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The women survivors in our rebel camp struggle to carry equipment and supplies as we mobilize them underground toward the deep valley where the Titan BlazeStar ship is set to pick us up for the final escape from Ellipsis. I pack everything I can tolerate on my shoulders. I didn’t serve Solcrue on an enemy ship like the vast majority of them. I endured something far worse that’s been growing more painful by the day.

By the sidelong glances I keep getting from Titan Poppy, she knows something is up. Shifter is clueless as he slinks along the tunnel to my left. And Menace, who’s guarding twenty paces behind us, never says anything unless provoked. His eyes burn like two red fireflies in the dark when I check to make sure we haven’t left him behind. I can loathe the irascible bastard but still respect his skills and his memberships to the Titan family and rebel camp.

I adjust the rifle in my sweating hands. Cold sweats are uncommon. It’s the same with lightheadedness. I can be launched out of a ship into space, tumbling end over end, and be more clearheaded than this.

“I’m just not used to being this close to so many people,”

I admit to Poppy, scanning an approaching tunnel for any sign of glinting eyes or claws of mutant wolves that screw like rabbits down here. “Working security for a crew of twenty or thirty hunters and junkers is nothing like protecting a couple of hundred women who mostly can’t fight and are surrounded by endless packs of welvirs. It would stress any human to carry such responsibility.”

“Headaches coming back?”

Poppy asks as she patrols on rudimentary metal legs, her rifle aimed into the shadowed alcoves as we make our way toward the last camp stop. Tomorrow, we leave for the final pick-up spot where we’ll load survivors. But there’s doubt in Poppy’s red flower-shaped irises.

She is all metal and cybernetics, less humanized in her design than the male Titans. From what she’s told me, female Titans have always and only ever been CyberPilots, a torso bolted to a seat. She flew the escape mission here and saved all of the Titans still in operation from the Solcrue with Cara’s help. Cara didn’t want to leave her, so the lead team, Amp, Diesel, Menace, and Rebel, made sure Poppy was unbolted and given legs.

As much as I felt treated like shit in my own way by my last junker captain, I see now I still had things most women—even Titans—didn’t: food, armor, training, and some control over my life. So I’m damn sure not going to waste it. And I’m not going to complain, even if the pangs in my skull have me on edge every day we’re stuck here.

“Trying to bury the headaches with distractions?”

Poppy tips her head toward the stacked bags of gear on my back.

“There’s nothing wrong with my bones, Poppy. Unlike a lot of the thinner women, I can carry what they need. I will until they are strong enough to carry it themselves.”

“You’re not just doing it to help them, Fin.”

Poppy’s steps are choppy and mechanical, but she is the most human of the Titans in her core thanks to some resistance members removing regulatory programming. “You’re doing it as punishment.”

I sigh and adjust the rifle hanging across my front. My gloves are worn and smell of sweat and dirt. The tunnels are cold, damp, and reek of welvir blood, human piss, and Titan gear grease. We pass another tunnel where a rock wall has been stacked up. The scent is strongest there. Someone up ahead cut down some of the animals and blocked them from following us through that adjoining tunnel.

Thanks to the less-than-reputable hunters and junkers I served, I know fifty ways to kill a Titan, a hundred more to kill a human, and a thousand ways to cause the enemy Solcrue pain. But helping improve the health and lives of others is beyond my capabilities. I’m not a healer like Cara and Taline or a cybernetic repair tech like Leah. I can’t fix engines like Rhee or heal hearts like gentle Celeste.

It wasn’t my choice to become a servant. It wasn’t for any of the women ahead of us. But it was better than the torture cell I found myself in after being taken from my guard post on Earth Minor. So I will do what I can with what I have left for the ones who are worth a damn in this rebellion. I can honor my mother and my ancestors’ duty even if I never see them again.

“Don’t tell me you don’t feel guilty for living a better life than the others,” I say.

The way Poppy’s red irises drift away from our group tells me she feels that way. And because it seems like she can relate, I’ve allowed myself to open up to her.

“I endured a worse trauma than the rest of them, so they won’t understand. But then, I missed out on the years of sadistic Solcrue servitude that feel—in all—more heinous than that initial punch that knocked me out of the game.”

Poppy snorts a breath, looks at me, then away again, and nods. “Something I understand better than you realize. It doesn’t matter who the bigger victim is in the moment, only the combined strengths that we have and can utilize. That’s how we get out of this, how we survive. But we must not choose more than we can carry, or we will be unable to help in the future.”

