Aurora Burning

by Amie Kaufman

I give my head a shake to chase away that thought, which will lead directly to the ghost ship full of corpses we left behind if I’m not careful, and instead eyeball the data I’m heisting as it goes by. At a glance, I can tell that a lot of the info is navigational, which is exactly the kind we came for. Hopefully it’ll mark the place something weird happened to the Hadfield. And Aurora.

  I set the data streams to encrypt as they store so nobody can get into them except yours truly. It’s a mimetic sixty-four-digit obfuscation cypher—just a special little something I whipped up back at the academy. I had a lot of spare time on account of my nonexistent social life. But who’s laughing now, huh? I’ve got this killer encryption, a state-of-the-art spaceship, and a big handsome friend who shoots people for me whenever I like.

  What more could a boy want?

  As if to answer that question, Scar’s voice sounds in my earpiece. “Ops team, we have a problem.”

  Kal’s eyes narrow slightly. “Please elaborate.”

  “Inbound vessels,” Zila reports. “They used cloaking technology to get close, but we have visual now. There are at least a dozen. Rapid approach.”

  “Someone’s responding to the Hephaestus SOS,” Scarlett says.

  I frown, crunching the numbers in my head. “Already?”

  “They must have been a lot closer than Emerald City to have gotten here already. Just our luck.”

  Kal looks at me, his voice cool as ice. “How long, Finian?”

  “Ninety seconds,” I tell him, mentally urging the data to move faster. Because that’s always worked.

  “We will be ready for retrieval in two minutes,” Kal advises.

  Tyler’s voice breaks in. “Roger that, we can—oh, Maker’s breath…”

  I’m about to ask him to elaborate on that as well, but the sound of Kal cursing softly in Syldrathi draws my attention to the monitor array. Through our tug’s forward viewscreen, we have an unencumbered shot of half a dozen lean, razor-sharp fighter ships speeding in to say hello. They’re shaped for stealth, and my heart drops to my boots as I watch one of them casually execute a strafing run that leaves three security fighters in ruins, debris tumbling slowly out into the black.

  More of the newcomers begin to engage, missile and pulse fire lighting up the darkness. Within moments, the Hephaestus security ships that Tyler’s been playing hide-and-seek with all this time are being simply annihilated.

  “Kal,” I whisper. “Are those ships…?”

  “Syldrathi,” he replies, his voice subzero.

  “But they’re just interceptors,” I protest. “They’re too small to have come here alone. They’ve gotta be with…”

  I glance to our rear cams, my heart tightening in my chest.

  “Oh shit…”

  A dark shape hangs there on the screen, lit from behind by the system’s sun, just a silhouette against a disk of burning red. It’s big and pointy and the most badass thing I have ever seen. All black, with huge white glyfs painted down the sides in a beautiful, furious script.

  They’re the glyfs of the Unbroken.

  A small crease slowly forms between Kal’s brows, which is about as close to upset as he ever looks.

  “The Andarael,” he whispers.

  “Kal?” Ty breaks in again. “You know this ship?”

  But Scar answers for him, already two steps ahead. “It’s his sister’s.”

  A green light flashes by my feet, and I look down. “Download complete,” I say softly, though that’s hardly our biggest concern anymore. Still, I’m an Aurora legionnaire, and I have my orders, so I drop to one knee and set to work frying the black box—that way, the only copy of its data will now be ours. Just in case we get out of this alive to use it.

  I hear a burst of static from the Totentanz’s comms panel, and sadly, that starts feeling a lot less likely.

  “Hello again, Kaliis.”

  Kal stares expressionless at the blinking light awaiting his response.

  “Saedii,” he murmurs.

  Like a man sleepwalking, our Tank crosses the cockpit to the transmitter. I glance around the bridge, looking for anything that might help us. A grimy mug that says GALAXY’S GREATEST GRANDMA! sits by the copilot’s chair. A jetball team jacket is crumpled on the deck near the nav station. A pair of fuzzy dice hangs above the pilot’s chair. When Kal speaks, he sounds cool, conversational. He talks in Syldrathi, but my uni has enough spare processing power to still run a translation for me.

  “We were not expecting your company so soon, Sister.”

