by Amie Kaufman
I chuckle, and the smile she gives me in response makes my heart sing.
Spirits of the Void, she is so beautiful… .
“Perhaps it is normal to progress slowly?” I ask. “Perhaps this is just part of the journey all Triggers take?”
“I don’t even know if other Triggers came here before me,” she sighs. “I don’t know anything, other than that I don’t know anything.”
“I know you,” I say. “You are one of the most courageous, strongest people I have ever met.” I turn her away from me to look out into the blue-green clearing around us, my hands at rest on her hips. “Do as it asks you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Empty your mind,” I urge her. “Think only what you must be, not what you were. And then make us something.”
“… Like what?”
“Something simple?” I offer. “A fire, perhaps?”
She breathes deep. Still uncertain. But finally, she nods. “Okay.”
Aurora closes her eyes. Reaches out toward the empty space, the smooth, flawless grass just a few meters away. I can feel the struggle inside her, feel her muscles tense.
“I can’t … ,” she mutters, teeth clenched.
“You can,” I whisper.
She winces, her hand trembling.
“Burn it,” she breathes. “Burn it all away.”
I hold her tight. Willing her on. And then, as if some new thought has occurred to her, she pulls my hands away from her waist, steps out from the circle of my arms. Amazement budding in my chest, I see the ground before her shimmer, the air ripple as if it were water with a handful of pebbles cast into it.
“Let it go,” she whispers.
And, as if by sorcery, a blaze springs up from the ground before her. Not merely unchecked flame, but a firepit, stacked with burning logs. I can smell woodsmoke, feel heat, hear the timber crackling in the flames.
Aurora turns to me, her eyes shining.
“Kal, I did it!”
She squeals and crashes into my arms. Elation on her face, she stands on tiptoe and crushes her lips to mine, and almost all of me is caught up in the joy of her victory. But the smallest part, the part that feels unwelcome when the Eshvaren looks upon me, the part that ached as she pushed my hands away from her hips and stepped out of my embrace, realizes that, yes, she did it. But she did it …
Alone?
Burn it, she said.
Burn it all away.
Aurora
It’s been a month, and I still feel a thrill of satisfaction every time I move the rock across the meadow. It’s light as a feather now, spinning through the air solely under the force of my will.
“How you like that,” I mutter under my breath.
The stone cannot reply to you, Esh points out, not for the first time. Not only is it without the ability to think or speak, it is also not a real stone.
“Then it won’t mind if I take a win at its expense,” I reply.
I can feel it. All of it. The dozen boulders I have suspended in the air above our heads, twirling and whirling like butterflies on a breeze.
I can feel the power, not just inside me, not just a part of me, but all of me. I let go of the feeling of my body, the sun on my skin, the sense that I’m anything at all but this force within me as another boulder rises from the river and joins the others.
I look at Esh, my lips curling. “Not bad, huh?”
“Jie-Lin,” says a voice behind me
My heart stops beating. My stomach lurches sideways. Because even though I know the sound of that voice as well as my own, I know it can’t be, it can’t be, it …
I turn and look behind me, and there he is.
He looks like he used to. Before … before Octavia. A bright smile and twinkling eyes and the wrinkles in his brow Mom used to tease him about so much. He’s standing there in the meadow, surrounded by rippling flowers, smiling at me.
“Daddy?” I whisper.
The ground beside me thunders as one of the boulders above me crashes to the earth. I shriek as another falls, then another, throwing myself aside as the tons of rock I moved around so effortlessly a moment ago all slip away like sand through my fingers. The ground shatters, the flowers are crushed to pulp.
Why do you fail?
Sprawled on the ground, I look up and see the Eshvaren above me, silhouetted against the rose sky, looking down with its rainbow eyes.
What stops you burning? it asks.
I look at the space where my father stood. The broken earth, the shattered rocks. There’s no sign of him now. Nothing remains but the tears that the sight of him brought to my eyes. I realize he was nothing but a phantom. A ghost. An echo.
