Aurora Burning

by Amie Kaufman

  “I’m scared, Kal,” she whispers.

  “I know,” I reply.

  I caress her cheek, and she closes her eyes again, trembling.

  “What did the Ancients tell you, to make you so?” I ask.

  She sucks her lower lip, uncertain, and I know as she speaks that I am the only one in the galaxy she would admit this to.

  “They have to train me,” she says. “How to use the Weapon. But they…”

  She breathes, as if readying herself before a deep plunge.

  “They said if I fail, it’ll kill me. ‘Like us, you must sacrifice all.’ ”

  I feel a thrill of perfect rage at the thought. Before she was mine, I did not know what it was to be complete. Before I found this light, I did not fear the dark. But to have discovered this girl, this missing piece in the puzzle of my life, only to be confronted with the thought that I might lose her so swiftly…

  “I don’t want to go,” she whispers. “I know it’s selfish. I know after everything we’ve fought for, everything people have given, Cat, Tyler, all the squad…” Tears glitter in her lashes as she shakes her head. “But I don’t want to risk this. Us.”

  She sighs, sinks into my arms, tipping her head back against my chest.

  “Tell me this is the right thing to do, Kal,” she says.

  I smooth back her hair, caressing her cheek.

  “You already know that, be’shmai,” I murmur.

  She pulls my arms around her tighter. “Tell me anyway.”

  I breathe deep, content for a moment to simply stand with Aurora in my arms. I know she is already aware of what she must do. That she knows it, with every atom in her body. She is nothing if not brave. But I know she is also asking me for strength, for certainty, for something she can hold on to as she walks into the fire.

  And so I tell her something I have never told another soul.

  “My earliest memories are of my parents fighting,” I say.

  I feel her uncertainty about why I am telling her this. But she trusts me enough not to question and simply lets my words sink in, then holds me just a little tighter still.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “That’s sad.”

  I nod, staring past our reflection to the Fold beyond.

  “My mother and father were young when they met. She was a novice at the Temple of the Void. He a Paladin of the warrior cabal. When they first felt the Pull, their friends and families all tried to talk them out of becoming lifebound.”

  “Why?” Aurora asks.

  “Warbreed and Waywalkers rarely make good pairings. Those who seek answers and those who answer most questions with conflict seldom get along.” I shrug, and sigh. “But still, my parents did it anyway. They loved each other dearly in the beginning. So much that it hurt them both.”

  She manages a small smile. “That sounds romantic. Two people wanting to be together, no matter what anyone else says.”

  I nod. “Romantic, perhaps. Ill advised, most assuredly. I think my mother thought she might be able to guide my father’s love of conflict into love of family. But Syldra was at war with Terra in those years. And as the rift between my people and yours deepened, he lost himself inside it utterly. The cracks in their lifebond were showing by the time Saedii was born. And they grew deeper still once I arrived.”

  I sigh again, realizing how bright a blessing it is to be able to speak like this. To simply have someone I trust enough to share with.

  “My father was a cruel man. He ruled with a heavy hand, and he brooked no dissent. He commanded that my sister and I be inducted into the Warbreed Cabal, and he oversaw our training personally. When he tutored us in the Aen Suun, he did not hold back. Many were the nights Saedii and I retired to our bedchambers bruised and bloodied by his hand. But he said it would make us strong. Mercy, he told us, was the province of cowards.

  “Saedii and I were close at first. When we were young, she was the star in my heavens. But as we grew older, Father began to show me more favor than her, and she became jealous. Saedii loved our father, you see. Loved him with a fierceness that eclipsed my own. Though I was raised Warbreed, in truth I always felt more kinship with my mother. She taught me the value of life, Aurora. The joy of understanding, the justice of an even hand. I loved her dearly, even as my father pressed me to embrace the war within, that I might better fight the war without. Mother would come to me at night, once Father was asleep. The bruises he would lay on her skin were the same shade as my own.

  “ ‘There is no love in violence, Kaliis,’ she would tell me, pressing a cool cloth to my wounds. ‘There is no love in violence.’ ”

  “That’s awful,” Aurora whispers. “I’m sorry, Kal.”

  I shake my head, feeling the old familiar sting.

  “The battle lines our parents drew became mine and Saedii’s. Saedii sought only our father’s praise, cared little for my mother’s wisdom.” I touch the three blades at my brow. “We were living aboard my father’s ship at the time. He wished us close, I think. The better to control my mother, to mold Saedii and me into what he wanted us to be. I grew older. Taller. Stronger. When Saedii could no longer best me in practice, she sought to punish me in other ways. For my eighth nameday, my mother had given me a siif—a stringed instrument, not unlike your Terran violins. It was a gift from her mother before her. And one day, when I was twelve, after I had bested her in practice again, Saedii went to my room and smashed it in retaliation.

  “Though I always tried to take my mother’s teaching to heart, I was still my father’s son. And this was the first time I truly felt the Enemy Within take control. I tasted the hatred on my tongue, Aurora. And I liked it. And so I hunted my sister down. I found her in the sparring courts with her friends. I showed her the broken pieces of my siif and she laughed. And so I hit her with it.”