  “Forgive me,” she replies, her smirk audible. “You left in such a hurry, you forgot to issue an invitation, Brother.”

  “Yet here you are.”

  “Here I am,” she purrs.

  “…How?”

  “Kaliis, I touched your ship,” she says. “Are you telling me that you did not even search for the tracker? You have grown slow and soft and stupid at your wretched little academy. Do they teach you idiocy there?”

  Kal’s eyes are closed again. Just like me, he’s imagining the moment we left the Emerald City. Saedii throwing herself at the Zero, holding on for those few precious seconds before Ty tipped her off. She must have slapped a beacon on the hull. That’s why the Unbroken were so close when the SOS was broadcast by the convoy’s security. They didn’t need the distress call to know where we were.

  “Saedii,” tries Kal. “You have asked and you have asked, and I have answered and I have answered. I want no part in this thing you do.”

  “This thing I do,” she replies, her anger audible, “wants you. He wants you.”

  Kal flicks the transmitter to the off position, killing his line to Saedii for a moment so he can speak to the Zero.

  “Tyler, you must go,” he says simply. “Now.”

  There’s a chorus of protests down the line from Goldenboy, from Scarlett, from Auri. Ty’s the one who prevails, at least for a moment. “Not an option, Kal.”

  The transmitter on the dashboard flickers to life again. “We’ve hacked your communications, so I can still hear you, little brother. And nobody is going anywhere. You will surrender yourself to the troops I am sending to your ship, and your squad will dock with Andarael.”

  “What could you want with my squad?” Kal asks, and for a moment, he sounds incredibly Syldrathi. Like none of the humans aboard the Zero could possibly have any value, anything worth delaying her journey even a minute for.

  “Kaliis,” she chides him gently. “Do you not think it fitting your elder sister wishes to be properly introduced to her brother’s be’shmai?”

  And there’s something in the way she speaks—a terrible, cold something—that tells me that she doesn’t just want to taunt Kal. That Auri has some value to her as well.

  “My squad is none of your concern, Saedii. Release them, and I will join you.”

  Kal looks across at me, and I can see the apology in those big violet eyes of his. We both know that whatever happens to the others, his sister won’t be letting me rejoin the Zero before it departs. And we both know what the Unbroken will make of my physical limitations. My suit.

  And Maker’s bits, does that suck.

  But it’s also okay. I want them to go. They’re my chosen clan, and I want them to live. So I draw a deep breath, nod at him silently.

  He reaches across to clasp my shoulder, completely oblivious to the fact that he just about crushes it.

  “Kal.” Aurora cuts across the channel. “Kal, I’m not leaving you.”

  I can hear the fear in her voice, the hurt, the heartache. I hassle Kal and Auri about it, because hey, it’s me, but I’m not blind to how close these two are growing. How much she means to him, and how much he’s starting to mean to her. I find myself wondering what it would’ve been like to have someone feel that way about me. To have found someone who
looked at me the way he looks at her. And yeah, it’s probably a stupid thing to be thinking at a time like this.

  Which is why I spot her just half a second too late.

  A figure in the bridge hatchway, leaning hard against the door, blood dripping down her nose. She’s not Syldrathi, I realize—she’s one of the Hephaestus tug crew that Kal laid out when we arrived. Maybe the Galaxy’s Greatest Grandma. Maybe just the jetball fan. Whoever she is, she looks like death warmed up, but somehow she’s made it to her feet and staggered to the cockpit.

  And she’s holding a disruptor.

  “Kal!” I shout, flinging up my hands as though they can stop a blast.

  Our Tank’s eyes are still on the comms array, the speaker his sister’s threats are spilling from. But at the sound of my voice, he swings around, drawing the disruptor at his belt. He moves fast—faster than any Betraskan, any human—but still not fast enough. He pushes me aside, his finger tightening on his trigger, just as the razor hissss of a Kill shot tears through the cockpit, ringing in my ears.

  My heart sinks in my chest as I watch it all unfold in slow motion.

  Kal twisting aside, trying to dodge the blast.

  The shot striking him, right in the chest.

  Violet eyes widening in pain, mouth open in shock.

