When the Titans Fall

Simulations

Fox awoke to a screaming alarm, and promptly fell out of her bed.
"What? Why? Where?" She exclaimed, scrambling to her feet.
"That's the emergency alarm, the ship's been hit!" Said Three, opening the door.
Before Fox could run out, B grabbed her arm.
"Sorry Fox, ignore Charlie. She has a twisted sense of humour." He turned back to Three, who stood outside the door, laughing manically at Fox's reaction, which cut off quickly at what Bravo called her.
"Charlie? Oh right, because you're the third..." Fox trailed off under Three's harsh glare.
"Call me anything beginning with a C and I will punch your throat."
"O-okay. Why the alarm?"
"That" said Dee, swinging her legs off her bunk. "Means combat simulation time."

Combat simulation training took place in a large chamber lined with pods. Fox was directed into a pod by a woman who didn't smile called Sarah, and was apparently a big deal leader in the Militia. The doors closed around her. Then the walls began to glow, assembling a massive dome, with buildings and glowing pathways of what appeared to be solid light. Fox shouldered her new weapon, an energy submachine gun, called an L-Star. The armour she wore was nearly identical to everyone else's, grey and green, and wasn't as heavy as it looked. Fox looked left and saw Echo, his gun still strapped on his back. His fingers tapped his sides.
"Hey." Fox called to him. "What do we do here?"
He looked at her, visor reflecting the orange of the dome and spoke softly.
"Kill. Don't get killed."
"By who?"
He nodded forward as a squad of four people rounded the corner and shouted in surprise. Fox hesitated.
"Are they real?" She asked. No response. She looked at Echo as he threw something at the four men as they pointed their weapons forward. The grenade exploded, shrapnel ripping through the bodies of the grunts, who didn't bleed, but dissolved into blue pixels.
"Let's go. We don't want to attract too much attention."
"Wait! I thought you'd never been in a firefight before? How did you do that?"
"I was born with a gift. Grenades are my speciality. I honed that with fifty seven runs of The Gauntlet."
"You- WHAT!"
Echo threw himself into the wall, then grabbed her arm and pulled her in after him
"Shush! Are you trying to get us killed?" He hissed, then noticed his hand was still on her arm and let go.
"I'll keep you alive as long as possible if you don't tell Three about that."
Before Fox could say anything, he turned the corner and kept moving at a fast walk. Despite his slim frame, the kid was fast and she almost had to jog to keep up.
"Three really scares you huh?" She whispered.
"Don't wanna talk about it. She's never been, WATCH OUT!"
Echo tackled Fox as a massive robot, about three meters tall, dropped from the white column behind them.
"Shit! Reaper!" Echo swore, swinging his Softball grenade launcher off his back and firing, once, then twice before hauling Fox to her feet.
"Go!" He shouted, pushing her behind him and beginning to strafe the robot as it's hands opened and began to fire blue rockets. Fox started to back away, then pulled her gun up to her shoulder and started shooting, aiming for the parts highlighted on her HUD, but mostly missing due to her weapon's unfamiliar recoil. A loud mechanical growl came from behind her and she turned to see another reaper as it fired four disks into the sky from the top of a parked fighter plane. The disks landed, grew legs and started to scuttle towards Fox, red bodies glowing with a devilish light. Echo yelled behind her, and as Fox turned to look, he landed next to her, sent flying from a punch. Fox's L-Star fired at the ticks, but started to cool down after a few missed shots. Then, with the ticks only a few feet away, a furious hail of bullets rained from the top of the column, detonating the red machines. A bright flash heralded the explosion of one of the Reapers as a beam of Charge Rifle energy ripped through it's head, and the other one fell under another hailstorm of bullets. Their saviour dropped from the column and landed, a pilot in black and orange with a Spitfire held lazily in one hand. Echo gasped.
"A-Alpha?"
The pilot nodded, then gestured with two fingers in a direction before setting off. The two newer pilots followed him. He led them down a narrow corridor of sorts, when a pod dropped from the sky, blocking their path. The pod faded into pixels, revealing four evil-looking orange robots. Alpha raised his gun and fired with methodical, ruthless precision, destroying the heads of each robot. The closest one made it one step toward them.
"Shit" whispered Echo, apparently startled by the brutal efficiency of the Wolfpack's leader as he moved forward, not bothering to step over the headless mechanical corpses as he continued forward. Fox agreed. This man may have been the leader, but she hadn't expected such... cruelty. And he hadn't spoken to them at all. She was certain that it wasn't like Echo's nervous quiet, but like the iron hardened silence of someone who never showed anything but apathy. If he was one of the good guys, was this really the right side?