Aurora Burning: The Aurora Cycle 2

by Amie Kaufman

  “Go with Plan B.”

  38

  KAL

  “You have given me your best, little Terran. Now I will give you mine.”

  The chamber shakes.

  The Waywalkers above me scream.

  My father raises his hand.

  A sledgehammer of psychic force slams into Aurora, sending her skidding back across the Weapon’s heart. Shards of crystal fall like rain, glittering in her wake. Her face is twisted, mouth open in a silent cry, skeins of midnight blue and burning red crackling in the air around her.

  The wall I am pressed against reverberates, the power of their exchange coalescing in the crystal around us. Every time Aurora and my father strike at each other, the Weapon pulses brighter, the air grows thicker. It feels like a coiled spring, like clockwork wound too tight, strained to breaking. I can tell it is almost ready to fire, overflowing with the barrages of energy they throw at each other.

  Spirits of the Void help anything in its path when it is unleashed.

  Aurora strikes out again, a ribbon of force cutting the air, knife-sharp and silver-quick. My father raises his hand, almost lazily, as he would when I was a child striking at him beneath the trees on Syldra. He never failed to press the advantage back then, despite his size, his strength. Punishing every flaw, every misstep, every error, sending me to bed bruised and beaten.

  He does the same with Aurora now, and I watch, helpless, as he pierces her defenses and sends her flying. She collides with the wall again, the crystal cracking beneath the force of the blow.

  Aurora falls to her knees. But she stands again a moment later, power flowing off her in waves as she drags her knuckles across her bleeding nose.

  “Nice shot,” she murmurs.

  I did not wish it to be this way.

  Aurora surges across the room, seeming almost to flicker inside the rising storm. Her eye burns like a sun, matched in intensity only by his own. I can see how hard she struggles, pure and formless. But though my father is less than she is alone, he is not alone. He draws on the power of these poor souls imprisoned around us.

  He strikes again, again, a crimson blur, moving so swift he leaves an afterimage in the air behind him. Aurora sails upward, shattering the ceiling. She falls among a rain of glittering crystal, and with a flicker of crimson power, he is there beneath her, lashing out again. She is flung across the room, limp and boneless, tumbling across the crystalline floor, rainbow colors crashing like waves on a sunset shore. The Waywalkers scream once more. And though Aurora rises again, fists clenched, she moves a touch slower than she did a moment ago.

  They collide like powder and flame. He towers over her, drawing the power of the multitude around us into himself. Her face is a mask of pain and blood, her eye gleaming in the dark. She seems small then. And looking at her, she who was my all and my everything and is now perhaps my nothing, I know the truth.

  I told her before she came here, after all.

  I cannot fault her for hating me. I never should have lied to her, or to the rest of them. But I warned her not to come here. I wished to deal with this by myself. My shame. My blood. In my veins and on my hands. I thought perhaps to topple the giant. Slay the monster I remembered from my childhood, the man who laid those bruises on me and my sister and my mother alike.

  But as soon as I saw my father, I knew he had become so much more, and so much less, than he ever was before. I thought to wait. Perhaps as he prepared to use the Weapon, he would be distracted enough for me to strike at him. Or perhaps after he had fired it, he might become weakened enough for me to cut him down once and for all. I had no real plan, save to spare Aurora this struggle.

  My deception and my devotion. Only one of them for her.

  But now …

  Now.

  I look around me at the Waywalkers, pinned in place against the curving crystal walls like insects upon a board. Their eyes are open, but they do not see. Syldrathi men and women, even children, the Waywalker glyf—an eye, crying five tears—marked upon their brows.

  The same glyf my mother wore on her brow.

  There is no love in violence, Kaliis, she would tell me.

  I reach down to the floor beneath me. My fingers search the shattered crystal broken loose from the wall. I take hold of a shard—long and pointed, like a dagger. And I look at these poor wretches my father draws his power from. The crystal slicing into my palm as I clench it tight.

  It would not take much to end them. Cut them loose from this life, and from him. Weakening him. Perhaps enough to topple him?

  Mercy is the province of cowards, Kaliis.

