by Amie Kaufman
“Amna diir … ,” Kal breathes.
“Grab Aurora,” I say, fighting the churning in my gut. “We’ve gotta move.”
He nods, his face grim. He kneels beside those shredded suits and rummages in the soggy pockets, finally producing a passkey. With a swipe, Aurora’s restraints are unlocked, and Kal lifts her effortlessly, gently cradles her in his arms. Then we’re moving across the bloody floor, out into the strobing light, wet footprints behind us. My disruptor rifle has a small torch slung under the barrel, a slice of light showing us the way through all that flickering gloom.
The elevators have no power, so we hit the stairs, barreling down as quick as we can to level five. Slipping out though the door I see four TDF troopers in a huddle around a wall comms console, trying to raise the bridge.
I know it’s them or us, I know I’ve got no choice, but my stomach clenches as I take a knee and fire. They cry out and scatter into cover like the dummies in training exercises never did as I turn to Kal and roar.
“Go! Go!”
He dashes out from the stairwell, across the Bellerophon’s docking bay toward our Longbow with Aurora in his arms. Troopers around the bay turn at the sound of gunfire, Scar pops up from behind a stack of cargo crates and opens up with her own rifle, disruptor fire streaking white through the dark. Looking through our Longbow’s blast shield, I see Cat has somehow managed to sneak aboard in the chaos. I breathe a prayer to the Maker that whatever killed the destroyer’s power somehow hasn’t affected our own ship, sighing in relief as she arcs the engines.
Sparks ricochet off the deck as troopers fire at Kal. I use what’s left of my disruptor’s power on them, trying to give him cover. Cat opens up with our Longbow’s gauss cannons and the TDF troopers are forced back into cover as a barrage of supersonic shells explode across the bay.
Scar breaks cover and runs for the Longbow, and I take my chance, too, dashing after Kal, heart hammering in my chest. The Longbow’s engines are growing louder, the ship rising off the deck. Finian’s on our docking ramp, waving to me frantically as Scarlett leaps into safety. Kal bounds up onto the ramp in three long strides, I hit it close behind him as TDF fire whizzes around me, sprawled flat on my stomach as I roar, “PUNCH IT, CAT!”
The ramp shudders closed and our Longbow banks hard to port. There’s a soft whine and bright hisssss as Cat fires two plasma missiles at the inner bay doors, melting them to slag. Bullets are pattering against our hull like hail as Cat fires again, this time breaching the plasteel on the outer hull, exposing the colorless void of the Fold beyond.
There’s a burst of violent decompression, the atmo in the bay spilling out into the Fold and forcing the TDF to retreat or suffocate. Alarms are screaming, our engines roaring, Cat’s voice crackling over the internal PA.
“Hold on to your undies, kids!”
We blast out from the bay, a handful of TDF bullets kissing us goodbye. The portside engines scrape against the melted bay doors as we rocket out into the Fold.
I look around to check on the others, and nobody seems to be hurt. Kal is crouching beside Aurora, making sure she doesn’t slide around. She’s out cold—her eyes are closed, lips and chin smudged with blood, her expression as blissful as the moment I found her in that cryopod.
That was only three days ago.
“Everyone okay back there?” Cat asks over the PA.
I tap my uniglass to reply.
“Roger that,” I sigh. “We’re all okay.”
Scarlett’s looking at me across the Longbow’s holding bay, eyes locked on mine. “You sure have a strange definition of ‘okay,’ Bee-bro.”
Looking at my twin, I know what she’s thinking. Sure as if she said it herself.
We just undertook armed insurrection on a Terran Defense Force destroyer.
We just violated a hundred or more Legion regulations before dinner.
We just attacked TDF personnel.
Great Maker …
The engines roar as we hurtle on through the Fold, farther away from the crippled Bellerophon, the scene of our crimes, on through all that glittering dark.
We might have gotten away alive, but we sure didn’t get away clean. Not after what Aurora did in that cell. You don’t murder GIA operatives and expect to keep breathing. It’s only gonna be a matter of time before the Global intelligence Agency and the entire Terran Defense Force is breathing down our necks. They were set on killing us, sure, but …
We’re fugitives, I realize. From our own people.
