“So am I.”
“And Lily?”
“You know she’s incredible.”
“And is that why you implied otherwise at the mission briefing?”
“I didn’t—”
He raised a brow. “Perhaps that is why your pair-bonded female has formally requested your bond be severed and erased from the Hall of Records? Has, in fact, told me of her intention to resign and return to Earth? Because you spoke so highly of her to your peers?”
“What?” Lily gone? That was not acceptable. She was mine. Mine to love. Protect. Cherish.
“Indeed. I thought, perhaps, she had decided to keep that information to herself. That would appear to be a trend in your relationship.”
“Fuck.” His words were daggers to my gut. Lily had said the same thing. That I’d embarrassed her, humiliated her, lied to her. Kept secrets. I needed to keep her safe. That was all. But I’d fucked things up. Badly. I’d just have to talk sense to her, then not let her out of bed until she promised to listen. “Where is she staying tonight? I need to see her.”
“I don’t believe that particular activity will be on your schedule tonight.”
“Where is she?”
He shrugged and I wanted to punch him. Again. As I had the day my brother died. Like that day, striking at the general would not help me protect Lily.
Tycho had been a grown man. He’d made his choices. Lily made hers. I had to respect that. I couldn’t make the same mistake again, or I’d lose her, too. My pair bond. She was everything now. Everything that mattered.
“Please, General. Where is she? I totally fucked this up.”
He studied me long and hard. Although he was only a few years older, the burden of his command made him feel more like a father figure than his age probably deserved. Still, the weight of his judgment made my fists clench at my sides.
“Ask Dea. If she will agree to allow you to take her place, I will approve it. On one condition.”
“Anything.”
“You bring Lily back alive.”
12
Lily, Titan Bellator, Launch Shuttle, Deep Space
* * *
“Call me Tor, Starfighter. I am honored to serve with you.”
“Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say. I’d used the Titan’s full name, Bellator, and been gently corrected. “You can call me Lily.”
“Very well.” The Titan’s deep, masculine voice sounded older than the profile I’d chosen for Athena. Almost like a wise, caring father who had raised ten children and seen everything. Tor’s voice was soothing. Calm. Like having my own, personal, Captain Jean-Luc Picard on board.
As Tor was the only company I was going to have for the next few hours, I was happy to discover he didn’t sound like a mechanical hag or petulant teen. Some of the voice options when building a Titan were, in my opinion, highly questionable.
“Starfighter, loading has commenced.”
“Copy that.” I didn’t really feel the Titan being loaded onto the launch rail system, not like I had on the planet Xenon. But then, we were in the middle of nowhere, in outer space, with no gravity, no light. Nothing. A few stars were twinkling here and there. I knew once I launched I’d be able to see the planets Velerion, Xenon and Xandrax off in the distance. But they weren’t going to be large. More like spotting a spoon across the room from ten meters.
Dea and I were going to be alone out here.
The thought made me wish Darius was here. I shoved that aside and watched the countdown on the display screen in the corner of my helmet.
“Launch sequence has commenced.”
“Ready for launch.”
The shuttle crew had been efficient and experienced. I was launching first. Dea, who I had not seen since the ordinance meeting back on the battleship, would be launched about half an hour behind me but arrive at nearly the exact same time. We were being hurtled through space onto opposite sides of the Dark Fleet Cruiser. Which meant the shuttle had to travel a fair distance to achieve the appropriate angle of attack for her because we were so very far away.
Dea had stayed in her bunk, which was fine with me. I wasn’t in the mood for talking to anyone. I just wanted to do my job and go home to sulk, eat ice cream and curse men in general, but one man in particular.
“Launch in ten…”
I waited.
“Five, four, three, two, one, launch.”
There was little difference in the feeling of weightlessness between the shuttle launch bay and hurtling through space at hundreds of kilometers an hour. Perhaps thousands. I wasn’t sure about the conversion rates. But it was fast. And as soon as I confirmed my trajectory and activated my boosters, I’d be what I could only call asteroid speed.
Too fast. One speck of space dust could throw a spanner in the works. Blow me to pieces.
“Quit your whining.” I was speaking to myself, but Tor appeared to be confused.
“I am unfamiliar with the term.”
“I was talking to myself.”
“Of course.”
“Have you confirmed our current trajectory? Are we on target to attach to the Cruiser?”
“Of course.”
“Brilliant. Have you sent the calculations to the shuttle?”
“Of course.”
What the everloving hell? “Stop saying of course.”
Tor did not speak to me, rather a stream of letters appeared on my helmet’s display. Two words.
‘Of course.’
I was still laughing when the shuttle crew's transmission reached me. “Lily, we have received and verified your course. Plus shut down communications and proceed with booster fire.”
“Confirmed. Going dark.” I had to appear to be a piece of rock, space junk, and nothing more or the Dark Fleet Cruiser’s defense systems would obliterate me before I even got close.
“Good luck.”
“You, too.”
I instructed Tor to shut down all non-essential systems, scanners, targeting, communications. Everything but navigation and life support. “Two minute booster burn in three, two, one...burn.”
