Rebellion (A Titan Romance Book 1) Read online

  This was exactly why, four years ago, she earned this Security Operations position, initially a lieutenant. She led well. She fought well. She always got the job done. And she maintained a strong—but not perfect—record of getting most of her girls home alive.

  Women and men throughout the Security Operation Division fought hard to get accepted on Akyra’s team.

  She looked down—yet again—at the Bio-Teck cube, checking its vitals. All good. Of course. This cube was reason enough for her anxiety, without the looming threat of Xerxus and his homegrown insurgency. She examined the green seal guaranteeing its medical integrity, tracing a gloved finger over them emblem printed on it: Sol’s Hand, the holiest symbol of The Church of Nova Sol, the open hand with the sun upon the palm. She turned off her mic and tried easing her nerves with words she’d known since she was an eight year-old orphan at Academy. She closed her eyes, calmed her mind, and whispered, “Glory to The Almighty.”

  It was then, right on cue, that Captain Akyra Roux heard the sound of plasma blasts striking Valarae’s vehicle.

  The rumble of the wheels over the dirt road muddled the blasts, but Akyra was too familiar with the concussive CRACK of matter instantaneously phasing through various states of liquid and solid as plasma ripped over it. She instinctively pushed on the side of her helmet to better hear the headset at her ear.

  “Plasma fire from six hundred meters, north,” a woman’s shout came through the comm. “Possibly two enemy units! Possibly three!”

  Akyra’s vehicle lurched to a stop as a second round of twin explosions rocked the convoy. Akyra spoke calmly in reply. “Are they hitting us?”

  “Yes. Yes, they’re definitely trying to kill us.”

  “Copy.”

  “Is this that Xerxus fucker?” a woman’s voice shouted through the comm. But no one answered. Akyra despised poor radio discipline during a fight, and no one wanted to piss off their captain when they needed her focused on coordinating their response.

  Vehicle commanders of each armored troop carrier sounded off that they were intact. The last adding, “Yeah, we got two enemies on top of those foothills to the north. Looks like three-man blaster teams… confirmed, six hundred and fifty meters.”

  Long shots for plasma blaster, Akyra thought. Who are these guys?

  By then, Akyra had activated her helmet display, scanning the landscape via the multiple video feeds patched into her visor. To the north, two red triangles highlighted the enemy units atop a string of jagged rusty hills. She quickly zoomed in, but couldn’t make out any individuals. “Vehicle commanders, keep your shields up and sealed. We’re gonna move forward through this.” Another pair of plasma blasts exploded between the vehicles. “Get rolling. Gunners, put some suppressive fire on that ridge. And see if you can’t kill somebody up there.”

  “Copy,” three female voices said in calm unison in her ear just before the three large-barreled turret guns roared to life down the convoy, one of them atop Akyra’s own vehicle, less than two meters from her head.

  Akyra paused a brief moment to watch the first explosive rounds bubble up a dust cloud along the distant ridge line. She pivoted in her seat to Specialist Kudzu’s legs hanging down from the turret next her. She slapped one the armored thighs for good measure.

  The troop carrier surged forward again as the convoy regained its momentum, pushing forward hard and fast out of the ambush.

  Akyra pivoted her seat completely around to face Corporal Clarx Nilsson, her radio operator and vital link to the world outside—and one of the few young men on the team. He bounced ridiculously in his seat.

  “Outpost Zebra, this is Banshee Leader,” he said on the other comm channel, beating Akyra to her next set of orders. ‘Banshee Leader’ was Akyra’s callsign, and Clarx’s primary job in life was to speak for her when she was busy. “We are thirty-five clicks out from base, sustaining light plasma fire six hundred meters north of our position.”

  She gave him a thumbs up, switching back over to the the gunner and driver chatter of the team’s fire comm. She considered ordering the drones in the air, but she decided against risking them in this low-level contact. Until the situation changed or they drove clear from their assailants, there wasn’t much left to do but observe, letting her well trained squad leaders do their jobs.