Scar chews her lip and nods.
What would Dad say?
Finian looks around the bay, big black eyes finally settling on me.
“So, Goldenboy,” he says. “What in the Maker’s name do we do now?”
I take a deep breath, blow my hair back from my eyes.
“That,” I sigh, “is an excellent question.”
13
Scarlett
Marc de Vries. Ex-boyfriend #29. Pros: built like a brick wall. Cons: brains like a brick wall.
“Mmmmmaybe,” I murmur.
[store]
Tré Jackson. Ex-boyfriend #41. Pros: looks like Adonis. Cons: knows it.
“Nnnnope.”
[delete]
I’m sitting on our Longbow’s bridge, feet up on my console, my uniglass in hand. The ship is quiet except for the low hum of the engines, the occasional ping from the LADAR sweeps we’ve got running. We dropped out of the Fold through the gate at NZ-7810, and we’re now cruising on low power through a random, low-rent system out in the Neutral Zone. Cat programmed a course to keep us close to the gate before she retired to her boudoir. Just in case we need to run.
Everyone else is in quarters getting some sleep, but lucky me, I drew first watch. So I’m using the time to go through my contacts and delete some of my exes.
Memory was getting full.
Riley Lemieux. Ex-boyfriend #16. Pros: madly in love with me. Cons: MADLY in love with me.
[delete]
It might seem an odd time for the squad to take a nap. My hands are still a little shaky when I think about everything that’s happened in the last day, and I can’t imagine what comes next. But grabbing some beauty sleep is a good idea—everyone needed some rest after the chaos aboard Sagan station and that TDF destroyer. Besides, Tyler thinks better after sleepy-bo-bo’s, and the decision he makes next will probably be the most important one of his life.
No pressure, baby brother.
We’re outlaws. Probably wanted criminals. A Legionnaire squad gone rogue. Though we’re technically under Aurora Legion command, we still broke out of a TDF ship. Attacked Terran personnel. Our own people. And for what?
I chew my lip, eyes flickering over my uniglass screen.
Alex Naidu. Ex-boyfriend #38. Pros: biceps!!! Cons: unknown.
“Why did I break up with you again?”
[store]
I must admit, when I signed up for Aurora Academy, this isn’t exactly how I pictured my career panning out. To be honest I didn’t even really want to join the legion. But Ty was hells-bent on “making a difference,” and there was no way I was letting him join up alone. We grew up without a mom. Dad got killed at Orion when we were eleven. Damned if was I going to lose my twin brother, too.
I remember standing in line with Ty on New Gettysburg station. Both of us thirteen years old, waiting to shuffle up for our turn with the recruiting officer. I remember asking Tyler if we were doing the right thing. If it would all turn out okay.
“I don’t know,” he’d said.
Then he touched the Maker’s mark at his collar and shrugged.
“But sometimes, you just gotta have faith.”
I can cram with the best, so I did okay on my exams. I might’ve actually been good if I tried. The cadet guidance counselor once told me the term if she applied herself ha
d appeared more times on my assessment sheets than on any cadet’s in academy history. But I hated it.
Hated the rules, hated the routine, hated the station.
The boys were fun, though.
Jesse Broder. Ex-boyfriend #45. Pros: A$$: 9/10. Cons: A$$hole.
“Hmmmm …”
[store]
What can I say, I’m a girl of simple tastes.
I hear the soft whisper of the bridge door opening, glance up expecting to see Zila come to relieve me from my shift. Instead, I see our resident stowaway, Aurora O’Malley. The girl out of time.
The girl out of bed?
“How’d you get up here?” I ask.
It might’ve seemed a little mean, but Ty had wisely insisted our young Ms. O’Malley be secured rather than be let loose to roam the ship. Whatever he’d seen aboard that TDF destroyer while rescuing this girl had my baby brother shaken up good. So after she, Kal, and Ty cleaned up, Finian secured Aurora inside the hold with a blankie and extra encryption on the door, which apparently he forgot to lock, because she’s totally standing here in front of me and she sure as hells shouldn’t be.
