Aurora Burning: The Aurora Cycle 2

by Amie Kaufman

  The question is, Are you worthy of it?

  My head is spinning, trying to process all this. How did it happen? Why didn’t Dad tell us? Who was our mother?

  … Is she alive?

  Gird yourself, boy, Saedii says. Hold firm.

  The biggest bombshell of my life just got dropped on my head, Saedii. I think I’m gonna need a minute here… .

  We do not have a minute, Tyler Jones. If what you have told me about this … ancient enemy is true, every second we waste in this cell among these insects is another second closer to the galaxy’s doom.

  I scowl, my temper flaring blood-red across our shared minds.

  You think I don’t know that?

  Saedii watches me for a long, silent moment. I can feel her, her emotions, her thoughts, all of her. It’s hard to keep straight in my head, to process which parts of all I’m feeling are me, and which are her. It’s like we’re touching … but not.

  I think there is much you do not know, she replies.

  Maker’s breath, what else?

  Saedii folds her bare legs up beneath her, leans back against the wall, and crosses her arms over her chest.

  You had best get comfortable, boy. This will be a great deal to swallow.

  32

  KAL

  There is a gravity to everything.

  I told Aurora that, not so long ago. Looking into her eyes as I finally confessed all I was feeling for her. Every atom in our bodies, every atom in the universe exerts a gravity on the atoms around it. Gravity is one of the forces holding all this together. It is inexorable. Nothing rises without falling. It is not a matter of if, but when.

  We Syldrathi believe that everything is a cycle. An endless circle. That one day the expansion of the universe will cease, the force generated by the explosion that began it will be overcome by gravity. And on that day, the universe will begin to contract. No longer spiraling out, but falling inward, every atom in existence dragged backward toward its point of origin, collapsing once more into the singularity that began it all. Only to begin again.

  We are all of us gravity’s slaves.

  All of us pulled by it.

  Back to the place it all began and to where we know it must end.

  It did not take me long to find transport from Meridia. There is no shortage of folks in the galaxy who fear the Starslayer, who watch the unfolding calamity between Terra and the Unbroken with an absolute certainty of who will triumph. The Chellerian smuggler who agreed to ferry me to the Unbroken armada still took a great deal of convincing, considering the dangers of approaching the largest Unbroken fleet assembled since the fall of Syldra. But my share of the small fortune that Admiral Adams and Battle Leader de Stoy left for us in the Emerald City vault was enough to purchase his peace of mind.

  I wonder if our commanders knew what that money would be used for when they left it for us.

  If they knew where my path would lead.

  I stand in the cockpit beside the smuggler and his copilot—a surly Rikerite with one of his horns snapped off at the root. The smuggler is fond of his rocksmoke, and the cockpit is full of the stink, metallic and thick, drifting from the burner on the console. The gabble of news feeds spills over the cockpit sound system.

  The Fold around us is colorless as always, as gray as the storm clouds around my head. I am watching the incoming Unbroken vessels on our scopes—four Ghost-class scouts on intercept course. They cut through the Fold toward us, and beyond them I can see countless ships, sleek and dark and deadly, gathered on the threshold to the Terran system. A force to set fire to the heavens.

  And at the heart of it, he waits for me.

  The shadow I have never been able to step out from.

  A transmission from the lead scout cuts across our news feeds, brought up onscreen with a tap of the smuggler’s fingers. I see a young Unbroken adept, the Warbreed glyf on his brow, black war paint across glittering gray eyes.

  “Unidentified vessel,” he says coolly. “You are either insane or suicidal. Retreat or be destroyed. This is your first and final warning.”

  The smuggler looks to me. I press one finger to the console and speak.

  “I am here to see my father,” I reply.

  The adept’s stare hardens as he takes in the glyf at my brow, the seven braids in my hair. “We are poised to reclaim the honor the Council of Syldra surrendered so long ago, boy. We are death on black wings, and we shall slay a star this day. This is no place for a family reunion.”

  I press the Transmit button again, my voice soft with threat.

  “Archon Caersan may disagree with you, adept.”

