Rebellion (A Titan Romance Book 1) Read online

  Rebellion

  A Titan Romance

  Rowan Bishop

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  25. Get Book Two Free!

  Chapter One

  When our father Raemus was seated at the right hand of God, the angels demanded to know what gifts he—a Titan—could possibly have given The Almighty to be granted such a high station.

  Raemus replied, “I have only served. And asked for nothing.”

  Thereafter, the angels bowed to him in silence, for not one of them could say the same.

  The Collected Virtues of His Eminence Raemus Kolach Petrus, 2nd ed.

  Captain Raemus Petrus, Titan Class, straddled the open hatch of his Raptor assault aircraft. One large boot remained inside, the other was planted in the gritty soil of a high clifftop. He smiled at the simple symbolism of it: half in, half out. But there was no time to think about it. There was never enough time for himself anymore, for his rebellion was a great one.

  At the moment, he was having difficulty wrapping up the final blessing of his Religious Officer, Bin Ar-Drezar, who was back at base in the comfort of the operations office. Bin Ar-Drezar’s full length hologram, distinct by its high hood and flowing robes, rose and flickered from the middle console of the aircraft.

  Raemus tried to give his superior his full attention. The blessing, required before any mission, had stretched into annoying, frivolous chatter. It wasn’t that unusual. He’d spent most of his life multi-tasking while religious mentors whispered into his ear. After all, he was a Titan warrior, one of the most ferocious and skilled soldiers ever engineered. So, he always had religious mentors whispering into his ear.

  Instead of giving the Bin Ar-Drezar his full attention, he surveyed his combat team the way a commander should do in the last minutes before a military operation.

  Six white Raptors, including his own, crouched back twenty meters from the cliff’s precipitous edge. Commanders manned each, poised and ready in their seats. Behind the immaculate white Raptors, three dirty and battered smaller aircraft stood, disguised as smugglers' freighters—but actually packing an enormous amount of firepower.

  The rest of his Titans lay prone on their stomachs at the edge of the cliff above the vast rusted valley below. He’d hand-picked them from his own Thunder Company for their loyalty and discretion, from squad leaders to weapon specialists to his communications specialist.

  These Titans were all beasts of war, loyal only to him and his holy cause, clad in their green battle armor, differentiated by the red hand-painted markings of rank.

  But instead being able to begin his mission on time, a frustrating blue and white hologram that wouldn’t stop talking held him up.

  “It’s a pity you aren’t the power-hungry war Titan I once mentored, ” the Religious Officer carried on. “You have obligations to your own career, captain. The Church needs you rising through the ranks. I need you rising through the ranks, too. Together we can move closer to the galaxy’s core, move closer to the power we know we both can wield. Now tell me, how can I shepherd your poor soul if you’re not blinded by ambition, Captain Raemus?”

  Raemus chuckled slightly at Bin Ar-Drezar’s joke. It was true, and that was the only reason he laughed at all. That and because Bin Ar-Drezar no longer hid his suspicions of Raemus’ diminishing loyalty.

  “You talk too much of compassion these days, captain. It’s unflattering. It’s not in your genes.” The hologram waved a finger. “And trust me. More than anyone, I know your genome.”

  “I’ll get the job done, your excellence, without a hint of compassion, I promise. The human convoy will arrive safely.”

  Raemus lied, of course.

  He had no intention of letting the human convoy arrive at the base at all.

  The figure of the hologram raised a fist in a well practiced salute. “Crush your enemies. Crush your rivals. Glory to The Almighty.”

  Raemus nodded. He did agree with that. It was not only a mantra of the Office of Religious Oversight, of which Bin Ar-Drezar served as the local envoy, but a system of conduct deeply programmed into Raemus' DNA. Bowing to Bin Ar-Drezar’s image, and—believing every word—he repeated, “Glory to The Almighty.”

  He gripped his helmet in both of his large hands and slid it over his head.

  Finally! I started to think the snake didn’t want the human convoy to even have an escort!

  The hologram flickered and vanished as Raemus stepped from his aircraft and planted both feet firmly toward his destiny.

  He lay down in the red, coarse dirt, shimmying to the edge of the cliff alongside his communications specialist, Sergeant Levi Petrus. Levi also had the last name Petrus, for though they weren’t clones, all soldiers of the Titan Class were literally—and figuratively—brothers.

  “How close are they?” Raemus asked, glad to be back on task.

  “Little more than six kilometers.” Levi came up on one elbow to look at his beloved commander. “Never known humans to be so punctual. You know, there’s still a chance to let them live.”

  Raemus frowned, barely offering a shake of his head. “The Almighty has laid my path, Sergeant Levi. I merely stride its track.”

  “But if the humans have free will, captain, and most of our DNA comes from human strains, then maybe we get a little of it, too. I mean, how do humans know they have free will? I only mention it, captain, because, well,” he pointed down toward the approaching line of three armored troop carriers far below them, “here come some humans now. You could let them live and just ask them about it.”

