by Amie Kaufman
All chance of stealth is lost.
And we still do not have the black box we came here for.
“K-Kal?”
My heart surges as she speaks, and I look down into her eyes, onyx and pearl, and I feel the universe fall away beneath my feet.
“It is well, be’shmai,” I murmur. “All is well.”
“What h-happened?” she whispers.
“Your power. You lost your grip.”
“I’m s-sorry,” she whispers, looking in slow bewilderment at the chaos and destruction around us. I can see blood pooling around her nostrils, bright red, clinging to her skin in the zero gravity. “I thought … I thought I was getting better at it.”
“You are.” I look at her intently. “You will.”
She shakes her head. “I saw …”
“What, be’shmai?”
She meets my eyes, and I sense fear in her. Fear and heartsickness, all the way to her bones. “I saw you … get hurt. Bad.”
My heart lurches, and I will it to be still. Warbreed fear no death. Warbreed fear no pain. Warbreed fear only to never taste victory. My father taught me that.
“… How?” I ask.
She shakes her head, wincing as the ship continues to break up around us, stanchions failing, bulkheads twisting apart. The totality of the destruction she has unleashed should be chilling. Her power, terrifying.
Instead, I feel only awe.
“It’s … hazy,” she says. “You got shot. You were aboard a ship. I saw … dark metal. Fuzzy dice. You … you were dressed the same as you’re dressed now.”
“Nobody is going to hurt me,” I smile. “With you at my side, I am unbreakable.”
She shakes her head and whispers, “Kal, I wasn’t by your side.”
“Kal, you read me?”
I touch my uniglass to transmit. “Affirmative, sir.”
“We’ve got Fin. Sending you coordinates for rendezvous. Security is all over us like a rash now, so we’re coming in red-hot. Zila will guide you.”
“Can you hear me, Legionnaire Gilwraeth?” comes a small, calm voice.
“Yes, Zila, loud and clear.”
“We are currently being pursued by thirteen Scythe-class fighters and two Reaper-class cruisers, so we will be unable to slow down below fifteen hundred kilometers per hour unless we wish to be incinerated by their missile fire.”
“Understood.”
“You will be attempting to match our speed and intercept the Zero, making a landing in the loading bay as we fly by.”
“At fifteen hundred kilometers per hour,” I say.
“Correct,” Zila says, just as deadpan.
“Understood.”
“Is that even possible?” Aurora asks, eyes wide.
“It is more likely Legionnaire Gilwraeth will succeed than a human would,” Zila replies. “Syldrathi reflexes are superior to Terrans’. If he matches Zero’s speed along the axis of pursuit, being X, and maintains speeds below one hundred kilometers per hour along the axis of approach, being Y, I calculate the odds of him successfully performing this maneuver at approximately six hundred and—”
“Thank you, Zila, we don’t need a breakdown of the math right now,” Tyler says. “Kal, I’ve sent you the trajectory; just burn hard and follow Zila’s mark.”
“Understood.”
“You can do this, buddy,” Tyler says.
I look down at Aurora in my arms and smile.
“I know,” I say.
“Ten seconds, Legionnaire Gilwraeth,” Zila says.
Aurora tightens her jaw and nods. She slips her arms around my waist, and my stomach turns a dozen somersaults at her touch.
“Eight seconds.”
I grit my teeth, breathe deep.
“Six.”
“Kal?” Aurora says.
“Four.”
“Yes, be’shmai?”
“Three.”
She leans up and presses her faceplate to mine, as if to kiss my cheek. There are only a few millimeters of visor between us. Warm, soft breath fogging the plasteel. The entire universe is perfectly still.
“Two.”
“You got this,” she says, meeting my eyes.
“Mark.”
I engage my thrusters, pushing them hard as we take off through the Hadfield’s wreckage. Moving slow at first, I guide us past massive bulkheads and disintegrating walls, tons of metal, building up to frightening speed. I can see the incoming Zero as a small green blip on my digital HUD, surrounded by pulsing scarlet dots, Aurora and myself rendered as a tiny speck of white.
