by Amie Kaufman
Burn it all away.
It makes sense, I suppose. If Caersan cut away all his ties—family, love, honor, loyalty—but didn’t replace them with devotion to destroying the Ra’haam, what would be left? Just an empty shell, with all the powers of the Trigger.
But somehow, I’m not sure that’s right. There’s something in his gaze—that flicker of temper that flashed to the surface like a silvery fish, then disappeared—that tells me that whatever he burned away has begun to slowly creep back in.
That maybe I’m stronger.
I lash out at him with a wave of pure power, quick as a whipcrack. He stumbles back a step, then straightens, radiating disdain.
“What was that, child?”
“Just a hello,” I reply, as sweetly as I know how.
Caersan strikes back, but instantly, instinctively, I throw up my hands. My energy is midnight blue, shot through with silver wisps, like nebulas, like starlight. His is a dark, dusty red, like drying blood, threaded with antique gold. There’s a depth to it, a richness and a power I’d find frightening if I were still me.
But I’m not. The Eshvaren saw to that, and now I know why.
He comes at me again, unleashing his power like a striking snake, and I meet him, holding the line. Midnight blue and deep russet entwine between us, each trying to choke the other. I lean into my power, impassive, knowing his passion will compromise him. Knowing my purpose will carry me.
I lash out at him again, hard as I can, a crack of psychic force like a slap to his face. Caersan’s head whips to one side, a tiny cut opening up on that flawless cheek. The silver braids he keeps draped over one side of his face are thrown aside, showing me the eye that was hidden from the rest of the galaxy.
And of course, like mine, it glows pure white.
But around that glowing eye, I can see scars carved down Caersan’s features, like cracks in an old riverbed. The right side of his face is withered, old, as if all the life has been sucked right out of it. The glow from his eye spills out through the cracks in his cheek as he glowers at me, dragging his braids back down over his face as if ashamed. He glances at the Weapon around us, the spears of crystal pointed toward the throne at its heart.
“So now you see. What it cost me to use it. And what it will cost you.” His pointed teeth are bared as he snarls. “They bestowed this power upon us, intending for this thing to tear it out of us again. To dismantle us piece by piece. No beautiful death. No ultimate sacrifice. They intended us to die in fragments. Twenty-two planets for us to destroy, twenty-two slivers of our souls to be ripped out of us one by one and fed to their vengeance machine.”
Even the thought is enough to make me recoil. I can feel the memory inside him, reverberating along the bond between us. I can sense just a hint of the pain he felt as he fired the Weapon, and even that is nearly overwhelming. But given what he used it to do, I know he deserved it, too.
He throws up his hands, his power rolling in the space between us. The Weapon trembles as I force him back, his boots skidding across the crystal. As the power rages around us again, cascading over us in waves of blue and red, the beautiful, powerful man before me takes an unwilling step back. I push outward, crashing into him with everything I have, and he staggers with a grunt of effort. His elegance is crumbling, his poise is fading, and he leans forward like a man battling the wind, those silver braids whipping out behind him. Midnight blue swirls around me in a growing storm, thundering as I harden my voice.
“You’ve corrupted the gift we’ve been given, Caersan. You’ve chosen years of power for yourself, trapped in a dying galaxy, over millennia of life for hundreds of species.”
My power crashes into him as I summon everything I have. The force of me, the power inside me, pure and unhindered, hits him like a tidal wave. He flails, torn off his feet, and sails back into the wall, smashing into the crystal with a thunderous crack. I strike him again, again, again, as a tiny line of purple blood spills from his nose and down over his lip. My midnight blue begins to consume the old blood it battles, surrounding it, silver twisting over gold. And finally, he collapses to the deck.
“One life isn’t too much to pay,” I tell him.
I take another step toward him, bathed in glittering midnight.
“Nor are two, Starslayer.”