  I hang my head in shame. My tongue tastes bitter, dry as ashes. Aurora looks at my reflection, and I can see the question in her eyes. But she can see the guilt in mine clearly, and instead of judgment, she finds compassion. Squeezes my hand, gentle as a whisper.

  “You were just a boy, Kal,” she says. “You’re not the person you were back then. I know you. You’d never do something like that now.”

  “That does not excuse it,” I say. “It has been seven years, and still, the contempt I feel for myself has not lessened a drop. She was my sister, Aurora. And I did not hit her for any reason, save to hurt her. When she fell, I hit her again. And again. I could feel my father at my shoulder in that moment. Hear his words in my ear. Cursing weakness. Pity. Remorse. ‘Mercy is the province of cowards.’ ”

  I look out into the Fold, at the cosmic ballet beyond the viewport.

  “I expected punishment. Instead, Father praised me. He told me that when he heard what I had done, he had never been more proud I was his son.”

  “Kal,” Aurora says softly. “Your father sounds…”

  “Monstrous,” I say. “He was monstrous, Aurora. And my mother saw the monsters he was making of Saedii and me, and finally, she decided to leave him. To break the lifebond and flee back to Syldra. Father told her that he would kill her if she ever left him. In abandoning him, she was leaving behind everything. Her home. What few friends he’d allowed her to have. All of it. Saedii refused to leave, to be parted from our father. So in the end, my mother gave up her whole life for my sake alone. It was the most difficult thing she ever did. But she did it anyway.

  “ ‘Mai tu sarie amn, tu hae’si, tu kii’rna dae,’ she told me afterward.”

  Aurora shakes her head. “What does it mean?”

  “ ‘There is nothing as painful, or as simple, as doing what is right.’ ”

  She looks to the stars outside, lips pressed thin.

  “You told me your father…”

  “Died,” I reply, my heart clenching with a strength
that surprises me. “He died at Orion, be’shmai. In the same battle that claimed the life of Jericho Jones. Tyler, Scarlett, me, all of us were made orphans that day.”

  “What…” She trails off, meeting my eyes again. “What happened to your mother? I’d like to meet her….”

  But Aurora’s words falter when she sees the pain in my eyes. I can feel her presence in my mind, just the lightest touch, and in it she sees the reflection of a sun flaring into blinding light, then to bottomless darkness. Enveloping the planets around it, dragging entire systems down to oblivion, ten billion Syldrathi voices screaming as the void opens wide to swallow them whole.

  “She died,” Aurora whispers. “When your homeworld did.”

  I hang my head. “The Starslayer took much from me, Aurora. But my mother gave me much more. I would have been on Syldra when it perished had she not instilled her wisdom in me, had she not forced me to see the anger in my blood as something to be used for good, and the safety of the galaxy a cause worth harnessing it for. I joined the Aurora Legion because of her. Even though leaving her and my world behind was the hardest thing I had ever done.”

  I shrug.

  “But that decision brought me to this squad. And you. And your quest. I would have none of that, if not for her.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Laeleth.”

  She nods, pale hair tumbling about her eyes. “That’s beautiful.”

  “She would have liked you, be’shmai,” I say, and she smiles through her tears, because she can see the truth of what I say in my gaze. “She would have seen the strength in you. The burden you carry, this thing we are a part of, this path we walk…” I shake my head in bewilderment. “The fate of the entire galaxy lies in your hands. The courage you have shown to even get this far…I know blooded warriors who would have crumbled to dust under such a weight. And yet, here you stand. Strong and beautiful and unconquered.”

  My hand closes around hers again, and I squeeze softly.

  “And though it fills me with joy to have been the one you asked to tell you this truth, I have no doubt you knew it already. Because that is who you are. And just one of the infinite reasons why I love you as I do.”

  She meets my eyes. “I could die in there, Kal.”

  My heart seizes again, but I try to show no fear. She needs me to be strong now, and I can give her that, if nothing else.

  “You will not die, be’shmai,” I tell her. “You are more than you ever imagine.”

  “…What will you do out here?” she asks softly. “While I’m in the Echo?”

  “Finian says he has managed to isolate a particle trail from the probe. He took great pains to explain how difficult it was.” She smiles faintly. “He says he can track the device back to its point of origin. Wherever the Eshvaren launched it from. Perhaps we will find the Weapon there. Or more clues to its location.”

  “The Eshvaren will probably tell me where it is. If I pass their test.”

  “When you pass their test,” I say, squeezing her hand. “But Scarlett says we cannot risk everything on the throw of million-year-old dice. I am inclined to agree. Besides, it will keep us occupied while you are in this…Echo of theirs.”

  “The Eshvaren…,” she begins. “They told me that time moves differently in there. That moments out here are hours in there. I was wondering if maybe…you might want to come with me? It would be a long time to be in there on my own.”

  I blink. “Can we do that? I mean to say…is it allowed?”

  She tilts her head. “They’re asking me to risk my life to save the damn galaxy, Kal. I think they can give me a little company on the ride.”