“How did you do that?” I demand, looking up at Esh, anger rising inside me like a flood. “If you’re just a collection of million-year-old memories, how do you know what he even looked like?”
We have told you before, Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, Esh replies. Your only obstacles in this place are those you put in front of yourself. You must let them go.
It leans closer, its voice like a song in my mind.
Burn. It. All. Away.
23
TYLER
I open my eyes, wondering where I am.
I can taste the vaguely metallic tang that Terran oxygen scrubbers leave in the air, and for a moment I wonder if I’m back in my dorm in Aurora Academy. Thinking about the academy puts me in mind of my squad, and of course that makes me think of Cat, and suddenly it’s crashing down on me like an avalanche. That detention cell. Those faceless mirrormasks. Cat’s new blue eyes, boring deep into my own, dry, cold lips pressed to mine.
It’s warm in here, Ty. I can’t wait for you to feel it, too.
I jolt upright with a gasp, rewarded with flares of pain: head, chest, throat. My screams have torn my vocal cords up good—it feels like I swallowed broken glass. I wince, pawing at my neck, looking around the cell and finding a pair of cool eyes staring back at me. Black hair. Black lips. Black heart.
Saedii.
You were gone a long time, little Terran.
Her voice rings in my mind, radiating Syldrathi arrogance, a melody of faint disdain. I still find it more than a little frightening that this psychopath can speak inside my head, but given the state of my voice box, it’s probably for the best. I don’t think the damage is permanent, but I doubt I’ll be singing karaoke for a while… .
What did they do to you? Saedii asks, looking me over.
What do you care? I shoot back.
I care, little Terran, because they will probably do it to me next.
Frightened?
Know your enemy, boy.
My eyebrows rise slowly.
Are you honestly quoting Terran military strategy at me right now?
She scoffs softly. Of course not. Do not be a fool.
Sun Tzu said that. He was a Terran general. “Know your enemy and know yourself, and you will not be imperiled in one hundred battles.”
Sarai Rael said that. She was a Syldrathi Templar. “Know your enemy’s heart if you wish to feast upon it.”
… I think Sun Tzu’s way of saying it is a little more poetic.
I am Warbreed, Tyler Jones. What need have I of poetry?
Saedii stretches out her long legs in front of her, glaring. I’m painfully conscious of the fact she’s still wearing nothing but her underwear from the waist down, but, gentleman that I am, I keep my eyes fixed firmly on hers. Saedii’s fingers brush the string of severed thumbs around her neck, and I realize that once again, she’s trying to get a reaction from me. She knows how beautiful she is. She knows how that beauty throws people off balance if they let it, and she wants to see what it does to me. Everything about this girl is measured. Strategic. Calculating.
I also realize I’m still not wearing a shirt.
And that those legs of hers go up forever …
They want information about my squad, I tell her. Information you don’t have. Torturing prisoners of wa
r is a violation of the Madrid Conventions. So don’t worry.
She arches one perfect brow.
Do I strike you as someone who is particularly worried, Tyler Jones?
If you had any idea what was really happening here, you would be.
I know exactly what is happening here. Your people have consigned themselves to suicide. Who will you mourn most, I wonder, when your world is dragged screaming into the black hole Archon Caersan makes of your sun?
I feel the anger flare inside my head.
You know, you talk about knowing your enemy, I tell her. Doesn’t anything about this situation strike you as suspicious? The Terran government has spent the last two years keeping its nose as far out of Syldrathi affairs as humanly possible. And now we just open fire on an Unbroken flagship for the fun of it?
The Unbroken never agreed to the Jericho Accord, boy. The war between our people never truly ended. It was only a matter of time before Syldrathi hands once more gleamed with Terran blood. This is a matter of honor.
Can’t you see when you’re being played?
She looks at me and sneers.
You are afraid of the coming storm.