I thread us through a roiling storm of debris, sheaves of metal as big as houses, ripped apart like tissue paper. We are moving quick now—fast enough that any collision will kill us. The black outside the Hadfield’s hull is being lit by explosions and tracer fire, and I can feel him inside me. The thing I was raised to be, straining at the thought of the battle out there, of blood being spilled.
I’na Sai’nuit.
But I push him back. Away.
“Hold on to me,” I say.
Aurora squeezes, her eyes locked on me in wonder. All is chaos about us, a twisted tempest of broken metal and wreckage as the Hadfield continues to disintegrate. I spiral between immense conduits, tumbling end over end, twenty tons of sundered hatchway scything through the black just a meter shy of my head, the Zero drawing ever closer.
“Your speed is insufficient, Legionnaire Gilwraeth.”
I see the incoming Zero, rusted and ugly but flying toward us swift and straight as an honor blade. I see the Hephaestus fighters swarming around her like fireflies in the dark. I adjust course, cleaving to the path outlined on my HUD, jet-pack at maximum burn now, swooping upward in a smooth arc to intercept our ship, her docking bay doors open wide to receive us, a light in the darkness. Tracer fire spills silently through the night, and Aurora squeezes me so tight it is hard to breathe, my heart pounding against my ribs.
“We are inbound,” I say simply.
“I see you!” Tyler shouts. “A few more seconds.”
“Alpha, adjust course, zero point four deg—”
“I got it, I got it!”
“They’re not gonna make it!”
“Kal, pull up!”
A blur of rusted metal. A gleam of pristine light. A beautiful girl in my arms. And all around us, soundless. I see it in slow motion, the Zero looming before us, the tiny moments of my tiny life strobing before my eyes. My sister and me, standing beneath the lias trees with our father, training in the Wave Way. The Enemy Within, stretching and flexing, blooming like a flower in dark earth beneath his hand. My mother, reaching out to touch my face, the bruises we share bringing tears to her eyes, her words ringing in my soul.
There is no love in violence, Kaliis… .
“Incoming!”
The light swells, and I wrap my arms around Aurora tight as we soar through the open bay doors. I slam on my thrusters to slow us, twisting to shield her with my body when we hit the far wall. My teeth bite my tongue and my brain is rattled inside my skull as we collide with the bulkhead and crash onto the deck. I feel the vibration of the bay doors closing behind us. Aurora is lying on top of me, gasping in my arms. Bruised. Breathless.
But alive.
Gravity is returning and her hair is tumbling about her face, her nose smudged in blood. But as she pulls herself up to look at me, she is still the most beautiful sight I have seen in my life. Atmosphere has returned to the bay and she fumbles with the clasps of her helmet, tearing it loose and dragging her hair from her eyes, shining in triumph.
“Holy cake, that was incredible,” she breathes.
She is grinning, bewildered, amazed. Her eyes are wild, delirious at the simple thought that we are alive, against all odds, alive. And before I quite know what she is doing, she has reached up and pulled my helmet loose, too.
“You are incredible.”
“Aurora—”
And then her mouth is on mine, smothering any thought o
r word. She grabs my suit and drags me closer, sighing into my lungs as I crush her to my chest, almost hard enough to break her. She is a dream, alive and warm in my arms, and I burn with the feel of her, the smell of her, the taste of her. She is smoke and starlight, she is blood and fire, she is a song in my veins as old as time and deep as the Void, and as I feel her surge against me, the flutter-soft touch of her tongue against mine, she almost destroys me.
Kiss.
It is so small a word for so wondrous a thing.
Our first kiss.
I am aflame in the sweet and urgent softness of her mouth, the sharp press of her teeth as she nips my lip, her fingertips weaving into my braids. Her touch is maddening, there is so much weight to it for one of my people, so much promise behind it, and there is nothing to me—nothing at all—save the feel of her in my arms and the single word that burns like a first sunrise behind my eyes.
More.
I must have more.