  That is, until a direct hit of something far more powerful than a shoulder mounted plasma blaster slammed into the side of her vehicle.

  The force of that hit sent a shock wave through the wall of the carrier and pounded everything inside with a huge, shuddering wave of pain and noise. Akyra’s eyes went dark for a moment, her neck searing from the whiplash.

  “Fuck!” Polli, her driver, shouted.

  “Kudzu!” Akyra yelled for her gunner, even before her vision righted itself, reaching for the specialist’s legs. But they weren’t there.

  “Fuck!” Polli shouted again.

  Akyra tried regaining control within the vehicle, but the squealing ring in her ears and the pitching of the carrier along the uneven road kept her disoriented. She tried looking at the images within her visor to evaluate the situation, as it had changed, but her eyes wouldn’t focus. Already, blood ran out one side of her nose that she was required to ignored. “Polli, clear us out!”

  Clarx’s voice broke in, “Outpost Zebra, this is Banshee Leader, we are now receiving heavy fire from multiple locations, north and south of our convoy. We are sustaining casualties. We are in need of our escort. What’s the ETA on our escort?”

  Akyra was regaining her senses. She pushed up her visor to see better within her vehicle, sucking deep breaths. It was then that, without the distraction of the multiple data feeds cluttering her view, she saw Kudzu crumpled on the floor next to Clarx’s seat. She looked intact, but she didn’t move. Seeing her there, knowing the blast hadn’t blown her clear off the roof, was a great relief to Akyra. This planet crawled with infidels, and losing a soldier during an engagement meant knowing that the body would be, dead or alive, horribly defiled, probably a bloody trophy for Xerxus and his devout followers.

  Using her forearm tapper, she opened up her direct link to Clarx. She pivoted her seat toward him again so their knees almost touched. “Clarx!” she shouted in her mouthpiece over the whine of the vehicle’s engines. “What’s up with that escort?”

  “Zebra says there’s a delay. Ten minutes.”

  Another huge CRACK slammed their vehicle, and the two of them rocked wildly in their shoulder straps.

  “Ten minutes!” Akyra yelled, without the need to shield Clarx from her anger. She looked past Clarx’s shoulder to the eight soldiers bouncing in their seats in the rear of the carrier. She switched back over to the team comm, shouting, “Rayeley, I need a turret gunner and a medic up here now!” Then, switching back to her private link with Clarx, said, “This thing will be over in ten minutes.”

  Akyra opened up the menu on her forearm tapper to the three drones attached to each vehicle. She growled that she hadn’t done so earlier, tapping the controls, sending the drones careening out of their nests to their preprogrammed stations half a kilometer above them. From that vantage, she saw just how bad this ambush, already two minutes old, really was.

  Six more red triangles lit up within her visor feed, like numbers of an old analogue dial, surrounding their convoy in every direction.

  Oh fuck, Little Miss Roux. What have you got your team into?

  Akyra examined the readout in her visor to evaluate damage to the rear vehicle. It was bad. Two of the huge drive wheels on the right side titled grotesquely. Which meant it didn’t go anywhere.

  Which meant the whole convoy didn’t go anywhere.

  This is exactly what the ambushers tried to do: disabling one vehicle would halt everyone.

  While she tried processing all the tactics and logistics of a firefight going south, other questions distracted her.

  Was this ambush random?

  Was this ambush a part of some larger threat to her girls o
r the outpost?

  Or worse,

  Was this an intentional ambush trying to steal the Bio-Teck cube she was contracted to deliver?

  If the last question was true, then the hostiles pounding her location were far more superior than any ragtag, infidel insurgency Colonel Weir outfitted her Sec-Ops team to handle.

  Clarx broke into her train of thought, “We have airborne Raptors inbound from the north-east. Looks like our escort’s decided to show up.”

  “About time. Get them on the radio.”

  Two feelings hit Akyra’s pounding heart. Gratitude that her mission still had a chance of success. And anger that she hadn’t been able to deal with this threat, while protecting her soldiers, on her own.