  You are as curious as I am, Levi. Bless your heart. I couldn’t imagine a mission without your nutty banter.

  Raemus ignored the joke, however, for Levi plainly meant it that way. No Titan there that day had any intention of letting the humans live. “They might believe they are free, Levi,” Raemus replied. “I don’t believe anyone’s free. Not anymore.” He peered down to the convoy, now only five kilometers out from the base of the cliff they hid upon.

  Raemus came up on his elbows and motioned to the valley below. “Sure, here come some humans. But they’re headed into a destiny they know nothing about. Do you think these arrogant fools have chosen this fate?”

  Raemus used hand signals, ordering his flight team to fire up the disguised smugglers' freighters.

  “Let’s test that, Sergeant Levi. Let’s see if a human can shape its own fate in the face of an unrelenting destiny.” He smiled wryly, but he found no humor in it—because by ‘unrelenting destiny’ he referred to devastating destruction by firepower. “Enough talk.”

  Raemus pushed himself up to his knees, squatting on his thick, powerful haunches. The five members of his leadership team repeated this movement until they sat in identical postures, on their knees, gloved hands on the hips of their high-powered green battle armor, aligned along the jagged cliff overlooking the immense cold, desert plain.

  If not for the powerful assault aircraft humming and shimmering behind them, they looked like acolytes of the desert, perhaps of a distant past, awaiting the touch of something divine.


  Which was close to the truth.

  They were Titans, created in the consecrated laboratories of The Church of Nova Sol, created to be the long fingers of The Almighty’s holy wrath throughout the galaxy. But these warriors lacked no divinity that day. War was their religion. And The Almighty had bestowed a lifetime’s worth of that .

  Only, something unexpected caught Raemus' genetically-enhanced eyes in the distant valley. A small plume of red dust half a kilometer north of the road below. It was a calm, windless day. There should have been no dust.

  “Captain,” a voice said over the comm. “I’m showing infrared anomalies on the valley floor. It’s not clear, but I don’t think your convoy is alone down there.”

  Raemus activated the digital zoom of his helmet cam, enlarging the three completely black armored troop carriers and the terrain surrounding their route below. Sure enough, he could make out at least six dark, blurred images staggered parallel to the road.

  “Damn,” he said in a mask of calm, though he felt heat surge into his blood.

  These images angered him for two reasons. One, the images were blurred, meaning whoever lurked down there used shields to mask their energy signatures, so they weren’t amateurs. Two, the images were deployed tactically. They were about to ambush the approaching human convoy.

  This last fact especially troubled Raemus, and immediately every member of his team, because they were about to ambush the approaching human convoy.

  Someone was about to beat them to it.

  “Captain, I’ve got movement from two locations.”

  And with that, Raemus watched in silent fury as a blue stream of plasma extended from one of the blurs in his helmet cam, smashing into the side of the lead vehicle far below.

  He was not going to let this happen. With the quick controlled surge of adrenalin, his pupils completely dilated, changing the color of his eyes from blue to black in an instant.

  “Mount up! Mount up!” he shouted into his helmet mic as he jumped to his feet. Most human commanders would have studied the situation a few moments. But not this Titan. Today, he would rain hell upon these who opposed his cause.

  In a tremendous windstorm of vertical thrusters and heat, the entire team jettisoned off the cliff, roaring toward the beginnings of the battle in the distance.

  Chapter Two

  My destiny opened up before me like a holy book. When I read its words, however, I balked and retreated into my wounded heart. For it read, “Your womb shall be the first to bear the new breed. And this breed shall save us all.”

  My Journey, by our Saintly Mother Akyra Kolach Roux

  Five minutes earlier.

  Captain Akyra Roux gripped her shoulder straps too tightly as her armored troop carrier thundered down the long unpaved road. There wasn’t much else for her to do in the near complete darkness of her vehicle except occasionally check in with her squad leaders up and down the convoy. But she resisted the urge to do it too much. As a good commander, sometimes it was best just to let her team members do their job without her.

  Instead, she did something she’d become increasingly inclined to recently: she thought about getting laid.

  For purely pleasurable reasons. Just for the sake of getting it out of her system.

  After all, she couldn’t reproduce. She wasn’t allowed to. Ever.

  Twice in her teens, she reached for her dream of applying for The Church’s holy breeding programs. Twice they denied her. Poked and prodded. DNA mapped and coded. They rejected her, the administrators said, because within every one of the thirty trillion cells, she carried genetic traits no longer appropriate for the species. Which traits? she asked. But they had no obligation to tell her. Her DNA was a blight by church standards, that was all she needed to know. They would never allow her to infect that blight upon humanity.

  That same day, administrators injected a birth control bolt into her shoulder that was never to come out. Not even knowing what her genetic sin was, Akyra had borne the secret shame of it ever since.

  She could be a good person. But she could never be a good mother. Instead, she chose to be a good soldier.

  Twenty-eight years old, Akyra was one of the most accomplished captains in the Security Operations Division, much of her celebrity within the division coming from her obsession to bury those emotional wounds under professional success.

