Titans 01: Coeus

The following story is a ~160k word mash-up of sci-fi and fantasy in a very literal way, featuring action, character drama, and a bit of intrigue. Warnings for violence, descriptions of injuries including some light gore, and implied/threatened sexual assault. Sex scenes will include MF, MFF, FMF, FF, and one memorable instance of FMFFF, with consensual BDSM and kink themes throughout including anal, pain, degradation, praise, cuckquean, orgasm control, CNC (consensual non-consent) between two women, and various others, as well as mild themes of incest between characters who aren't strictly-speaking family with each other (and I don't mean step-siblings, you'll see by midway through this chapter).

If all of that sounds good to you, read on! If you're not sure, you should know that things will get progressively heavier through the story (both the kink and plot themes) so that could either give you the chance to acclimatise or suddenly put you off right before the end. You know yourself best.

This story will be released in four parts, already fully written and edited, which will be uploaded one after the other as soon as I see that the previous one has gone live with no issues. For any returning readers, or just people who have checked my profile, the first two parts (

Titans 1: Coeus

and

Titans 2: Leto

) are a combined, edited and partially rewritten version of the previous Titans chapters from 00 to 08. If by some coincidence you've just finished reading those versions and don't feel up to a reread then you can probably jump straight into

Titans 3: Atlas

without issue as the plot hasn't changed at all in the rewrites, just been made a bit clearer in places. I've left the old chapters up for posterity and those of you who bookmarked them, but I'd consider the new version definitive and wouldn't say there's any need to go back.

Writing this story has taught me a lot about myself, both in terms of literary skills and in terms of my (in)ability to work to a non-binding deadline. I'll make sure any future projects are finished in their entirety before I start to upload, so my readers don't end up with an unexpected 5-year gap again. That being said, I hope you all enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Without further ado...

Are you sitting comfortably?

*****

*****

*****

The transporter craft shook and rumbled as it tore through the space between space. Captain Alexander Murray stayed steady on his feet as he walked the gantry around the gigantic mechanised humanoid hanging in the cramped cargo hold. Each forearm of the mech was bigger than even the pilot who was examining it, with his broad shoulders and a towering physique that put him head and shoulders above nearly any other man. A bundle of lenses, forming a rough approximation of a face, glared down from above a gaping chest that was split open like a beetle's shell. A comprehensive looking series of analogue dials surrounded a harness within the cavity of what would be the torso.

As Alex wandered around the metal man, panels and flaps slid open at his touch. Strong, tanned hands turned valves and pressed buttons with methodical precision as he ran through a well-practised maintenance routine. Closely stacked behind his machine - with just enough room for the walkway - was a second mech, and its pilot had managed to lift the right hand into a cupped position. She was lounging along the wrist with her head in the palm and her long hair draped over the fingers, swaying gently with the movements of the ship. Lieutenant Anna Carroll's mech was shorter and more stocky than the longer and sleeker counterpart, and it had a long tube resting over each shoulder, mounted on the upper back. The woman herself was only slightly shorter and more slight than the captain, making her still massive compared to any ordinary person, and had blonde hair to his dark brown.

When Captain Murray passed between the mechs, the lieutenant nimbly sprang from her perch to hug him from behind.

"Take it easy, Alex," she chided gently, "You've checked every system three fucking times since we set off, you know damn well they're all good."

Alex could feel Anna's soft breasts pressing into his back, even through two layers of force-reactive armour. Not for the first time, he cursed the fraternisation rules for mech pilots, despite the good reasons behind them. He forcefully pried her arms from where they had been wrapping around his chest and turned to face her. He held her wrists firmly in his hands, but she pressed her body against him just the same, giving him a playful smirk, lips inches from his. She knew exactly what she was doing, and she knew she would get away with it. The little tease. He looked down at her, her cheek rested on his shoulder and deep blue eyes stared back at his own matching pair.

"Come on, you grumpy fucker," she taunted him in a mock little girl voice, "Have a game of cards with me and the navigator, you could do with taking a load off."