He looks up at me then, braids draped around his face, and I see the pride and hatred crackling in his gaze. I feel his power swell, and I force myself to focus, to keep my hold on him firm. Kal steps forward in the storm, shouting over the roar.
“Aurora!”
But I ignore him, my eyes fixed on his father.
“I can feel it,” I tell him. “What you lost when you fired it.”
Caersan closes his fists, the air crackling. “What they took from me.”
“And once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.”
“Yes.”
I smile at that. “Which means you’re less than you were, Starslayer.”
I reach deep inside myself, ready to finish it.
“Less than me.”
“Perhaps,” he whispers. “But you are failing to account for one thing.”
There’s a sudden flicker in his presence that I don’t like, that makes me wary.
“And what’s that?”
“That I am not alone.”
His power flares, like a sun rising over the horizon, and the crystal in the walls around us responds, lighting up from within.
That’s when I see them, no longer hidden in the shadows, but lit from behind by blood-red light. Row upon row of Syldrathi, hundreds of them, are pinned against the walls of the chamber above me by some invisible force. Their eyes stare at nothing, their hands stretched out to either side.
“Mothercustard,” I breathe.
The glyfs at their brows tell me they’re Waywalkers. All of them. And a shudder goes through me as I suddenly realize why the Unbroken have been hunting them across the galaxy.
Every Waywalker cries out, fingers flexing, face contorted. The sudden flow of their power into Caersan is like being caught by a wave, tumbled end over end until there’s nothing to do but hold your breath, lungs bursting, fighting to last a second longer, praying to whoever’s listening for air.
His eyes—so like his son’s—lock onto mine as he speaks again.
“I am a warrior born. I carved my name in blood among the stars while you slumbered in your crib. I am Warbreed. I am Unbroken. I am an eater of worlds and slayer of suns. I am not less than I was before, child. I am more.”
He stands slowly, arms outstretched. The power around him doubles, triples, a psychic tempest of blood-red and glittering gold. The chamber around us, the whole Weapon, trembles, the screams of those Waywalkers filling my mind.
And I realize with creeping horror that he’s been holding himself back.
“You have given me your best, little Terran,” he says.
Slowly, the Starslayer curls his hands into fists.
“Now I will give you mine.”
It’s called a gremlin.
In the Terran war-propaganda posters I studied for conflict history in fourth year, gremlins were depicted as tiny, malicious humanoids with pointed ears and claws. But they were basically a way for pilots to keep up morale. Equipment failures got blamed on gremlins, so pilots got to avoid pointing the finger at the flight crews they depended on to keep them alive, and the war got won.
Nowadays, gremlin is a nickname for any number of portable counter-electronic devices—signal killers, network jammers, or, in the case of the miracle I’ve just discovered in my boot heel, electromagnetic-pulse generators.
How could they know?
I glance up at Saedii, who appears to be ignoring me for the benefit of the camera above our cell door. But she’s caught a glimpse of the gremlin in my heel, and sharp as she is, sh
e knows exactly what it can do for our predicament.
The ones who left that for you, she continues. How could they know?
I have no clue, I admit.
How did the Terran marines not discover it? Surely they scanned you?
The heel looks shielded. Whoever put this here knew I’d need to hide it.
How? Saedii demands. How is this possible?
Doesn’t matter. We need to get out of here. I don’t know where we’re headed, but there’s literally no place the Ra’haam can have chosen that will be good news for us. And the Unbroken and TDF are probably tearing each other to pieces by now.
She glances my way for a brief moment.
Then we are at war once more, little Terran.
You can gouge out my eyes later, okay? From the look of this gremlin, it’s got a decent range. But TDF dreadnoughts are huge. When the pulse goes off, we need to move fast. Get to the launch bays and get ourselves off this ship. So be ready.
Saedi sneers.