I remind myself to give Finian some sass about that later.
“Aurora?” I ask.
The girl doesn’t reply. Her hair is mussed from sleep, that thick white streak through her bangs treading the fine line between chic and weird. Her eyes are almost closed. Lashes fluttering. Her right iris is the same bleached white as her bangs now, sadly falling off the line between chic and weird and tumbling right down into spoooooky.
Her movement is stiff, her body language all kinds of weird, and my first thought is that she’s sleepwalking. But that doesn’t explain how she broke out of the hold. Unless Finian’s encryption is so bad that a girl born two centuries ago can break it. In her sleep.
Yeah, I’m really gonna sass him about that one. …
Aurora turns her head, as if surveying the room. It’s hard to imagine what’s going through her head. Two centuries out of time. Nowhere she was supposed to be and a galaxy gone all the way sideways. But she shouldn’t be up here.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She starts walking, making a beeline for Cat’s pilot console. It’s about now I decide that, whatever the deal is here, our beautiful heroine Legionnaire Scarlett Isobel Jones has just about enough of it.
My hand slips to the disruptor pistol at my waist, and I climb to my feet.
“All right, lovely lady, if you—”
Her right eye lights up with a soft, flickering glow, pale as moonlight. She raises her hand without looking at me, and an invisible blow to my chest slams me back into the wall. I gasp, trying to draw my disruptor, but Aurora curls her fingers into claws, her eye burns a brighter shade of white, and there’s a force pressing on my wrist, stopping me from raising the weapon.
“Ezigolopai,” Aurora says, in a voice that sounds nothing like her own. Hollow. Reverberating, like in an echo chamber. “Emevigrof.”
I feel pain, as if some invisible grip were grinding my knuckles together. I let the disruptor go, and as it clatters to the deck, the pressure eases.
My heart’s thudding in my chest and cold sweat is breaking out on my body. I realize I can’t move a muscle, my throat compressing so I can’t even speak. Aurora peers at the pilot’s console, head tilted, lashes fluttering. Her right eye is still aglow, her hair is moving slightly, as if in a breeze. With her free hand, she begins typing commands, fingers blurring over the keyboards.
“Wh …” I wince, trying to force the words out of my crushed throat, my clenched teeth. “What … y-you … doing?”
Her nose starts bleeding. A thin line of red, rolling down over her lips. She doesn’t stop typing to wipe it away and I realize she’s messing with the nav system. Setting a new course. She’s a novice, totally untrained, zero flight hours. Maker’s sake, she’s spent the last two centuries asleep in the Fold.
How does she know how a Longbow’s nav system works?
“Ytinretipmes,” she whispers. “Doogdoog.”
I hear the engines alter tone, the subtle shift of a course change. The blood’s flowing down over Aurora’s chin now, pattering on the console. She turns to face me, hand still outstretched. Her right eye aglow with a soft, warm light. My stomach’s full of ice, fear hammering in my temples. But as much as I strain, it’s like there’s some hidden weight, pressing me back into the wall.
I can’t move.
I can’t fight.
I can’t even scream.
Aurora shivers, blood slicking her chin. Her brow furrows, lips moving slowly, carefully, as if she’s straining to pronounce her words.
“T-t-ttrig-ggerrrrr,” she says, pointing to herself. “Trigg—”
I hear the familiar BAMF! of a disruptor burst. Aurora’s eyes widen, and she staggers. The pressure holding me in place relaxes, and I collapse to my knees. Zila’s at the door, weapon in hand trained squarely on Aurora.
One blast from a disruptor on Stun setting is enough to drop a full-grown Rigellian stonebull, but somehow, Aurora’s still standing. She turns and Zila fires again, pistol flashing. Aurora falls to her knees, groaning, raising one hand toward our science officer. Her right eye burns like a sun. And with the kind of callousness that earned her twenty-seventh disciplinary citation, Zila keeps firing.
BAMF!
BAMF!
