Page 19

My use of suit thrusters is clumsy and sends me into a tumble that takes me a second to map and correct as I race toward Scythe.

I know they’re freaked out about the vessel because I’m learning to sort their communications faster and read them in a split second as they load on my helmet.

I’ve always been a fast learner, and right now, that’s a critical asset when I’m seriously inexperienced.

I glance back at Kelta’s ship to see her on the hull, kicking free the toasted engine. I think she’ll be okay. She seems familiar enough with ships that she doesn’t need help.

I’m the one who needs it.

Mental help for this idiotic decision!

This is not where I excel. But I know Scythe is the Reaper of Titans, and there’s no way in hell I’m letting them get anywhere close to the BlazeStar or the main battlefield if I can do anything about it.

Air thunders over my suit. It feels like trying to stand up under a waterfall. I can’t quite look up, and my feet are unsteady. But I have a special hatred for Scythe.

I had hoped it was taken out in the war. I know it has special shielding and anti-Titan weapons. It is CSP’s flagship. And the only ones who can get on board without being blown to pieces are CSP officers. I just don’t know if they can tell who’s still loyal by which ships we come from.

Otherwise, I am the perfect weapon.

If they don’t shoot me out of the sky.

Maintaining radio silence, I rocket myself toward the incoming vessel.

ScytheCO 952: Report.

I say nothing even as they repeat it. They’ll know something is wrong because my vocal patterns likely won’t match whoever is on file for this suit.

ScytheCO 952: If your radio is down, click back twice.

Yeah, no.

It’s a test. If I click back, it’s not down. It’s switched off for a reason. It’s a manipulation tactic CSP are known for. Redirection. Deflection. Distraction.

“Ping, switch off.” It’s a guess at the suit’s capabilities.

An alert flashes in the upper right corner with a signal beacon in a circle with a line through it in red.

No one can track me now. Not my source patrol ship, not the Titans.

Not Scythe. I know a few things. Not everything.

But enough. If there was a way CSP could play dirty and keep control, they did.

We were so afraid of what our AI and cybernetic creations would do to us if they learned they were stronger that we lived in fear of something we didn’t need to. Then, our elite human guards turned on our finest creations, tortured them, and killed them because of that fear.

Now look at where we are.

I am so ashamed of the weakest of our kind, and yet I know it is because they did not understand our creations. I do. They were not ready to confront their fears. I am.

I’m trying.

Titans are human inside. Armor has shown me that. Everything from lust and tenderness to anger and desperation. They still care about their Brothers, want to know love, to feel alive, and to have purpose. Solcrue threaten all of it. And CSP. Especially Scythe.

Scythe banks away from me, likely because I have not responded.

If I don’t redline my suit, I will miss catching a ride and my chance to stop them. But I’m already behind.

Scythe launches familiar warping pulses that make Titans fall like dead weight on their ships, toppling to the dunes like husks of gray men. Stolen Skysprinters plummet to the dunes from the EMP blasts.

It is heart-wrenching to watch. I swallow against the ache forming in my throat, hating that any of them have to know such misery and deep down praying Armor isn’t hit.

Knowing what I do about how his Brother squadrons from the BlazeStar met their fate makes me all the more determined to take Scythe out of the game.

A shield flickers to life around Thruster as he rockets through the air, rescuing falling brothers. I don’t know if he’ll be fast enough, and he’s on limited power. He can’t do it forever. None of them can.

Another shielded Titan fires rockets manually from another vessel. He hops off of it and falls to another, where he fires again like he’s challenging them to try to hit him. But the number of Titans they’re taking down is devastating.

“Increase thrusters to 100 percent,” I command my suit.

My suit surges so hard that I strain to keep my body upright as I soar across the dunes and catch up to the stern engines of Scythe. Blood drains from my head. I breathe faster to help my heart compensate.

Overheat warnings flash in my shaky vision. Power lever drops a bar every two seconds.

Come on… Please make it.

A Skysprinter explodes midair to my right in a plume of fire, smoke, and shrapnel. Instinct makes me want to duck inside my suit, but I can’t break course, or I won’t reach my target.

Metal fragments plink as they rain over my husk. And then I see what nearly turns me inside out.

A ship with a gaping hole in the side banks along the distant mountains.

“Zoom in, visual.”

My visor focuses the image of a winged Titan crawling along the ship, black spots darkening his body.

Armor?

Anger I haven’t felt in a long time roars to life inside me. I grit my teeth and bring Scythe back into view.

Alert: Overheat and shut down in five…four…

Almost there…

Three...two...

I try to make myself as aerodynamic as I can, folding my arms and legs tightly together. It helps me close in on Scythe until I’ve got a handhold within reach. Flying under the main engines, I slip between them, reach an arm up, and snag the aileron as my visor flashes and my suit cuts out.

The weight of my body and the dead suit threaten to break my grip. My visor switches off as my body steams in the wind.

I’m on my own now.

I lug myself up and study the radiant swirling light inside a nearby cylinder. Portal generator?

Suddenly, it makes sense how Scythe has been able to be everywhere all at once, how they showed up and took Myria and the others out of the fog, made it to battles all over the galaxy to capture Titans, swaying the war in the Solcrue’s favor, and dropped in here without any word circulating among the Titans or Clover and all the scanners available to her on the BlazeStar.

Portals were never something I could find a lot of study material on. But I read everything I could when I was stuck in the mines.

I want to tell Armor, Commander Savage, anyone. But my suit is offline. Its mechanical assists are all I have to help me now.

