Aurora Burning

by Amie Kaufman

  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 YO
U 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.

  “Tyler?” it calls with her voice again.

  I say nothing. Biting my lip.

  “Ty?” it calls again.

  “What do you want?” I finally shout.

  “I want you to stay.”

  I risk a glance out, see it standing in the corridor alone. It’s still clad neck to toe in GIA charcoal gray. But it’s taken off the mirrormask now, and its face, its nose, its lips—they’re all hers. All except the eyes, glowing soft and poisonous.

  “Stay with us, Tyler,” the thing wearing Cat’s body replies. “Please.”

  “You’re not Cat!” I shout. “Don’t pretend to be!”

  “But I am,” it calls. “Don’t you understand? I’m more than I used to be, but I’m still in here! I’m still me!”

  “You’re nothing like her! You’re orchestrating a war that billions of people could die in, and for what? Just so you can infect the rest of the galaxy?”

  “I’m trying to save you, Tyler,” it pleads. “Don’t you get it?”

  I hear a crack in its voice. It sounds like it’s close to crying. And I risk another glance from behind cover and see it standing there, hands balled by its side, and my stomach twists up like a clenched fist as I see…it is crying. Tears shining in the glow of those flower-shaped pupils. The Kusanagi shakes beneath me, but it’s not the motion of the ship that almost brings me to my knees. It’s what this thing says next that guts me.

  “I love you, Tyler.”

  I close my eyes. I feel each of those words like bullets in my chest. A part of me knew how she felt about me. A part of me always knew it. But Cat never said those words aloud. Not even after the night we spent together. And to hear them now…

  “I love you,” it says. “So the Ra’haam loves you, too.”

  Cold dread washes over me. My worst fears confirmed.

  “I knew it,” I breathe. “That’s where you’re taking us. That’s why we’re still Folding. You…you want to…”

  “We want you in here with us,” it says, tears spilling down its cheeks as it takes one step forward. “We want you to stay.”

  I look out into the corridor again. And I can see her there. The girl who always backed me when I needed her. The girl who sat beside me in that tattoo parlor on shore leave and laughed as she poured me another shot in the bar afterward, who sighed my name as she dragged my shirt up over my head and sank with me down onto the bed. I can see her.

  I can see her.

  “Cat?” I whisper.

  “Yes,” she breathes.

  “You can…hear me?”

  “Yes,” she whispers. “It’s me, Ty. It’s me.”

  I thought she was gone. I thought I’d never have another chance to speak to her. To tell her everything I should have told her when she was alive. I know nobody gets a second chance like this. I know I should tell her how I felt about her, how I’d do things differently if I could, how I always loved her and always will. I know she’d want to hear it. I know she’d want to know. And my stomach is a knot and my pulse is hammering and I can’t deny what my heart is telling me. She is in there. Looking out at me with those strange new eyes.

  But in the end, that just makes it worse.

  “I’m sorry I failed you, Cat.”

  Because she is in there.

  “All I can do is promise not to fail you again.”

  But she’s not in there alone.

  And I raise the disruptor rifle in my arms. And I see her face twist, and I get a sense of something vast, something ancient, something awful behind the glow of her eyes. And I pull the trigger, spending the last of the rifle’s power, and the shot strikes the thing that’s Cat and the thing that isn’t, sending it sailing back in a spray of gray blood. And then I’m up and moving, running across the corridor and diving through the escape pod hatch. Slamming it shut on its screams.

  “Tyler!”

  I’m sorry.

  “TYLER, DON’T GO!”

  I’m so sorry.

  And I slap on my safety harness.

  And I hit the Eject button.

  And I blast out into the burning Fold.

  Zila flies like a demon, but she’s no Cat Brannock.

  Everything around us is chaos. Ships of every shape and size, little one-man fighters all the way up to the biggest that TerraFleet and Betraskan battle command can throw. The whole solar system seems on fire. But crazy as it sounds, I find myself thinking of my bestie. My roomie. My girl. If Cat were behind the stick of this junker, she could’ve made it dance. There’s not a pilot alive who could touch her.

