Elite Starfighter, Game 3 by Grace Goodwin

5

Darius

A Scythe fighterappeared 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 fueling 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.