Alex sighed, all thoughts of disciplining her leaving his mind. At least all thoughts of official discipline did, he had a few ideas of how to punish her for the teasing that were relentlessly circling in his hindbrain regardless of his attempts to ignore them.

"Alright," he acquiesced, dropping her hands and stepping back, "I hope you have something more interesting than poker though, I don't feel like taking all your money again."

The lieutenant laughed easily.

"We could always play for something other than money," she said innocently, thumbing the fastenings on her suit of high-tech armour.

The captain felt himself growing hard despite his best efforts, and laughed nervously.

"You want to play strip poker with the navigator? Be my guest."

Anna pulled a disgusted face, and he laughed again, grabbing her by the shoulder and steering her towards the front of the vessel.

*****

The navigator was a spindly, decrepit young man, with thick black veins sprawling all over his skin, converging at the point where the wires of the ship's systems fed into his bulbous head. The ship's bridge was arranged in concentric semicircles around him, where the other crew hustled about performing all the busywork that kept them in motion. The inner semicircle was empty aside from the navigator himself, the two black-armoured mech pilots sat cross-legged on the floor, and a small deck of cards.

"Three," the navigator said in a small voice, tapping the two face down cards piled in front of him and causing him to shift slightly in the rigging that suspended him above the floor. He turned to his left, peering at Anna with solid black eyes. Most would have found it disconcerting, but the mech pilots were well used to it by now.

Lieutenant Carroll thought for a moment, contemplating the two cards in front of her and the one in her hand.

"Four," she said finally, looking at Captain Murray.

He barely hesitated.

"Call," he challenged.

The lieutenant grinned, flipping over her two cards revealing two artistically rendered roses. She then reached out to the pile in front of the navigator, flipping the top card to show a third rose, and the bottom to show a grinning, black skull. Her face fell, then screwed up in anger.

"Fucking lanky piece of crap! Conniving... shitty, black-eyed BASTARD!" Anna went off on a tirade as the two men burst into laughter. Even some passing bridge staff chuckled along, the trio had become a regular fixture on the month-long journey and they had gotten over their initial shock at the woman's foul mouth.

"It's been really great having you two here," the navigator wheezed as Anna took a moment to breathe, "It's nice to have someone intelligent around to talk to."

"Aww, we'll miss you too, big guy!" she exclaimed, suddenly switching from furious to joyful. She clapped him on the shoulder, sending him swinging in his supports. Alex just smiled and nodded his thanks at the compliment. The navigator winced, then screwed his face up in pain.

"Are you alright?" Alex asked, getting halfway to his feet. Anna went white as a sheet, and she stammered out an apology, but the navigator held his hand up to her and shook his head.

"Not you," he hissed past gritted teeth, "It's something... it's... it's..." his head shot back and his eyes opened, his black eyeballs now had little pinpricks of white light emerging scattershot like stars. "SLIPSPACE ANOMALY!" he screamed, and the ship bucked and groaned, tossing everyone except the navigator around like ragdolls.

Alex wrapped Anna in his arms and cushioned the blow as they were flung against the wall. The breath was knocked out of him as her not-insubstantial weight slammed into his ribs, but the armour hardened upon impact and absorbed any real damage that could have been done. Gravity righted itself and they fell to the floor, struggling to their feet to see the navigator writhing and contorting as he hung there. The white lights had spread across his eyes and now they blazed like suns as he fought to regain control of their tumble through the ethereal realm of slipspace. He suddenly snapped his head to face the two officers, nearly blinding them with his glowing eyes.

"Get to your mechs! I'll extend the field, and you might be able to get out of slipspace before we come apart."

The navigator's voice was strong now, and hummed with unknowable power. The mech pilots didn't even stop to acknowledge him as they raced back down the corridors to the cargo hold. The walls started to buckle and bend, and they could hear the deafening roar of boundless energy beyond them. The air smelled like a thunderstorm, and the captain could taste a metallic tang in the back of his throat.

