Starfighter Command

by Grace Goodwin

“What?” Mia’s gasp made me wince with guilt. If it weren’t for me, Captain Sponder, the leader of Group Two, would have done what he was supposed to do. A shuttle would have been standing by, close enough to get here in under a minute, as the mission parameters required, regardless of whether or not our ship had gone down. Instead he was going to make up some fuck-all excuse, no one would be able to prove he’d done anything wrong, all evidence of the bomb he’d planted on Mia’s ship would be destroyed and Mia would be dead.

  Fuck.

  Of course, he’d planned on her being dead already.

  There was no time to argue. No other group would have a ship in place to assist. That responsibility had been assigned to Group Two. Sponder’s group.

  “We have to run, Mia!”

  “Shit. He knows I know. He really did want me dead all along.” She stood, abandoning her equipment. We would sprint, run as fast as we could, but it wasn’t going to be fast enough.

  “Yeah, and for me to suffer knowing you are going to die. Come on.” I took Mia’s hand and pulled her out of the moon base and onto the surface.

  “There’s nowhere to run, Kass.”

  I scanned the horizon, desperate for a rocky outcropping, a groove in the ground, anywhere that would give us the slightest chance of survival. “Run for the ship.”

  Hand in hand we sprinted across the moon’s surface toward the remains of our ship. Perhaps, if we could hide behind the wreckage, maybe even burrow inside somewhere behind the hull, we would survive the bioflare coming for us.

  Mia tugged her hand free of mine and pulled ahead, increasing our pace. I followed, unwilling to run ahead of her. If we were going to die, I would die shielding Mia.

  “I know this isn’t the best time…” Mia panted the words as we ran for our lives.

  “I’m here.”

  “It’s crazy. And stupid. And makes no sense. But I love you. If I’m going to die, I’m glad it’s with you. I have no regrets, Kass. I want you to know that.”

  Her breathing was ragged as we sprinted.

  “I love you, Mia. And I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. Sponder’s not sending someone because of me.” My visor’s alert system flashed a warning, and I glanced into space. “There it is.”

  Mia looked up as well, and I knew exactly what made her gasp. The bioflare was clearly visible, its comet-like tail leaving a trail of brilliant blue light streaking behind it. “Oh shit.”

  “Keep moving.”

  “We’re not going to make it.” Mia ran despite her dire prediction. “And it’s not because of you. He’s working with Delegate Rainhart. Sponder. He’s a traitor, and he was afraid I was going to figure it out.”

  “What?” I stumbled and nearly fell. “No, Mia. What are you saying?”

  Her words came in bursts as she fought for breath. “Sponder. He’s been working with Rainhart for at least three years. Since before the original Starfighter base was attacked. He’s a traitor. He was nervous when Jennix threatened him with that audit, but after today he knows I know.”

  My mind scrambled, trying to make sense of what she was telling me. “How would he know that?”

  Twenty-five seconds and the Phantom was still at least thirty paces away.

  “I sort of sent some information to General Jennix on the way here.”

  Twenty seconds.

  “Mia, why didn’t you tell—”

  A blast of light rose over the moon’s horizon from just ahead of us. A starfighter. “Would you two stop chatting and get your asses over here before we all blow the fuck up.”

  Mia laughed out loud as I tried to register where I’d heard that female voice before.

  “Jamie? Did you just say ‘fuck’?” Mia asked between gasps of air.

  That was Jamie and Alexius?

  “Yes. So get your asses over here. I like my ship almost as much as I like you. Don’t make me choose.”

  A small starfighter moved close, then hovered just above the ground, almost far enough away to be safely out of range of the bioflare. Almost. Neither Mia nor I slowed our pacing as a small door opened on the side. There was no ramp, just Alexius reaching his arm out toward us.

  Mia reached up first, and Alexius pulled her inside as I followed, leaping behind her. Alexius made sure I was secure before slamming the door closed and squeezing past us. It was tight, but I held Mia against my chest as Alexius slipped behind her, back to the copilot’s seat. There were two jump seats behind them, facing one another, with just enough room that Mia and I might not rub our knees together.

