Starfighter Command

Chapter 1

1

One Year Later…Mia Becker,

Berlin, Germany, 2:24 AM

I was ten minutes into the game. I was wired in, and my fingers flew over the controls. On-screen, Kassius, the Velerion hunk I’d created to be my training partner, sat in the pilot’s seat looking handsome and stoic and almost real. Handsome wasn’t the right word. Hot was better. When my friend and fellow player, Jamie, had said she had a crush on her imaginary sidekick, I hadn’t laughed because I had one on mine, too.

Not a thirteen-year-old-girl boy-band kind of love, but an all-out, I-wanted-him-naked-in-my-bed kind of craving. My vibrator got a workout as I thought of Kass. Nightly and often twice on nights I played the game and spent hours listening to his voice. I knew it made me slightly crazy and a sign I needed to date more, but no men I met matched Kass’s… everything.

The game, Starfighter Training Academy, was cool and challenging, but it wasn’t all that fun anymore. Not since Jamie had won the game and went radio silent two weeks ago. She’d literally disappeared after celebrating her win. Jamie, Lily, and I had all watched the cut scene finale as General Aryk congratulated her on becoming an Elite Starfighter. Watched when she’d accepted the pair bond to her game-made hottie, Alexius. Sat stunned as her screen had gone black. After that… nothing. No Jamie when I’d tried to connect to play again. Lily hadn’t had any better luck. Our friend had just poofed into thin air. Vanished.

Gone.

With my job in the intelligence community and my hacking skills, I couldn’t let it go. I’d accessed places a normal person wouldn’t dream of looking. She might live on the other side of the Atlantic, but everything in the world was online. In police files. Tax paperwork. Employment records.

I’d even hacked Jamie’s employer’s database—which had been ridiculously easy—and discovered that she’d been terminated for not showing up for work. That had been over a week ago.

Searching for family had come next. It was possible she was visiting her oma. But no. No grandmother. No father or siblings. Only a mother who was in a prison-run rehab program. Their log showed that Jamie had not called or visited once.

“You have no idea where she is?” Lily asked through my headset as I watched her pound the side of a Dark Fleet stronghold into rubble with her giant mechanical fists. As usual we were playing together, and her destructive tendencies appeared to be opposite what I imagined when compared to her soft British accent. She was a librarian in real life but made me think of a prima ballerina swinging a sledgehammer when she played the game. Lily tore through Dark Fleet scum like a tank playing in the Starfighter Titan division.

“None,” I replied. “I tracked her phone number and called. No answer. It’s like she vanished off the face of the Earth.” I spoke clearly into my headset as I looked to the pilot’s seat on the stealth ship Kass and I were flying for this mission in the game, which I hadn’t been able to beat.

Yet. But Kass—yup, I’d given him a nickname—and I got closer to winning every time. As an MCS pair, he flew the Phantom, which was what I had named our ship. Generally, he piloted and I sat buckled into the computer that covered the copilot’s area as well as the entire rear of the cockpit, using my computer skills to hack into the Dark Fleet’s systems from the complex quantum processors as he moved in so close we could have reached out and touched the enemy with our bare hands.

As I played, I spoke to Kass as if he were real, and he gave formulated responses. I even chatted when he never said anything back, as if we were truly side by side fighting the Dark Fleet. Anyone would call me crazy, but I was half in love with him.

An avatar in a video game.

An alien, no less, who was just pixels on my screen.

Sometimes he seemed more real to me than the people I worked with. Then again, my colleagues were serious and dangerous, and we all lived with a lot of secrets. They were good people, loyal. Dedicated. Lonely. People like me.

I never once fantasized about my coworkers. Never dreamed of being pushed up against the wall. Never imagined dropping to my knees and making any one of them lose their mind as my hair was tugged.

“She hasn’t used her credit cards?” Lily asked, breaking me from my dirty thoughts. About an alien in a video game. Maybe Jamie was in an insane asylum and I would be joining her next.

“How would I know that?”

“Don’t bother lying. I know what you do.” Lily’s chuckle followed as her Titan mechanical warrior—something like a Mech Warrior or a Transformer straight out of an action movie—jumped on top of a low-flying enemy shuttle and ripped off the communication panel with its powerful hands. “This the one you want?”

My eyes widened as she’d done that so easily. We’d all improved as we’d played together. Jamie had won the game first because she’d been a badass as a starfighter pilot. “Easy, Lily. There are bombs on that shuttle. They could blow.”

This bomb-run mission was a new addition to the game with enemy weapons that could easily take us both out. Then it would be game over.

Our mission task—mine and Kass’s—was to hover over the shuttle and remain hidden from the Dark Fleet ships’ sensors, take control of that shuttle through hacking, then redirect it at the Dark Fleet’s armada and blow them all to bits, using their own weapons against them.

“Not going to happen.” Lily’s Titan jumped off the shuttle as Kass flew us in close.

“Thanks, Lily.”

“Go get ’em!”

I grinned as I hacked into the shuttle’s navigation system and remotely steered it away from the planet’s surface.

“You’re fifteen seconds ahead of where we were last time.” Lily’s voice was husky with excitement. “You’re going to bloody do it this time, Mia. You’re really going to do it!”