  The adept’s eyes narrow, then slowly widen as realization sinks in. He draws one halting breath, his hiss spilling over bloodless lips.

  “I’na Sai’nuit.”

  I press the Transmit button, speak with a voice as gray as the Fold around us.

  “Tell my father I wish to speak to him.”

  · · · · ·

  My heart is a war drum, pounding against my ribs.

  I am standing aboard the shuttle he sent for me, hands clasped behind my back, surrounded by six of his Paladins. The decor on the Syldrathi ship is black, its crimson light muted to gray by the Fold. The Unbroken warriors around me are clad in ceremonial armor, watching me from beneath silver lashes. None are brave enough to give voice to their thoughts, but in truth none need to. I feel it.

  Curiosity. Resentment. Fear.

  The lost son, returned.

  I watch the shuttle’s forward screens as we weave through the Unbroken armada. The sight of it is awe-inspiring, terrifying: the sheer scale of it all, the countless ships ready to unleash chaos at his word. He commands respect, my father. His very name enough to strike fear wherever it is spoken. A man who was prepared to burn his own homeworld rather than sacrifice his honor. A man to whom the murder of billions was preferable to surrender.

  I remember him standing behind me beneath the lias trees. His hand on my shoulder. Guiding my strikes as he tutored me in the Wave Way.

  I can feel him now, if I try.

  My Enemy Within.

  And then I see it.

  A glimpse between the crescent shapes of two massive carriers. The full scope of it unfolding as the ships part before us like water. The breath is snatched away. I feel like an insect in the presence of a god.

  The Weapon.

  It is the largest vessel I have ever seen, stretching twenty kilometers from nose to tail and making children’s toys of the mightiest ships around it. Its shape is vaguely conical, and a series of massive concave structures are arrayed at what I presume is the bow, like vast lenses—asymmetrical, arcane, and utterly alien. It is carved of the same living crystal that the Eshvaren wore in the Echo, and the rainbow of light playing upon its every surface, hypnotic, melodic, would have been stunning enough were it not for the thought that suddenly occurs to me:

  We are in the Fold.

  Everything around us should be monochrome. Muted shades of gray. But the Eshvaren Weapon is a song of color, almost heartbreaking in its beauty. This is a device designed to destroy suns, and yet my soul swells to see it.

  The war in my blood surges. Something in it calls to me, reaching out across the gulf between us, roiling, rushing, setting my pulse pounding quicker, my fingertips tingling. A power at once alien and familiar. A voice I have not heard in years, and yet have heard every day of my life, echoing now in my head.

  Kaliiiiiissssss.

  As the shuttle draws closer to the Weapon, we pass through a field of some sort—vaguely glittering, translucent. The ship shudders beneath me. The Paladins around me sway on their feet, and I feel a flood of … power in my head. Thick like syrup. Heavy as iron. Blurring my eyes.

  The shuttle lands in a strange docking bay, crystalline structures on the ceiling and floors, the colorscape almost blinding in intensity. I glance at the Paladins beside me, but they remain silent. They bay has no doors—no way to keep the cold and the vacuu
m out. But the warriors march me down to the shuttle’s airlock and, without hesitation, cycle it open.

  We do not freeze. We do not suffocate.

  The Paladin commander fixes me in a gray stare.

  “We can go no farther, I’na Sai’nuit,” he tells me.

  I step out into the bay, the surface humming beneath my feet. I cannot say how, and yet … I know the way. Drawn like a needle to north, I walk up winding paths of singing crystal, whispering, thrumming with power.

  I feel … strange. All the emotions within me seem louder. I see an image of Aurora standing with her hand raised aboard the Zero’s bridge, her power striking me in the chest as she commanded me to stop. I hear the venom in Scarlett’s voice as she cursed me, blamed me, hit me. I feel Finian’s bewildered pain, Zila’s silent acquiescence as they cast me out. I who have fought for them. Bled for them. Risked my all to keep them safe. None of them could understand what it was for me to join the Legion, how much I have given, how much I have suffered, how it feels to be utterly alone, even in a crowded room.

