Aurora Burning: The Aurora Cycle 2

by Amie Kaufman

  The bridge feels too big—it’s just the four of us now, with Shamrock on the console and Tyler’s and Kal’s empty seats to remind us of what we’ve lost. Which, given that it’s our badass pilotry, our tactical genius, and our muscle, is no joke.

  Scarlett is hollow eyed. Just as I can’t summon up a smart-ass remark to keep us going, she can’t find anything in her Face’s book of tricks to make this sound better than it is. I know she’s blaming herself for not having seen this coming, but though her ability to read everyone she meets is nearly superhuman, there are still limits. For the first time I can remember, she looks … I’m not sure what to call it. Beaten? Scared?

  Auri’s in her own place, her gaze distant. Everything about her has changed—even her posture. She’s not the girl we’ve known anymore. She’s utterly focused now. I thought she’d be weaker without Kal’s support, but it’s as though the heat and fire we’ve just been through forged her into something stronger.

  Something unbreakable.

  It’s Zila who ends the silence. She has her back to us, piloting the Zero through the FoldGate and into black-and-white safety. Now she swings around, her face as blank as it was back when we met. I didn’t realize how many small changes I’d seen in it until they went away, along with Kal. She’s closed off again, speaking carefully and evenly, her voice flat and gray.

  “We must consider our next steps.”

  Auri’s response is immediate and unwavering. “We need to take control of the Weapon.”

  Scarlett nods. “Ideally, before Caersan uses it to blow up Earth. And we’re already three hours into his twelve-hour countdown.”

  Auri glances at her, gaze burning, chin up.

  “And then we have to turn it against the Ra’haam.”

  “Right,” I agree. “So that means we need to get aboard it, yeah? Past a massive Syldrathi war fleet on high alert, ready to unload its many, many guns on anything that looks remotely unfriendly.”

  Zila inclines her head. “This is an accurate summary.”

  “Do we have any advantages?” Scar asks. She’s reaching for what Tyler would do, I think. Trying desperately to fill the hole her twin has left behind.

  “They will certainly not be expecting us.”

  I wish Zila were making a joke right now, flexing that newfound sense of humor of hers. But she’s just stating the obvious. They won’t be expecting anybody to do anything this foolhardy, to take on odds this long. Because it’s suicide.

  “Auri can flatten them with her brain bullets,” I offer. “Put that in the advantage column, I guess?”

  Aurora doesn’t even smile.

  “This is true,” Zila agrees, equally grave. “However, displays of devastating psychic power would certainly draw attention among the Syldrathi armada. If we wish to maintain our advantage of surprise, we will need to blend in.”

  Auri’s gaze flicks to Zila. “We need a Syldrathi ship.”

  I frown. “Where are we going to …”

  My voice fades as I catch the look in Scarlett’s eyes. I can see the intelligence behind them, the smarts she keeps hidden behind a mask of sass and indifference. She told me once she never even wanted to join the Legion. That she only signed up to look after Tyler. And she feels her brother’s absence worse than any of us, I know. But suddenly she’s filling his shoes just fine.

  “Raliin Kendare Aminath,” she says.

  Maker’s breath, of course. The Waywalker elder we rescued on Andarael told us to find him if there was a way he could repay his debt to us.

  Scar looks across at Zila, and our Brain nods, her fingers flying across the pilot’s console. “We can be there in four hours,” she says. “Shall I set a course?”

  Scarlett nods. “Burn as hard as you can.”

  · · · · ·

  Each of us finds a way to occupy the next four hours. Zila’s at the controls, checking the readings over and over. Auri disappears to her room and closes the door. Scarlett pulls up files in Syldrathi and starts reading.

  Me? I got nothing except trying to fix Magellan, and to be frank, hearing a relentlessly chirpy summary of how stupid I am doesn’t sound like too much fun right now. Instead, I find something to eat, and I feed Zila and Scar—Auri doesn’t answer my knock—then I pace a little. I stare at the closed door to Kal’s quarters, trying to figure out what I think of what he did. But though I’m usually a galactic-class champion at dreaming up comebacks an hour or two after the opportunity to say them has passed, this time I draw a blank. I can only be certain of how it feels now that Kal’s gone. And honestly, after all we’ve been through together, it feels like someone reached into the heart of us and ripped out a fistful.

