Page 6 of Rogue Starfighter

I liked him because he never panicked. He did not waste words. He always had my back, never questioned my competence, and shot anyone who tried to kill me. What more could a woman want? Besides a pulse. A physical body. The ability to leave the monitor and ravish me in bed. Minor details.

Vesh’s animation finished loading. He turned his head toward the camera and looked directly at me. My heart did the same ridiculous little flip it did every time.

It was only an animation. I knew that. Somewhere, a programmer had written the code that made his eyes lock on mine. Another had recorded the low voice that whispered through my headset during missions. Knowing that did not stop me from staring.

Those green eyes were intense enough to make me wonder what he would do if he really could see me. Would he like the soft stomach hidden beneath the giant hoodie? Would he care that I was too tired to put on makeup or that my fuzzy socks had little pink airplanes all over them?

Would he look at me the way he did now? Like I was the one person in the universe he had been waiting for? God. I needed a date. Or new batteries. Probably batteries. They were less disappointing.

“Stop staring at him,” Alisha said.

“I’m not staring.”

“Your camera is on.”

I glanced at the small video window in the corner of my screen. Both women were watching me. “You two are nosy. Load up your own games.”

“Start the mission, Priya,” Gina ordered. “You're about to win and I'm going to watch. Some of us are old and exhausted.”

“You’re twenty-nine.”

“Exactly. Ancient. Go.”

I wiped the salt from my fingers, settled both hands on the controls, and hit start. The simulated cockpit closed around me. My chair shifted into flight position. The side monitors filled with stars, enemy positions, weapon status, and the moving debris field that had killed me fifty-six times so far. Not that I was counting.

The game generated Vesh in the copilot’s seat beside me. He checked the sensor display, then turned those impossible eyes my way.

“Final corridor,” he said. “Three defensive gates. No fleet support. No extraction if you fail.”

“So, a normal Wednesday.”

Vesh did not smile. He almost never did.

“Your odds of survival are fourteen percent.”

“You’re a ray of sunshine.”

“I do not know what that means.”

Of course he didn’t. The character’s alien confusion was one of my favorite details. “It means try to keep up.”

“Fly fast enough, and I will.”

Gina made a strangled sound in my headset. “Did your sim just flirt with you?”

“No.” Damn, the programmers were good.

“He totally did,” Alisha said.

“Can we focus?”

The first gate appeared ahead, hidden inside a rotating field of rock, wreckage, and free-floating mines. I had failed here nineteen times. Every safe route closed before I could reach it. Every standard flight path ended in an explosion. I knew because I had tried them all.

At work, safe and predictable kept people alive. Separate the aircraft. Maintain the lanes. Never assume another pilot would see the danger in time. The game did not care about any of those rules.

“Corridor is active,” Vesh said. “Your call, Scout.”

My call. I tightened my grip on the controls. For weeks, I had waited for an opening. Tonight, I was done waiting.