“You and me both.” I admired Alex’s intense green gaze for one more moment, then hit the start button. I had no doubt he could clear those cobwebs.
“I’m logged in. Let’s do it,” I said.
“Ready.” Mia’s character and her alien hunk popped up on my screen with green lights. Both Lily’s and Mia’s heroes looked nothing like mine, which showed how different our tastes were in men. That was the beauty of Starfighter Training Academy. It was as if it were almost real.
I laughed at how insane my thoughts were as Lily spoke. “If I have to give up Darius, the Dark Fleet is going down.”
“Amen, sister.” I watched my avatar and Alex walk toward the Valor on the screen. They climbed inside the Volantes II fighter as the mission introduction played in our headphones. I’d heard it hundreds of times. It was the same before every single mission, and we’d already won nearly a hundred training battles but not this last one. Yet.
“Welcome to the Starfighter Training Academy. You have volunteered to enter our training program. Should you succeed, you will become the best of the best, the elite among Velerion Starfighters. Complete your training, and you will earn your place in history. You, Starfighter, will be called upon to defend the Galactic Alliance under the command of General Aryk of Velerion. We need you now. War rages in the Vega Star System. Prepare for battle. Your mission is to defeat Queen Raya and destroy her allies in the Dark Fleet before they reach the capital city. Should you fail, Velerion will fall… and Earth will be next.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I mumbled, waiting for the game to begin. “Cue the dark, creepy voice threatening humanity with total destruction by alien invaders.”
Mia chuckled. “Maybe the bad guys are those tall, skinny gray aliens with the big eyes.”
“Oh, I hate those. They’re so creepy.” Lily sounded like she’d spent a little bit too much time on the Internet looking up alien conspiracy theories.
“Come on, Lily. You know you want to be abducted and get one of those sexual probes.” Mia’s deadpan voice took me a moment to process.
Lily choked on whatever she was drinking as I laughed. Mia had no filter. None.
“The only alien I want probing me is Darius. And since he’s not here at the moment, I’ll pass on the creepy grays. But I do wonder what the bad guys look like. They never show them in the game.”
“They probably have tentacles,” Mia said.
“We’re on. Let’s do this.” My ship lifted off and headed for orbit. My gaming screen changed to reveal the fighter’s control system I was so familiar with, and I set my soda down to focus as a swarm of Dark Fleet ships headed toward me. Us. Me and Alex.
“Enemy fighters approaching.” That rumbling, sexy voice came from Alex in the copilot seat beside me. A thrill shot through me at his deep timbre.
“Mia?” I asked.
“On it.” Mia’s commands came through the on-screen controls as if we actually were out in space. I was in the starfighter, and Mia was in some kind of control command center on Velerion. As for Lily, she was on the ground on an enemy controlled planet. “Lily, move your ass. You need to get one grid farther than last time in order for us to win. I think that will be enough to get you to their ground control. You need to smash them into tiny pieces so their ships become disoriented, and Jamie can finish the rest of them off in space.”
“Moving as fast as I can,” she said, her words clipped and laser sharp.
I watched the blip that was Lily move from grid to grid on the display.
She wasn’t on Velerion, which meant the Dark Fleet hadn’t gotten to the peaceful planet, the one that looked similar to Earth. Blues and greens, reddish-brown deserts and white clouds. But it was twenty times the size of Earth. Or so the game’s designers mentioned in the story details they’d published.
The enemy planet of Queen Raya, Xandrax, was even bigger, supposedly eighty times the size of Earth and just a bit farther away from their sun. Star. Vega. It was called Vega.
“Taking evasive action.” Alex looked over, his green eyes intense as he spoke. “You are not focused.”
Oh, how these game developers paid attention to every detail and somehow knew I’d been distracted. The headsets we played with must be tracking my eye movements, too. Alex had roughly a hundred different dialogue cues he could say while we were in combat. This one was the most annoying. “I know. Shut it,” I snapped.
“That is no way to talk to that sexy man,” Mia scolded.
“Shut up, Mia.” I was focused now.
“I’m in! Grid twelve breached.” Lily’s victory cry made me jump in my chair as Mia whooped in victory.
“Yes. Smash everything,” I told her, sharing the thrill.
“This is going to be so much fun.” Lily’s voice was pure joy as she did whatever it was her giant fighting robot did to the Dark Fleet’s operational command center. I had no doubt her XP would be off the charts with that move.
“I’m going to take out their communications. They should be all over the place after that. Standby, Jamie, to finish them,” she ordered. “Aaaaand… now!”
“I’m trying.” My hands shook, my body so pumped with adrenaline I was choking on it. My fingers flew over the gaming controller. This was it. With their help, I was actually going to defeat the game. Win.
“We’re taking fire,” Alex said, followed by a warning beep. The Beep of Doom, as I thought of it.
“I know,” I countered, leaning forward. I wasn’t distracted now.
“Critical system failure.”
“I know,” I repeated, snapping at my wingman. Every damn time our fighter had the same issue. These ships needed to be tougher if they were going to be shot at in space.
“Life support down to fifty percent.”
“Ahhh! Shut. Up.” I knew the game’s copilot couldn’t actually hear me, but I chose the appropriate response on the menu provided on-screen to tell him off and keep fighting. “There are only three of them left.”
“You’re going to run out of air.” Mia’s nervous energy was palpable.
Fuck that and the incessant Beep of Doom. “I’m either going to run out of air, or I’m going to blow up three more bad guys and we’re going to complete this mission.”
“Do it!” Lily was fully on board now.
Everything faded as I leaned forward in my gaming chair, closer to the screen. My body flowed. My fingers flew over the control buttons. I knew the game. Knew my ship, knew where the enemy was going to fly before they did. I’d played hours and hours. Hundreds of hours to reach this moment.
I fired. Again.
Two down, one to go.
“Return to base. Oxygen level critical,” Alex said.
“No.” I muted my copilot. Normally I would not have done that, as his sexy voice provided half the fun of playing. But this time I wanted to win. I didn’t want to be safe. It seemed as if his warnings were meant to keep me alive rather than win against Queen Raya. I was going to blow that last bad guy’s ship out of existence if my avatar died doing it.
“Holy shit!” Lily shouted.
“Focus. You got it, Jamie. You got it.” Mia’s calm voice grounded me in the familiar. It was only a game, but this victory mattered to all three of us.