  Ever since my mother fled back to Syldra, I have never known a moment’s peace. Outcast among my own people for the Warbreed glyf at my brow, the blood in my veins. Outcast among the academy cadets as the former enemy, the pixieboy, the freak: Remember Orion, remember Orion. Among the members of Squad 312, I thought I had found a home. A place to belong. Something worth fighting for.

  But I was a fool.

  I should have known that the shadow of the past would forever come between us. We cannot deny who and what we truly are.

  And Aurora …

  “Aurora.” I whisper the name, as if it is poison on my lips. Pushing thoughts of her aside, the memory of our time in the Echo, the things we shared, locking her and them away in a room inside my head and casting away the key.

  I am no one now.

  I am only this.

  What I have always been.

  There is not a soul in these vast and glittering halls. Not a single soldier or scientist or servant. The entire ship is empty, save for this power, familiar and unknowable all at once. As I walk farther down the crystal way, I feel catatonia, vertigo, perfect clarity. My pulse is rushing, asynchronous, like a drumbeat out of time. My mouth tastes like rust.

  This ship is huge. These corridors seem endless. But eventually, the pathways converge, opening out into a vast, spherical chamber.

  Power drips from the air, red and thrumming on my skin. The walls are lost in shadow, and my eyes are drawn to the light, the concentric spires of crystal in the center of the room, aglow and radiant. An ever-ascending dais, rising off the floor, crowned with an enormous glittering throne. Branches of crystal reach out toward it from the ceiling, the walls, like the roots of a tree straining toward water. Squinting, putting my hand up against the rainbow light, I see a figure upon it.

  A shadow falls upon my sun.

  He is clad in black armor with a high collar, and a long cloak is arrayed around his shoulders, spilling down over the steps below him in a crimson train. His hair is silver-bright, woven into ten braids and draped in long, thick waves over one side of his face. And that face is all I remember and more. Beautiful. Terrible. Radiating a dark majesty. He watches, impassive, as I climb the dais, the power around me thickening, my footsteps ringing hollow in the vast crystal sphere, the gravity of him drawing me in. Drawing me back.

  Everything is a cycle. An endless circle.

  Everything has led to this.

  I stand before him.

  “Father,” I say.

  “Son,” he replies.

  And then, finally, I kneel.

  33

  TYLER

  Kal …

  Saedii just stares at me. The revelation about her brother, their father—who and what he is—it’s almost too much for me to wrap my head around. This entire conversation has happened at the speed of thought. It’s maybe been ten minutes since it began. But it feels long as a lifetime.

  I thought of Kal as a friend. Someone I could trust. Steady and strong and sure. Even when I’d been torn away from the squad, it was easier to deal with—knowing he’d be there to look after them. But to find out he’s the son of the man who killed my dad, that he was lying to us this whole time …

  I will follow you, Brother, he told me.

  Some brother …

  But I push the hurt, the betrayal aside. Focusing on the problem I can actually do something about. The galaxy is still on the threshold of war. The TDF and the Unbroken could already be tearing each other to pieces. But if everything Saedii just told me is true, if the Weapon the Starslayer used to destroy the Syldrathi sun …

  What did you call it again? I ask Saedii.

  My father named it Neridaa, she replies.

  I shake my head.

  My Syldrathi isn’t as polished as Scar’s.

  Saedii sneers. Your boots are better polished than your Syldrathi.

  I peer mournfully down at the kicks I got from the Emerald City vault. They’re scuffed, beaten, bloodstained. I’d kill for a tin of polish, honestly.

  Wow, that’s cold, lady.

  Saedii raises one eyebrow ever so slightly. It’s kind of amazing how much she can pack into a simple gesture like that. Amusement. Disdain. Arrogance. Smug superiority. Scar could take lessons from this girl.

  Neridaa is a difficult concept to translate into your crude Terran tongue.

  Let’s leave my Terran tongue out of this, shall we?

  The eyebrow rises higher. The word describes … paradox. A state of beginning and ending. The act of destroying and creating.

  And you’re certain this ship is the Eshvaren Weapon?