“You’re overanalyzing,”

I tell her. “It really is just a different pain to take my mind off the pulsing between my temples and the ice picks in the back of my head.”

Poppy’s eyes shimmer with light. “Rebel says that is not normal. Pulsing temples might be, but not ice-pick headaches for a sentinel.”

Alarm flares through my nerves. “Hush, Poppy. Do not tell others. For the love of stars.”

“Why not? Hiding the truth creates vulnerabilities.”

She is frustratingly rational.

I glance back into the shadows at the faint red glow of Menace’s eyes, and Shifter’s violet light on the left side of the tail end of our rebel migration. “I need others to believe I am capable because they are not mentally strong enough to survive this hell without hope.”

“You mean you don’t want to be a body carried like the others?”

Poppy cuts to the core of my insecurity.

“We don’t need any more. Just let me cope,”

I remark through gritted teeth.

Poppy stops at the same moment I hear a noise down an intersecting tunnel. I swing my rifle behind her, aim down the lightless passage, and find the shimmering blob on four legs. Spreading my feet to stabilize my failing body, I fire. The shot is a quiet, whistling punch through my homebuilt silencer. A welvir collapses.

Red light moves in my periphery. I glance to see Menace watching me from ten paces into the shadows. His rifle igniter darkens, and his Titan lights—eyes and digibadge—wink out.

He makes my spine shiver. I’m glad I can see his pulsing blue silhouette in the dark as he turns toward me and then walks away. I can see everyone even when there is little to no light.

Poppy lowers her rifle. The weapons we have in our arsenal are all salvaged or manufactured from parts into odd shapes, bounty hunter style. Poppy carries our backup supplies: ammunition, spare parts, grenades, the whole lot. It’s unnerving to be so close to such a big bomb if she were to get hit. It’s why we’re at the back, and all the bonded Titans and their mates are in front with Drillbit, blazing a new path to the next campsite.

“Diesel, Amp, and Commander Savage have officially merged the rebel camps into one group behind Drillbit.”

Poppy says it with a slight rasp to her voice, something uncommon to Titans, a sign of stress.

“Don’t like it?” I ask.

“All of our humans are in one place. Of course, I don’t like it. We’re one big target,”

she whispers. “One enemy hit could take out many, or the welvirs break in and shred us from the center out. Since we have to keep closing off tunnels because of the growing welvir population, we’re unable to take the drilled tunnels back to the pick-up zone, the ship, or anywhere familiar. Drillbit is getting a workout.”

Poppy seems upset by this.

“Got a thing for Drillbit?”

Poppy’s face wrinkles like she’s mildly disgusted. “He is the only one who can get us all to a pick-up zone. We are all at his mercy. But I am worried that the welvirs or the Solcrue will track us down. Our ammo supplies aren’t endless. Besides, he’s like a toddler next to me. I could be his great great great grandmother.”

“Isn’t age sort of irrelevant once you’re immortal?”

Poppy shrugs. “I don’t know. Guess I never really thought about it.”

Flashes of light across the tunnel draw our attention to Shifter. He’s a sneaky unit like Menace, Morbid, and Savage. But I’ve learned they each had their capabilities designed for specific purposes in battle.

“Might have to resort to old-fashioned ways,”

Poppy mutters. “You up for that?”

“You mean…”

I pull the knife from the sheath on the strap across my chest.

Poppy grimaces. “You’re more vulnerable than us because of your human skin. But it may come down to that. I’d rather us conserve ammo so we have it when we really need it.”

“For the escape?”

Just saying the words brings harsh reality to the plan that we’re going to attempt liftoff in just two days’ time.

Poppy is not as apathetic as many think her to be. She is tough. As a CyberPilot, she has to be. But she worries. I can see it in her posture and how she makes subtle adjustments, as though some energy inside her wants out. “There’s something we’re not seeing. I can’t tell you what it is...only that something else is watching us.”

“What makes you think that?”

“An old battle, long before you were even a thought on your parent’s minds,” she says.

“Stars, how old are you?”

Poppy laughs softly.

“Really, I want to know.”

She draws in a breath and adjusts her packs. “I was one of the original cybernetic models before WreckTanks were an idea. We’ve been piloting ships, Clover included, for many years. The Creators just upgraded us from the original Sol designs.”

“I’m sorry, did you say Sol as in the original solar system with Earth, not Earth Minor?”

She shifts her shoulders under the weight of her bags. “Fin, I brought humans to Earth Minor. I flew your people to this galaxy from their dying homeworld. Clover piloted a different ship on the same route. So we have seen a thing or two.”