  I tugged Mia to the seats, and we sat immediately.

  “Buckle up. This might get bumpy.”

  “Five seconds,” I said, checking the time. Fuck.

  “Hold on!” Jamie shouted the warning as their ship took off like a beam of light, racing away from the moon’s surface.

  I watched the countdown in my visor.

  Four.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  The ship bucked and jolted like we were tumbling down a rocky cliff. Somehow Jamie and Alexius kept the ship under control. Its outer hull shielded us from the worst of the blast, the temperature rising inside their starfighter just enough to make me uncomfortable. But our skin hadn’t melted off our bodies, so I considered that a win.

  I only had one side of my harness buckled. Mia was less fortunate, her body swinging wildly as she hung on to the shoulder straps with her gloved hands. Once we stabilized, I reached for her leg and pulled her back down into her seat. She buckled the harness with shaking fingers as I held her in place.

  “Thanks.” She grinned at me, and I sighed with relief. She was unharmed. Thank Vega.

  “Anytime, my Mia.”

  A voice came through the starfighter’s ship comm. “Starfighters? This is General Jennix on a secure channel.”

  “Yes, General,” Jamie responded.

  “Confirm retrieval of the Starfighter MCS pair.”

  Jamie looked over her shoulder at me. Mia sat directly behind her, so the two Earth women could not make eye contact. Instead Jamie reached back with her hand, which Mia gripped at once.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Excellent news, Starfighter. Return them to the Resolution, then continue with your original mission. I have informed General Aryk of your detour, but you are to say nothing. The shuttle teams are now directly under General Aryk’s command. As far as Captain Sponder is concerned, Mia and Kassius are dead.”

  I looked to Mia. She eyed me.

  “Yes, General.” Jamie ended the comm and the four of us sat in silence for a few seconds. The quiet did nothing to dampen the cold rage settling like an ice blanket over my bones.

  “He almost killed you,” I said. “Not once but twice.” I’d hated Sponder before, but now… he’d wanted Mia dead. Me? I knew he had it in for me, but nothing… no one fucked with my pair bond.

  Before the bomb, it had been my mission to be free of Sponder. Now he was going down.

  12

  Mia

  * * *

  Jamie and Alex flew the Valor back to Battleship Resolution with the comm channels open so we could all hear what was happening. When our ship exploded, the mission had been paused. All teams had been battle ready and waiting for the shields to go down to begin their portion of the takeover of Xenon. But the entire plan hinged on Kass and me overriding the controls on the moon base. No one—ourselves included—expected to do it by hand. On the moon’s surface.

  Or that we’d survived the crash. But our comms to General Jennix had kept the mission from being aborted or delayed. As soon as we’d shut down Dark Fleet control of the moon base, the mission was a go.

  We’d survived. We’d taken down the force field around Xenon that the Dark Fleet was using to keep Velerion forces from regaining control of their colony and the factories. We’d done everything we were asked to do, and now our role was complete.

  As Jamie took us back to the battleship, we heard the details
of the rest of the mission. Everything. The attack. The losses. The way the people of Xenon rose up to help overthrow the ground forces under Queen Raya’s command as well as the Dark Fleet ships serving her once the force field had been removed.

  It was a quick assault. A quick victory. I could only imagine how eager the Xenon colonists were for their liberation.

  Jamie and Alex didn’t linger at the docking station, only hovering the Valor over it so we could descend the ramp before it was retracted. Then they were off.

  So were we. Straight to the forward operations center inside the battleship’s control room.

  In all the years I’d worked in law enforcement, helped to hunt down and capture the bad guys, I’d never wanted to see anyone behind bars as much as Sponder. I’d met people who were vile. Evil. Without conscience. But I’d never hated any of them.

  I hated Captain Sponder.