The two giant metal humanoids swung like chaotic pendulums from their mounts on the ceiling. Anna ran for her seat and was knocked flying by the arm she had been sitting on such a short time ago. Alex had been going for his own seat, but detoured to catch her. He hauled her to her feet and dragged her along the gantry, ducking under the flailing limb. She was dazed and blood was leaking from her nose and mouth, but she accepted his help and clambered up into the cockpit and began fumbling with the straps.

"Don't you go spacing out on me Lieutenant!" Alex yelled over the ever increasing cacophony. Anna looked up at him, regaining some focus, and nodded grimly.

"What's that soldier?!"

"Sir, yes sir!" she responded, as loud as she could but still barely audible.

"We are the best of the best!" he started.

"The toughest part of a mech is the pilot!" she said, finishing the motto.

Alex slapped a button inside Anna's mech and the chest plate slid into position, shutting her in. He jumped back and sprinted to his own seat, grabbing the hand of his robot to help him corner and leaping up, putting his arms through the straps before his ass had even touched the chair. As the cockpit closed around him he reached behind him to grab a short wire ending in a thin spike, which he slid into a metal socket on the back of his skull with a grimace.

As the neural spike clicked home Alex's vision lit up with floating displays, he felt his awareness of his own body fade away as he took control of the mech. He looked down and the array of lenses focused on the floor as it opened, a swirling purple maelstrom danced across the protective field some fifty metres below. Here and there flashes of black space were visible, but none big enough for the mech to fall through. Alex established a comm link with Anna.

"Wait for my signal, then release the docking clamp," he ordered.

"Affirmative, sir," came the uncharacteristically formal response.

Alex watched and waited, broken pieces of the ship went whipping by the hatch and were obliterated as they hit the field, turning from matter to raw energy in an instant. The maelstrom pulsed, and a large gap appeared.

"Drop drop drop," he signalled.

Anna's mech blew its clamp with a bang and fell out of sight, accelerated away by the ship's artificial gravity field. Alex's clamp released and he began to plummet after her, then stopped with a crack and the sound of tearing metal. The mech's limbs thrashed wildly as he fought to free himself from the unseen obstruction.

"No no NO!" he cried out, as the hole in the slipspace storm wobbled and began to close.

Metal creaked, and there was another crack. Captain Alexander Murray lurched head over heels into the unknown.

*****

Alex awoke to darkness and muffled voices. He hung limply from his harness, the only lights coming from the day-glo parts on the backup dials. He dimly lifted his head after a great deal of protesting by his muscles and checked the readouts; nothing seemed out of the ordinary, though the mech had gone into sleep mode while he was out. He vaguely remembered firing the retro thrusters far too late into reentry on a planet that had appeared out of nowhere. Late enough that he would have chewed out Anna for a week if she'd done it in training. His pilot suit had taken the worst of the shock, but he felt bruised all over from the sudden deceleration.

There was a heavy knock on the outside of the cockpit. Alex shook himself awake, and reached to reinsert the neural spike, which had become dislodged with the impact. The hard shell of the mech was a relief from his aching meat body. As the reactor hummed into life, the muffled voices outside turned into shouts. The camera flickered on, and he saw large, drooping faces looking on as he lay foetal in a small crater in a primaeval forest.

The mech unfurled and stood up. The figures backed away and Alex realised that it wasn't just a trick of perspective. As the mech stood upright it towered, some ten metres tall, but the three figures that surrounded him matched him in height, and even exceeded him by half a metre or so. They were pot-bellied, and clad in furs so large that they could have come from a mammoth. One of them looked old, and leaned on a staff that looked like an ancient sailing ship's mast, complete with a crow's nest. The tallest one had a club that was literally an entire tree trunk stripped of branches.

"Okay," Alex muttered to himself, "That's new."

Any further speculation was cut off as the third one roared and hurled a fist at the mech. Captain Alexander's combat instincts kicked in and he caught the punch on an armoured forearm. The giant howled in pain and staggered back, clutching at his knuckles, which seemed to galvanise the other pair. The tall one bellowed and stomped, pounding the ground with his club. Alex ignored the display and deftly punched him in the chest. He felt a crunch through the mech's feedback circuit, and the bellowing turned to a gurgle, but the one that had thrown the first punch had recovered and grappled him from behind, attempting to tear off the head. A diagnostic report came in, the neck joint was holding, but most of his weapon systems were still offline, either damaged or still warming up - there was no way of telling yet. He would have to do this the old fashioned way.