Of course I’m afraid! Billions of people could die!
You are unworthy of the blood in your veins.
I shake my head and turn away. I know I should be trying to get her on my side. I know the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But I feel like there’s no point in even talking to this girl. I understand what it is to be a soldier, to fight for something you truly believe in. But Kal’s sister seems like nothing but rage and scorn.
Still, she presses on, looking at me with those black-rimmed eyes.
Jericho Jones had the courage to fight when his world needed him. When the call was sounded at Orion, he at least was honorable enough to answer it.
I glare at her, jaw clenching at the mention of my dad.
You think there’s honor in another massacre? We both lost our fathers in that battle, Saedii—isn’t that enough?
Saedii’s eyes narrow.
Is that what Ka—
The door slides open with a soft whisper. I look up and see half a dozen Terran marines in full tac armor, disruptors cradled in their arms. My heart sinks, my throat constricts, as I remember that pain collar slipping around my neck. The thought of another round of torture fills my stomach with slippery ice.
“Oh Maker,” I croak.
The marines file into the room, boots ringing on the floor. But instead of grabbing me, they march over to Saedii’s bio-cot, surround her in a small ring.
“Hands, pixiebitch,” their lieutenant commands, holding out a set of mag-restraints.
“… What do you want with her?” I demand, my throat aching.
“Hands,” the LT repeats, his comrades punctuating the command by raising their rifles. “Now.”
“She doesn’t know anything,” I protest. “You don’t—”
“Shut your mouth, traitor,” one of the marines snarls at me.
Saedii’s voice rings in my head, that small smile growing a little wider.
This is courage, little Terran. Watch and learn.
She stands slow, languid, extending her arms and offering her slender wrists. She’s outnumbered six to one, and already wounded. But as the LT moves to slap on the restraints, Saedii brings up her hand and drives her knuckles into his throat.
The man gasps, flies back three meters into the wall. Despite her injuries, Saedii kicks another’s legs out from under him, slaps the third’s rifle aside, blindingly quick. But the rest are ready for her, blasting her full in the chest with pointblank disruptor shots. Stun blasts ring out in the cell and Saedii crashes backward, braids flying. I’m half out of my cot before I realize it, face to face with another marine’s rifle. He peers down the barrel at me, his laser sight lighting up my bruised and bare chest.
“Give me a reason, traitor,” the private says. “I’m begging you.”
“This isn’t the way we do things,” I say, despite the agony in my throat.
“We?” he scoffs, looking at the tattoo on my arm. “Who’s ‘we,’ Legion boy?”
“I’m Terran just like you. I don—”
“Those pixies killed a few thousand Terrans during the Andarael attack,” the lieutenant growls, picking himself up off the deck. “And she was calling their shots. This is exactly how we do it. So shut your mouth before we do you, too.”
“You’re getting played!” I hiss. “The GIA is using the TDF to start a—”
The private steps up and clocks me in the face with the butt of his disruptor. I’m rocked backward, tumbling down onto the cot.
“One more word, traitor,” he growls, “and you’re gonna be picking up your teeth with broken fingers.”
I raise my hands, pressed back onto the bed. I watch as one of the marines slings the semiconscious Saedii onto his shoulders, as the lieutenant shoots me a poison glance and, with a barked order, sends the whole squad marching out of the cell without another word.
I lick the split in my lip, tasting blood, my skull still ringing from the blow.
I have no idea what they want with her, but it can’t be good. And then I think of the Ra’haam, wearing those GIA colonists like second skins. I think of Cat with her new blue eyes. All the things I should have said and done.
And I shake my head and sigh.
Maker’s breath, none of this is good.
24
THE ECHO
Kal
She has come so far in these last months.