The slight increase in heat around my legs and the internal sound of the booster firing were the only things that registered. I was in a black, lifeless void. I had no sense of time or place. Nothing to look at or study or feel. I didn’t feel real.
Watching the timer and the booster fuel readouts kept me sane as time became oddly abstract. I wasn’t normally one to suffer from claustrophobia, but my heart rate picked up and the air inside the Titan was suddenly much too hot.
Seconds later the boosters shut down and the standard temperature returned to the cockpit.
“You may speak, Tor.”
“Of course.”
I tried not to smile and failed. “How long until we arrive at the Cruiser?”
“At current speed, three hours, twenty-two minutes and sixteen seconds.”
Trapped in a tin can, shooting through space with massive bombs strapped to my Titan’s body was more of a mental challenge than I’d expected. Damn it.
“Tor, have you ever heard of chess?”
“One moment.”
I waited as he searched his onboard database. He wasn’t allowed to contact any of Velerion’s communications or data systems either.
“I have references to chess as a game played on Earth. However, I have no other information.”
“Of course...not.” Take that.
“Would you like to play a game to pass the time?”
“God yes. And please turn off my video. Do you have something else I can look at? Plants or flowers or people? Anything but empty, black space?”
“Of course.”
This time I sighed with relief at his two word response. Felt like I could breathe when photos I assumed were from the surface of Velerion began to fade in and out on my monitors. Children playing, mostly. Which was perfect. “Thank you.”
“The game of Tabula is popular on Velerion. Would you like me to teac
h you how to play?”
“Of course.” Was I being cheeky? No. Not me. Never.
Tor placed an electronic board on my screen and proceeded to explain a game very similar to backgammon.
We played for hours. Tabula. Another game similar to chess with an odd name.
I didn’t win once. But I also didn’t hyperventilate thinking about the fact that I was a speck of space dust on a suicide mission. So, I considered that a win.
Nothing, however, could keep my mind off Darius. He’d appeared at the mission briefing today, sat in the back and didn’t interfere or approach me. Which was, technically, a victory, as he was respecting my desire not to speak to him. But winning had never felt more like losing. Worse, I couldn’t shut down the memories. His touch. The sound of his voice. The way he smelled. His smile. The way I felt as my body exploded when he was inside me.
Every time I thought of him, I hurt. My heart. My soul. Every cell in my body. So why couldn’t I just stop? Why didn’t I want to stop?
“Because you love him, you idiot. You fell in love with him and pissed the whole situation.”
“I am unsure of the reference, Lily. How can I help?” Tor asked.
“You can’t. Apologies. I was talking to myself again.”
“Of course.”
I grinned. Those two words were rapidly becoming my favorite bit of comic relief. I understood why Divi, his normal Starfighter partner, hadn’t ordered him to stop saying it.
“How much longer?” I felt like the child in the back of the car asking ‘when will we get there?’ every few minutes.
“Three minutes.”
“What?”
“Five minutes, fifty-four seconds.”
“Damn it! Tor! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You asked me not to speak of it until we had arrived.”
Good Lord. “Well, this is close enough. Shut all this shit down and give me visuals.”
“Of course.”
Games disappeared and my screens activated. My view had changed dramatically.
Xenon’s moon was clearly visible, the size of a tea cup saucer directly ahead. Behind that, filling nearly my entire screen was the planet Xenon itself.
“How far away is that moon?” I could see it, but with my sensors and comms off, I had no nav grid or point of reference other than the video coming directly from the Titan’s exterior cameras to my monitor. “Do we have enough booster fuel to reach it?”
“If my calculations are correct, negative. We are well beyond booster range, even at full capacity.”
Well, that wasn’t good news, but that is what I’d been told by Mia in the briefing. She’s said this moon was a lot bigger than Earth’s, and Xenon, larger still.
In space, the size of things seemed oddly irrelevant. Everything was so massive as to be beyond true comprehension. The place was huge. I could see it, but there was no way in hell I would be able to get there.
“What if we just kept going? Could I make it? Use my boosters to land?”
“My external shielding is not designed to survive the plasma burn that would result from entering the planet’s atmosphere.”
“What about the moon?”
“Our current trajectory would not intersect with the moon’s orbit.”
Okay. So, no, no, no and fuck no. We were out here with nowhere to go if this cruiser destruction plan didn’t work out.
“Where is the Cruiser? Have you found it?”
“Of course.”
“Show me.” The command was wasted as Tor had shifted and magnified the nav grid as well as created a green targeting lock on an object that looked about the size of my thumbnail on the monitor. But it was growing rapidly. I watched in silence, trying to see the shape I was expecting, the ship I’d been shown in the mission briefings.
We moved closer. Closer. Until something unlike anything I’d seen before in the training filled half my screen.
“We will impact the enemy ship in two minutes.”
Impact was the right word. I’d been worried about missing, but the ship was almost as big as Xenon’s moon. “That doesn’t look like the Cruiser I saw earlier.”
