Aurora Burning

by Amie Kaufman

  “Stealth field engaged,” Kal reports. “We should be hidden from their radar now. We only need to get out of their line of sight.”

  “Leave that to me,” Zila murmurs.

  She looks up at Shamrock, still perched above the pilot’s station. Reaching out, she touches the fuzzy green dragon, as if for luck.

  “Everybody hold on,” she says.

  Our thrusters roar.

  And we’re away.

  * * *

  • • • • •

  Turns out Zila can fly as well as she drives. She’s no Cat, no Zero, nowhere close, but apparently all those nights alone in her room, bereft of friends, she had more than enough time to study theory and practice simulations. It’s a wild ride, though—she definitely leaned heavier on the theory than the practice.

  The Terran fighters pursuing us didn’t have the range to keep up with the Zero, and every capital ship in that attack fleet had suffered major damage by the time Andarael’s guns fell silent. Though it was a defeat, one Syldrathi warship fought six Terran vessels and gave every one of them a bloody nose or a broken neck. I can’t imagine what a war between us is going to mean. My dad fought half his life to build the peace between our peoples.

  And now everything is in flames….

  We’ve dropped out of the Fold near a no-name star, way out in a neutral zone. This system is only notable for the naturally occurring FoldGate leading to it—according to logs and scopes, there’s no settlements here, no mining ops, nothing. It’ll be a good place to lay low while we figure out what the hells we’re gonna do now.

  “So what the hells are we gonna do now?” Finian asks.

  Zila has locked us into orbit around the system’s first planet—an Earth-sized rock fried to a cinder by the white dwarf it’s circling. She’s taken her place with the rest of us, sitting around our bridge consoles and looking into each other’s eyes. Kal and Auri sit together, bloodstained fingers entwined. Fin sits opposite with me, his uniglass plugged into his terminal, the surface aglow with scrolling reams of data. Zila is at the head of the console where Ty used to sit.

  Where Ty used to sit…

  “We have to go back, right?” Auri says, looking back and forth between us. “We can’t just leave Tyler in the hands of the GIA.”

  “That is exactly what we must do,” Zila says.

  “But this is my fault!” Auri says. “They wanted me, not him. This is on me!”

  “No,” Kal sighs. “Saedii was chasing me. If not for her interference, the GIA would never have caught up to us. This is my fault. All of it. I am shamed. De’sai.”

  “Listen,” Fin says, glancing up from his data streams. “I know I’m not usually Mr. Sunshine, but I’m not sure we should be pointing fingers at ourselves here.”

  “Agreed,” I nod. “This is no one’s fault. You didn’t ask to become what you are, Auri. And Kal, you can’t help it if your sister is, and I mean no offense here, a murder-faced psycho bitch-machine.”

  Kal smiles faintly, but I see hurt twinkling in the violet of his eyes.

  “She was not always so,” he murmurs.

  I breathe deep, chewing my lip and running over the events of the last day in my head. It seems like we’ve got the whole galaxy chasing after us. We can’t rely on anyone for help out here. We’re still wanted galactic terrorists. And I can’t say my time in Unbroken captivity has endeared me to the thought of life in a penal colony.

  “Those Waywalkers Saedii captured,” I murmur, thinking back to the cells on Andarael. “Why would Warbreed be rounding up Syldrathi empaths, Kal?”

  He shakes his head. “I do not know.”

  “Saedii seemed to take a real interest in Auri once she saw a display of her power,” I say. “She made specific mention of transporting her back to the Starslayer.” I meet Auri’s eyes. “What would Caersan want with you?”

  “This is all utterly irrelevant,” Zila snaps.

  I blink at our Brain, a little taken aback. Normally Zila speaks in monotone, her mannerisms closer to a cardboard box than a human. But she actually seems…

  Testy?

  “…Are you feeling okay?” I ask.

  “Tyler, Saedii, the Starslayer, none of it matters,” she says, looking at each of us in turn. “We cannot stray from our path. The stakes we are playing with here are unfathomable. We must find the Eshvaren Weapon. The Ra’haam must be stopped. Every other consideration must be secondary.”

