by Amie Kaufman
“What is this place?” I whisper.
“Their home,” Aurora says, her eyes on the display. “What’s left of it, anyway.”
“The Ancients,” Kal says reverently.
“Eshvaren,” Finian breathes.
Aurora sighs. “I wish you could have seen it like it was.”
“I can detect no tectonic activity,” Zila says, looking over her scopes. “The core is frozen solid. Atmosphere almost nonexistent. No life signs.” She looks around the bridge, dark eyes finally settling on Aurora. “Not even microbial.”
“This is the place,” Auri says, her voice like steel. “Where they made the probe. Where they made the Weapon. I can … see them. Feel them.” Her brow creases, and she presses her fingers to her temple. “Their echoes. Their voices.”
She looks at Kal, reaches for his hand.
“I know where we need to go.”
Kal nods, eyes glittering. “I would follow you to the end of all things, be’shmai.”
The rest of us look tired, wired, halfway between shabby and comatose. As usual, Kaliis Idraban Gilwraeth doesn’t have a single silver hair out of place on his head. But there’s something different about him, too.
Something I can’t quite put my finger on.
“What happened in the Echo?” I ask, looking between them.
“Was your training successful?” Zila says. “Can you wield the Weapon?”
Auri looks out on the dead world below us. I can feel fire in her. A heat, burning like a sun. But also … uncertainty?
She looks at Kal. Squares her jaw, curls her fists.
“Let’s just find it first.”
· · · · ·
We touch down seventeen minutes later, after a frictionless decent into the atmo-free skies above the Eshvaren world. Zila politely suggested she be allowed to take the controls—well, as polite as Zila gets anyway. After my time at the stick, having somebody who knows what they’re doing flying us was a welcome relief.
There are no oceans on this world anymore, no continents, but we touch down somewhere near its south pole. Zila brings us in for a perfect landing: a gentle thump and a soft navcom ping are the only indicators that we’ve landed at all.
“You’re just showing off now,” I smile.
“Yes. But do not fall in love with me, Scarlett. I will only break your heart.”
I laugh and throw her a wink. “I’m too tall for you, remember?”
Her lips curve in a small smile, and she tucks one dark curl behind her ear. I notice that her stare lingers on me even though she’d usually look away.
Interesting …
Soon we’re gathered in the docking bay, gearing up. The Zero is equipped with enough enviro-suits for the whole squad. They’re bulky, ugly, scandalously drab—fitted for us personally and neatly stored in lockers marked with our names. Zila’s assisting Fin with pulling his over his exosuit. Auri and Kal are helping each other change with the casual ease of people who are absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent sleeping with each other now.
Lucky girl.
Of course, my musings on the extracurricular activities of Mr. Perfect Hair and Little Miss Trigger are brought to a crashing halt at the sight of Tyler’s locker. One glance at his name stenciled on the metal is enough to make my stomach drop and roll inside me. Despite where we are, the scope of all we’re doing, I find myself worried sick again. I know we’re saving the damn galaxy here, that we’re doing exactly what he’d order us to do. But he’s my twin brother, and I’m still wondering, hoping, praying he’s okay.
Fin seems to pick up on it, sliding a little closer, trying to ease the tension.
“Good thing these suits are heavy-duty,” he jokes, nodding at the spectrograph beside the bay door. “Definitely not bikini weather out there.”
“Shame.” I smile weakly in response. “I look amazing in a two-piece.”
“Hey, what a coincidence, me too.”
But it’s not his strongest effort, and as he speaks, he glances at Tyler’s locker. Swallows hard.
“He’s gonna be okay, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I sigh.
“Seriously,” Fin says, looking around to the others for backup. “After we’re done here, we’ll get him back, Scar.”
Kal bows, which is Syldrathi for a nod. “I vow it on my honor.”
“No question,” Auri agrees, steel in her voice.
“I know this is difficult, Scarlett,” Kal continues, looking at me intently with those picture-pretty eyes. “But we are on the right path here. Of all people, Tyler Jones would understand that.”
I buck up a bit, stand a little taller. Buoyed by these people around me, these squaddies who’ve become my friends, friends who’ve become my family.