BAMF!
Until Aurora crashes face-first onto the deck.
“Zila,” I moan.
BAMF!
“Zila!”
BAMF!
Zila blinks, looks at me, finger still on the trigger.
“Yes?” she asks.
“She’s d-down,” I groan, my head splitting. “You can s-stop shooting her now.”
Zila looks at her disruptor. Down at the unconscious Aurora, sprawled on the deck. And maybe for good measure, maybe just for fun, our science officer gives the comatose girl one more blast.
BAMF!
“Interesting,” she says.
•••••
“We should just space this crazy slip right now,” Cat spits.
We’re gathered on the bridge, standing around the unconscious body of one Aurora O’Malley. She’s seated in one of the auxiliary stations, mag-restraints around her wrists, though I’m not sure how much good that’ll do if she wakes up. Cat, Zila, and I have our disruptors trained on her in case she decides on a repeat performance of her “attack the gorgeous yet totally down-to-earth space diplomat” routine. I’ve got time to notice now that Zila’s wearing a new pair of earrings—these ones are small golden chains with tiny charms in the shape of weapons hanging off them. There’s a gun, a knife, a throwing star.
Did she stop for a wardrobe change before coming to my rescue?
Kal is standing silently by the doorway, a thoughtful pout on those oh, so shapely Syldrathi lips. But at the mention of flushing Aurora, he looks at Cat.
“Do not be a fool,” he says, voice dripping with disdain. “We cannot kill her.”
“Screw you, Pixieboy,” our Ace snaps back. “She nearly flatlined Scarlett. Head out of arse, please and thanks.”
“Scar, are you sure you’re okay?” Tyler asks.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I reply. “Just a little shook up is all.”
“She really … held you in place just by looking at you?”
I nod, rubbing at my neck. We’re back in the Fold, headed on whatever course Aurora locked into the navcom before Zila knocked her flat. The bruises on my wrist are a dark and ugly gray. My skin is bleached to bone in the Fold colorscape—almost as pale as the glow that spilled from Aurora’s eye as she crushed me against the wall.
“Tyler,” Cat says. “We need our heads read, keeping this girl aboard. We have to either space her right now, or sedate her hard and hand her over to th
e authorities before they court-martial us back to the stone age.”
Kal looks ready to dish out some more insults, but before he can speak, a voice crackles over comms.
“Goldenboy, you read me okay?”
Tyler taps his uniglass. “We read, Fin, what’s your status?”
“Well, I’m down in the hold and I gotta tell you, this is about the scariest thing I’ve seen since I walked in on my third grandparents when I was twelve.”
“Explain.”
“Well, I had a med appointment that got canceled and I came home early and found my grandmother and grandfather with a bowl of sagarine and a twelve-inch—”
“Maker’s breath, Finian, I mean explain about the hold!” Tyler snaps.
“Oh,” Finian replies. “Right. Well, I’m not sure how our little stowaway did it, but the inner doors have been peeled open like those things you dirt farmers eat. I can’t remember what they’re called. … They’re round. Orange colored.”
“You mean oranges?”
“Yeah, whatever. Point is, these doors are made from case-hardened carbite and titanium. And she bent them open like they were cardboard.”
“Flush her, Tyler,” Cat says.
Kal pushes off the wall, looming over Cat, his voice cold as ice.
“You will not hurt her.”
I suck my bottom lip, noting the calm in Kal’s voice versus the intensity in his eyes. Syldrathi body language can be tough to read far beyond We are soooo much better than you and yes, we know it, but for a girl he was being a complete jackass to twelve hours ago, Kal looks ready to tear Cat apart if she so much as blinks at Aurora wrong.
Cat’s a foot shorter than Kal—maybe a little more right now, with her fauxhawk flattened by sleep. But never one to back down, our Ace squares up against our Tank. “You heard what she did in the hold, Pixieboy! In case you flunked mechaneering, our hull is built out of exactly the same material as those doors. And she buggered with my flight controls. How could she know how to do that if she’s been drifting in the Fold for two hundred years? This girl is not what she seems.”