She looks away. “I wish I knew what happened to CP-65099. She was the other mothership pilot. I lost track of her in the war.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I know what you are and who you are descended from. I know how deep your desire to protect your people is ingrained in your genes. And I know you will do anything to try and stop what’s coming. But you can’t. None of us can.”

I hunker forward, feeling like I’ve been punched in the stomach. “You knew my family?”

“Yes.”

She continues, like the break in the topics doesn’t bother her at all. “We think the Solcrue don’t know what we’re planning. But every time we kill one of them, we prove to the others that they were on to something. They learn from everything we do and don’t do. Solcrue have not taken over the galaxy simply because they were lucky.

“We have to outsmart the enemy. That might mean going back to simpler forms of battle. They can trace some rifle signals by heat or energy. But a knife or a dark zembi—”

“Switch to methods they don’t know as well—”

I glance back to where Menace patrols. “He has one of those swords, right? The zembi?”

She nods. “Stealth models and Cosmic Piercers, Starjumpers, a few others. But many of us are without our gear.”

Poppy drums a finger laced with tracework on her rifle. It lights up with every piece of tech it encounters.

I wonder if Poppy hears something or feels things differently through her fingers. I bet she feels out of place not being on a ship with so many things literally at her fingertips. “Each of us has to take out many of them if this will work. That means we must do much more than bashing our way in like WreckTanks. Do you have any ideas?”

“Me?”

I’m stunned that Poppy’s asking a human for advice.

“You’ve interacted with Solcrue in a way most haven’t.”

Menace’s presence fills the back of my mind. I can almost feel him touching my shoulder like he’s listening in. I glance behind us and see his red eyes burning into me. He’s always back there, watching. He’s patrolled closer and closer the longer we’ve walked these tunnels as a group.

“I’m not going to hurt Poppy, Menace. Why are you always looking at me? You going to try and kill me? Fucking do it already!”

He slowly tilts his head like he isn’t sure what I’m asking.

Whatever. Creep.

“How did you survive interacting with them while maintaining your freedom?”

Poppy asks, drawing my attention back to her.

I think of the captains I served and their tactics. “Being unpredictable with what strings we could pull, like setting traps and holding Solcruean officers by the balls. We’d find a way to control their most prized weapon.”

I shake my head and instantly regret it as the pressure grows more painful. “The trouble with those wild tactics is that it breeds distrust. We had to always watch our backs and ensure that any time we pulled a stunt like that, we could get out of any countermeasures they had in place.

“A grav-beam on a Solcrue ship needed an antigravity deterrent system on the hull. Shields had to be able to take a plasma pulse at close range. Engines had to be able to reignite with hypercapacitors if an EMP went off and killed spark plugs, coils, and batteries. It’s not a tactic I prefer because it provokes unpredictable behavior, requires a lot of countermeasures, and creates supply waste. Think sex-deprived Solcrue on stimulants.”

“Creates rash decisions.”

Poppy steps over a boulder, picks up a strap of leather from the dirt, and ties it to her pack. Poppy saves everything useful and watches out for dropped goods from the survivors.

“We could use that to our advantage,”

she says. “If they lash out, they will waste ammo trying to end us, put themselves into kill boxes, maybe even miss an obvious signal if they’re focused on searching for something else, something we put in their minds.”

“Yeah. Use Holo if you can, so he can project things. That way, we don’t risk losing actual rebels.”

The straps of the packs on my shoulders are growing more painful than my headache, but I won’t complain. I won’t.

I have all my body parts. I haven’t been used as a practice mate by officers or starved and tortured for information.

My feet ache inside my boots as we walk over the uneven ground, but at least I have shoes. The women that walk ahead of us have scraps of fabric wrapped over their feet and, on rare occasions, some form of armor plating strapped to their soles.

I am lucky to be in just this amount of pain. They have to be in far more.

Poppy continues, but I’ve lost interest in the topic as I study the worn clothes and hunkered postures of the weary women.

“They might have a few factories left in operation on Earth Minor,”

Shifter replies to her. “But there’s still only so much that can be manufactured at any given time.”

“I’m sure they’re going to think they have plenty of weapons,”

I offer. “So if we can make them impulsive with their use, we can render their supplies limited rather quickly.”

“They’ll just push the producers for more, faster,”

Shifter counters.

“There’s still a maximum output,”

Poppy replies.

Shifter keeps pace two steps from us. “And time to get the supplies here. I’m just saying, you know humans and droids are going to die if they’re pushed too hard in the factories.”