  Eventually, on a hunch, I head back to the storage bays. Sure enough, piled in a corner behind the spare fuel cells and replacement parts are drums of thick black paint. Just what we’ll need.

  This ship really does have everything.

  Gets me thinking, that. About the note in Kal’s cigarillo box. The little metal case itself sure proved useful, and the note inside it proved right.

  So, what about the other gifts we were left in the Emerald City storage box? Zila’s earrings, Scar’s pendant, Tyler’s shiny new boots. It’s like Adams and de Stoy knew what was coming for us—where we’d be, what we’d be doing—and not for the first time, I wonder how.

  I reach into my cargoes, find the ballpoint pen they gave me. I frown at it. Wondering what in the Maker’s name it’s for. I figure if the Legion commanders did know about Kal getting shot, if they knew enough to warn him to tell the truth, maybe this thing in my hand has some magic to work in our darkest hour.

  I click the button on the end, in and out. Hoping for some kind of miracle.

  Nothing.

  Absolutely nothing.

  “I got robbed,” I sigh.

  · · · · ·

  When we arrive at Tiernan Station—Zila did burn it, but the clock’s still ticking—we don’t know what the reception will be like. So we ease cautiously out through the FoldGate, color restored to the ship once more. The station’s structure is beautiful, as all Syldrathi designs are. It’s shaped like a large egg, speckled all over with lights. There’s a massive Waywalker glyf painted down one side in an elegant script, and close to a hundred fighters and cruisers are swarming around the station in graceful, sweeping arcs.

  Every single one of them locks its weapons on us as soon as we appear.

  Scar leans forward to speak very carefully into the mic. I don’t understand Syldrathi, but I can follow along with the translator on my uni, and this encounter is so important that she practiced her script with me before we arrived.

  “We are here to see Elder Raliin Kendare Aminath.”

  There’s a pause, and then the reply crackles back.

  “For what purpose?”

  Scarlett breathes deep and sighs. When you’ve got no other angle, it’s always best to run with the truth, she told me. So she presses the Transmit button and dials her earnestness up to eleven.

  “We need his help saving the galaxy.”

  · · · · ·

  About half an hour later, I’m standing in one of the landing bays of Tiernan Station, carefully daubing Syldrathi glyfs down the side of an elderly shuttle. The Unbroken sigils are beautiful, elegant … but possessed of a savagery somehow. Some hint of the violence the Starslayer’s warriors adore so much. I’m following a visual guide Scar sent to my uniglass, watched by a number of very dubious Waywalkers.

  Zila’s inside the shuttle, having a piloting lesson.

  Auri has finally emerged from her quarters and is walking a slow lap of the landing bay. She moves with a kind of grace that I associate more with Kal, and she reminds me of a restless predator. She seems unaware of the rest of us. But the Waywalkers we rescued from their imprisonment on the Andarael are fascinated by her, tracking her progress back and forth. All Waywalkers have some kind of low-grade psychic ability. They’re empaths. Resonants. I’ve heard rumor so
me can even speak telepathically to each other. Maybe they’re sensing her new brain muscles.

  Scar is talking to the elder, who looks deeply concerned about her life choices. Though his accent is terrible, he’s speaking in fractured Terran for Auri’s benefit.

  “We cannot aid you in this,” he tells the girls. “Caersan—Void curse his name—has already destroyed our world. It has taken us many cycles to gather this enclave. We cannot risk his ire, young Terrans.”

  “I understand,” Scarlett says.

  Raliin smiles gently. “Your lie is appreciated. And we owe you a debt for our rescue aboard the Andarael, no doubt. But we Waywalkers were the smallest cabal among my people, even before our world was destroyed. And since Syldra’s fall, Caersan’s agents have been hunting us ceaselessly.”

  Auri’s eyes narrow at that. She stops her pacing, looks Raliin in the eye.