“Correct. That is not a Xandraxian Cruiser.”
“Then what is it?” The ship was multiple shades of black, each surface reflecting the light from Vega in a different direction. It looked like a sandspur from hell.
“A Dark Fleet Battlestar.”
“What does that mean for the mission?”
“Unknown. The Velerion fleet has never encountered one in battle.”
“Tell me everything you know in the next sixty seconds.”
“Historically, the Battlestar has been used by Dark Fleet operators during planetary invasions. The ship is a polygon with twelve distinct sections. Each section is capable of breaking away from the core and attacking individually once the ship reaches its destination.”
“That thing breaks into pieces?”
“Twelve attack vessels and the core.” Tor continued as the individual spikes, long blade-like structures two or three times larger than the skyscrapers I’d seen on a visit to New York City, came closer and closer.
“Each attack vessel is an equilateral equiangular polygon with independent navigation, power and weapons systems.”
“Can you speak English, please? It looks like a compass star, but meaner.”
“I am speaking your native tongue. Would you prefer I mimic your dialect?” The question was asked in the computer equivalent of posh. It was like being lectured by my father. I shuddered.
“No. Don’t do that.”
“Of course.”
“Can we still destroy that thing with the weapons we have?”
“Unknown.”
Brilliant.
“Impact in sixty seconds.”
“Do we need to adjust course?”
“If your intention is to impact the Battlestar, no.”
“What other intention would I have?”
“Unknown. However, I do not recommend any unnecessary system activations. The Battlestar’s technology is much more advanced than the typical Xandraxian Cruiser. They may detect our presence immediately.”
“Do they already know we’re here?”
“Negative.”
“How do you know?” He didn’t know anything else.
“We would already be dead.”
Dead sounded so very final. I wasn’t panicked at the thought, but I realized I did have regrets.
I should have told Darius that I loved him. Should have given him a chance to explain himself. Should have gotten him naked last night instead of pouting in my room like a child.
Too late now.
“Has Dea arrived?”
“Unknown.”
Of course Tor didn’t know. Dea would have her Titan’s systems shut down as well. We were coming in dark and praying for a miracle.
I looked up at the massive network of black panels connected to make one of the demon star’s points. They were coming at me faster than I could comprehend.
Couldn’t slow down. One, they’d sense the Titan’s power system. Two, space debris didn’t slow down. It didn’t change course.
I activated my borrowed Titan’s grappling claws. Braced myself for pain. The suit I wore would keep me alive, the Titan’s internal systems prevent my body from taking most of the impact.
Hitting the massive ship was still going to hurt.
“Impact in three...two...one…”
Make that miracles. Plural. I was going to need more than one. And so was Velerion.
13
Darius, Titan Tycho
* * *
I watched Lily climb inside her borrowed Titan and breathed a sigh of relief that she had not sought me out. Well, not me, but Dea, the Starfighter who was supposed to be on this mission.
Dea herself had helped me sneak on board the shuttle in the dark hours of the night. We’d swapped Titans so she could take Intrepidus on her newly assigned mission on Ve
lerion while Tycho and I took her place out here. With Lily. My stubborn, beautiful pair-bonded female.
The launch sequence commenced and the Titan shot off the rail system as fast as I’d ever seen. I stood in the view room and waited until she’d confirmed her coordinates and fired her boosters.
There was no turning back now. For either of us.
She was mine. I was a fool. I’d humiliated her without realizing my mistake. Made her feel that I lacked confidence in her abilities when the opposite was true. She was strong. An excellent fighter. Fearless.
Just like my brother had been.
I was the one who was weak. Afraid to lose her. And yet, my need to keep her safe had driven her from my side, out here, to the most dangerous Titan mission ever attempted.
Somewhere out there were two other shuttles with two Titans on each. Bantia and Ulixes on one. A bonded pair I did not know well on the other. And if any one of our teams failed, Velerion would fall to Queen Raya and the Dark Fleet.
There were few things I was willing to die to protect. Lily was first. But second was my home. My planet. My people. We could not fail.
“Load up, Starfighter. We are approaching your launch coordinates.”
I nodded at the shuttle crew member as she walked by and made my way toward Tycho.
After climbing inside, I waited for the rail system to lift me into the launch position. My Titan swayed.
“Starfighter, loading has commenced.”
“Copy. Ready to load.”
I watched the inner support structures of the launch bay sway before my eyes. There was no change in gravity, or lack of. The only indication of my movement was the shifting position of the shuttle’s walls.
Fighting back the urge to bark at them to hurry the fuck up and get me to Lily, I bit my tongue.
“Launch sequence has commenced. Launch in ten…...five, four, three, two, one, launch.”
I closed my eyes as my display screens showed streaks of light moving past, the tiny pinpricks of light from distant stars had become lines of white in my peripheral vision.
“Tycho, check out coordinates and launch trajectory. Confirm our position and send it to the shuttle crew.”
Elite Starfighter: Starfighter Training Academy - Game 3 Page 9