“We have to be fast,”

I say. “It has to be executed all at once so there’s no time or reason for reinforcements. All of our ships have to sneak out and attack together. We hit them hard and run while they get their shit together. We have to take what we want while they’re distracted, then vanish before they see where we went.”

“But what could possibly distract them from us?”

Menace asks. He’s suddenly right behind Poppy and me. I didn’t hear him approach, even though I usually sense where he and every Titan are. It’s a trick even my friends Aniah and Celeste don’t know about. Only Poppy knows.

Something about Menace makes my heart race. I don’t know if I should expect an attack from him or if I should turn and run. I don’t like the vulnerability I feel around him, especially not with my growing headache.

“Solcrue are still descended from us, like your kind. What do you care about most?”

I ask him, hoping he’ll provide some insight into why my vision lights up so strongly when he’s around and why my body reacts the way it does, like every inch of me is on fire.

Menace glares at me but says nothing.

“Primal urges,”

Shifter remarks.

“Of course, you’d say that,”

Poppy whispers condescendingly. “Let me guess: mating, power, and preservation of their species.”

I nod. “Yes, but you’re missing one. Their beliefs. They will do anything to protect their way of life. Anything that challenges them is viewed as a threat to them all, even if it isn’t a threat but a chance to grow before they’re ready.

“Fuck with their heads. That’s how you wreck an empire without getting physical.”

“Twist reality,”

Menace rumbles behind us.

I look over my shoulder and up at his smoldering red eyes. He’s a tall, stocky Titan, dark grey in the light, pulsing blue in my vision in the darkness.

“Yeah.”

Needing a distraction, I turn to Poppy again. “You said you knew my family. What did you mean?”

Poppy guides away from Menace and Shifter. “Aniah said your last name was Parimith.”

“Can’t believe she remembered that with everything else going on.”

“A Parimith stood guard at my side during the migration. She gave her life to protect me during the Solcrue invasion after I landed Valient on Earth Minor. She got me off of the ship. Parimiths and Volencas protected pilots and got us disconnected from the ships and underground. We are alive because of your ancestors.”

“Doubt I’m like them,”

I mutter, feeling like I haven’t done anything nearly as grand or important.

“You are. More than you know,”

Poppy remarks.

Hot prickles flood my spine, race up my head, and into my vision. I wince, stop, and turn to find Menace watching behind us. He’s sensed something, too.

Poppy notices Menace and me turning back and calls ahead. “Tighten the group! Pack approaching!”

The growls from the tunnel behind us and the plethora of shimmering shapes in my vision make me hang my rifle across my chest, draw my handguns from my thigh holsters, and point them at the growing mass.

Beside me, Menace snarls and drops to all fours. I’ve seen him slash through Solcrue on mothership Vessna during the Iridithatium raid and soar through the void in a spacesuit, tearing solcruean fighters to pieces. But this…this monster side of him is something different.

“Menace?”

He sneers at me, “Stay here. Save your bullets.”

Then he barrels down the tunnel, muscles bulging with fury, and tears into the welvirs, turning the approaching pack into bloody chaos.

“What in the actual fuck?”

“There’s a reason he’s the last,”

Poppy says.

I lower my guns, but I don’t holster them. “Because he’s sadistic?”

“Not last in the migration order. Because not even Morbid or Savage have Menace’s skills.”

Poppy turns her back to the people we protect and keeps her rifle half-raised down an adjacent tunnel.

“He is different from other stealth models. Morbid is, too, but they adapted differently. I know all of the specs of every model Titan ever built. Rebels loaded the data into my core before the jailbreak mission with Cara. Menace is not wholly his design. Someone modified his and Morbid’s batch before they were put into service.”

“Corrupted?”

I watch the shapes shift in the distance. Menace’s silhouette flings welvirs off of him with impressive strength and then confronts the next like it’s just another annoying day at work.

My core tenses with strange intrigue. Holy shit.

“I don’t know.”

Poppy’s shorter than the other Titans but still a head taller than me. “They put them through different training. They took good men with second chances at life and turned them into violent, sinister creatures. It’s like they took humans’ worst nightmares and made them real.”

Welvir shimmers attack Menace then fly off of him and slump one by one until only the pulsing outline of an exhausted Titan stands among fading shimmers of the animals he’s just killed.

Menace glances back at me. I see a red eye focus on me and jerk my gaze away. His raw, primal nature interests me in a way I don’t expect. I have never seen blood spray sparkle through the air in such a manner before.

What the hell has Menace become? But I know the question I should be asking. What happened to him to turn him into that kind of monster?