Aurora Rising

by Amie Kaufman

  “No,” I snap. “You’re not. You stick out like a six-foot-eight pointy-eared sore thumb in here. Get to the docking bay. You might need to fight your way through.”

  “You will definitely need to fight your way to Aurora,” Kal says, stepping forward. “And I am better at it than you.”

  “I just gave you an order, legionnaire,” I growl.

  Kal tilts his head. “Please feel free to put me on report, sir.”

  “For the love of…,” Scar sighs. “Will you two just kiss and get it over with?”

  “I mean, I could think of worse things to watch?” Finian says.

  The lift arrives and the doors hiss open as the alarms continue to scream. I wonder what the big deal is. Why Kal is so keen on rescuing Aurora when he was such a jerk to her back on Sagan. But looking up into his eyes, I can tell he’s not going to budge unless I push, and Maker’s breath, we just don’t have the time.

  “Scar, go with Cat. Five minutes, then you launch. That’s an order.”

  Scarlett looks at me, blinking in the silver rain. “Yessir.”

  The four board the turbolift, and I look Cat in the eyes as the door hisses closed. I turn to glower at Kal, met with a stare hard as diamond.

  “Priority prisoners will be in the brig down on eleven,” I say.

  “Follow me,” the Syldrathi replies. “Sir.”

  We dash to the stairwell, taking the steps four at a time to the level below. Out in the hallway, Kal walks in front, hands still held before him in the mag-restraints. I march behind, pointing my disruptor rifle at his back, hoping I look like a guard escorting his prisoner. A tech crew with fire-suppressant gear barrels right past us, followed close by a squad of TDF troopers. None of them spare us much more than a glance. The alarms are still blaring, the PA still shouting about the fire Zila set in the electrical conduits. I make a mental note to ask Fin exactly why he has a propane torch hidden in his exosuit, and what other surprises he has stashed in that thing.

  Presuming we make it out of this alive, that is.

  The brig is almost deserted—most of the troopers are upstairs looking for us. I see a hallway beyond the admissions area, lined with heavy doors. A junior officer is typing at a workstation, and a second sits behind the counter, shouting into a comms unit over the shipwide alarm. He holds up one hand at me, signaling I should wait.

  And then it starts.

  It’s a weird prickling on the back of my neck at first. The air suddenly feels greasy—charged almost, like with static electricity. There’s a noise above the thrum of the engines, below the shriek of the alarm. Almost…

  Whispering?

  I look to Kal, and from the slight frown on his face, I can tell he hears it, too. The brig officer blinks, glances in the direction of the holding cells.

  Without warning, the lights flicker out, plunging us into darkness. The whisper gets louder, almost sharp enough to make out the words, and the room…vibrates. High-pitched screams sound out in the black, followed by a wet crunching noise, and every holding cell door buckles simultaneously, titanium crumpling like paper.

  Every display on every console dies.

  The engines and alarms are suddenly silenced.

  The dull illumination of emergency lighting kicks in overhead.

  Terran destroyers have four separate reactors, a hundred fail-safes and a dozen different backup systems. But impossible as it is, I realize the entire ship has suddenly and completely lost power. The silence after all that noise is deafening, and I look down the hallway, wondering what on Earth is going on here. Spilling from beneath one of those crushed doors is a long, dark, gray slick of what can only be—

  “Blood,” the brig officer whispers, reaching for his sidearm.

  Kal takes his chance, sloughing off his mag-restraints and slamming them into the officer’s throat. The man falls back gasping, and Kal vaults the counter, strikes twice, and leaves him unconscious and bleeding on the floor. The junior officer turns with a shout, sidearm raised, and Kal has broken his wrist and his elbow and then knocked him senseless before I can squeeze my trigger.

  The Syldrathi straightens, tossing his long braids back off his shoulders, his face as impassive as if he’d just ordered dinner.

  Great Maker, he’s good….

  I’ve no idea what just killed the power, but we’ve got no time to open a global inquiry into it. The overheads start flickering like strobes, and I come to my senses, leap the counter after my Tank. Dashing down the hallway, we skid to a stop at the blood-slicked door. I raise my disruptor rifle, heart beating quick, nod to Kal. Though he’s stronger than a human, it’s still a stretch for him, but finally he drags the cell door aside with a squeal of metal.

  I step inside, weapon raised and ready.

  “Maker’s breath,” I whisper.

  Aurora is slumped in a single metal chair, restraints at her wrists. Her eyes are closed, blood dripping from her nose, spilling over her chin. The floor, ceilings, and walls are buckled outward, almost in a spherical shape. I see two faceless helmets on the floor, two charcoal-gray suits crumpled beside them, their contents smeared up the wall in a strange mixture of gray and black, textures unrecognizable. They go all the way up to the ceiling, like the people inside them were tubes of toothpaste and someone just…squeezed.

  “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 flashlight 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 through 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 and 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 blastshield, 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 at me frantically as Scarlett leaps to 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 aloud.

  We just undertook an 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 are 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.”

  AURORA LEGION SQUADS

  ▶ SQUAD MEMBERS

  ▼ FACES

  IF YOU’RE DEALING WITH AN AURORA LEGIONNAIRE SMOOTHER THAN A GLASS OF SINGLE-MALT LARASSIAN SEMPTAR, THEN ODDS ARE YOU’VE JUST MET A FACE. DIPLOMATS BY NATURE AND BY TRAINING, THEIR JOB IS TO DEAL WITH FRIENDS OR FOES—AND A GOOD FACE CAN OFTEN TURN THE LATTER INTO THE FORMER WITH A FEW WELL-PLACED WORDS.

  WHETHER IT’S MAKING FIRST CONTACT, MEDIATING A LOCAL DISPUTE, OR TALKING THEIR WAY OUT OF A STEAMING PILE OF ALIEN DOOKIE, FACES ARE VERSED IN THE CULTURES, TRADITIONS, AND LANGUAGES OF MANY SPECIES AND HAVE A REPUTATION FOR BEING SKILLED NEGOTIATORS.

  PLAYING CARDS AGAINST ONE IS NOT RECOMMENDED.

  FACE’S INSIGNIA

  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 a 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-bos, 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. An Aurora Legion squad gone rogue. Though we’re technically under 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 have to 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 I was 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 phrase if she applied herself had 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$$. Cons: A$$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 wrong, 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.

&nb
sp; 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 mind. 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 had 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 systems. 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.