The impact knocks us sideways, an alarm blaring across the Zero’s docking bay as emergency lights begin to flash. We break apart, Aurora’s lips bee-stung and parted, the taste of her blood still on my mouth. The deck shudders beneath us.
“You two okay in there?” Tyler asks over comms.
I look into Aurora’s eyes, and her smile is the only heaven I have ever known.
“We’re perfect,” she whispers.
“Well, not to rush you, but I could use my combat expert up here!”
I blink hard to clear my head, willing myself to breathe.
“On our way, sir.”
Aurora climbs off me and I glide upward, pulling her with me. I want nothing more than to linger here. To sink slowly into the unspoken promise behind that kiss. But the danger is bright as the fire she lights inside me. And so I take her hand and we run together, limping and bloodied, down the main corridor to the bridge.
Scarlett looks up from her console and winks.
“Nice flying, Muscles.”
“What is our status?” I say, sliding into my station.
“One of the cruisers has sustained critical damage from the Hadfield debris field,” Zila reports. “Ten fighters and the second cruiser still in pursuit.”
“They’re sending an SOS,” Finian reports. “Our ship ident and vid footage.”
“They think we’re pirates!” Tyler shouts, leaning hard on his controls as we weave through the surrounding convoy. “Can you jam their transmission?”
Fin shakes his head. “They sent it before I got aboard. I’m not a miracle worker, Goldenboy!”
“Anyone who was monitoring us when we blasted out of Emerald City is going to know we’re on this ship!” Scarlett yells over the alarms. “TDF. GIA. Our fellow legionnaires. Bounty hunters. This sector is going to be hotter than my unmentionables when the navy hits town!”
“Thank you, Scarlett, I don’t need a status report on your underwear right now!” Tyler roars.
“I mean, I could hear a little more?” Fin says.
Aurora’s uniglass beeps in her pocket. “THE FIRST RECORD OF HUMAN UNDERGARMENTS WAS THE LOINCLOTH, A SIMPLE GARMENT COMMONLY WORN IN—”
“Silent mode!” Tyler shouts.
Tracer fire rips through the dark around us. I let loose a burst from our rear railguns and am rewarded with a flare of bright fire and a soundless explosion. The fighters return fire, but the Zero’s flakscreen and interceptors are state of the art, and we are still ahead of the pack for now. Tyler is not the ace that Zero was, but he is still an impressive pilot, sending us soaring over the vast gunmetal expanses of the derelicts around us, weaving between the broken ships like a dancer.
“Undies aside,” Scarlett says, “I’d like to keep my ass in my pants if at all possible. We should get out of here before real trouble arrives.”
“We still need the black box,” I point out. “If we retreat now, we will not have another chance to approach the convoy.”
“We do not know where the black box is,” Zila points out.
“Like I said, they probably just stowed it on the lead tug,” Finian says.
“Well, bad news, they’re not slowing down for us to stop and check!” Tyler shouts. “And we don’t have long till these goons aren’t the only ones shooting at us!”
Alarms scream as a volley of missiles bursts below us, carving black swaths across a derelict’s skin. My pulse is pounding, electricity crackling at my fingertips, a fierce and burning elation welling within me—both at the memory of Aurora’s kiss and at the thrill of battle around me.
I feel invincible.
Unbreakable.
“I can retrieve it,” I hear myself say.
Scarlett blinks at me, flame-red hair framing disbelieving eyes. “Are you high?”
“Kal … ,” Aurora says.
I am looking at my Alpha, still bent over his controls.
“We need that data, sir,” I tell him. “If we miss our chance here, the convoy will be doubly guarded. And in less than twenty-four hours, they will have docked. This is our moment. Get me close to that lead tug. I will do the rest.”
Tyler tears his eyes off his displays, meeting mine.
“Believe, Brother,” I say.
He clenches his jaw, but nods.
“I’ll get us close as I can.”
I am on my feet already, my blood alight. I am retrieving a disruptor rifle and a blister of thermex charges from the weapons locker when Fin pushes himself upright with a sigh.