  I was possessive of Kass. Ridiculously so. Knowing that Sponder had it in for Kass, that he’d almost kept him away from me, made me furious. But knowing Sponder had actually planted evidence to see him rot in jail for something he didn’t do, made me clench my fists, ready to break his nose all over again. And Kass was just the tip of the iceberg. I didn’t know much about what had happened to the Velerion people over the last two or three years, but Sponder had probably killed thousands of people. Thousands. He was pure evil.

  But Kass? He was so far past where I was in his anger. His jaw was clenched, his face a hard mask. He had a mission of his own. Nothing, not even Commissioner Gaius, was going to stop him this time. Uncle or no uncle, Sponder was finished.

  We made our way through the maze of corridors to get to the forward operations command center, our pace swift. The doors slid silently open, but the room was full of commotion and noise. It looked like the Houston NASA control room in the movies. A front wall was covered in comms screens, each one showing a different part of the mission. Ground fighters. Air battles. Everything was happening at once. This was the place where it could all be witnessed simultaneously.

  And everyone was going to see what happened next.

  Kass stopped just inside the entry. His gaze scanned the room until he locked on, like an IPBM targeting a planet, to Sponder, who was onboard the Resolution and sitting at his command station like the cat who ate the canary. He thought we were dead. He believed his treachery had gone undetected. Again.

  Kass stalked around the rows of control desks and stopped beside the man. Sponder looked up, his eyes widening, and he stood. In fact he hopped up much faster than I expected for someone of his age.

  “You belong in the brig,” Sponder said. His nose was crooked and swollen, and he’d have two black eyes in a few hours from Kass’s earlier headbutt.

  “You belong in the ground.”

  The mission continued around us, but Jennix came over. Another general—I assumed since the uniforms matched—as well.

  “MCS, this is not the time,” Jennix said.

  Kass took a second but finally lifted his gaze from Sponder. He looked over the asshole’s shoulder at Jennix.

  “It is, General. He locked me up with fabricated evidence, planted a bomb on the Phantom, which not only was intended to jeopardize the entire mission, but murder Mia and the other pilot. And he refused to retrieve us from the moon surface in order to cover his crimes.”

  As Kass spoke, Sponder started to sputter and deny.

  “Who knows what other ways he’s sabotaged Velerion? Or this mission.”

  Jennix didn’t even blink.

  “Why should I trust the words of an MCS who cheated?” Jennix asked. She knew the truth. I could see it in her eyes, but she was enjoying watching Sponder squirm. As was I.

  “Innocent until proven guilty, General,” Kass replied.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “The same could be said for Sponder.”

  “I request his immediate removal from the command center!” Sponder said.

  Jennix didn’t even blink. I took the locked stare between Kass and the general as my cue. I made my way down to the trio, nodded to the new general—Aryk, I thought, because he was the one who’d been on Jamie’s screen when she’d won the game.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and let the hate boil through my blood. “Sponder is a traitor and a liar, General, and I found the proof,” I said. “You have it. All of it. I sent it to you.”

  Sponder went quiet.

  “And Sponder had the proof to have you arrested,” Jennix said to Kass.

  “I said I found the proof. You have it. I sent it to you before the Phantom exploded.”

  Jennix eyed me and continued to play her role. I had no idea why she was doing this, but I didn’t question her choices. Perhaps she had to play this game to satisfy the Commissioner? Or to solidify mine and Kass’s reputation as a highly skilled Starfighter MCS team.

  “Graves!” she shouted.

  “Yes, General.” Her emissary appeared almost immediately.

  “You are Group Five Leader until I return.”

  “Yes, General,” Graves repeated, then disappeared.

  “Comms,” Jennix said to the room. “Retrieve Jennix data files sent from MCS Becker. Past two hours.”

  “Processing,” the AI-generated voice replied. “Data visible on screen six.”

  Jennix pivoted on her heel and walked to a screen along the side wall and stood for long minutes, reading. Processing. She stared at the display. I knew when she read the details of Sponder’s connection to Delegate Rainhart because her spine stiffened and I could almost see the steam coming off her shoulders. Her self-control was admirable, as was her acting skill.