  I feel a tiny sliver of fear, far in the back of her mind.

  I am certain of nothing. My father keeps his own counsel. And I was not present when he discovered the first relic.

  … What relic? I ask.

  A probe of some kind. Three years ago. I was already a Templar by then, serving aboard Andarael. Fighting our war against the traitors on the Council of Syldra. But I was alerted via a panicked transmission from my father’s flagship after they discovered an object drifting in the Fold. Apparently, my father had … dreamed of it. He told his science division that it had called to him. And when they brought it aboard, he touched it and fell unmoving to the deck.

  Saedii shakes her head.

  I had his science staff all thrown to the drakkan for it. The fools. The object they had found was crystal. Denying all analysis of its structure. My father lay on the deck beside it. Nothing we did could rouse him. I thought it was all about to come undone. After everything we had sacrificed, our Archon had been laid low by a freak encounter with some ancient curio in interdimensional space? It seemed a cruel ending to our song.

  But eighteen hours later, my father woke, as if from deepest sleep. Crackling with some new power. I was almost weeping with relief. I asked him what had happened, and he looked at me like I was a stranger. Then he commanded the helm to plot a new course. A rift in the Fold, leading us to a long-dead world. And from there to the Weapon that won our war, ended the treachery of the Syldra council forever, and wrote his name, bloody and beautiful, among the stars.

  I look at Saedii, utterly bewildered.

  You didn’t ask him about it? None of you wondered how he knew it was there, or raised an eyebrow that a weapon capable of destroying entire star systems had just been left lying around? Didn’t you wonder what it was for?

  Saedii sneers.

  Of course we wondered. But he was our Archon, Tyler Jones. We his Templars, his Paladins, his adepts. Loyal to the death. The Syldrathi civil war had been raging since the Orion attack. And finally he led us to victory against the curs and cowards who had so shamed us—the Weavers and Watchers and Workers so keen to bend the knee and sign your father’s accursed peace.

  I shake my head. Is peace such a horrible thing?

  It is through conflict we attain perfection, Tyler Jones. The blade grows dull wh
en it sleeps in its scabbard. Sharp when pressed against the stone.

  Saedii glowers at me, eyes flashing. I can see … no, feel the conviction in her. The flame burning in her chest. War is more than a way of life for this girl. It’s a religion. And the awful thing is, I can see a kind of truth in what she says—it is through challenging ourselves that we grow stronger, better, more.

  But it’s not the whole truth.

  I’m not afraid to fight, I tell her. But it’s always been for something. Family. Faith. Maker, even peace itself. Fighting for the sake of fighting—

  I was born for war, Tyler Jones, she tells me, those perfect brows drawn together in a perfect frown. And if you are worthy of the Syldrathi blood within you, you had best become acquainted with that notion. Because we will need to carve our way off this vessel if we mean to escape. We must paint this ship red.

  We’re Folding. Everything is black and white.

  Her face sours. Ah. That wonderful Terran sarcasm.

  I shake my head, jaw clenched. These people are following orders. They’re soldiers doing their jobs. The Ra’haam is the enemy here. The GIA, not the TDF.

  They tortured me.

  You murdered their friends!

  That makes it right in your eyes?

  I breathe deep. Looking over the bruises on her face. She knew how I’d answer that question before she ever asked it.

  No, it doesn’t. But my father taught me that to be a leader, you have to set the example. To be a leader, you have to be the kind of person you’d want to follow you.

  Yes, she hisses, sitting up taller. A warrior. Unconquered and unafraid.

  No. Better. We need to be better than the enemy we fight. The Ra’haam wants us to tear each other to pieces. It wants us at each other’s throats. All it needs to do is stall here. To sow chaos and confusion long enough for it to hatch from those seed worlds and then out into the Fold.

  Saedii crosses her arms, shaking the hair from her eyes.

  I know not if my father understands the purpose of the Weapon he has claimed. But we must get off this ship and warn him of this greater enemy. We are Unbroken. We are no one’s pawns. To say he will be displeased at being manipulated is an understatement.