  Fin clears his throat. “Zila…”

  “All of this is happening for a reason,” she says. “We must go forward. The message from Adams and de Stoy, this ship, the cigarillo case that saved Kal’s life, all of this is unfolding as it was supposed to. The only way out is through.”

  Kal touches his chest where the disruptor blast hit him, as if remembering the shot that almost killed him. Auri squeezes his hand, concern in her eyes.

  “Don’t you dare do anything like that again, okay? Listen to me next time.”

  “I will, be’shmai,” he replies. “I swear it.”

  Fin is looking at the pair, at Kal, a strange expression on his face. I nod to the uniglass he has plugged into his terminal.

  “So, does the data from the Hadfield tell us anything?”

  “Gimme a second,” he replies. “I’m looking for unusual readings or anomalies in the logs, but there’s a lot to wade through here.”

  An uneasy silence falls, broken only by the pulse of our LADAR sweeps, the tapping of Finian’s metal-tipped fingers on his screens. I look at Auri and I can tell she’s still torn up. Thinking this is her fault. Feeling guilty about leaving Ty behind, about her loss of control on the Hadfield, about losing her nerve on the Andarael. I know she’s trying, but this power of hers…she has to learn how to control it. And I’m wondering how she’s going to manage that if she won’t even acknowledge it.

  “When the Unbroken had me sedated…,” she begins.

  Her voice falters and Kal squeezes her hand. She seems to draw strength from his touch, breathing deep before speaking again.

  “I dreamed,” she says, shaking her head. “I felt it. I saw it.”

  “The Ra’haam,” Kal says.

  Auri nods. “It’s getting stronger. I can…sense it somehow. Like a splinter in the back of my mind. Every moment we spend out here is another moment it has to grow. In my dreams…I saw whole worlds covered in that blue pollen. I saw Earth. Other planets. All of them like Octavia III. Completely overrun.” She shakes her head again. “It’s close to hatching now. Blooming and bursting.”

  “How close?” I ask, my stomach turning cold somersaults.

  “I don’t know.” She sighs, leans forward, elbows on her knees. “But soon.”

  My stomach rolls again, and I think of Cat in her final moments. Imagine what it would be like, being consumed. Losing yourself to this thing the way she did. I imagine whole worlds being assimilated, annihilated, and for a moment I feel so small, so insignificant, I can barely breathe. I’ve already lost my best friend. Now I’ve lost my brother, too. Who else am I going to lose before this is over?

  “Hold up…,” Finian murmurs.

  Zila comes to attention, sitting up even straighter in her chair (if that’s possible). “Finian? What have you found?”

  He narrows his eyes, poring over the Hadfield data streams. “There’s something strange here. Spatial anomaly. Massive power fluctuation in the Hadfield’s core. Critical bio-failure in most of its cryo systems. Its sensor arrays weren’t that advanced, but these readings…” He looks up at me. “Yeah, something really weird happened aboard that ship.”

  “When?” Auri asks, her mismatched eyes growing wide. “Where?”

  “Almost a hundred years ago.” Fin whistles, tapping a handful of commands on his screen. “I’ve got approximate coordinates. It’s about twenty ho
urs through the Fold from our current location, if we put Zero on maximum burn.”

  They all look to me then. The tattered remnants of Aurora Legion Squad 312. Maybe because I’m a Jones. Hells, maybe because they’ve got no one else to look at. But I’m not cut out for this. I shouldn’t be making these calls. Tyler should.

  Who do I think I am?

  Who do we think we are, going up against something this big alone?

  Zila meets my eyes, her voice soft. “The only way out is through, Scarlett.”

  I breathe deep, nod slowly.

  “Okay,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “Fin, see what else you can make of those readings. Find out anything you can about what we’re flying into. Kal, run a diagnostic on the Zero’s weapons systems and defenses, get us ready in case we hit more trouble. Zila, set us a course for those coordinates. Maximum burn.”

  The squad breaks into motion, probably grateful just to have a direction to follow. We have no idea what we’re headed toward. What we’ll find when we get there, assuming we find anything at all. But in the end, what choice do we have?

