Page 3 of Starfighter’s Salvation

Nobody waited for me. Nobody ever did. I checked my temperature. Tad high, but not a true fever. Two ibuprofens, a shower, and common sense would have sent me to bed. Instead, I booted the game, Starfighter Training Academy, and hopped on the server.

“There she is.” Alisha’s voice came through my headset the moment I came online. Cool. Smooth. She and Priya were the closest things to sisters I’d ever had. Alisha was smart and gorgeous with one of those voices that disarmed people instantly. She could sell bottled water to a beaver. “How many lives did you save today, Nurse Reyes?”

“All of them. You hear from Priya?” I knew the answer, but I asked anyway. Priya had been my best friend for more than twenty years. No way she’d call Alisha first. I was her best friend. Me. And I’d heard nothing. Fucking crickets.

“Still dark,” Alisha said. “Three weeks today.”

Three weeks since Priya completed her last Elite Starfighter mission, promised to wait for us, and vanished. Her game system had died. Her phone went dead. Her boss at the air traffic control tower said she’d left in the middle of a shift with a man no one could identify. The security pictures were so blurry we couldn’t see who it was. Tall? Yes. Dark clothes? Sure. That was it. Whoever he was, he must have been really damn convincing, because Priya would direct airplane traffic through the apocalypse before abandoning people in the air.

“The police called me again,” Alisha said. “They asked if Priya met men online.”

“No way. She wasn’t dating anyone. She would have told us.” I rolled my eyes. Couldn’t help it. “Besides, she was too in love with Vesh to pay attention to anyone else.”

“I know that. You know that. Apparently, Detective Mustache doesn’t believe us.”

“He has a name.” He’d called me too. Multiple times.

“So does his mustache. I named it Larry.”

I smiled despite myself. “Anything new on the player boards?”

“Total of four accounts that went inactive immediately after someone finished the program. Jamie Miller was first. Priya is the latest. Same pattern every time. Game completion, hardware failure, disappearance.”

“You make it sound like the game kidnapped them.”

“I am not ruling it out.”

“It’s a video game, Alisha.” Who was I trying to convince?

“Maybe. Maybe it’s a hunting ground for serial killers. Maybe aliens kidnap the best players. I don’t know. But here we both are, playing anyway. Making excellent choices.”

“Us and a million other idiots.” I settled deeper into my chair and picked up the controller. “I’m one mission away from beating the game.”

“I know.”

“If Priya is somewhere connected to this game, I need to know.”

“I know that, too.”

The three of us had made a promise. Whoever finished first waited for the other two. Priya had finished first, then disappeared. Priya would never have broken her word to us. So, something had happened that kept her from keeping it. The detective thought she had a sketchy online boyfriend? No way. Unless he wanted to count Elite Starfighter Vesh from the Vega system. That I’d believe. Hell, I did believe it. Stupid or not, the conspiracy theorists online were the only people making any sense. Beat the game, and aliens show up and take you into space to fight a real alien war.

I’d thought it was ridiculous for a long, long time. Until Priya disappeared without a trace. Now? Now a small part of me wanted it to be true. Wanted Corvan to be real.

Who was I kidding? The part of me that wanted Corvan to be real wasn’t small. More like every cell in my body. “Let’s do this,” I said.

“You sound like you’re marching off to war.” Alisha munched on a raw carrot, loud and obnoxious in my ear.

“What if we are? The game says we’re at war with Queen Raya in the Vega system. What if it’s true?”

“You’re too sweet for war. You’d be dead your first day.”

“Rude. I’m starting the mission.”

My final training assignment filled the screen. Downed troop shuttle. Active shelling. Multiple casualties scattered across a rocky canyon on an alien world. The mission had beaten me multiple times because I kept trying to save everyone in the order I found them. That wasn’t how triage works. It was how guilt works, and guilt was the enemy of success. Right?

This time, I was going to be ruthless. Efficient. This time, I was going to win.

Corvan’s avatar appeared beside mine in the on-screen rescue ship. Big. Broad. Gray eyes. Scarred hands wrapped around the flight controls. I had chosen every one of those details months ago, after a double shift and two margaritas. Muscular shoulders. Well defined jaw. The scar through his eyebrow had seemed like a nice touch. The fact that his black uniform hugged his ass like the game developers had hired a team of horny women programmers wasn’t my fault, but I appreciated their attention to detail. Even knowing he was just code, my attention snapped to him before I bothered looking for the wounded.