She’s probably always ready for combat, and my warning is a little insulting. Despite the punishment she’s suffered, Saedii radiates a steel-cold will, her eyes narrowed and focused. Curling over to hide my boots from the camera, I slip my hand to the gremlin, praying to the Maker that despite all the punishment I’ve put these boots through over the last few days, it somehow still works.
My finger finds the activation stud. I meet Saedii’s eyes.
Go.
I press the button. I feel a slight vibration in my boot, a hum on the edge of hearing. And then every light in the cell dies.
The camera dies.
The magnetic lock dies.
Saedii is on her feet in a heartbeat. The emergency lighting has been knocked out—every electronic device around us that isn’t shielded is basically a paperweight now. Without the lights, it’s almost pitch-dark in here, but I catch a vague impression of her as she snatches up the wreckage of the bio-cot I smashed and jams it into the doorframe. I lunge to my feet, grab the twisted strut of metal, and give her a hand. We lean into it, Saedii silent, me grunting softly with the strain. But between the two of us, we pry the cell door open in a few seconds.
The corridor outside is almost pitch-dark too, every terminal fried. But like I said, I’ve studied Terran ships since I was a kid, and despite the black around us, I know exactly where we need to go.
I reach out in the dark, grab Saedii’s hand.
She immediately snatches it free.
“I did not give you permission to touch me, Tyler Jones,” she snarls. “Do it again at your peril.”
I glare at her in the gloom, but I can’t see her face.
“Well, how about this,” I snap back at her. “I give you permission to touch me. I know the layout of this ship like I know my own name. So you can stumble about in the dark by yourself, or we can buckle up and run.”
I hold out my hand in the black.
“Lady’s choice.”
The silence stretches between us, broken only by the thrum of the Folding engines. Rising alarms. Running boots. I see laser sights cutting the dark at the end of our corridor. I can see Saedii’s silhouette now, black curves against the distant light.
She breathes deep.
She presses her hand into mine.
And, hand in hand, we run off into the dark.
* * *
• • • • •
Eight minutes later, Saedii and I are in a supply closet, trying to ignore each other as we strip down to our unmentionables.
The space is small and the lighting is dim, supplied by a flashlight slung under the barrel of a disruptor rifle. The male owner of the rifle, along with a tall female comrade, is in the supply closet across the hall, minus the uniforms we stole. We accosted the two marines in the middle of their security sweep, overpowering them before they could get a shot off. The element of surprise helped. Having a master of the Aen Suun fighting alongside me didn’t hurt much either. Both marines got beaten to within inches of their lives—if I hadn’t been there to stop her, Saedii would have beaten them all the way.
“Keep your eyes to yourself, Terran,” she warns me softly. “Or I will pluck them out.”
“We’re in a life-or-death situation here. I think I can keep my mind on the job.” I fix my eyes on my boots as I drag them off. “Besides, I’ve seen bras before, and trust me, yours isn’t that spectacular.”
She pauses midway through inspecting the female marine’s tac vest. “I wear the garments of an Unbroken Templar, boy. They are not meant to be spectacular.”
“Well, good,” I say, unbuttoning my cargoes. “They’re succeeding admirably.”
Her glower is almost enough to burn a hole in my chest. I do my best to ignore it and her. And I’m down to my boxers, and she’s wearing very little in the way of those Unbroken Templar garments, when the first blast strikes the ship.
Hard.
Saedii grabs hold of a supply rack to steady herself, but I’m too slow. Slung across the closet like a kid’s toy, I crash right into her. She spits a word I know has a four-letter translation in Terran, and we both go down in a heap. I find myself on my back, Saedii lying on top of me, her long black hair tumbled around us, our faces just a few centimeters apart.
“What was—”
“Silence!” she hisses, her head cocked.
We lie there for a few moments, and Maker’s breath, I’m really, really trying to ignore it, but there’s two meters of Syldrathi warrior princess lying on top of me in nothing but her underwear. And while the Aurora Legion probably doesn’t make a medal for it, I still genuinely think I deserve one for what I say next.