  The only way out is through, Scarlett.

  The only way out is through.

  AURORA LEGION

  ▶ AURORA ACADEMY

  ▼ FOUNDING

  AURORA ACADEMY WAS FOUNDED IN 2214 BY THE TERRAN AND BETRASKAN GOVERNMENTS, AFTER THE SIGNING OF THE TREATY OF NAIDU.

  THE FIRST ACADEMY PRINCIPALS—AND THE BRAINS BEHIND IT—WERE TERRAN ADMIRAL NARI KIM, AND BETRASKAN GREATER CLAN BATTLE LEADER RAYA DE MONOKO DE SEEL. NO OFFICIAL RECORDS EXPLAIN HOW THE PAIR BECAME PALS. GIVEN THE EFFORT BETRASKANS AND TERRANS HAD PUT INTO BLOWING EACH OTHER UP BEFORE SIGNING THE TREATY, IT MUST HAVE BEEN ONE HELLUVA PARTY.

  THE SYLDRATHI JOINED THE AURORA LEGION AFTER THE TREATY OF S’LATH MOR IN THE YEAR 2378. IT WAS ONLY AFTER THEIR FIRST CADETS ARRIVED ON AURORA STATION THAT EVERYBODY REALIZED THE DOORFRAMES WERE FIVE CENTIMETERS SHORTER THAN THE AVERAGE SYLDRATHI HEIGHT.

  AWKWARD.

  I’m trying to concentrate on these calculations, and failing miserably. The data I’m pulling out of the Hadfield’s black box is like an endless stream of moving targets, all spinning and dancing around one another in an unpredictable game.

  We’re en route to the coordinates indicated by the original readings, where something caused the colony ship’s systems to go haywire. The place, presumably, where something happened to Auri. The problem is that whatever caused it—if it was a physical object—will have drifted by now, so I need to account for that. The other problem is that an approximate location just isn’t good enough. Space is really big, and “somewhere around here” doesn’t cut it.

  Kal’s finished with his weapons check, and having set our course through the Fold, Zila has taken him to the infirmary, along with Auri to assist, or possibly just to tell him to stay still and not be such a baby while side-eyeing his abs (for this I cannot fault her). While I work, Scarlett’s watching the monitors, alert for even the smallest hint we’re being followed or flying into something dangerous. But truth be told, she’s staring down at the screens like she can barely see them, lips pressed together hard, her breathing slow and deliberate as she tries to keep it together.

  “You okay?” I murmur, knowing that it’s a dumb thing to say. I’m not okay, and he wasn’t—isn’t, I mean—my twin brother.

  She looks up, summons a weak smile. “Not really,” she admits.

  I nod because, well, fair enough. “We’re not giving up on him,” I tell her quietly. “You know the GIA’s going to hold on to him. He’s more useful to them—to Princeps—alive. Whether it’s for information, or just as bait.”

  “I know,” she agrees in a whisper. “But I still can’t believe we left him. He was right there, and we ran away.”

  Her words echo in the silence between us, underscored by the soft hum of the Zero’s systems. I know we’re both thinking about the ship’s namesake. About Cat, who was still right there when we ran too.

  Scarlett swallows hard, tries to sit up a little straighter in her chair, and it breaks my heart to watch her like this.

  “Okay,” I say. “What’s Tyler’s most annoying habit?”

  She blinks. “His what?”

  “Work with me on this,” I coax, summoning a smile I pray is a little stronger than hers. “What really drives you nuts about him?”

  She considers the question. “He labels his stuff,” she says, lips curving just a touch.

  “Sorry, he what?”

  “Puts his name on it. Has since we were kids. Everything. I never checked, but I’m pretty sure his underwear’s got his name sewn in the back.”

  “What else?”

  “He never seems to mind when you screw up,” she says. “He’s perfect, but when the rest of us aren’t, he never looks at you like you could have, should have done better. It’s like he makes allowances for everyone else to fail, but never for himself. He’s so damn saintly about it.”