  And then he’s flying, spit spraying between his bared teeth, backward into the control panel and crashing to the ground. The Hephaestus goon staggers and drops from Kal’s return shot, her rifle clattering across the deck. I can hear our squad screaming down our channel, Kal’s sister through the Totentanz’s comms unit, demanding to know what’s happening.

  But I can’t find my voice.

  Can’t do anything but stare at the smoking hole in Kal’s suit, edged in black scorch marks.

  Right over his heart.

  But despite all the voices, the shock, in a way that would please and definitely surprise my academy instructors, my Legion training kicks in.

  First, secure your position.

  That much is easy—one look at Grandma tells me that Kal’s blast knocked her stupid, and she’s lying unconscious in the passageway.

  Second, medical emergencies.

  Dropping to my knees with a thump and popping a multi-tool from a recess in my exo, I slice a clean line into the fabric of Kal’s suit and through the insulation beneath. He doesn’t move the whole time, and my brain is conjuring up images of Cat on Octavia—images of her bright blue eyes, flower-shaped, of her hand outstretched, of the sadness on her face as she watched us go.

  First seven.

  Then six.

  Now five?

  “Finian, report!” Tyler shouts.

  Not again, no, not Kal too, please, Maker, not him too…

  “Fin, what happened?” Auri cries.

  “Kal’s hit,” I manage.

  “Fin, no!”

  “He’s hit….”

  My pulse is thumping in my ears, mouth dry as dust as I drag the suit fabric aside, waiting for a gush of deep, warm purple to soak my hands.

  But…

  But there’s nothing.

  I blink hard, something between a sob and a laugh bursting on my lips. Because there, beneath the burned lining of Kal’s suit and the scorched fabric of his Legion uniform, praise the Maker, I see something has stopped the worst of the blast. My hands are shaking as I pull it out of his breast pocket, watching the console lights glint on the scorched silver, my mouth open in wonder.

  That damn cigarillo case…

  Kal’s out cold, maybe from the blast, maybe from slamming into the console. He’s gonna have an award-winning bruise when he wakes up.

  But he’s alive.

  I can’t say the same for the poor cigarillo case, though. It’s bent and busted open, and as my heart slams against my rib cage, as the voices of my teammates ring out over comms, I realize there’s something inside the case.

  “Finian, status!” Tyler demands.

  “Fin, what’s happening?” Auri cries.

  “It’s okay,” I report, my voice shaking. “He’s okay….”

  I pry the case apart, forcing my hands to cooperate, though the adrenaline flooding my nerves is making it hard for my exo to compensate. There’s a piece of paper inside the buckled metal, small, square, marked with black handwriting.

  It’s a note.

  Four words.

  TELL HER THE TRUTH.

  Tell who?

  What truth?

  They’re both good questions. But for now, as I hear Saedii demand our surrender again, as more Syldrathi fighters swarm in the space around us, as I hear Ty give the reluctant order for me to stand down, my brain shoves them aside in favor of a much more compelling one.

  I turn the note over in my trembling hands, dragging shaking breaths into my lungs. Trying to make the pieces fit. Because, like the rest of the gifts in the deposit box, like the Zero in the Emerald City docks, this note has been waiting to be found since Kal and I were both children.

  So how in the name of the Maker is it in my handwriting?

  SUBJECT: INTERSPECIES RELATIONS

  ▶ FAMOUS BATTLES

  ▼ THE ORION INCURSION

  THE ORION INCURSION OCCURRED IN 2370.2 AND IS THE MOST INFAMOUS INCIDENT OF THE TERRAN-SYLDRATHI WAR. THE ATTACK WAS PERPETRATED BY A REBEL SYLDRATHI FACTION OF THE WARBREED CABAL (SEE UNBROKEN) DURING A CEASE-FIRE BETWEEN THE SYLDRATHI AND TERRAN GOVERNMENTS.

  AS THE TERRAN DEFENSE FORCE WAS ENGAGED IN PEACE NEGOTIATIONS, EARTH WAS CAUGHT BY COMPLETE SURPRISE. THOUGH THE ATTACK WAS EVENTUALLY DRIVEN BACK, THE TERRAN SHIPYARDS AT BELLATRIX AND SIGMA ORIONIS WERE DESTROYED, AND THE TDF WAS DECIMATED.