  But now she’s gone.

  Tyler too. And Kal. And Auri.

  Fin, Zila, and me are the last ones together.

  Three of seven.

  The engines are howling, pushed into the redline as we tear across the black toward the Weapon. Zila had to swing out wide, finally throwing off the two TDF fighters on our tail, weaving through a burning storm of bullets and missiles and I don’t know what else. Her fingers blurred as she calculated our trajectory, aiming us toward one of the thinner support pillars holding those massive crystal lenses in place. We’re flying right into its face now. One last doomed charge to save our world.

  And maybe the entire galaxy.

  “Forty-five seconds to impact,” Zila reports.

  Honestly, I have no idea if this has any chance of working. I have no idea if we’re doing the right thing. But the medallion around my neck glints as I look down at it, red alert lights playing on the diamond surface as the alarms around me scream.

  Go with Plan B.

  I was never a believer. Never bought into the idea of the Maker, or the United Faith. Ty and I used to fight about it all the time—how silly it seemed to me, how obvious it seemed to him. But in the end, he believed hard enough for the both of us. And I don’t know exactly how we’re going to pull this off, but Aurora Command told us we were on the right path.

  Know that we believe in you. And you must believe in each other. We the Legion. We the light. Burning bright against the night.

  And as we charge toward our deaths, I find myself looking around at the last few members of Aurora Legion Squad 312. And I realize it’s like Tyler says.

  Sometimes you just gotta have faith.

  “Thirty seconds,” Zila says.

  I swallow hard. Heart thumping in my chest.

  “You okay?” Finian asks softly.

  I look at him beside me, the Weapon looming larger in front of us every second. I can tell he’s scared. I know what he wants to hear. That this is the right thing to do. That I’m sure. That even though I’m only eighteen years old and I still had my whole life ahead of me, it’s okay. Because this is for something bigger than we are. This is for something greater.

  But that’s bullshit.

  I’m scared to death.

  “No,” I tell him.

  I reach out and take his hand.

  “But I’m glad you’re with me, Fin.”

  And then it hits us. A missile.
A pulse blast. I’ve got no idea. But we’re rocked hard, the impact like a fully loaded freighter, smashing me back into my chair and forward into my harness. Stars burst in my eyes. The displays in front of me spew sparks and die, alarms roaring, fire suppressors firing, filling the cockpit with chemical fog. I can taste blood in my mouth, my head is ringing, my—

  “Scar, are you okay?” Fin shouts, unbuckling his harness.

  “I’m…o-okay…,” I manage.

  He kneels at my side, checks me over. “Zila?”

  Our pilot straightens behind her flickering, spitting control panels, dragging a thick curtain of black curls out of her face. For the first time, I realize she’s wearing the earrings that were waiting for her in that Dominion Repository vault. The little hawk charms someone left for her, knowing she’s never without her golden hoops.

  I wonder if there’s any chance we’re going to live to find out who it was.

  “I am alive,” she declares.

  “What h-hit us?” I demand.

  “A stray railgun round, I believe.” She shakes her head, a stream of blood dripping from the split in her brow as she stabs at her controls. “Perhaps a fast-moving chunk of debris.”

  “Damage report?” I cough, looking around the smoking cockpit.

  “Engaging secondary guidance systems and auxiliary power. Control should be back online momentarily.” Her fingers dance on her consoles. “But the power coil is critically damaged. Engines are offline.”

  The Weapon pulses again, the brightest it’s ever been. The impact hasn’t knocked us too far off course—we’re still staring down the barrel of those massive crystalline lenses. Still right in its firing line. But we’ve got no momentum.

  We’re dead in the water.

  Looking into the Weapon, I can see a collision of rainbow-colored energy coalescing like the eye of a storm. I know space is a vacuum, that sound doesn’t travel through it, but I swear, I swear I can hear a sound. Building slowly. Rushing past the edge of hearing now. Louder and louder.

  And all of us know it.

  “It’s going to fire,” Zila says, just a tremor in her voice.

  “We’re not going to make it,” I whisper.