by Amie Kaufman
“She is Terran,” the girl says, gripping a slender black cylinder in a way that makes it seem like a weapon. “She is wearing the uniform. She is yours.”
“She—” He glances at me, clenches his jaw. “She is beneath our concern.”
… wait, what did he just say?
We’re in a huge room—part of a space station, I’d guess—and the whole place looks like it’s held together with spit and good luck. Gaping holes in the walls reveal a tangle of fire-hazard wiring, the lights flicker like they’re about to give out, and the only new things here are the crates I stowed away in. I followed Battle Leader de Stoy’s instructions, so I’m guessing this is where she wanted me to be? I just wish I knew why.
I wish I knew anything at all.
In reply to the tall boy’s edict, the girl raises the stick, and suddenly holy cake that thing’s definitely a weapon. Purple energy crackles to life, sprouting from it like a long, curved blade, and I scramble backward so fast I crash into Middle-Earth’s legs behind me.
“Control yourself, Aedra,” he says, voice cool. “You shame yourself, acting so, in front of a human. Should we survive, we can argue about the girl later.”
I both do and don’t want to know why our survival is in question, but apparently I don’t get a vote—he reaches down and lifts me to my feet like I weigh nothing at all, holding me in place while I get my balance. My knees are still singing a protest at being straightened as the girl kills the juice on her weapon, glaring one last time before stalking across the room like she expects to be followed.
“My name is Kal,” the guy says quietly.
“Aurora,” I reply, still miffed about the Beneath Concern crack.
“You are the girl Tyler Jones discovered in the Fold.”
“How do you know about that?”
“You were found on an infamous derelict after being lost for two centuries and you have the same name as the academy I have lived at for the past two years.”
Okay, good point, well made.
“Yeah. Look, sorry but I—”
“Explain when the danger is over,” he says, cutting me off like I hadn’t spoken. “For now, stay beside me and do not stray.”
His eyes are the same purple as the energy the girl called Aedra was wielding a minute ago. When I saw the vision of him in my room, I thought his hair was silver because of the light, but no—it really is that color, pulled back from his face and spilling down his back in five long, perfect braids. I can even see the same bruises on his jaw.
I remember the sound of screaming.
The blood on my hands.
A shiver runs straight up my spine when he looks at me, so hard the muscles cramp. It’s like a fear response, except it’s something else, too. There’s a coldness to him. Something entirely … well … alien, I guess. He scares me, but despite his crappy manners, he scares me slightly less than everything else in the galaxy for now. So as he turns and stalks away, I match his stride.
“What’s happening?” I whisper, just in case I understand the answer.
He looks at me with distant eyes.
“This is an abandoned mining station,” he finally says as we step into an ancient elevator. “I am part of an Aurora Legion squad sent here with relief and supplies. A warship manned by … by a violent faction of my people is nearby.”
“It was summoned,” Aedra says, and though her voice is calm now, she still gives the boy a glare that’s almost pure murder.
“It is dangerous,” he says, as though she didn’t speak, turning away from me. “But do not fear, human. You are among friends now.”
“Could’ve fooled me … ,” I mutter.
The elevator shudders to a stop and the doors slide open and we’re in a control center. Large screens show flickering images of the stars, incomprehensible graphs and graphics, half-dismantled control banks lining the edges of the room, the middle taken up by a central bank. The room is full of people, shouting and rushing about.
“Aurora?” Someone’s saying my name over in the middle of the room, incredulous. It’s Captain Hotness. Ty, I mean. He’s standing with his sister, the one with the bright orange hair, Scarlett, and a guy with paper-white skin. He must be Betraskan, just like Battle Leader de Stoy. Except this boy is wearing a sort of exoskeleton over his uniform that hums and whirs as he turns to me.
All three are staring at me now, like Kal just pulled me out of his hat. I feel him shift his weight, fold his arms beside me.
“Hi,” I say.
Solid opener.
