts and back into action.
I jumped down from the rock and ran toward the entrance to Queen Raya’s bunker. More weapons fired from vents in the heavy doors, but they were much smaller than the cannons we’d just wiped out like a swarm of killer bees. They would pose no real danger. It was the fighters coming in from above that could destroy one of us.
“Lily! Take cover!”
“No!” I ran for the door, rage fueli
ng me as hot blood poured through every cell in my body. I was not a child to be coddled and protected. I was not some silly girl who didn’t know how to protect herself, how to fight. I was an Elite Starfighter, and Darius had damn well better learn that and accept it, or we were going to have serious problems.
Maybe we already did.
I fell in step next to Bantia and Ulixes, the three of us the front line of an assault formation that spread out behind us like wings. We were the tip of the spear.
My blood pounded. Adrenaline flooded my already exhausted system. But we weren’t finished yet.
“Scythe fighters! Coming over the ridge!” someone shouted. I didn’t recognize the voice, but Athena’s displays informed me it came from someone in Titan team four.
Looking up as I ran, I saw two fighters blast over the top of the cliffs I’d just been climbing, moving faster than any jet I’d ever seen. Two more. Four. They were all in battle formations that I recognized from Starfighter Training Academy.
“Lily! Wait for me!”
“Four in the rear, take a knee and shoot those Scythe fighters out of the sky,” General Romulus ordered.
Display data showed the last four Titans peel off and take positions to defend the rest of us. Darius was one of them. I could hear him cursing in my helmet.
“Fuck! Goddamn it! Lily!”
But he did as General Romulus ordered.
“Break down that door. Ground assault is two minutes out.” Bantia’s order was clear and precise. We had two minutes until the smaller assault teams would be pouring into this bunker like water. Assuming we had the door open for them.
“On it!” I shouted, then used my boosters to fly to the topmost opening in the door. A large energy weapon rotated toward my face. I wrapped one Titan hand around the tip and pulled with all the power I could get from Athena.
The weapon hummed; the power surge so strong I could feel it pulsing up my arm inside the Titan’s protective armor.
Athena’s voice filled my helmet. “Lily, recommend you disengage. The weapon will destroy us in six…five…four…”
With a scream of frustration, I put every ounce of rage and fear and anxiety I’d felt since leaving Earth into my next pull.
The weapon broke free with a loud pop, and I tossed it to the ground over my shoulder.
“Nice one, rookie,” Bantia said. She was below me and to my left, tackling the next weapon.
“Thanks.” At least someone appreciated my skills.
Using my claws, I dug into the wall and used the weight of my Titan to slice my way down to the next opening. This one was actively firing, so I lowered my arm to the corner and shot a grenade inside.
Three seconds later, the weapon exploded, mid-fire, the blast twice the size it would have been otherwise. The wreckage exposed an additional section of the bunker wall, blasting off the thick metallic shielding to reveal a series of weight-bearing structures that reminded me of trusses beneath a roof. Except thick. Heavy. Indestructible. Layers deep, like a maze.
We were never getting through this wall with a frontal assault. We’d have to blow the entire side of the cliff to even make a dent.
Looking behind me, I watched Darius shoot down a Scythe fighter, the small ship spiraling out of control as it dived into the ground and burst into flames.
On the other side of the battle area another fighter had already crashed and burned to a crisp. I winced.
No one could have survived that.
So far I’d taken out unmanned guns, not people. But that could change at any moment.
“Let’s go, Lily! Let’s finish this.” Bantia’s Titan leaped into the opening I’d created and disappeared inside the maze. Ulixes was right behind her as I hung onto the side of the wall with one clawed hand and two feet still puncturing the shielding material.
“We have to open it from the inside,” Ulixes said, then disappeared behind his pair-bonded fighting partner.
I looked back over my shoulder to make sure Darius was alive and well. He was. Cursing and firing like a battle-crazed berserker. Running toward my position.
“Lily!”
Ignoring his shout, I dropped down to the opening to follow Bantia and Ulixes inside. Within seconds complete and total darkness swallowed me whole.
6
Lily
* * *
Nothing like walking on beams in total pitch-black. Athena’s infrared and sonar systems were providing me with a visual display, but it wasn’t clear.
“Athena, can’t you clean that up? I can’t see.”
“Negative, there is too much interference from their jamming frequencies.”
“Brilliant.” I took two more steps. The Titan’s left foot slipped, and I barely caught the massive body with my right hand. “This is ridiculous. Give me a flashlight and open the shielding so I can see with my own eyes.”