  But no. That is a choice he would make, not me. And if I am to step out from this shadow at last, I cannot do it by walking into darkness. I am not my past. I am not he who made me. I must stand in the light of the sun.

  No matter what it will cost me.

  I steal across the trembling floor, the crystal dagger in my hand, struggling through the storm of power building around them. My father and my be’shmai are locked together, the Weapon around us trembling now with tectonic violence. Blood drips from Aurora’s nose, her ears, her eyes. Her arms shake. Her knees buckle.

  She cannot win this alone.

  But the truth is?

  She was never alone.

  I loom up behind my father. Like a shadow. Like the past come back to haunt him. Like the voices of ten billion souls gone to the Void, my mother among them. And I wrap my arm around his throat and plunge the crystal blade toward the sweet spot between his fifth and sixth ribs.

  The crystal pierces my father’s armor, and for a brief and beautiful moment, I feel the flesh parting beneath, the blade sinking toward the heart I can only assume he still owns.

  But then it stops.

  I feel his grip on my wrist, though he does not touch me. I feel his hand at my throat, though his own hands are still locked with Aurora’s. I struggle, powerless, gasping as his hold on me tightens. He glances over his shoulder at me, his eye burning like cold flame.

  “Tsk, tsk,” he says.

  With a toss of his head, he slams my be’shmai backward, sending her skidding across the floor, bleeding and gasping.

  And then he turns to me.

  I am held in place. Suspended three feet above the floor, utterly still.

  He looks at me, the storm raging all around us. He is so changed now. Severed from the ties that once bound him. But I look deep into his eyes, and I think I see something left of what he was. Something of the man I feared and loved and hated.

  “So,” he says, disappointed. “You are still your mother’s son.”

  And though I cannot move to strike him, though I can barely muster the strength to breathe, still I draw enough to speak.

  “I am n-not yours.”

  His eyes narrow. The storm wind rises around us, the Waywalkers begin to scream, and I look to the girl who was my all and my everything, watching as she raises her head and looks at me.

  “K-Kal …”

  “Be’shmai,” I whisper.

  And then I feel my father reach into my mind.

  And he tears me apar—

  39

  TYLER

  Auxiliary power has been restored to this section of the ship, and Saedii and I are charging toward the escape pods in the dim glow of the emergency lights. I presume the TDF marine squads are still looking for us back on the detention level, but the Unbroken attack seems to be occupying most of the crew’s attention. The decks are a hive of activity: marines, techs, repair crews, pilots all flooding to their battle stations, the ship shaking around us as the conflict rages through the Fold.

  The reports we’re getting over the headsets in our stolen helmets aren’t so good. Turns out Saedii and I were both wrong—it’s not an Eidolon hitting us, but four Banshee-class Syldrathi cruisers. The ship we’re on, the Kusanagi, is a heavy carrier, but Banshees have cloaking tech that makes them almost invisible to conventional radar—probably how they snuck up on us in the first pla
ce. That means the Kusanagi’s gunners have to target visually, which is hard to do when your opponent is moving a couple of thousand klicks a second. All this is to say that even though the Syldrathi ships are smaller, it’s still gonna be a brawl.

  I honestly have no idea who will come out on top.

  Another blast rocks the Kusanagi, sending Saedii stumbling into me, and me stumbling into the wall. Half a dozen Terran techs dash past us, and the alarms continue to blare as I haul myself back to my feet.

  “Just for future reference,” I ask, steadying myself, “if you’re falling and I catch you, are you going to knee me in the groin again?”

  “Be silent, Tyler Jones,” Saedii sighs, staggering forward.

  Maybe I should just let you fall right on your arrogant ass, I think to myself.

  I heard that, comes her voice inside my head.

  “FIRST ENEMY VESSEL DESTROYED,” the PA reports. “CRITICAL DAMAGE TO SECOND ENEMY VESSEL. KUSANAGI HULL BREACH ON LEVEL 4, PORT BATTERIES DISABLED. TECH CREWS REPORT TO LEVEL 6, CORRIDORS 6 BETA AND EPSILON, IMMEDIATELY.”

  “The escape pods should be just ahead,” I report.

  “I see them,” Saedii replies, charging on through the gloom.