Scarlett frowns at me. “Um, what’s she doing here?”
“The Unbroken first,” Kal says. “Questions later.”
I’m guessing the Unbroken are the violent faction he mentioned, and the looks on the faces around me send a finger of ice curling down my spine.
Tyler simply nods. “Cat, I want you flying perimeter in the Longbow. Keep out of sight. Kal, you’re on our defenses. That Wraith is gonna be on us in ten minutes unless we give them a reason not to be.”
The girl with the tattoos that I saw in the infirmary brushes roughly past me, the elevator doors rattling closed behind her.
Kal glances at me, but soon strides over to a series of consoles. I want to ask what’s going on, but considering the mood up here, I figure I should try to keep out of the way instead. So, I back up against the wall near an older-looking Syldrathi man. My heart’s beating a mile a minute, and a part of me wants to find a small space and hide. It’s too much. I can almost cope with two centuries in cryo, if I don’t think too hard about everything that entails. I can deal with stowing away aboard some ship with a bunch of strangers. Being lied to by everyone around me. But actively under attack might be a bridge too far.
I wish I could say the room’s full of trained operatives clicking together like a well-oiled machine, but they’re anything but. The Legionnaires are talking over one another, shouting questions without waiting for answers, their voices rising to a frantic note. If this is the squad Ty didn’t want to lead, I see his point—nobody’s listening, and from the outside, it’s obvious how badly everybody should be.
I glance at the old man next to me, who’s the only one not doing something. “I’m Auri,” I offer quietly. And then, feeling the need for more formality, in the face of his perfect posture, I offer a small bow. “Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley.”
He looks at me quizzically, like I’m a dog that just performed an amusing trick. “I am First Walker Taneth Lirael Ammar, young Terran,” he replies, his voice deep and cool. “You may call me First Taneth.”
“The people on the warship …” I try to swallow, my throat raw and aching. “Will they kill us?”
“Most assuredly,” he says, in the same voice he used to give his name.
Well, son of a biscuit. This is going from bad to worse.
The joke sounds weak in my own head, and my breath feels oddly shallow, as if someone’s squeezing my chest. I can’t die in the middle of a conflict I don’t even understand, on a space station, two hundred years into the future.
Can I?
There are things I should have done before a moment like this came. I still haven’t even tried to look up my mom, or Callie, find out what happened to them. Through all the long hours jammed in that packing crate with Magellan, I never felt ready to see them reduced to names and dates on a screen. Or worse, missing like Dad. So I didn’t try at all, and now I might never get the chance.
Kal’s voice breaks over the noise around me, the chaos of the squad’s shouted questions and instructions. “Station defenses will not be adequate to fend off the Wraith. We must break out all available weaponry and prepare for a boarding action. The Unbroken will show us no mercy.”
The Betraskan boy replies, his voice dry, as though the situation’s somehow funny. “Our combat specialist’s advice is gather up the sharp
cutlery and pointy sticks, then run face-first at certain death? You know, I like you, Kal.”
The other boy raises one perfect silver eyebrow. “You have a better plan?”
“We could ask the Unbroken out to drinks, flirt a little, talk this thing out?”
“You are not much of a warrior, are you, Finian?”
“Well, you’re not much of a—”
“Shut up, Finian,” Scarlett says, exchanging a glance with her brother. She tilts her head and he lifts his chin, and something passes between them. They have the same language of siblings I have—had—with my sister.
I wonder if Callie went on to become the composer she dreamed of being.
I wonder what it was like, to only have mom there in the audience, trying to clap hard enough to make up for dad and me.
Ty lifts his head to address the ceiling.
“Zila, are we anywhere on comms?”
Surprisingly, a voice from the ceiling answers him. “One minute, sir.”
A pair of legs in the same blue-gray uniform we’re all wearing appear through an open hatch, and a moment later they’re followed by the rest of a girl about my age. She has dark brown skin; long, black, curly hair pulled away from her face in a loose braid that shows off big, gold hoop earrings; and she looks like she could have been in any one of my high school classes. She types a series of commands into a console and nods.