  And she planned on keeping it that way.

  Except some days, like this one, all she could do was imagine herself making love to a man strong enough, passionate enough, to make her forget the shame and regret of it all.

  She often wondered why the birth control bolts in her shoulder—also mandatory to everyone in the Security Operations Division—didn’t suppress the intense regular urge to jump in the sack. Which did happen now and then, after all. But that urge was too related to the hot-bloodedness she felt during fierce combat situations. That was something she never wanted to suppress.

  Problem was, the hormones propelling everyone on her team, especially Akyra, to be a bad-ass on the battlefield were the same hormones that made her increasingly wish she wasn’t on forced birth control, deprived by her vows to The Church of a real man in her life—even if she wasn’t permitted to produce the precious babies she dreamed of her whole life.

  At least thinking about getting laid by a big, handsome—and ferocious, why not—alpha male was the perfect distraction from her worries about the mission at hand.

  Akyra’s team was on their way from the Orbital Trans Point to Outpost Zebra. And the route was way too hazardous to be on without their promised escort.

  “Thirty-seven kilometers out from base,” Staff Sergeant Polliana Paxton said, Akyra’s driver in the adjacent seat. “Scanners show clear up and down the line.”

  Despite the brightness of the day, they rode in the dark, Akyra ordering all troop carriers to ride with blaster shields up the entire way. At least until they met up with their curiously late escort. Instead of sunlight, their helmets and red battle armor were dimly lit by the orange glow of driving and navigation instruments.

  “Squad leaders, please confirm all clear down the line,” Akyra said into the leaders' comm. Continual checking and re-checking of safety standards wasn’t so tedious when it came from Akyra. To every soldier on her team, it was an act of caring and deeply held responsibility. They never resented it. Not any more, at least.

  There were two other armored troop carriers, one in front and one behind. Today they transported not only her entire team but also a parcel cube The Church contracted her to deliver safely to Bio-Teck Laboratories within the outpost on this planet. Whatever was inside the parcel cube must have been very, very valuable.

  Each squad leader replied to Akyra over the comm in order.

  “Roads clear. Skyline clear. Weapon systems ready,” replied Sergeant Rayeley Thomsen, Alpha Squad Leader.

  “Roads clear. Skyline clear. Weapon systems ready,” replied Sergeant Emilsa Peeters, Bravo Squad Leader.

  “Hey Captain! Are we almost there? I gotta piss.” That was Sergeant Jexica Crane, head of the sniper unit in the lead vehicle.

  The entire leadership team laughed into their mics.

  Except for Akyra. Something just wasn’t right about their mission. She wanted to laugh. “Shut the fuck up, Jex. Machines like you don’t piss.”

  She glanced to the Bio-Teck cube in the storage cubby next to her, strapped down and plugged into the vehicle’s crucial environmental controls. She patted it twice. The Bio-Teck cube could have been placed anywhere in the convoy, and some commanders would have placed it in the care of the team’s first sergeant in the lead vehicle, but Akyra knew the success of this contract could affect the careers of every soldier in her care. Just as importantly, high level contracts such as this were the source of brutal competition among Sec-Ops teams, and every successfully completed contract was a vital step to gaining the next.

  Akyra was a commander who’d learned the hard way not to take chances. Hav
ing it next to her own body simply made her feel better. That was that.

  She didn’t know what inhabited the parcel cube, other than that it was probably alive. Alive by some definition. She didn’t know about such things. She didn’t need to.

  However, she did know they headed toward an outpost manned mostly by the ferocious Titan Class soldiers. She knew these beastly “men” wouldn’t be stationed on this remote planet if the locals were friendly. Worst of all, much of the heretical insurgency was organized by a local chieftain named Xerxus—who had a nasty reputation around this arm of the galaxy. No matter how much intel assured her the route from the Orbital Trans Point was clear of infidel insurgents, she knew her own soldiers traveled in danger every minute of the way.

  And that fact weighed on her a lot more than other commanders.

  “Captain,” called out Sergeant First Class Valarae Klipssen, her second in command, over the comm from the lead vehicle. “I’m formally requesting permission to formally request that you formally relax the fuck out.”

  They were ganging up on her. Great. Even stoic Val is having a turn. No doubt they’d heard the tension in her voice. As long as they weren’t in combat Akyra tolerated the ribbing from her noncommissioned officers. “Permission denied, Val. Thanks for showing us that you have some feelings.”

  There was laughter again all over the comm channel.

  Akyra looked over to her driver, smiling behind her helmet visor. Her driver, in turn, reached over and thumped Akyra on her chest plate.

  Danger didn’t bother Akyra, of course. What caused the tension in her voice was the nagging feeling that this mission was somehow not in her control. For instance, where the hell was their escort, and why couldn’t her radio operator raise it over the radio?

  And if there was one feeling that Akyra disliked more than seeing her beloved soldiers turned into casualties, it was the feeling of a situation not in her control. Because the one usually led to the other. When things went her way, they usually went very well.