  I think on it a moment. I do not truly know what this Echo entails, but I feel confident Scarlett and Finian and Zila can conduct the tracking of the probe on their own. And in truth, the thought of being parted from Aurora has been weighing like a stone upon my shoulders. And so I smile at her, nodding agreement. And for a moment, the smile she gifts me in reply is full of the same joy I feel in my heart.

  But the shadow soon returns.

  I see it lurking with the fear in her eyes.

  “There’s nothing as painful, or as simple, as doing what’s right,” she says.

  “No. There is not.”

  We stand there silently for a very long time. Letting it wash over us—the enormity of it all, where she must go, what she must face, what hangs in the balance, resting on so small a point as the two of us. Aurora’s eyes are fixed on the dark outside, her thoughts a silent kaleidoscope.

  “You know, before I broke him, Magellan used to show me random science facts every day,” she finally murmurs. “I was reading one yesterday about atoms.”

  The warmth of her, the press of her body against mine, is a drug, and I am conscious of how fierce and loud my heart is pounding on my ribs. With her back pressed into the curve of my chest, surely she must be able to feel it. But I try my best to listen. To be here in this moment for her.

  “Atoms,” I say.

  “Right,” Aurora nods. “Every cell in your body is a nucleus surrounded by electrons. And those electrons are negatively charged. So they push away other electrons when they get too close. And this article said that while your brain perceives the force created by electron repulsion as ‘touching,’ the atoms are actually always hovering some tiny fraction of a millimeter apart.”

  She runs her thumb across mine and shakes her head.

  “So we never actually touch anything,” she says. “We go through our whole lives totally apart. We never actually get to touch another living thing. Ever.”

  The hunger in me stirs. I can feel it in her as well—the thought that this fire growing between us, this whisper rising into a storm, all of it could be snuffed out tomorrow. Gently, I turn her to face me. Look into her eyes. She shivers as I draw one finger down the arc of her cheek.

  Her voice is a whisper as I lean in closer.

  “Magellan said if two particles ever actually touched…”

  Closer.

  “…it’d create a nuclear reaction….”

  “That sounds dangerous,” I whisper, searching her eyes.

  Closest.

  “Very,” she breathes.

  Our lips meet, and our fires collide, and in that instant, all and everything is utterly right. There is no ship. There is no Fold. There is only this girl in my arms, and the Pull in my core, and the press of her mouth her hands her body to mine. She surges against me, breathless, hungry, seeking that same solace I feel, the shelter of oblivion, the everything of us and the nothingness of everything else. Her tongue brushes mine, and she guides my hands to where she wants them to be, and though I know in some part of me that what she said is true, that we are not truly touching at all, for a moment I fear we truly are, that the heat between us has become some nuclear fire that will consume us both.

  She pulls away from me after an eon. Looking up into my eyes with something close to the adoration she must see in mine. She presses her fingertips to my face, my ears, my lips, her touch incandescent on my skin.

  “You are the fire I long to burn inside,” I tell her.

  She takes my hand.

  She leads me to her bed.

  She draws me down with her.

  “Let’s burn together,” she breathes.

  It’s cold in this interrogation cell.

  The troopers who escorted me from the detention level ignored all my protests, all my challenges to the lunacy of what they’re caught up in. Good soldiers don’t listen to terrorists, I know. Good soldiers don’t think. Instead, they just marched me into this room, bound me to a chair in mag-restraints, and, with a series of crisp salutes, tromped right back out again.

  Leaving me with them.

  I look the three figures over, picked out in the spotlights overhead. Their breath
hisses, slow and hollow. They have identical mannerisms, identical mirrormasks, identical charcoal-gray uniforms. Apart from the one leading them, of course, who’s clad head to foot in pristine white instead.

  “GOOD EVENING, LEGIONNAIRE JONES,” Princeps says. “WELCOME ABOARD THE KUSANAGI.”

  I look at the figure where I guess its eyes must be. Imagining the face hidden behind that featureless facade.

  “Nice to see you again, Zhang Ji,” I say.

  The name of Aurora’s father. The name of the shell this thing stole and now wears like a cheap suit. This thing that’s slumbered for a million years, wounded, hiding in the shadows, wanting to be unseen, undiscovered, unknown.

  But I know its name.

  “Or should I call you Ra’haam?”

  I look among them, bristling with anger. Waiting for an answer. A reaction. Something. But they just stare, silent and still.

  “I know what you’re doing,” I spit. “You’re starting a war between Terra and the Unbroken as a smoke screen. Buying yourself time until your nursery planets are ready to bloom. But millions of people are going to die. Maybe billions. You know that, right?”

  The two gray GIA uniforms take up position on either side of me. The one to my left reaches out with gloved hands and slips a pain collar around my neck. I flinch at the touch of cold metal. I feel the tiny trode slip out and press against my spine.

  “Use of pain collars is outlawed under the Madrid Conventions,” I say. “They probably should’ve written something about being possessed by alien parasites in there too, but you get th—”

  “WHERE IS AURORA JIE-LIN O’MALLEY?” Princeps asks.

  I square my jaw, look into that blank, mirrored face. “Under Aurora Legion protocols, I’m permitted only to give you my name, rank, and squad number.”