There has to be a maintenance hatch close by if they have portal generators.

I climb around the unit to the hull of the ship, duck under an engine turbine shaft, and find an airlock.

It’s engaged from the inside, but there is always an emergency backup on CSP ships.

As much as they kept tools for themselves that they didn’t let anyone else have, just like Solcrue, they also had backups to get them out of situations, even though they presented vulnerabilities like the one I’m going to exploit now.

Bashing an elbow into the control panel, I find the solenoid that the power runs through to the door and rip it out. The hatch’s shielding shuts down.

I’m going to have to be fast if I don’t want to be an easy target for whatever patrol is in this area of the ship.

I get up and brace myself on the hull. They’re going to hear me for sure.

Grabbing my rifle from my back, I steady it in front of me, watch it light up, and switch off the safety.

Then, I stomp a heel at the mechanical latch.

All those months of compiling bits of data and salvaged pages from textbooks on CSP and Solcruean ships under a headlamp with the constant threat of a mine collapse is suddenly worth it.

Prying open the hatch, I peek inside with my rifle. I find no one in the immediate area, climb inside, and close the hatch.

What to wreck first…

I’m on a lower deck, below the cockpit. Guns will be up another level, but the munitions core that powers the rows of guns will be up two floors.

I’ve got to find a way out of the area I’m in so any soldiers coming for the infiltrator won’t find me.

I have no doubt they’ve received the signal of hatch shielding offline.

I find an ascent shaft ladder behind an engine power turbine and fold my helmet back so I can switch to my goggles and hear worth a damn in the local area.

I could power down the ship, but then I’d die when it crashed.

With my suit offline, I don’t like that plan.

And the portal generator is still on my mind. I’m certain there’s a use for it.

Exiting into the maintenance room, I hear two men talking. “BlazeStar’s lifting off. Erdox wants it buried.”

“Cypherjets then?”

“That’s what Lieth wants.”

Uncle Lieth. My stomach turns, hearing his name again. Only people who know him personally can call him by his first name. To everyone else, he was Major Oethiaus. Growing rage steadies my hands and my shaking legs as I sneak out from the shelter of the ascent shaft.

I don’t like shooting anyone in the back. But I’m desperate to save humanity . And right now, Titans are looking like the last source of it.

I fire at a familiar man and tag him in the back of the head. The second turns to me, surprise on his face.

“E-Esthi?”

My heart wrenches, but I squeeze the trigger again. I take him down with a shot to the leg, then walk up to him as he crumples. “You’re a traitor.”

“Trying to feed my family,” he rasps.

“Your family died in the war twelve years ago, Arius. I’d love to go back in time and change a lot, but believing a lie is never something I’d want.”

His face reddens. “I miss them so much. I’m just trying to survive.”

“So am I. So are the Titans and the hundreds of women on their ship.”

“Women?”

“Yes,” I hiss. “You piece of shit.”

His eyes scan the room as he braces his bleeding leg. “They said the Titans were corrupt, coming to kill us for vengeance after the war.”

“Never thought you were that stupid,” I harshly whisper.

“ CSP took Myria, Kelion, Havlis, and Sima, among how many others? They took family from us and handed us over to the Solcrue! Not the Titans. Those Titans are still protecting humans, even after all the shit we put them through, all the pain…”

I can see the connection form in his mind the wider his eyes get. “I just did what they said to stay alive.”

I find a nearby rag and throw it at him. “Patch yourself up. You’re going to help me make up for this mess you’ve made.”

“What about Talryn?”

I look at the man I’ve killed. “He raped your sister as a kid. Fucking leave him. He’s no better than Solcrue, who’ve turned most of the women into anajas.”

“Practice mates?”

“Yes,” I snap, directing my rifle at the main door. “Get up. Shut down the munitions core. All of the rails. I want guns down. Not broken. Offline.”

“What if I can’t?”

I glare down at him. “I’ll drop you like Talryn just for being a moron.”

He grabs a nearby pipe system and lugs himself onto his good foot, keeping the other off of the ground. “I don’t really care to live now.”

“Then help for the future of those of us who want to.”

He nods once, hops over Talryn’s body, and works on the control panel at the end of the room. I tuck myself in the shadows, waiting for whoever will come to inspect the system to find out why it shuts down.

Motors whir slower. Ammo belts grind to a halt. Seconds later, a man charges into the back in a CSP uniform. As the door slides shut behind him, I slip out.

The door shuts behind me. A gun goes off. I don’t know who’s died, but I hope Arius has found some courage for a change. If not, I’ll need a backup plan for the other soldier.

“It truly is amazing, isn’t it?” a familiar voice says in the distant doorway to the cockpit. “How loyal Titans are. It’s one of their most predictable features.”

The door opens to the munitions core. Arius steps out with a handgun and blood spray across his chest and face. A murderous gleam shines in his brown eyes.

My uncle looks back.

“Problem solved, sir,” Arius remarks with a bitter tone. “Core should be back online in a matter of minutes. Spooling up now.”

“Good.” My uncle turns around as if nothing is wrong.

Arius scans the shadows, finds me hiding behind a pillar, walks by me, and drops into the portside gunners’ bay, a hand behind his back filled with injectors. He glances up at me and jerks his nose toward the cockpit.

I close up my helmet, expecting a confrontation. But when I turn to walk up to the front, Uncle Lieth is standing in the fuselage, looking right at me.

“Thought I saw something in the shadows,” he says. “Welcome to Scythe, Gray . This will be your final memory. Let’s make it a good one.”