“Where are you going?” Scarlett asks.
“With him.”
“Seriously, is there a CO2 leak in here or something?” she says, looking between us. “Or did we all come down with a case of boneheaded heroics when I wasn’t looking?”
“I’m the Gearhead in this squad.” Fin shrugs, checks his suit integrity. “Pixieboy wouldn’t know a black box if it fell out of the sky, landed on his face, and started to wiggle.”
She scowls. “I presume they’re black? And, I dunno, box-shaped?”
“Well, excuuuuse me, Miss Scarcasm,” he says, eyebrow rising, “but they’re orange, not black. Makes them easier to locate and recover in a crash situation. Besides, I’m already suited up. And we don’t have time to argue.”
I toss another disruptor rifle across the bridge, and with a swift whine of his newly repaired exosuit, Finian catches it. Scarlett throws her hands up in resignation. Zila is crouched beside Aurora, checking her vitals, wiping the dried blood off her lips. I meet my be’shmai’s eyes and I can see fear in her stare. I can see fire. I can see the memory of our kiss, and the promise behind it, and the thought of more hanging in the infinity between us.
“I will return,” I say.
“You better,” she says.
With a nod to Finian, I am running back down the hallway to the secondary airlock. I slip on my helmet, activate my heads-up display, watch the view from outside the Zero as we flash in and out between the convoy ships. The auto-fire systems in our railguns are good enough to keep the fighters off our tails, though not much more, and our interceptors can keep the cruiser’s missiles at bay. But if more trouble arrives—and it is certainly on its way—we will be outgunned.
“We must be swift,” I say as Finian bundles into the airlock beside me.
“Don’t worry,” the Betraskan says, pulling on his helmet. “I’m just doing this to look impressive. I don’t wanna be over there any longer than we have to.”
He meets my eyes and smirks.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m not much of a warrior, Kal.”
I look him up and down, the rifle in his hand, the lumps of his exosuit beneath his space gear. He is a strange one, this Betraskan. A sharp-edged shell, built around a fragile heart filled with sadness. In truth, we Warbreed have little compassion for frailty. With his disability, someone like Finian would have been cast aside among my brothers and sisters—thrown to the drakkan so his weakness would not infect the rest of the cabal. Such was our way. Only the weak seek mercy. And only the wea
kest grant it.
But I see the foolishness in that now. I see a courage in Finian that other Warbreed would envy. He asks for nothing, this boy. No favor. No quarter. He lives every moment of his life in pain, but still, he lives it. And he stands, where others would have long ago fallen.
“You look like a warrior to me, Finian de Seel,” I say.
He blinks at that. Opens his mouth as if to speak, but—
“Approaching lead tug now,” Tyler reports. “One fifty klicks and closing. I’ll get as near as I can, but we’re still gonna be coming in fast.”
“Acknowledged.” I look at Finian. “Are you prepared for this?”
He nods, slips his fists into the wall restraints. “Ready.”
I press the controls for the outer door, and with a brief rush of air, silence descends once more. I watch the convoy ships fly past us in a blur, watch the stars tumble and turn as Tyler ducks and weaves through the fire from behind us. I can feel the beauty in this moment. The war in my blood, longing to be unleashed.
There is no love in violence, Kaliis… .
We are approaching the lead tug, its engines burning bright, the dark around us lit by railgun fire and missile bursts. I see the name TOTENTANZ stenciled down its belly. I nod to Finian and engage my thrusters, a digital count ticking down on our HUDs. The Zero weaves and rolls, drawing ever closer, the tug growing in size until it is all I can see.
My lips are still tingling from where she kissed them.
“Now,” I say.
The Zero banks away from the lead tug just as we kick free of the airlock, and I feel the heat of her engines as she roars silently overhead. The endless black around us is aflame, the rockets on our packs at full burn to slow us before we are pulped on the Totentanz’s flanks. I can see our target dead ahead—a tertiary airlock, just below the main thruster array. We speed out of the blackness, me in front, Finian close behind, and my heart is thunder in my chest.