  “Explain, MCS Becker,” she said.

  “This is preposterous, General,” Sponder sputtered, but a trickle of sweat ran down his cheek.

  Jennix held up her hand. “The Phantom mysteriously exploded, Captain. I have questions. If Becker’s data is inaccurate, she will share a cell with her pair bond.”

  Which meant she believed me—and the data I’d sent to her—because, if she didn’t, she would have done the political thing and set up an investigation to review the data at a later date. But now, here, it was displayed in front of the entire mission control team. She’d probably doubted Sponder all along but had no proof that would enable her to do anything about it.

  Sponder wasn’t arrested yet, but I was exhilarated. This wasn’t like flying in the Phantom with Kass. This was like my work on Earth. I dug up the data. Processed it. Analyzed it. Found the bad guys. Took them down.

  Facts were facts. It was finding those facts that made catching the bad guys hard. I brought the truth to light, and I was damn good at it.

  I would now, for the first time, expose the dark truth about someone I knew. Someone I could look in the eyes and enjoy watching them realize they’d been caught. It was also the first time someone’s evil had affected me and someone I loved.

  On Earth, my job had been real but not personal.

  Now, this? Sponder? It was more than personal.

  I started with the information I’d retrieved on the Phantom.

  “I believe you’ve heard of Delegate Rainhart? The traitor to all of Velerion? The person responsible for the decimation of the Starfighter fleet?”

  I thought a hush fell over the room for a moment.

  “Yes,” Jennix said. The one word was taut with tension.

  Everyone knew what Rainhart had done. I didn’t know how widespread that knowledge might be because I was new to the planet, but apparently he was infamous.

  “Captain Sponder is in league with Rainhart?”

  “That’s outrageous!” Sponder shouted. “I’m here leading Group Two shuttle teams, offering valuable resources to Xenon. How can you not question her data? Her pair bond is a cheat and a liar. Guards, arrest him. Again. Arrest them both.”

  Guards appeared behind Kass. I felt movement behind me and turned to see two less than enthusiastic members of the control room’s security detail. They
hadn't touched me, yet. Sponder opened his mouth to shout more orders, but Jennix held up a hand.

  “Wait,” she called. The guards stilled, holding off for additional orders from Jennix, who outranked Sponder. “Continue, MCS Becker.”

  I nodded. “On the screen, you can clearly see the trail of data that proves they’ve been working on multiple projects together for well over a year. I found encrypted files with structural drawings and maps of a massive base of some kind as well as a large building on the surface of Velerion. It looks like a giant meeting place of some kind. The Hall of Records?”

  “Oh shit,” the other general said. “Queen Raya is going to take out the Hall of Records?”

  “What is that?” I asked.

  Kass blinked hard, and I saw him brighten as he thought of a way to explain it to me. “It’s like a country’s capitol building on Earth. All the lawmakers are there, like a Velerion senate.”

  Jennix began to rub her forehead in a subtle sign of distress. “There are many secret passageways, underground tunnels, and decentralized power stations to protect it from a direct assault. We knew she’d received her information about the Starfighter base from Delegate Rainhart. But if Queen Raya has the structural details for the Hall of Records as well?”

  “General, this is—”

  Jennix looked to Sponder. “Silence.”

  Sponder was fighting for his life now and forged ahead despite the general’s warning. “If he falsified his records for the training program, what makes you think his pair bond isn’t doing the same now? To protect him?”

  “Because MCS Becker didn’t know Velerion was real until two days ago. The time stamp on the data collection indicates the time when MCS Remeas was in the brig.”

  “And in the Phantom, General,” I added. “I discovered the link to Rainhart on the way to the moon base.”

  She glanced at the second time stamp and nodded. Then continued with Sponder. “You put Remeas in the brig yourself. Becker wouldn’t have had time to learn the history of Delegate Rainhart and fake reports. And since she was expecting Lieutenant Markus to be her mission partner, they certainly couldn’t plan this en route.”