“Signal strength is now sufficient to send a distress call into the Fold,” she informs him. “We can also hail the Syldrathi vessel if you wish.”
Kal shakes his head. “The Unbroken will not negotiate with the likes of us.”
“We could all evac?” Scarlett asks. “Run for it through the asteroid field?”
The Betraskan boy, Finian, chimes in again. “We won’t all fit in the Longbow. And the skiffs these people came in are in no shape to outrun a Syldrathi Wraith.”
Ceiling Girl—Zila—speaks up. She’s the only one without that hint of panic in her gaze, and she’s still studying her station like she’s doing a crossword. “Legionnaire Brannock could ram our Longbow into the Syldrathi ship. Impact would be fatal for her, but if she aimed right, she has an excellent chance to take out their reactor and weapons systems.”
Cat’s voice rings out over the loudspeaker.
“You know I can hear you, right?”
“Yes,” Zila deadpans.
“Well, if we could avoid any orders that end with the words ‘ramming speed,’ that’d be just brill, thanks. Ty, I’m launched. Stealthing through the asteroid field right now. They dunno I’m here yet.”
“Stay off their scopes,” Tyler replies. “Zila, have a mayday ready to broadcast, but don’t send it yet. This station looks like it’s falling to pieces. If we don’t do anything to attract attention, we might convince them nobody’s home.”
“Sir, I’m detecting a launch from the station’s aft port bays,” Zila reports.
“Visual,” Ty snaps.
An image springs to life on the largest screen. It’s a debris field in space, mostly chunks of rock, a few pieces of derelict machinery floating lifelessly among them. Like I’m watching a video game, the focus shifts and zooms as Zila adjusts it, and we get a close-up of a tiny shuttle weaving through the asteroids. First Taneth tenses beside me, whispering in a language I don’t understand.
“De’sai …”
“One of the refugees making a run for it,” Finian reports, hands on his hips. “Trying to save their own hind parts while alerting our new friends ab—”
He gets no further, his voice cutting off as the shuttle soundlessly explodes into a million glittering shards, spinning out into space. We all watch it, nobody even seeming to breathe, until Zila breaks the silence in her strangely calm voice.
“One Syldrathi war cruiser, Wraith class, turning straight for us, sir.”
“Maker’s sake,” Ty mutters.
“Transmission incoming,” she reports.
“Onscreen,” Ty orders, turning to his sister. “Scar, work some magic.”
“Magic?” Scarlett raises one sculpted eyebrow in disbelief. “I left my wizard’s staff in my other pants, Bee-bro.”
Tyler meets her gaze squarely. “You got this, Scar.”
An image blossoms to life on the main display. It’s a beautiful young woman, a Syldrathi like Kal, Aedra, First Taneth, like everyone here except the Legionnaires. Her skin is olive, almost golden, her silver hair pulled back into a series of ornate braids. Black armor makes broad shoulders squarer, and it’s adorned with what might be blades. Her canines are filed into sharp points as well—or maybe they just come that way. She’s speaking in what I assume is Syldrathi, but as she registers Scarlett’s features, her scowl deepens, suspicion slipping into her icy tone.
“What are you doing here, Terran?”
“My name is Scarlett Jones,” Scarlett replies smoothly. “My squad and I are representatives of Aurora Legion, here in Neutral Space on an aid mission.”
“You are meddling in Syldrathi affairs.”
“We’re providing medical assistance to refugees, as per the provisos in—”
“Those who aid enemies of the Unbroken become enemies of the Unbroken.”
Scarlett runs one hand through her red hair, widening her stance, bracing herself as though she’s about to throw a punch. “With all due respect, the Aurora Legion is a neutral party in your conflict, ma’am. I advise you to withdraw. We are authorized to respond with force in the event our safety is threatened.”