I sniff and nod, drag my helmet down into place. “I know he would.”
Fin pats me a little awkwardly on the shoulder.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s go find this damn shooter.”
We load ourselves into the airlock, and soon enough we’re stepping out onto the freezing surface of the Eshvaren planet. I glance at Aurora, remembering the last time we did this, on Octavia III. She was a nervous wreck back then, struggling to come to grips with who she was. But now she takes the lead, marching across the crumbling rock. The landscape is gray and lifeless. The arctic wind is blowing at hundreds of kilometers an hour, but the atmo is so thin, it’s barely a breeze.
Even the air in this place is dead.
Kal and Zila carry disruptor rifles, me and Fin walking with hands on our pistols. There’s no real sense of danger here as we follow Auri. Nothing close to the strange, otherworldly hostility we met on Octavia III. I’m struck by it then, how unfair that is—that the Ra’haam got to go on, and the race that gave everything to cut them away ended like this. I feel sad. Small. Cold despite my suit.
We march for twenty minutes, up a steady rise, until finally we find ourselves on a bluff overlooking an impact crater: a massive, circular indentation in the skin of this dead world, stretching to the horizon. But in the center of it, I’m astonished to see—
“A doorway,” Finian whispers.
At least, that’s what it looks like. It’s huge—at least ten kilometers across. Open like a mouth to the sky, it leads into a vast, dark passage beyond. The surface of this planet is a wasteland, but the tunnel interior is virtually untouched by the elements.
“Should it … be open?” I ask, uncertain.
I glance at Aurora sidelong, feel the tension coming off her in waves.
“Be’shmai?” Kal asks, looking at her intently.
“This is where the crystal city was, Kal,” she says, her voice not quite her own. “This is …”
She shakes her head.
“All of you. Hold on to me, to each other.”
She offers her hands, still staring into the abyss below us. Kal takes her right one, and I take her left, holding tight. Zila grabs Kal, and Finian locks fingers with me, giving me a small squeeze of reassurance.
“You okay, Stowaway?” he asks Auri.
“Just hold on,” she replies.
I feel it tingling on the back of my neck. A power, a rush, a greasy tang in the air. And without warning, I’m lifted off my feet, up into the colorless sky.
I gasp, tempted to shriek girlishly for a bit. And, looking at Aurora, at her mouth pressed thin, her eye burning with blinding white light, I realize she’s the one doing this—moving us with nothing but the power of her mind.
When the Ra’haam attacked us on Octavia III, she lifted us to safety then, too. Kept the Ra’haam at bay. But she was barely in control of it—I got the feeling she wasn’t even really herself, just a puppet for the power inside her. But I can see, I can feel, she’s herself now. This is Aurora, wielding the gift the Eshvaren gave her like a master. Lifting us up like we’re kids’ toys, over the blasted landscape, down into the crater, and then into that long, dark tunnel beyond.
“Wow,” Finian says, watching Aurora’s
face.
“I concur,” Zila murmurs.
We move into the tunnel, accelerating under the force of Auri’s will. I can feel that each of us is having a time of it, each reacting to this display of newfound power in a different way. Kal takes it best—he probably got a taste of this in the Echo, after all. I can feel his adoration as he looks at his girl, admiration at how far she’s come. But again, I get the feeling he’s uncertain somehow. About what, I can only guess.
Zila is looking at Auri with something like fascination. Taking readings on her uniglass. That big brain of hers in overdrive. Fin is a little more gobsmacked, and I’m right there with him. Less than a day ago, Auri was a tiny, frightened kid, afraid of using this thing inside her for fear of hurting the people around her. Now she wields it like she was born to it. Like this is exactly what she’s supposed to be doing.
We leave the surface behind. The light of the red dwarf we’re orbiting fades, but the light from Auri’s eye illuminates the tunnel before us. The shaft is kilometers across—so big I can’t see all the edges. The stone is perfectly smooth, beautiful patterns woven by the layers of sedimentary rock we’re cutting through. My enviro-suit warns me the temperature is falling, gravity decreasing, our speed climbing. I look at Auri, a little worried, but she seems totally in control, determination written in the lines of her face.
