Aurora Rising (ARC)

by Amie Kaufman

he

  loves

  me

  .

  35

  Tyler

  She’s gone.

  We’re in space above Octavia III, floating in orbit. Our flight from the colony in the stolen shuttle is just a blur. Our limping trek up from the planet’s surface in our wounded Longbow is muddier still. The ruins of the Bellerophon and Bianchi’s stealth fleet drift through the black around us, starlight glittering among the wreckage.

  I’m sitting on the bridge in my copilot’s chair, looking at the pilot’s seat beside me. Shamrock sits there, shabby green fur and broken stitches, staring back at me with accusing plastic eyes. A single thought is burning in my mind.

  I couldn’t save her, and now she’s gone.

  Aurora’s star map is projected onto the central display. A holographic rendering of the entire Milky Way, spinning forever around its black hole heart. Out in the spirals of its arms, twenty-two planets are burning red in all that darkness. Twenty-two warning signs. Twenty-two question marks.

  Finian and Zila have finished our repairs—the Longbow is Fold-worthy again. I only need to punch in the coordinates to the navcom, give the command, and we’ll be on our way. Except I’m not. I’m sitting there, elbows on my knees, motionless.

  The others are gathered around me. Battle-worn and weary. Bruised and bloodied. Silent in our grief.

  Seven, now six.

  All of them are looking to me.

  And I don’t know what to do.

  We’re still fugitives. A rogue squad, hunted by the TDF and GIA and probably the rest of the Legion, too. Even if we weren’t kill-on-sight status among Terran personnel, we can’t go back to Aurora Academy—the GIA will almost certainly be waiting for us there. And with all we’ve discovered about Octavia, about the Ra’haam, about those twenty-two planets that this thing is … incubating on, we can’t risk Auri falling into their hands. Not after all we’ve already lost.

  We can’t go home again.

  “This defeat is a victory.”

  We all look at Auri as she speaks. She seems older somehow, this girl out of time. Harder. Something fiercer burning behind her mismatched eyes. She stands small, slender but straight-backed, with Kal by her side. And she’s looking at me, hands balled into fists.

  “What?” I say.

  “That’s what Cat said to me.” Those eyes of hers shine with grief, her voice trembling at the memory of their final moments together. “One of the last things she said, Tyler. ‘This defeat is a victory.’”

  Scarlett shakes her head, her cheeks wet with tears. “How?” She paws at her eyes, smudging mascara across her skin. “How?”

  “We know our enemy now,” Auri replies, pointing to the map. “We know where the Ra’haam is sleeping. We know it wants to consume every living thing in the galaxy, until we’re all part of its whole. We know the Eshvaren fought a war against it, a million years ago, and they beat it. We know they suspected it might return, and they left weapons to fight it. We know I’m the trigger for those weapons.” She looks around the bridge at all of us. “And we know we have to stop it.”

  “How?” Finian demands. “Every GIA agent we’ve come across is infected by this thing. Who knows how far it’s spread? Sorry to rain on your parade, friends, but your whole Terran government is suspect.”

  Aurora’s face pales at the reminder. I can tell she’s thinking of her father—what was left of him—holding out his hand down there on the surface.

  Jie-Lin, I need you.

  But her eyes harden. She shakes her head.

  “The signs of infection on a person’s body are obvious. Colonists infected here on Octavia must have infiltrated the GIA, got the planet interdicted to help keep it hidden. But if they could spread the infection person to person, there wouldn’t be any humans left after two centuries.” She glances at the star map, those pulsing red dots. “I don’t think the Ra’haam is strong enough to spread while it’s sleeping. I think it can only infect people who stumble onto one of these nursery planets. But it’s still mostly dormant. It’s weak. We still have a chance.”

  “To do what?” Zila’s voice is quiet. “How do you fight something like this?”

  “With the weapons the Eshvaren left us. With me. If we can stop the spawning it talked about, if we can keep these twenty-two planets from spreading the infection through their FoldGates, maybe we can stop this thing once and for all.”

  “We’re wanted criminals,” Scarlett points out. “We attacked Terran military ships and broke a Galactic Interdiction. We’re going to be chased by every government in the galaxy. We can’t rely on anyone for help.”

  Kal folds his arms. “Then we do it alone.”

  “The six of us?” Finian scoffs. “Against the whole galaxy?”

  I reach under my shirt for my father’s ring, hanging on the chain around my neck. I feel the metal against my skin, wonder what he’d say if he could see me now. I’m staring at the star map. Thinking about the odds arrayed against us. The impossibility and insanity of it all.

  Asking myself if I still believe.

  “It’d take a miracle,” I finally murmur.

  We sit in silence for a moment. I glance at Shamrock, tracing with my fingertip the line of the eyebrow scar Cat gave me. My chest is hurting so badly, I actually check to see if I’m bleeding. The bridge is quiet except for the hum of the engines. The beat of our broken hearts.

  And into that silence, Zila speaks.

  “Almost every particle in the universe was once part of a star,” she says softly. “Every atom in your body. The metal in your chair, the oxygen in your lungs, the carbon in your bones. All those atoms were forged in a cosmic furnace over a million kilometers wide, billions of light-years from here. The confluence of events that led to this moment are so remote as to be almost impossible.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. Her touch is awkward, as if she doesn’t quite know how to do it. But she squeezes gently. “Our very existence is a miracle.”

  “What are you saying?” I whisper, looking up at her.

  She meets my eyes dead-on. “I am reminding you of wisdom you have already shared with us.”

  “And that is?”

  “That sometimes, you must have faith.”

  I look at her. At my squad. The hole in space where Cat should be sitting is like a hole in my chest. But then I look into my twin’s eyes, just as tear-filled and hurt as mine. And she speaks to me without speaking a word.

  Show the way, baby brother.

  I stand up. Run my gaze over these five who flew into the mouth of the beast for me. We might have the whole galaxy gunning for us. We might not last another day. But as I walk to the pilot’s chair, pick up Shamrock and put him on the displays above Cat’s console, I know they’re all thinking the same as me. We owe it to Cat to fight this thing. With everything we’ve got.

  “We don’t have to do this alone, Kal,” I say.

  I look at the five of them one by one.

  “We do it together.”

  Aurora smiles, weak and watery, but true. “Squad 312, forever.”

  Kal looks me in the eye. And slowly, he nods.

  “We the Legion,” he says.

  “We the light,” Scarlett replies.

  “Burning bright against the night,” we say in unison.

  I sit in the pilot’s chair, punch in coordinates for the Fold. The bridge breaks into motion, my squad taking their places, the engines spooling up, light rippling across our consoles in all the colors of the rainbow.

  “Where we headed, Goldenboy?” Finian asks.

  I stare at the star map in front of my eyes.

  Twenty-two warning signs.

  Twenty-two question marks.

  Twenty-two targets.

  “Seems to me we’re in a war here.” I nod to Aurora. “And seems we’ve
already got our trigger.”

  Our engines flare, bright against the darkness.

  “Let’s go find our weapon.”