4
Lily, Titan Tech Bay
Six meters tall.Stealth black metal. The giant robot-looking Titan was armed with small missiles, loaded guns, and a host of other weapons buried beneath the Titan’s outer shell. The word Athena and the Elite Starfighter emblem had been engraved over the chest plate.
“She’s mine?”
Darius reached above his head and rested his bent arm on the giant Titan’s leg. “Custom-made for you based on biometric scans acquired during training simulations.” He patted the massive machine leg and looked up, way up, to the top of the Titan’s body. “After we run this mission, you can request any necessary changes. We have our own tech team that will maintain and repair our Titans.”
“We do?” This was all so much. Everything was larger than life. I felt like I was walking around on a psychedelic trip of some kind. “Where is yours?”
Darius grinned and pointed to a docking bay next to the one we were currently standing in. “Right next to you, where I belong.”
I blushed. The heat crept up my cheeks, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it. I’d seen him naked. He’d seen me naked. I’d ridden his cock like a wild thing. So why was I blushing now? Damn it.
A loud voice filled the chamber. “Loading to commence. Titan One, clear your bay.”
Bright green light flickered a warning, and a massive set of metal arms lowered from the ceiling to lift the Titan onto a track. I watched, fascinated, as it slid forward, then turned, heading for a loading area aboard a large shuttle of some kind.
The process looked exactly like I’d seen hundreds of times in the training simulation. Back on Earth, I’d admired the cut scenes and graphics, thought the artist’s rendering of the inside of the base was pure sci-fi sweetness, the Titans fun to look at but not at all frightening.
Now?
The Titans were massive. Built for destruction. War. They were death machines. Chaos on the ground. The claw like fingers could puncture metal structures as thick as my arm was long. The targeting system inside could shoot down Scythe fighters or take out armed bunkers.
I stared at Darius’s Titan as he walked to a tech display station and looked over the status report for his machine. “Looks good. Let’s take a look at Athena, shall we?”
“Yes.” Of course. In the training simulation, this had all happened automatically. But that had been a video game. This time I was going into battle firing real weapons.
Darius took my hand and led me to the display panel connected to my Titan as the overly loud announcements continued. They were loading Titan Eight.
“What numbers are we?” I asked.
“Thirteen and fourteen. We’re team seven. We have a few minutes.”
“Titan Team Seven. Right.” I’d heard that fact during the briefing. Team Seven. Which meant there were six other teams, twelve other Titans that would be loaded before we would. But… “In the game—I mean training—it was first on, last off.”
“Correct.”
“And we’re last on? First off?”
“Yes.” Darius squeezed my hand even as he used his free hand to move over the control panel, his gaze glued to the Titan’s status reports, not me. “Athena looks great. We’re ready.”
Ready? I’d been here less than a day, hadn’t even been inside my Titan, and we were going to be first out the door on Xenon, running straight into enemy fire?
Brilliant.
No, I was not okay. But I didn’t really have a choice, did I? This was what I’d agreed to and, apparently, trained for. My heart pounded, and only half from fear.
In my real life, I was a wallflower. Introvert. Spent more time with books than humans. I was at the library so much I didn’t dare have a pet, not even a cat. But in the game?
In the game I was brilliant. Fearless. Aggressive. I kicked everyone’s ass, screamed at my enemies, and tore down walls with my bare hands. In the game, I was a monster.
And I had come to realize I enjoyed being that monster. I was tired of hiding all my emotions and acting as if everything was right with the world.
Sometimes a lady needed to scream out loud. And here was my chance.
Terrified? Yes. I was also excited. Adrenaline was flowing. I felt…alive.