The walls change from rock to rainbow-colored crystal. The temperature outside our suits is now a hundred below. I can hear my heart thumping against my ribs, and the tunnel stretches on so long and empty all around us as we float downward into the core of this dead world that I’m almost about to say something, I’m almost about to speak when—
“Great Maker … ,” Finian breathes.
Before us, the tunnel opens out into a massive chamber. A giant hollow space, carved far beneath the surface of the Eshvaren world, blanketed with the dust of a million years. I can see bizarre structures made out of the same crystal that lines the walls, their purpose totally unknowable. The sense of space in here, the utter alienness, is almost frightening. Each of us looks around in awe and wonder at those impossible shapes, glimmering and shifting in Aurora’s light.
“What is this place?” I whisper.
“A … workshop?” Finian breathes.
“A weapons factory,” Zila says.
We fly on toward the center, between the alien machines, the sense of excitement in my chest building. All the time we’ve spent, all the loss we’ve suffered, it’s all going to be worth it. I can see it in front of us now: a massive scaffold rising out of the darkness. I can feel Aurora’s elation spilling into me, the thrill of this discovery, the thought that despite the enemy we’re pitting ourselves against, this war can be won, the Ra’haam can be beaten, because this girl beside me, this tiny powerhouse thrumming with midnight-blue energy, is the Trigger, and now at last …
… we have the Weapon.
We reach the crystal scaffold. Tall as skyscrapers. Wide as a city. My eyes straining as I peer into the dark beyond, looking for the key to everything.
“Um … ,” Finian says.
“Yeah …” I frown. “Um.”
“Oh no,” Aurora whispers.
“Be’shmai?” Kal murmurs.
“No, no, no …”
We all look to Auri, to her face, and it doesn’t take a Legion-trained diplomat to know that something is horribly wrong. We soar on into the dark, weaving through the scaffold, crystal shimmering around us. But it’s obvious that this scaffold was built to hold something. And, as alien as it is, we can all of us tell that it’s empty.
As I see the tears begin to spill down Auri’s cheeks, as I see her face crumple, feel the air around us ripple with her power as her frustration, her horror, her despair comes bubbling to the surface, I know the awful truth.
“It’s not here,” I whisper.
I look to Finian, to Zila, to Kal, and finally, to Aurora.
My heart sinks in my chest as she speaks.
“The Weapon’s gone… .”
· · · · ·
We head back to the Zero. And from there, back into the Fold.
We don’t know what else to do.
I wish Tyler were here. I wish it so badly, it’s like a knife in my ribs. We shared a womb together, he and I, we shared everything, and to find ourselves without him, leaderless, rudderless, reminds us all just how badly we need him. We stand on the Zero’s bridge, the colorscape once more reduced to black and white.
Aurora is pacing back and forth, wearing the darkest scowl I’ve ever seen. Kal stands to one side, brow creased in thought. Fin sits opposite me at the central station, trawling the news feeds, Zila atop the console, chewing a lock of dark hair.
“How could it be gone?” I ask. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” Auri replies, voice trembling.
Finian shakes his head. “Crossing into the anomaly would’ve destroyed any normal ship. And to even know where it was … they’d had to have found a probe.”
“Or been told of the location by the Ancients,” Kal replies.
The answer is obvious.
“Another Trigger,” Zila says.
Auri purses her lips. “The Eshvaren said there might have been others before me. The Echo resets when someone leaves it, and this plan has been in place for a million years. But they also said that whoever came before me must have failed, because the Ra’haam is still alive.”
She shakes her head, the air about her rippling with her frustration.
“I don’t get it.”
Finian starts spitballing. “Maybe this other Trigger completed their training, claimed the Weapon, then … I dunno, fell down the stairs or choked on a creshcake or something?” “Perhaps they completed their training,” Kal says, looking at Aurora, “then balked at the price they would pay to defeat the Ra’haam.”
Auri looks at Kal, her voice soft. “Let’s not talk about that, okay?”