  That last feeling disappeared when a barrage of rockets from one of the aircraft careened over her vehicle, striking an enemy location to the south, creating huge spires of red dirt, flame, and metal. She wasn’t a young ego-driven lieutenant anymore. When life and death were at play—and especially the success of her mission—winning was winning no matter how much help she received.

  Besides, she thought, this escort was supposed to be with us!

  She checked the display in her visor, watching the carnage of the rocket fire, saying to Clarx, “Shit, I didn’t even know we had any enemy there.”

  Clarx added, “That’s what I call suppressive fire!”

  “Damn right. Now if only we could roll out of here.”

  “Titan’s tapped into our datalink.”

  Good. At least they’ll see the stats on the disabled vehicle.

  “They’re not following protocol,” Clarx said. “They checked on the stats for the Bio-Teck cube first.”

  Two Raptors wailed as they cut low over the convoy.

  “Banshees, this is Thunder Company, flight of five Raptors,” a deep, calm voice said over the comm. “You’ve got enemy north and south of the road. We're going to post up on your perimeter and clear them out. Sit tight.”

  “This is Banshee Leader Actual,” Akyra replied to the voice in her ear, using the term “actual” when she actually spoke for herself over the radio. “Negative on sitting tight.”

  Akyra popped open the hatch above her seat and climbed halfway out to watch the Raptors roar into stationary positions, their white hawk-like hulls a terrifying sight to any enemy of The Church. The enemy assailants shifted their brilliant blue plasma bursts upward toward the assault aircraft.

  Akyra nodded to the new turret gunner next to her, still relentlessly hammering away at the enemy positions along the north ridge. No, Banshees don’t “sit tight” very well.

  The ambushers tried to put up a fight, but they were doomed. The Titan aircraft pummeled every one of their locations to dust.

  Every direction around Akyra’s convoy was a fury of explosions from rockets streaking diagonally from ship to ground. The convoy became surrounded by violent walls of the dirt, fire, and debris.

  It was over in a minute.

  By the time the mighty Raptors settled to the ground, Akyra stood completely on the roof of her heavily built black vehicle, watching the dust settle around her, toggling through the video feeds of her airborne drones. She wasn’t prepared to trust that all the enemy threats had been destroyed.

  Through her visor, she also watched canopies open around her as some members of Thunder Company, probably Titan officers, began to dismount their Raptors.

  She’d seen Titans before, always at a distance, always far enough to keep the mystery of who these genetically-engineered soldiers were—and what the rest of the galaxy gossiped them to be capable of. But she’d never been this close. Never spoken to one. Never looked one in the eye.

  And yet one of them stepped away from the rest. From the two red vertical stripes—curiously painted on in a sloppy way—on his battle armor’s broad chest plate, she identified that he was a captain. Just like her. He removed his helmet as he approached the vehicle that she stood on.

  First thing, Akyra was a little surprised he had hair, in fact a little longer than most men she knew. She assumed all men in the service kept their hair, like Clarx, buzzed short.

  Then again, these aren’t men.

  Are they?

  They sure look like men. Incredibly strong… capable men.

  Then, Oh my lord. His eyes! They were black. Almost entirely without whites.

  The Titan captain looked up to her as he approached, staring thoughtfully, as if he were as curious about her as she was of him.

  Akyra called out to him before he got too close. “Well hello! You must be our Titan escort!” Her voice was strong and clear, despite shouting through her helmet.

  Standing in the dirt, still ten meters away, the Titan captain fixed his gaze on her, pointing to the lopsided rear vehicle, its massive rear wheels smoldering. He called out, “Everybody okay?”

  “Oh yeah.” Akyra reached up and pulled off her own helmet to better look at this giant soldier. The cold, arid desert air cut into her cheeks and the sweaty skin on her neck. “We’re all good.” The way this big male stared at her inquisitively made her stomach flutter in a way that was not a result of the recent battle.

  Hatches all along the convoy opened as Akyra’s red armored soldiers—27 women and 2 men—rose from their vehicles, removing their own helmets, even poor Kudzu who wasn’t going to be the only one to miss this sight. All the women wore their hair braided into tails of various colorful designs.