“Defensive shielding will be at fifty percent.”
“I don’t care. I need to see.”
“Understood.” With a few loud clicks and swooshing noises, the front shielding that covered my face slid away so that I was protected only by my helmet and the translucent canopy. Bright floodlights pierced the darkness for three to four meters in front of me, and I sighed with relief. It wasn’t perfect, but at least I could see where I was going.
“Lily, I’ve lost sight of you. Report.” Bantia’s voice gave the order.
“Line-of-sight visibility is three to four meters. Only way to see is without full shielding. Using only canopy and helmet cover.”
“Ulixes?” she asked.
“I can’t see a fucking thing. The jammers are getting stronger the deeper we go.”
“Go to visual. And be careful.”
“Copy that,” Ulixes said.
The other two Titan’s lights turned on, and between the three of us, I could just make out enough of the structure to see a spiral pattern. “Up or down?”
Light appeared behind me. I turned to find Darius in Tycho just a few steps away. “Both. Bantia and Ulixes go down; Lily and I will head up.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be out there shooting down Scythe fighters?” I asked.
“Air support from the Elite Starfighter pilots came in and wiped them out. They are patrolling the airspace. We’re clear.”
I looked at the set of lights I assumed belonged to Bantia. “We could head back out and tell the pilots to blow this door into pieces.”
“Negative. It’s too thick. We’d need battleship cannons to get through,” Ulixes said.
“And there would be nothing left,” Bantia added.
I didn’t think we cared much if there was anything left of the place, but then I had no idea how many people were inside. What if they had children here? “All right.”
Bantia leaped down three levels and caught a beam with her Titan hands, swinging to drop down on the level below. Ulixes cursed.
“Damn it, female.”
She laughed. “Keep up then.”
The two took off like bouncing fireflies in the darkness. I looked at Darius, then up. And up. We were about equidistant from both top and bottom. Jumping down suddenly seemed a lot easier than climbing. “Let’s go.”
Using my boosters for an assist, I leaped up and landed on the beam above me.
“Careful,” Darius instructed.
“You didn’t tell Bantia or Ulixes to be careful,” I pointed out, jumping to the next beam.
“I’m not in love with them.”
Shit. I nearly missed the beam, caught myself with the claws on my right foot as my right hand missed the handhold entirely.
Darius jumped up to the beam I had just abandoned.
Love? He loves me? After one day? And he tells me now? Not when he was buried inside me. Not when I was gasping and clawing at him, screaming his name. Now?
And love? Like real, honest-to-goodness love? How was that possible? My parents had known me their entire lives and barely remembered to send me a card at Christmas.
>
Leaping again, I overshot the mark and grappled for a hold on the beam above where I’d been aiming. Thank goodness the Titan’s arms were a lot stronger than mine. I pulled myself up and took a couple of slow, deep breaths. I could do this. I was not rattled and on edge simply because the sexiest man I’d ever met had treated me like a helpless child one moment, then told me he was in love with me the next.
Was this tightness in my chest anger? Anxiety? Frustration? Disbelief? Pain? I didn’t know, and trying to figure it out was making me shaky and distracted. I wanted Darius to love me, badly. I simply couldn’t accept the fact that the emotion came so easily to him.
Not even my own mother loved me. I was tolerated. A tool to make her look like a good parent. Sent to the best schools, the best universities. The best clubs. The best of everything. And not once had she attended a recital or award ceremony. No matter how hard I tried, she never cared. I finally figured out the problem; I was the textbook definition of unlovable.
Athena’s feet safely planted on the beam, I looked down. And down. I could see nothing in the darkness, not even Bantia’s and Ulixes’s lights. I felt like I was standing over an abyss that wanted to swallow me whole.
“Lily? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Try to keep up.”
Darius chuckled and I felt the tightness around my heart loosen a little. “Vega help us, you sound like Bantia already.”
The idea of being as strong, confident, and skilled as Bantia seemed to be, pleased me.
Moving quickly, I reached the top level of the structure, Darius arriving less than a minute behind me.
“What now?” I asked, looking around at…nothing. Stone. Beams. There was nothing here that looked like any kind of control, wiring or power source. Just rocks and darkness.
Darius stood next to me in his Titan, and we used our combined light to widen the viewable area. Still, I saw nothing.
“Team One? You see anything? We are at the top, and there is nothing here.”
“Stand by.” Ulixes voice sounded gruff and like he was nearly out of breath.
Elite Starfighter: Starfighter Training Academy - Game 3 Page 4