Zila’s eyebrow rises two millimeters, which is practically a scream of alarm as far as she goes. “What price?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Auri says, temper flaring. “It doesn’t matter, because the damn Weapon isn’t even there!” The air crackles around her, a pale light flaring in her iris. “After all that! After everything we’ve gone through, and someone’s stolen it right out from under us! Son of a biscuit, I want to just … scream.”
I glance at Kal, but, good lad, he’s already on the job, folding Auri in those covetable arms of his. He kisses her brow tenderly, smooths back her hair.
“All will be well, be’shmai,” he vows. “Trust in this. In us. The sun will rise.”
She sinks against him, sighing. I watch the two of them, realizing how deep they’re into each other now. I can feel the bond that’s grown between them in the time they shared in the Echo, those hours to us that were months to them. The love. And, heartbreaker that I am, slayer of suitors with over fifty confirmed kills in my little black book, I wonder for a moment if I’ll ever have anyone who means as much to me as they do to each other.
“Um,” Finian says.
I glance at our Gearhead, his big black eyes fixed on his screens.
I do my best Tyler impression, eyebrow raised. “Do you have something you’d like to share with the class, Legionnaire de Seel?”
Wordlessly, he flicks a metal-clad finger, his exosuit humming as he transfers his feed to the holo display above the main console. It’s a news feed from TerraNet, the most reliable Earth news source, the words LATEST UPDATE scrolling across the bottom of the screen. It shows footage of a massive Syldrathi armada, thousands upon thousands of ships, all floating like sharks in the Fold.
It’s the biggest fleet I’ve ever seen.
“Amna diir,” Kal breathes.
Fin presses another button, arcing the volume of the feed.
“… Unbroken armada is currently amassing in the Fold near the gateway to Terran space. Terran forces have yet to engage, instead mustering inside th
e Sol system in defensive posture. This statement was issued from the head of the Terran Defense Force, Admiral Emi Hotep, one hour ago.”
The feed shifts to a severe, bronze-skinned woman with short dark hair, in a sharp TDF officer’s uniform.
“I am sending this message on all channels, addressing the Unbroken fleet: Though we have had differences in our past, the Syldrathi are friends to Earth. We consider you an honorable people, warriors born, and we have no wish to engage in hostilities with Unbroken forces. However, should Syldrathi vessels invade Terran space, they will be met with deadly force.”
The feed shifts to a Betraskan man in officer’s dress. The label under him reads GREATER CLAN BATTLE LEADER ANALI DE TREN.
“The Betraskan people strive always for peace, in our hearts, in our dens, and in our skies. But should any world or force engage in unwarranted hostilities, Trask will stand with our Terran allies.”
My heart sinks in my chest as I look around the bridge. I can see the same despair in the faces of my squad. The galaxy is on the verge of war.
The feed continues.
“Disturbingly, an unknown vessel has been detected within the Unbroken fleet. TDF Command has dismissed claims of a ‘superweapon,’ but the fate of the Syldrathi homeworld at the hands of Unbroken leader Archon Caersan, aka the Starslayer—an attack in which ten billion Syldrathi lost their lives—cannot be ignored. Moments ago, before our drone was destroyed, TerraNet managed to shoot exclusive footage of this unknown Syldrathi ship.”
The feed cuts back to an image of the armada, cruising through the Fold. Again, I’m struck by the size of it—the sheer firepower the Starslayer has brought to bear in retaliation for the attack on Andarael.
“This Caersan guy seems to be taking this real personal,” Finian mutters.
“Yeah,” I nod. “I wonder wh—”
“Mothercustard,” Auri whispers, eyes widening.
Kal’s face is pale and drawn as he watches the feed, a sliver of fear and sorrow appearing in the cracks of his normally ice-cool Syldrathi demeanor. But at the note in Auri’s voice, he turns to her.
“Be’shmai?”
I look back at the screen. The footage is blurred, a few frames snatched in the second or two before the TerraNet drone was killed. It shows a glimpse of a vessel between the silhouettes of two Unbroken dreadnoughts. It’s absolutely massive—easily the biggest ship I’ve ever seen. Kilometers across, as long as a city. In contrast to the smooth black metal profiles of the Syldrathi ships, it’s an odd, conical shape, kinda like an oboe or a clarinet. And it’s made of what looks like …