My gaze dropped to the timer in the lower right corner of the screen. f**k, yes!

My nerves were finally coming to life. I’d never made it this far before. I held my breath. This could be it. Final victory. Or we’d be blown up, our game lives gone, and we’d have to start the mission over. Again.

I might actually beat the game this time. Not Lily. She didn’t have enough experience points. She needed to level up and tackle her final mission.

“If I do this, Lily, you’re the only one of us left.”

“I’m right behind you in points. It’s not the same without Jamie. And it won’t be without you.”

That was assuming my screen went black like Jamie’s had and Lily would have to play without the two of us. She’d just have to use game-generated playing partners until she finished her final mission.

“I gave you my phone number so you have it and you can call me. I’ll find Jamie.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I’ve got a few favors I can call in.”

“In the United States?”

A reasonable question since I lived and worked in Germany.

“Yes. Among other places.”

“You’re scary sometimes. You know that?”

Coming from Lily, I wasn’t sure whether to take that as an insult or a compliment. She was a one-woman wrecking ball in the game. And her on-screen partner, Darius, was even crazier.

“Yes. I do know that.”

Nothing stopped me when I had a goal, and right now I wanted to win. However, winning this game had a downside. I didn’t want to say goodbye to Kass. He was tall, dark, and handsome, of course. But he was also insanely brave, funny, and a real pain in the ass. He made me laugh and scared the hell out of me at the same time. He was arrogant and unpredictable. He was s*x and danger and protection all rolled into one.

He wasn’t real. I knew it, but scheisse, he was the one for me. I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted any flesh-and-blood human male. Pathetic but true. Jamie and Lily understood. In fact, Lily had once discussed purposely losing the game so we wouldn’t have to give up our make-believe alien men.

I watched on-screen as Kass timed our cloaked ship’s movement perfectly and dived directly beneath the wing of a Dark Fleet shuttle, their smallest, most heavily armored transport. The cloaking technology worked, and they never noticed us.

“Nice flying,” I said to Kass but also pushed the button on my on-screen phrases I’d programmed in to tell him.

His deep, sexy voice rumbled through my headset in reply to the chat post. “Anything for you, love.” He had about a hundred different phrases, and every single one of them made me shiver.

His accent was thick but unrecognizable, like they’d taken ancient Greek, ancient Turkish, and a little French and put them in a blender. I loved the sound of his voice.

I homed in on my screen again. The Dark Fleet shuttle I had taken control of flew through space with erratic and unpredictable movements. Lily had made sure its communications were out so they couldn’t warn their armada that I was about to steer it into the landing bay of their queen’s massive warship and blow them all to hell.

“Be careful, Mia. We’re close.” Kass’s soft warning pulled me into the game.

“There are so many of them.” I’d never been this deep behind enemy lines on this mission before. Those fifteen seconds Lily and I had gained made all the difference. We were surrounded by what had to be at least half of Queen Raya’s fleet… and her ship sitting like a giant target in the middle.

“Thirty seconds.” Kass’s alert was automatic, and I responded aloud, even though he was a computer-generated alien and wouldn’t hear me.

“On it, gorgeous.”

“Get ’em, Mia!” Lily’s excited shout made me grind my teeth, but I didn’t chastise her for the volume. She was very much on my side.

“Setting self-destruct timer.” My fingers flew over my controls as I programmed the enemy shuttle’s death throes, hoping it would explode after it flew deep inside the queen’s command ship. The bombs would tear through every Dark Fleet ship in the area. At least, that was the idea.

I scanned my nav grid to ensure the Starfighter teams were all safely out of range of the blast. I knew how to fly this ship if I had to. Just as Kass knew how to hack enemy systems. But he was better at the flying, and I was a lot better at the hacking.

I waited, finger on the activation command for the shuttle’s self-destruct sequence, when Kass flew our ship directly beneath the launch bay doors of the queen’s warship. He held us there as I directed the enemy shuttle up over our heads and into the bay area.

The moment it cleared the doors, I activated the timer and autopilot. It would keep flying forward and land inside.

Kass’s deep rumble made me squirm in my seat. “Excellent job, Starfighter.”

Why did his praise make me smile and make my panties wet at the same time?

We flew away at maximum speed as I watched the countdown.

“Ten seconds,” I said.

“Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Yes, Mia! Three. Two,” Lily said in my ear.

I held my breath as the screen flashed with the explosion of Queen Raya’s warship, her entire fleet lighting up like fiery dominoes in the darkness of space.

“Wow.” I’d never seen such massive destruction in the game before.

What followed was no surprise. I’d seen it before, when Jamie won.

My avatar appeared, standing in a formal-looking room with high ceilings. Before mine and Kass’s avatars stood a stern-looking general… and Kass was looking at me with an expression I’d never seen before. Was that desire?

God, these programmers were good.

Kass held the Starfighter emblem in his palm and extended the offering toward me like it was an engagement ring. He asked if I—I mean, if my character in the game—would accept him and be his pair-bonded fighting partner for life.

I didn’t let him finish asking. My finger was already on the X button. I pressed it, and my screen went black. No more game. No more Kass. Or so I thought. This was exactly what had happened to Jamie when she beat the game.

It was my turn to find out what happened next.