  “What were they hunting you for?”

  Syldrathi nod instead of bowing, so when the elder pauses and nods for a long, slow moment before replying, I realize these people must have some small inkling of what she is. What she’s about to do.

  “We do not pretend to know the designs of a madman,” he replies. “We know only that we few have gathered here carefully, secretly. We cannot call attention to ourselves.” He gestures to the ship I’m repainting. “But as I said, our rescue from among the Unbroken will not go unrewarded. This is the swiftest vessel we have that is capable of being crewed by four people. And the ident codes we have given you were taken very recently by the few intelligence operatives we still have in the field. With the grace of the Void, the sheer size of the Starslayer’s armada, and the thrill of the upcoming attack, the Unbroken may not detect you.”

  “Thank you, Elder Raliin.” Scar nods deeply in respect. “If we haven’t contacted you within a day, the Zero is yours. No matter what safety you think you have here, I suggest you use her and the rest of your fleet to run. If we don’t pull this off, the Unbroken are going to be the least of the galaxy’s problems.”

  To be honest, a day sounds kind of optimistic to me. It’s now two and a half hours until the Starslayer drops into the Terran system to rearrange the furniture. And given that we’re heading straight toward him to try and stop him, the odds are good it’s two and a half hours until Caersan rearranges us as well.

  There are a lot of things I wish I’d done or said.

  But the truth is, I can’t think of anywhere I’d want to be except right here.

  31

  TYLER

  Ra’haam.

  Saedii stares at me across the detention cell, her lips pursed. In the time it’s taken for me to lay it out for her—Aurora, the Eshvaren, the Ra’haam, Octavia III, Cat, the locker on Emerald City, the GIA, all of it—her blood has dried on her face, on the floor between us. She hasn’t thrown a single thought into my mind. Her expression only changed once—a quick flicker, eyes narrowing, when I mentioned the Weapon, which even now I hope the others have found without me.

  Scarlett.

  Auri.

  Great Maker, I hope they’re all okay… .

  Saedii sits there in the aftermath of my confession. I expect her to laugh. To call me a liar and a lunatic, to react the way any normal person might when you tell them that an ancient plant-being that lost a war against a race of ancient psychics is set to wake up after a million-year dirt-nap and nom down on the entire galaxy.

  But when she does finally speak into my head, her thoughts are quiet.

  This explains the girl you think of constantly.

  I blink at that.

  … What?

  Cat, I think? She weighs heavy on your thoughts, Tyler Jones.

  I swallow hard. Chest aching.

  She was a … a friend of mine.

  Saedii’s eyes narrow. More than a friend.

  … Maybe.

  And it took her. This Ra’haam. Turned her. Absorbed her.

  I feel anger surge inside me. Welcome and warm.

  Yes. It did.

  Just as it will absorb the galaxy if we permit it.

  Yes, I nod. It will.

  We must escape this cell, Tyler Jones.

  I raise one eyebrow. The scarred one. For extra effect.

  I’m glad you’re here to tell me these things, Saedii.

  Was that sarcasm, little Terran?

  I shrug. My sister inherited most of it. But some rubbed off on me.

  Her eyes narrow again at the word inherited. She looks at me long and hard. Glittering eyes framed by dark lashes and dark paint. Her stare lingering maybe a fraction too long on my bare chest.

  Listen, I know these pecs could run for president and win, I think to her, more than a little annoyed. But you could be a touch less obvious about getting an eyeful. In case you missed it, we’re in it up to our necks here.

  The Unbroken Templar tilts her head at that. Slowly, slowly leaning back on her bio-cot and stretching those long, bare legs out in front of her. I know what she’s doing. I know what she wants. I fill my head with a barrage of unsexy thoughts—my old bunkmate Björkman trimming his toenails with his teeth, that time I caught myself in my zipper, my grandma’s underwear, huge cream-colored monstrosities, billowing like sails on the cl—

  I can’t help it. I glance down for a fraction of a second.

  Dammit.

  I look up into Saedii’s eyes again. Her split lips twist in a small smile.

  I am not “getting an eyeful,” as you so eloquently put it, Tyler Jones.