“Get off me.”
“Be quiet, Tyler Jones!”
I lie there in the dark with Saedii stretched out on top of me, staring at the ceiling, hands pressed firmly at my sides.
Think unsexy thoughts.
Think unsexy thoughts.
“I heard that,” she whispers, glancing at me.
“Look, I know I gave you permission to touch me, but this is pushing the—”
Another impact strikes the ship. Thunderous. Running through the metal beneath us. Saedii’s eyes find mine, lit with triumph.
“There,” she smiles.
I frown up at her, mind racing. “That sounded like a—”
“Syldrathi pulse cannon.” She presses her tongue to one sharpened canine. “They are here.”
“ALERT,” cries the shipboard PA, as if on cue. The distant wail of a siren pierces the dark. “ALERT. ALL HANDS, BATTLE STATIONS.”
I blink. “Who’s ‘they’?”
“My lieutenant Erien, I imagine,” Saedii replies. “My Paladins. Whatever remained of my adepts. It would be death for them to return to my father without me. I expect they have been tracking us through the Fold since the battle on Andarael.”
“REPEAT: ALL HANDS TO BATTLE STATIONS,” the PA shouts. “SYLDRATHI VESSEL INBOUND. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
I frown at the girl atop me. “…You knew they’d come?”
“I suspected.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I did not trust you, Tyler Jones,” she scowls. “I still do not trust you. You are Terran. The son of Jericho Jones, our great enemy. Our peoples are at war.”
“Our peoples?” I reply. “You just told me I’m half-Syldrathi, Saedii. My people are your people.”
She pauses at that. Violet eyes searching mine.
“Perhaps,” she says.
Goose bumps rise on my skin as Saedii presses her fingertips to my chest, light as feathers. Another blast rocks the ship, more alerts begin screaming, and I wince as her fingernail scratches my skin.
“What blood truly burns in these veins of yours, I wonder?”
“If
we don’t get off this ship soon,” I tell her, “you’ll be able to examine my blood up close and personal. Because it’s going to be splattered all over the floor.”
Her smile comes slowly.
“Mmm.”
Another blast rocks the ship as Saedii slides off me, twists into a crouch, and grabs for the stolen tac suit pieces, now jumbled together. I take a deep breath, then pull myself up and separate out the gear I need as the sirens continue to wail. I peek at her once while we get dressed, only to discover that Saedii is already watching me. Both of us immediately look away.
In a few minutes we’re geared up, fully armed, and encased in TDF tac armor, faces hidden behind our helmets.
“From the sound of those weapon impacts,” Saedii says, her head tilted, “the ship attacking us has four to six pulse cannon batteries.”
“Yeah,” I nod. “It’s Eidolon-class at least. A capital ship.”
“In a battle this size, the chaos will be our friend. If we can get to the escape pods, I can set the communications unit to transmit on Unbroken emergency frequencies. With fortune, my crew should be able to retrieve us.”
“Unless the TDF blasts our pods to pieces,” I say.
Saedii shrugs. “Warrior or worm, Tyler Jones?”
I heft the fallen marine’s disruptor rifle, set it to Stun.
“Let’s get moving.”
The battle raging across our holo displays is the most insane thing I’ve ever been part of in my life. And I say that having once schmoozed my way through six layers of security goons to crash the launch party of multiplatinum interstellar rock band the Envied Dead, an escapade involving twelve cases of Larassian semptar, skinny-dipping on a volcanic planet, sixty-one arrests, and a brief romantic train wreck. (N1kk1 Gunzz. Ex-boyfriend #34. Pros: Rock star. Cons: Drummer.)
The dark all around us is just swarming with ships: Syldrathi, Terran, Betraskan. Pulse cannon blasts and railgun fire, missiles snaking through the dark, explosions bursting silently across that big empty. Tens of thousands of people fighting and killing and dying. And I’ve never been so scared in all my life.