  A TDF carrier has escape pods on every level—one-person units, independently powered in the event of catastrophic reactor damage. I can make out a bunch at the T-junction ahead—a few dozen hatchways set into the wall. Their operating mechanisms are basically big red buttons behind panes of glass marked BREAKIN CASE OF EMERGENCY—they’re made to be easy to operate, even in a disaster scenario. If our luck holds, we can b—

  The disruptor blast hits Saedii right in her head. The tac helmet she’s wearing absorbs the brunt of the blow, but the shot still sends her spinning like a top.

  “Contact! Contact!” a marine cries behind us. “Section A, Level 3!”

  I dive away from the escape pods, dragging Saedii with me into an adjacent corridor as more rifles open up on us. Their shots go wide as Kusanagi takes another hit. I can see half a dozen TDF marines behind cover at the end of our corridor. I’m not sure how they zeroed us—maybe the ident numbers on our breastplates—but however they did it, their disruptors are set to Kill. I press back against the corner of the T-junction, cracking off a few haphazard shots. The escape pods are right there, maybe five meters away. But they might as well be five kilometers now.

  Are you okay? I yell into Saedii’s head.

  Lower your voice, Tyler Jones, she says, slinging off her smoking helmet.

  Tossing her hair from her eyes, Saedii lifts her rifle and starts shooting around the corner. And suddenly we’re in a firefight for our lives. The dim light is punctured by muzzle flashes, screaming alarms are drowned out by disruptor fire. Saedii cries warning in my mind as another group of marines opens up from the opposite end of the corridor. If they maneuver around behind us, we’re dead.

  The air is filled with the sizzling bursts of disruptor shots, my rifle bucking in my hand. I’m not shooting with much finesse, just trying to get the TDF marines to keep their heads down. But one glance over my shoulder tells me Saedii has already taken out three of them—two with face shots and another with a blast into the fire extinguisher on the wall beside him, which exploded and knocked him senseless. And all this after she took a Kill shot to the skull.

  Maker’s breath, this girl is good… .

  I heard that.

  DAMMIT, STOP IT.

  Saedii smirks over her shoulder at me as I crack off a lucky shot, taking out a marine sergeant with a Stun blast right into his visor. He collapses, out cold.

  Fine shooting, Tyler Jones.

  All the fine shooting in the ’Way isn’t gonna help us here—we’re outnumbered ten to one!

  Another blast rocks the Kusanagi, another burst of fire forces me back behind cover. If we stay here much longer, we’re finished. I tear off my helmet so I can breathe a little better, pawing the sweat from my eyes as I glance at the escape pods across the corridor from us. They’re made to open quick in the event of an emergency; it wouldn’t take much time to get inside one. But running across the corridor to reach them, risking the crossfire between us and them …

  Give me your rifle, I tell Saedii, holding out my hand.

  … Why?

  You go first. I’ll cover you.

  She scowls. I do not need your assistance, boy.

  Maker’s breath, does everything have to be a fight with you?

  Yes, she says, blasting another marine. I was born for war, Tyler Jones.

  Well, you can’t fight a war if you’re dead! So get yourself into the escape pod and alert your crew of psychopaths to pick us up instead of blow us up.

  And leave you here?

  I’ll follow you.

  I duck low as a disruptor blast sizzles over my head, flashes against the wall beside me. I fire off a shot, manage to stun an advancing marine running for cover. Glancing over my shoulder, I find Saedii staring at me.

  What? I demand.

  Saedii says nothing. Reaching to her tac armor’s belt, she grabs the spare power pack for her disruptor, and slings it across the corridor into an escape pod’s control panel. Her aim is perfect (why am I not surprised?), the glass does indeed break in the case of this particular emergency, and the panel switches from red to green as the hatchway cycles open. I keep blasting away, but I feel Saedii’s hands at my belt, grabbing my rifle’s spare power cell. She repeats the procedure—another dead shot, more broken glass, another pod door open, this one for me. The marines are closing in now, and we only have seconds.

  Saedii hands me her rifle. Looks me in the eye.

  You have courage, Tyler Jones. Your blood is true.

  She grabs my breastplate and, leaning in, kisses my cheek.

  Spirits of the Void watch over you, she says.