  I tilt my head, feeling the stretch in the stiff tendons of my neck. “And what form does this sainthood take?”

  She flaps a hand. “You know. Pep talk. Patient expression. Tells you to keep trying.”

  I study her for a long moment. “Hey, Scar?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Keep trying.”

  She balls up her empty Strawberry Cake’n’CustardTM wrapper and tosses it at me, but she laughs. And she reaches out to curl her fingers around mine and squeeze, and my heart wants to break out through my chest.

  “Thank you,” she says quietly. “And thank you for going back for him with me. I won’t forget that.”

  “Anytime,” I tell her.

  “Do you need me to be quiet so you can concentrate?”

  “I do not, for I am outrageously clever, and I can multitask.”

  Her smile is tired and a little sad, but it’s real. “All right, Superbrain. What do you think we’re looking at?”

  I squint at my screen. “Some sort of…wiggly, blobby confluence of space-time aberrations,” I say, injecting as much authority into my tone as I can.

  “So you have no idea.”

  “I have no idea,” I agree. “But if it’s something left behind by the Eshvaren, I’m not sure I would. I’ll keep working on locking down the exact location. We’ve still got a while before we’re close. In the meantime, is there any chance you’d sleep if you took a sedative? I can keep an eye on the monitors until Zila gets back, holler if anything crops up.”

  “We should all sleep,” she frowns. Caretaker mode initiated.

  “I’ll take my turn, I promise,” I say, raising my hand and waving around a couple of fingers like I’ve seen Terrans do when they make a promise. I can tell from her expression I’m doing it wrong.

  “All right, all right.” She pushes to her feet, stretching slowly. “I’ll take something, head to bed.”

  “You need anyone to tuck you in?”

  She just winks and saunters off toward her quarters, leaving me to my calculations. I’m still replaying the wink a little while later when Zila and Auri reappear.

  “How’s the patient?” I ask.

  “I have tended Kal’s wounds,” Zila reports. “They are painful but will heal cleanly. He has agreed to Aurora’s suggestion that he should wash off the copious amounts of blood he is…covered in, and then attempt to sleep.”

  “Scar’s trying for some downtime as well,” I report. “And radar’s clean.”

  “Then we should check news sources for information on the battle,” Zila replies, sliding into her seat and pulling up the displays on the central monitor.

  The news is grim.

  Reports are filtering in through civilian channels—all we can access—about the clash between the Unbroken and the TDF. There are conflicting accounts of who fired first, casualty n
umbers, and even the exact location of the battle, but on one thing they all agree: a massive Unbroken fleet is mobilizing and heading toward Terran space. The galaxy is holding its breath, waiting to see what happens next.

  Zila’s expression is as unreadable as ever.

  Auri looks like she’s going to be sick.

  “Well,” I say, switching out the feed for my latest calculations, “I have some good news for a change, at least. I’ve adjusted for drift along our known timeline. If we feed in these course corrections, we should end up exactly where the Hadfield incident occurred.”

  Zila’s fingers dance over her console. “Aurora, do you have any premonition as to what we will find?”

  “None at all,” Auri mumbles, looking down at her hands. One thumb’s rubbing across her opposite wrist, where a red patch still marks the place the sedation patch was stuck on. When she looks up, it’s to glance back toward the infirmary, where Kal lies. “I don’t know what’s there,” she whispers. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what happened.” She draws in an unsteady breath. “And I don’t know what I’ll do next.”

  Zila and I exchange a long glance. Aurora doesn’t look ready for anything, let alone saving the Milky Way. We’re putting everything on the line—we’ve already sacrificed two of our number—for the uncertain chance she represents. But she’s all we have.

  “Tell you what,” I say, making myself cheerful again. “Why don’t you and I get some sleep? Zila can watch over us.”

  Our Brain inclines her head. “I will wake Scarlett when I require rest.”

  I want to offer to stay up myself, but Zila and I both know I need the downtime. So instead I stand, and offer Auri my hand to pull her up. She takes hold, and when she’s on her feet, I keep her fingers in mine, studying her.