  THE UNBROKEN’S TREACHERY GALVANIZED THE TERRAN POPULATION AND PROLONGED THE SYLDRATHI CONFLICT ANOTHER EIGHT YEARS. THOUGH PEACE WAS EVENTUALLY BROKERED THROUGH THE JERICHO ACCORD, TENSION BETWEEN THE TWO RACES HAS NEVER QUITE DIED.

  HMMM. THIS TOPIC IS SAD.

  WOULD YOU LIKE A HUG?

  Remember Orion.

  Those are the two words burning in my mind as Ty guides the Zero into the Andarael’s docking bay. I should be worried about Kal. Worried about Auri. Worried that the name Andarael means “She Who Lies with Death” in Syldrathi. I should be thinking of how I’m going to talk our way out of this. I’m the team Face, after all. We’re outgunned and outmanned—the only way we’re getting clear here is diplomacy. But I can’t quite bring my thoughts to bear on the problem at hand, can’t think of anything to say, witty, sassy, sexy, or otherwise.

  Because these are the people who killed our dad.

  Remember Orion.

  He was a Great Man, our dad. That’s what everyone told me and Ty. Those were the words repeated over and over at the funeral of Senator Jericho Jones. All those diplomats and heads of state, all those military types with chests full of shiny medals. They said those words with gravitas. They said them like they meant them.

  Capital G. Capital M.

  A Great Man.

  The thing about great men is that they usually don’t make great dads.

  We never knew Mom. She died when we were both too young to remember. And it’s not that Dad didn’t try—he really did. But the problem was, everyone wanted a piece of the great Jericho Jones. And there just wasn’t enough to go around.

  The Syldrathi war against Terra had raged for twenty years before Tyler and I came into the picture, and Dad had been a soldier for twelve of them. He was TDF, born and bred—an ace pilot who escaped enemy captivity and led the rally at Kireina IV, where TerraFleet held back a Syldrathi armada twice its size. He was a literal poster boy after that. The Terran Defense Force actually put him in their recruitment ads, ice-blue eyes staring right at you as he told you, “Earth needs heroes.” One year later, he was a rear admiral—the youngest ever in TDF history.
<
br />   Then Ty and I came along, and he resigned his commission.

  Just like that.

  It wasn’t to raise his kids, that’s for sure. The year after he quit the TDF, Dad ran for the Senate and won in a landslide. After that, he was always away. But Ty just idolized him, and I couldn’t really be mad about it, not with the work Dad was doing. Because, despite being the TDF poster boy, Jericho Jones became the strongest voice for peace in TerraGov. The blistering speech he gave against the war in 2367 still gets taught at Aurora Academy today. I can no longer look my children in the eye without seeing the wrong in killing other people’s, he said, and that always made me kinda mad, considering how little time he actually spent with us.

  But seeing Earth’s greatest hero advocating for peace with the Syldrathi helped turn public sentiment against the war. It was Jericho Jones who began the first real peace talks with the Syldrathi government, Jericho Jones who organized the cease-fire in 2370. The war had been raging almost thirty years by then. The defeats they’d suffered had seen the Warbreed fall from ascendancy in the Syldrathi council, and the Watchers and Waywalkers were just as tired of the bloodshed as we were. The treaty was drawn. Everyone was ready to sign.

  And then?

  Remember Orion.

  The Warbreed saw the treaty as dishonor. As weakness. And, under the leadership of their greatest Archon, a faction of Warbreed attacked during the cease-fire. In desperation, TerraGov activated its reservists for a counterattack.

  Dad hadn’t flown a fighter in years. And still, he answered the call. I remember him kissing my forehead and wiping away my tears and telling us he’d be back in time for our birthday.

  A little aluminum canister with his ashes inside came back instead.

  Remember Orion became the rallying cry after that. Remember Orion was the call on every recruitment poster, every simcast, every news feed. “Remember Orion!” bellowed the president himself at Dad’s funeral, right after he told us all what a Great Man we’d lost.

  But I didn’t lose a Great Man at Orion. I lost my daddy. And as much as I wished he’d been a greater father than man, you bet your ass I remember.