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

Finding the traitor meant saving lives, including Jamie’s. She was my highest priority now. She was my bondmate. My lover. My fighting partner. To the general, she was one of his strongest weapons. I would keep her safe out of duty and, more importantly, out of greed. I was greedy for every look, every kiss.

“I have the comm tower and power grid on-screen,” Jamie said beside me as she slowed our ship to pair with the speed of the lumbering hex port. “This thing is huge. It’s like an international airport terminal floating in space.”

I didn’t know what that was, but I had a feeling she’d said it as a reference more for herself than for me.

“Arming missiles.” I readied the two weapons that had been specially mounted to the Valor in preparation for this target. They were larger than our normal ordinance and would create vast craters on the backside of this floating mega-ship. If we were lucky, it would tear the place apart.

“Target acquired,” Jamie said.

My finger flexed on the kill switch as the other Starfighter’s comm cut through our helmets.

“Starfighter One and Three, there’s nothing here.” Gustar’s voice came through loud and clear.

“Repeat, Starfighter Two,” Jamie said. Her dark eyes met mine, then flicked to the hex port.

“We’re looking at the docking bay. It’s empty. No craft and the scans indicate no life-forms.”

“The attack on Gamma 4 came from here,” I added, staring at the mega-ship. My mind was working over what Gus was saying.

“This is the Triton.” It was Zeke in Starfighter One. “The weapons depot is empty, and there’s nothing in the manufacturing bays. I agree with Gustar. There may have been a squadron here for the attack on Gamma 4, but they’re gone now. They must have known we were coming.”

The traitor. He must have tipped them off. Again.

“Shit,” Jamie murmured under her breath, saying aloud my exact thoughts.

“We should blow it,” Ryziz said. “We’ve confirmed there are no life-forms. The Dark Fleet will only return, and it is so massive they could use it as a base again later.”

I glanced at Jamie.

“Your call,” she said. “You know them better than me.”

I nodded. “I agree, Starfighter Two. However we’re on the opposite side. It was one thing to destroy sections of a hex port of this size, but the entire thing? Debris’s going to spread like an asteroid belt and we’ll be caught in the fallout. It will also drift into the flight grids of Arturri. We should destroy it from this side and then the debris can clog up Syrex’s flight pattern.”

I heard a chuckle through the helmet. “Good thinking, Starfighter Three.”

Jamie gave me a nod, and I saw something like pride and admiration in her eyes. She trusted me. Here in space and also in our bed.

I took a deep breath and focused on the task.

“You and Starfighter One, regroup at rendezvous site two,” I ordered. “We’ll join you there after we decimate the hex port.”

“Affirmative,” said Ry. “Meet you at the rendezvous site. Starfighter Two out.”

“Agreed,” said Zeke. “Starfighter One disengaging.”

“Take out the weapon station first?” I asked Jamie when the comm was clear. We were alone with an abandoned hex port.

“You’re reading my mind,” she said.

I grinned. “I believe that’s what you said last night, during your third…no, I think it was your fourth orgasm.”

“Behave.” Jamie’s order was ruined by the happy grin on her face. I knew her body far better than I knew her mind. But I had time to learn.

Jamie was quiet for a moment and scanned the blackness. “Let’s get this done and get the hell out of here. My skin is starting to crawl.”

I knew what that meant. That was one of the sayings she’d chosen to program into her training simulation, and I’d heard her voice use just that tone many, many times.

Her instincts, even in the simulation, had rarely been wrong.

“Firing.” I pulled the firing trigger and watched with satisfaction as the two missiles covered the vast space in a matter of seconds and blew the comm station and the surrounding power grids to bits of space debris.

We watched for a moment in the eerie silence.

“It’s too quiet here,” Jamie murmured. “Even with the guts of that thing destroyed, this is… too easy. I mean, we’re forgetting something.”

I stilled, processed what her feelings were, and turned them into reality. My skin was crawling now, alarms shooting up and down my spine as I refreshed the scanners one more time. Fuck. “Nothing’s here. Which means—”

“We need to get out of here,” she cut in to say. “Set thrusters to… Oh shit.”

Her voice faded as a large warship appeared from around the side of the hex port. Two smaller gunships, either capable of taking us out with the push of a button, flanked it.

“How did our scans not pick them up?” she asked, her hands flying over the controls. When they continued to give us no data, she went on. “Tell me that’s not a Dark Fleet armada with their jammers on. It couldn’t be since we spoke to the other teams. Then what is it?”

I swallowed hard. My heart was pounding. This was bad.

This was really fucking bad.

“That’s a command warship. Minimum of a hundred Scythe fighters onboard. The smaller ones have cannons big enough to wipe us out and another twenty or thirty fighters each.” I checked my scanners again. “Jamie, power down all weapons. We’re being hailed.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Jamie.”

“No. We can get out of this. I’ve seen worse.”

“No.” All at once, all the enemy’s ships appeared on our radar. “Fuck. We have ten Scythe fighters already on our tail, two gunships, and a fully armed warship ahead of us. You start a fight, we die. Power down,” I snapped.

“Damn it. I fucking hate this.” She slapped her hand on the controller.

“Live to fight another day.” Hopefully.

“I can hit the gas, and we can run.”

I considered her idea for a fraction of a second.