The First Starfighter by Grace Goodwin (lightweight ebook reader txt) 📕

With all three Scythe fighters destroyed, I brought the Valor around and headed toward Gamma 4’s docking station and opened comms. “Gamma 4, this is Starfighter Valor. Scythe fighters have been destroyed. Repeat, Scythe fighters have been destroyed.”

I waited, expecting a shocked shout of thanks. Nothing.

“Gamma 4, this is the Starfighter Valor. Do you copy?”

More nothing. Damn it.

“Why aren’t they answering?” I asked Alex.

He didn’t look up, checking his data monitors. “The jamming signal is still in place.”

“How is that possible?” Unless…

An explosion rocked through the back of the ship, and I checked my controls. “We’re hit. They burned out the control panel for our rear-facing missiles.”

A warning sound blared, and Alex pressed a button to shut it off. He immediately rattled off critical data. Remaining weapons. Life support.

I looked at my engines. I could fly. I still had control. Whoever had just fired at us had their one shot.

And they’d missed.

“Lock down everything we don’t need. I’m taking him out.” Already in evasive maneuvers, I spun the Valor around to find a shuttle loaded with missiles bearing down on us.

“They have target lock.”

“I thought you said their jammers were still up.”

“Guess they turned them off so they could try to kill us.”

“Shit.”

“I’ve got target lock.”

“No. Jam them. I’ll take them out.”

Alex activated our jamming system as I put the Valor into a spinning dive away from the shuttle and their missiles.

“Does that thing have laser cannons?” I asked.

“Unknown.”

“Great.” As we spun, the missile they’d fired slipped past us and exploded in the rocky face of the asteroid just above the Gamma 4 base. “What the hell is that?”

“Looks like a shuttle with missiles.”

Genius. “I can see that. I never saw that in the game.”

“Training simulation,” he countered with a grumble. “And I’ve never seen one either.”

Pushing the Valor to dangerous speeds, I flipped us around and came up on the backside of the shuttle, my finger itching to fire the laser cannons and take them out. But it wasn’t a Scythe fighter. It was a shuttle. “How many people are on that thing?”

“Unknown.”

“Rephrase. How many people can that shuttle carry?”

He glanced at me, then up, through the translucent cockpit cover, to study the ship. “Twenty. Maybe thirty.”

I had two, maybe three seconds to make a decision.

“They have missile lock on the base,” Alex said.

There were children on that base.

I pulled the trigger on my controller, and four laser cannons, two mounted under each of Valor’s wings, hit the shuttle simultaneously. It exploded into hundreds of burning fragments as my attack tore the shuttle apart.

“How many people did I just kill?”

Alex sighed, but if he’d really been flying all those gaming—training—simulations with me, he would know I was not going to let this drop. “Best estimate is about thirty. Three per Scythe fighter, which is nine, and about twenty on the modified shuttle. But I could be off a bit on my count.”

“I just killed thirty people.” It was not a question.

“No. We just saved over a hundred civilian lives.”

That math did not add up for me. Logically I was fine. But my soul was hurting. I was a killer now. I. Had. Killed.

My heart dropped with the adrenaline dump. Alex had said the same thing to me over and over again, but this was the first time I truly understood.

This absolutely, positively was not a game. What had I done?

9

Alex, Starfighter Base on the Moon Arturri

The ship was guided in through the last grid by the autonav system, and the sigh I heard escape from Jamie echoed my thoughts exactly.

What a nightmare. An unexpected confrontation and fight with the Dark Fleet.

On her first day. I’d hoped to ease her into a battle, but that was the way of it with Queen Raya. Fuck.

Jamie had been so happy and excited about seeing the ship. She’d thrown herself into my arms, and I’d dragged her to the control room, getting a taste of what our future might be. Full of trust. Passion. A partnership in all things.

After, when we’d taken the starfighter out, she’d smiled with my home world spinning below us, the joy on her face making her radiant. Shockingly beautiful. Just watching her, I’d wanted her more than I had before, enough to bring me to my knees.

Then the Scythe fighters attack had killed every ounce of happiness in her. She couldn’t question if this was real now. Our role in this war was devastatingly dangerous. The damage to the Valor was proof of that. An entire section of the rear weapons system was half missing, the control panel nothing more than scorched remnants. The cockpit cover had taken damage from our high-speed encounter with debris from the first ship Jamie had destroyed, the cracks not deep enough to kill us but enough that the entire cover would have to be replaced. The laser cannon power supply was down by fifty percent, and our front-facing missiles were gone. We would need replacements at once. Unfortunately, as I inspected the bottom side of the wings, I saw that two mounting brackets had been damaged as well.

The best repair crew on base would need several hours to repair the minor damage. I had no idea how long the weapon control system would require.

A full day? Two?

I had walked around the entire ship inspecting the damage while Jamie sat in the pilot’s seat, staring at nothing, and I had not registered her distress.

What kind of bondmate was I? It angered me that I would only find my bondmate through a training program, that the only reason she would come to Velerion was because of her fighting prowess. I’d intentionally brought my mate from her own home world to fight in my war, for my people. She was beautiful and soft, and I’d made her face death. I’d been beside her and watched her kill.

Wanted her to kill. Been thrilled and proud of her skill. I had