  She glances back at my chest, thoughtful.

  I am wondering what kind of heart beats beneath those ribs of yours.

  … Meaning what?

  Meaning the foe of my foe is my friend. Meaning that despite the enmity and insult between us, I respect the trust you place in me to speak your secrets. And that there are secrets you are perhaps owed in turn. Secrets about me.

  She looks into my eyes.

  Secrets about you.

  I frown.

  … Me?

  She gives a gentle shrug, toying with one black lock of hair as she looks me over once more. You and your sister, I suppose.

  … What’s Scar got to do with this?

  Twins, are you not?

  Yeah, so what?

  Jericho Jones escaped Syldrathi captivity before the battle at Kireina IV, yes?

  My frown deepens. How’d you know that?

  She smiles again. Your father held back a fleet twice the size of his at Kireina. It was the worst defeat we suffered in the entire war. Know your enemy, Tyler Jones.

  I don’t—

  Jericho Jones was a rear admiral less than a year after his victory. A warrior, born and bred, who fought the best of the Warbreed to a standstill and caused our fall from ascendancy in the Inner Council of Syldra. And yet, he resigned his commission. Became the strongest advocate for peace in your Senate. Why the change of heart?

  I have no idea where she’s going with this. But something in her eyes urges me to run with it.

  He made a speech about it in 2367, I tell her, pride swelling my chest. It still gets taught today at Aurora Academy. “I can no longer look my children in the eye without seeing the wrong in killing other people’s.”

  She sniffs. A pretty lie.

  I bristle. You watch what you say about my father, Saedii.

  When I first spoke to your mind, you said you were not aware that those who possessed Waywalker gifts could speak to other people telepathically.

  I shrug. I wasn’t aware.

  Saedii shakes her head, mild contempt spilling into my mind despite her best effort to hold it in check. That is because we cannot speak to other people, Tyler Jones. We can only speak to others with the gift.

  My stomach lurches. I don’t …

  I am Warbreed by birth and troth, Saedii tells me. But … though I loathed her, I did inherit some of my mother’s talents.

  She meets my eyes, her own glinting like glass.

  It would seem your mother al
so shared her gift with you.

  The thought knocks the breath from my lungs. My heart is thumping, mind spinning. But I’m trying to hold on to the threads in my head, stitch them together into a tapestry that makes some kind of sense, while Saedii looks on, cool and aloof.

  We never knew our mom—I always wondered about her, but I could tell how much it hurt Dad to talk about her. I didn’t want to push it. And I thought we had a lifetime to ask him about what happened. Where she went.

  But Dad was missing behind enemy lines for months. I admit it always struck me as kinda strange—for him to have turned from the Syldrathi’s greatest enemy into the man who argued strongest for peace. I guess part of me wanted to put him on a pedestal. The noble war hero who came to respect the enemy he fought against. To understand we’re all, in some essential way, the same.

  But it would make a lot more sense if …

  While he was captured, if he …

  It’s funny being a twin. Sometimes I feel like I know what my sister will say before she says it. Sometimes I swear she can tell what I’m thinking just by looking at me. Scar and I were inseparable as kids. Dad said we invented our own language before we could talk. And the way my sister instinctively reads people—like books, like she can actually see into their heads sometimes …

  “Maker’s breath,” I breathe aloud.

  You do not have much of the look about you, Saedii says. Probably why your mother sent you away. But it is undeniable that you and your sister are possessed of a certain—her eyes flicker over my body again—grace. Height. Poise. You saw the images of my torture in your head. You can speak to me in my mind. I feel you in here—she touches her brow—as surely as you feel me. There is only one explanation, Tyler Jones.

  Saedii tucks a long black lock behind her ear.

  Your mother was a Waywalker.

  I swallow hard. Look down at my forearm. My tanned skin. The veins beneath the muscle etched in long scrawls of pale blue.

  Scar and me … we have Syldrathi blood in our veins?

  Saedii’s fingertips drift over the string of severed thumbs at her throat. She is looking me up and down, the tip of her tongue pressed against one sharpened canine.