  I swallow hard, meeting her stare.

  … You too, I manage.

  If you let me get shot, I will rip your heart from your chest and feed it to you.

  I almost laugh. Go. I’ve got your back.

  I lean out into the corridor, let loose with a flurry of blasts, one rifle in each hand. The burst is haphazard—there’s no way I’m gonna hit anything. But the clumsy spray of fire does force the marines back behind cover long enough for Saedii to make a break. She dashes across the corridor and dives like a spear, black hair streaming out behind her as disruptor blasts cut the air around her, right through the escape pod’s open door to safety.

  It slams shut behind her. The diode switches from green to blue. And as another blast rocks the Kusanagi, Saedii’s pod blasts free.

  I can taste smoke now, the damage reports spilling thick and fast from the PA as Kusanagi takes another hit. I thank the Maker more marines haven’t already been scrambled, but I’m guessing they’re too busy not getting blown to pieces by those Syldrathi Banshees out there. For a second, I find myself praying Saedii makes it out okay. That her people can pick her up before the TDF blasts her out of space. But then I realize I should really be praying for myself.

  My rifle suddenly runs empty. I glance at the power level on the weapon Saedii gave me—it’s down to 13 percent. And, looking across the corridor, alive with disruptor fire, I can see my only two spare power cells lying on the floor among shards of broken glass.

  Hmm. Maybe she’s not a perfect tactician after all.

  I stick my head out, rewarded by a spray of disruptor fire from both directions. The marines are advancing quick—it’s only a matter of time before they cut around behind me and hit me from all sides.

  I’m not sure how I’m gonna pull this off… .

  “CEASE FIRE,” comes a cold, metallic command.

  “Cease fire!” a marine LT repeats, shouting. “Corps, cease fire!”

  I press back against the wall. Heart battering against my ribs. It’s one of the GIA operatives out there. Princeps, maybe, come to drag me back to my cell. Or maybe just to finish me once and for—

  “TYLER
?”

  My heart seizes up.

  Even under the metal, the mirrormask, I know that voice. I’ve known it since we were five years old, that first day of kindergarten, when I pushed her over and she smashed a chair over my head.

  The voice of my best friend. The girl who always looked out for me. The girl I was supposed to look out for in turn. The girl I loved, and the girl I failed.

  I peek out into the corridor, and she’s standing right there. Clad head to toe in GIA charcoal gray. That featureless mirrormask over her face.

  But still, I know her.

  “TYLER, DON’T GO,” Cat says.

  “Ma’am,” growls the marine behind her. “This prisoner escaped his cell and—”

  “YOU’RE DISMISSED, LIEUTENANT,” Cat says, not looking at him.

  The LT looks unsure. “Ma’am, we have orders to—”

  “I AM COUNTERMANDING THOSE ORDERS,” Cat snaps. “THERE ARE THREE SYLDRATHI STEALTH CRUISERS OUTSIDE TRYING TO BLOW US INTO COMPONENT MOLECULES. I AM SURE THERE ARE BETTER WAYS FOR YOU AND YOUR MEN TO BE SPENDING YOUR TIME RIGHT NOW, LIEUTENANT.”

  “But the prisoner, ma’am …”

  Cat’s still staring at me, head titled.

  “HE ISN’T GOING ANYWHERE. ARE YOU, TYLER?”

  My eyes are locked on that mirrormask. My mouth dry as ashes.

  “ORDER YOUR MEN BACK, LIEUTENANT,” Cat commands. “I’M SURE I DON’T NEED TO REMIND YOU THAT THIS OPERATION IS UNDER GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY COMMAND.”

  I can see the conflict in the LT’s eyes. The orders don’t seem right, and he and his squad know it. But I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again—the Terran military doesn’t teach you to think in combat. It teaches you that you follow orders or people die. And right now, given the attack going on out there in the Fold, these marines probably do have some better way to spend their time than wrangling me.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the LT nods, and pulls his crew back.

  I listen to the marines retreating. Glancing down at my rifle’s power.

  Eight percent.

  The thing wearing Cat’s body waits until we’re alone in the smoke-filled, trembling corridor. And then I hear a small, wet hiss. The ship shudders around me.