A metal boot flattened the giant's foot into a bloody mess, causing it to relinquish its grasp. As it limped backwards, the mech rotated at the waist and grabbed it by the throat. With a whir of hydraulics Alex crushed the beast's neck. Sensors beeped in warning but he couldn't dodge fast enough to avoid the club that threw him off balance. Gyroscopes strained and he stretched out his arms, coming upright again in a low crouch.

The club came around again, but this time Alex was ready. A long, wide blade extended from each wrist across the back of the hands - hissing as the energy field around them powered up - and he caught the club with one of them, slicing it in half with barely any resistance. The other blade whipped around, cutting the giant diagonally from hip to shoulder. The creature's skin was tough and leathery, but the blade was designed to spear through tanks, and it cut through it like butter.

While this was happening, the elderly giant had backed off, and had been chanting and gesturing with his staff. Alex had been content to ignore him for now, but that proved to be a mistake as he gestured with the tip of the staff and a bolt of green fire exploded across the mech's hull. The protective shields snapped on only to be immediately overloaded.

The captain sat in shock as his systems attempted to make sense of what had happened. A huge burst of energy had thrown almost all of his sensors out of calibration. The sudden influx of heat had had one positive side effect though, as he received a notification that one of his weapon systems had warmed up; the plasma gun. He raised an arm, and a ball of white hot gases arced out and hit the remaining giant in the stomach as it growled at him. It burned through skin and seared organs, and the last of his assailants fell down, dead.

Captain Murray stood in silence, taking in his surroundings and attempting to process the insanity that had just happened. The trees around him were tall, and several had branches that had been broken as he made his landing. The two corpses at his feet were leaking blood onto the floor, which was pooling in the crater, and the third crackled and popped as the fat and muscle cooked in the residual plasma heat. With most of his sensors rebooting he had to rely on sight alone, but he still managed to spot the blur of movement between the trees to his left.

Alex stared and stared, willing some of his scanners to come back online so he could locate the source of the disturbance. There were no animals, not even birds, as they had all been frightened off by the disturbance. The undergrowth was thick save for a few narrow game trails, so there was no way he could spot anything putting any effort into hiding. His thermal vision finished restarting, and he switched it on, following the trail of hotspots to a thick tree. Moving as carefully and as quietly as a giant mech could, he approached.

As the mech rounded the tree a red splodge appeared on Alex's vision. He switched back to the visual band camera with a thought, and saw a cowled woman pointing a drawn bow at him. She was cloaked in green, and a dull brown tunic was tucked into a scabbard belt at her waist. Her skin was pale and freckled, and a pair of emerald green eyes stared defiantly at him down the shaft of a steel tipped arrow, fletched with mottled grey feathers. Wisps of fiery red hair poked out from her hood, framing a beautiful, scowling face. Alex pulled back from controlling the mech to pinch the bridge of his nose inside the cockpit.

"What the fuck is going on?" he asked himself.

Despite the strangeness of the situation Alex found himself in, there was another human in front of him, who was still his best bet for food and shelter besides ration packs and the mech until he could be picked up, despite her obvious distrust of technology. The thought of being picked up suddenly sparked his curiosity, and he checked his navigation system to determine his location. The pilot gave a sharp intake of breath as the lack of any beacon signal presented itself; he was clearly far, far out in the middle of nowhere. Rescue from out here could take years.

"What manner of beast are you?" said the woman in front of him, startling Alex.

The mech had been stationary for some time, but she hadn't lowered her weapon. Alex thought quickly: now was the time to make a good first impression, and he wouldn't get a second chance with her. Slowly, so as not to startle her, he dropped to one knee. Activating the external speakers, he announced himself.

"Captain Alexander Murray, mech pilot. At your service, citizen."

"I did not ask for your name, creature," she accused, "What are you that stands like a giant yet slays three of them with ease?"