  At the same time, the rest of the green armored Titans emerged from their aircraft around the convoy. They also removed their helmets, which in this moment felt like a reciprocal, cordial gesture.

  “So,” Akyra said, “You’re our Titans.”

  “And you,” Raemus replied. “You must be our humans.”

  A low laugh broke throughout both groups.

  The two captains locked eyes for a long moment. Then for reasons neither would have been able to articulate at the time, they smiled at each other.

  Polli, Akyra’s driver who’d risen through the roof hatch next to her, quickly tried tidying her braid. “Handsome bastards, aren’t they?” Then whispered, “What’s up with their eyes? They’re black.”

  Handsome as fuck, actually, Akyra thought. “Polli, don’t whisper. They’re Titans. They hear everything you say.”

  Akyra called down to the Titan captain, “I think you guys just saved our butts.”

  Raemus still had a huge smile on his face. “Yes. We did.” His voice was a thick baritone, barreling through the planet’s dry air. “It’s our job, really.”

  Polli crossed her arms. “Oh good. They’re funny, too. Who knew?”

  Akyra stopped smiling. “A little late getting here, don’t you think, captain? Just saying.” With that, she stepped over her vehicle hatch and dropped from his sight.

  Chapter Three

  She intrigued me the moment I saw her. She was a purebred female! Despite my years of study, a feeling that I knew nothing of her kind paralyzed me. In that instant, I wanted to know everything about her.

  Stories Of My Beloved, by His Eminence Raemus Kolach Petrus

  Raemus watched the female captain drop through the roof of her vehicle, her long brown braid trailing after her. It was another moment before realizing he was still smiling up to where she’d been standing. The vehicle’s driver, with a striking multicolored braid, standing halfway out of the roof hatch, flittered her gloved fingers at him. “Hi there.”

  He finally came to his senses and looked away, chuckling at himself.

  That female captain was something!

  But he couldn’t say exactly what it was that grabbed him so hard by the guts.

  Thunder Company’s second-in-command and Raemus' most trusted noncommissioned officer, First Sergeant Akino, walked up behind him. “What, is the whole pack of them good looking? I think my boner’s about to crack through my dick plate.”

  Raemus glanced at Akino over his shoulder, a smile barely concealed at the edge of his mouth. Leave i
t to Akino to say the things I can’t. “Seems to be, brother. For once I’ll agree with you on something.”

  “Well… now what?”

  Raemus turned back to the human captain’s armored carrier, waiting for her to come out to him. “Now? We escort these humans and our Bio-Teck parcel cube back to the outpost.”

  “Safe and sound?” Akino asked incredulously.

  Raemus motioned with a finger to the convoy’s silent drones high above them, recording and transmitting everything to the military station in orbit, as well as to Bin Ar-Drezar who was surely tapped into the datalink back at the Religious Oversight tower.

  He turned his attention back to the human captain stepping from her vehicle. His pupils finally contracted to normal size, but he could still make out every detail about her. She’s absolutely beautiful. I’ve never seen a purebred female walk with such poise!

  He finally answered Akino’s question, “Yes, absolutely safe and sound. Sergeant, we need to know who these hostiles are and why they tried to get their hands on our Bio-Teck cube. Have some of the team start checking bodies.”

  Akino began passing on the order into his headset before Raemus finished speaking. Then back to Raemus, “Captain, if we don’t get our hands on that cube, we’re all dead. Don’t forget, these are humans.”

  Raemus’ spine stiffened. He looked up and down the convoy, at all the well armed humans gawking at him. The hairs on his neck rose.

  Do I still detest humans so much? True, the pain they forced me to endure as a child was so long ago. But on a child?

  He watched Akyra approach, her red feminine contoured armor shining elegantly in the cloudless sunshine.

  Time will never change the fact that my human handlers were wrong: a child does not need to suffer to gain such strength.

  Raemus finally replied to his trusted brother. “I know, Akino. Beautiful, yes, but unfortunately for them, entirely human. Bear with me. Our plans have obviously changed.”