“Threatened?”
The young woman shakes her head and sneers.
“We make no threats, little Terran. Only promises. Ready your souls for the Void’s embrace. In Caersan’s name, you will be purged.”
The screen drops into sudden black.
“That’s your idea of magic?” Finian asks softly.
“Shut up, Finian!” Scarlett snaps in reply.
“They’re accelerating,” Zila says, calm as ever. “ETA four minutes.”
“Zila, send the mayday,” Ty commands. “Loud and wide as you can.”
Scarlett’s running her hand through her hair again, leaving it a mess. “Nobody’ll respond. If the Terran or Betraskan defense forces hear it, it’s policy not to. And if there was another AL ship within range, we wouldn’t have been sent here in the first place. This is all us.”
Ty simply nods, and presses on. “Finian, you have the bridge. Keep working on those missiles. Zila, stay with him, keep on comms.”
For once, no sass—the two of them simply murmur an acknowledgment and get to work. I think that scares me more than anything else has so far.
“Looks like we’re going with your plan, Kal,” he continues. “You, me, Scar, arms ready. We’ll head for the cargo bay. First Taneth, gather up anyone among your people who has a weapon and meet us there.”
Kal and the Syldrathi girl are already moving toward where the First Taneth and I stand by the door, and Tyler’s eyes are on me as he draws close.
“I don’t suppose you’ve had any combat training?” Ty asks softly.
“Um,” I say. “I mean, I took a self-defense course at school?”
“You cannot intend to send her down there?” Kal says.
Tyler glances at the taller boy. “Give her a sidearm.”
Kal bristles at the suggestion. “That is unwise, sir. She will only be a liability.”
“Hey, listen here, Lord Elrond … ,” I begin.
“We face adepts of the Unbroken,” Kal says to Tyler, not even looking at me. “Syldrathi are faster and stronger than Terrans. And these ones are trained from b—”
“I appreciate the warning, Legionnaire. But we’re in it up to our necks here.”
A small electronic chirp sounds from my breast pocket. “Well, if I may offer an opinion—”
“No, you may not,” Tyler tells Magellan. “Silent mode.”
My uniglass falls quiet as Ty turns to me. “Look, Auri, I’m sorry. I don’t even know what you’re doing here, but we need everyone in the ring or we’re all dead. If you can pull a trigger, we could use you. Will you help us?”
My heart is in my throat and my palms are damp. And I’m a million light-years from home and two hundred years out of time, and none of this makes any kind of sense. But if we’re all going to die anyway …
“Okay,” I say quietly.
I find myself crammed in the cage elevator with the rest of the team. Kal holds out a dangerous-looking high-tech pistol, and the words “She will only be a liability” are echoing in my head as I snatch it from his hand.
“This locks on to your target,” he says, pointing. “This will fire. In the unlikely event you actually hit someone, hit them twice more for good measure.”
“Thanks,” I say. “But I learned to use a flare gun in my colony training. I can shoot just fine, Legolas.”
He blinks. “My name is Kal. Who is this Legolas you speak of?”
I roll my eyes and mutter under my breath. “Read a book sometime, you conceited sonofa …”
My grumbling trails off into nothing as I notice how quiet everyone else is. And in that moment of silence, the truth I’ve been running from catches up and hits me like a freight train. I’m about to go into combat here. My hands are sweating, and I’m not sure I’m even going to be able to grip the gun. My body’s still aching from hiding in that crate, and my lungs have gone all tight, so I can’t even suck in a slow breath to try and calm myself. Truth is, the thing in my hands is to a flare gun what a full-grown lion is to a kitten.
All the stupid little routines I used to do before a big competition at home flash through my mind—the stretches, the breathing exercises, the pump-up songs—and they all seem so impossibly small and stupid. That version of me—the one who thought she had any idea what life and death stakes were—feels young and far away, even though really, she was only a few days ago.