I watch Aurora from our camp, my breath taken clean away by the power she wields. The clearing we sleep in has been transformed. The simple fire she summoned so long ago has been replaced with an ornate stone firepit. The grass we slept on has been crowned with the grandest bed I have ever seen in my life—four-poster, carved wood, silken sheets. My be’shmai even crafted me a siif so I could play during the day while she is about her training.
I sit now beneath our trees, strumming the instrument’s strings, watching her. Aurora floats high above me, just a silhouette against a blinding sky. Boulders larger than the Zero orbit her in perfect synchronicity, moving in all directions. She floats in the center, sitting as if on the air, her right eye burning. I watch as one boulder shatters into a thousand shards, its fragments forming a perfect sphere around her.
The Eshvaren floats nearby, watching. It does not look at me. It does not speak to me. As ever, I feel a vague sense of … not hostility, but unwelcome, in its presence. But as I strike chords upon the siif my be’shmai made me, I see that the hues within its crystal form change with the music I play.
“May I ask you something?” I call.
It does not look at me. But I feel a fraction of its attention shift.
Ask, it replies.
“A thought has been playing on my mind since we arrived.” I strum a minor chord, watch the Eshvaren’s hue shift and dance. “Why do you look like us?”
It turns its head then. Regarding me with kaleidoscopic eyes.
I do not fear this thing. A warrior fears only to never taste victory. But I feel the power in it. My people are one of the few species in the galaxy to still hold belief in the Eshvaren. The Ancient Ones were mythical figures to me as a child. And sitting here in the presence of their collected memory, I find its gaze … unsettling.
“I mean to say, you do not look exactly like us. But you are bipedal. Humanoid. Do you appear this way to make it easier for us to look upon you?”
It is a long time before the Eshvaren replies.
We do not look like you, young one, it finally says. You look like us.
“… I still do not understand,” I reply.
Nor do you need to.
“Perhaps not. But I wish to.”
Your wishes are irrelevant, young one. You are irrelevant.
I try to ignore the sting to my pride, keep my voice cool.
“Why do we look like you?”
The Eshvaren does no
t reply, its glowing eye on Aurora in the rose sky above.
“The Terrans, Betraskans, Chellerians, hundreds of other races,” I press. “We all wear similar shapes. We are all bipedal. Carbon-based. Oxygen breathers. The odds of that are next to impossible. Many among the milieu take our similarities as final proof of a greater power. As undisputable evidence of a … divine will. It is the basis of their United Faith. Of the existence of a god. A Maker.”
Again, the Eshvaren says nothing. But I push on.
“Our enemy knows much more than we do. The Ra’haam was there during the last battle. We cannot meet it in ignorance. If there is some knowledge we would benefit from in the coming fight, it might be dangerous to keep it from us.”
Finally, the Eshvaren glances at me. I feel a shiver down my spine and my fingers slip on the strings, setting a rainbow loose inside its form.
You would do well not to lecture on the price of keeping secrets.
I blink. “What do you mean by that?”
We have been preparing for eons to win this war. When we first defeated the Great Enemy, through one thousand years of blood and fire, we knew what needed to be done to ensure it did not rise again. And we know now. Better than you. Do not presume to lecture us on the perils of the deceit you so obviously reek of.
It turns its burning eyes back to Aurora.
Do not dare.
The siif is heavy in my hands. The Eshvaren’s words heavy in my chest.
I place the instrument aside and sit in silence.
And I am afraid.
Aurora
Esh has brought me somewhere new today. We flew for an hour, soaring over now-familiar landmarks. The meadow, with its pink carpet of flowers. The wide river I must have sunk into hundreds of times before I managed to part it. The tangled jungle where eventually every single leaf held still at the wave of my hand.
We end up on a cliff top, looking out over the broad vista of the Echo, the crystal city on the far horizon. I never thought about this place having an edge, but behind us is a kind of mist that slowly swirls and roils.
This is the end of the world, I guess.
I sit cross-legged on the edge of the cliff, looking out over my training ground, and I wait. Floating beside me, Esh eventually speaks.
