Aurora Rising

by Amie Kaufman

  “Where we headed, Bee-bro?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

  “Sempiternity,” he says softly, looking around the cabin.

  “You sure that’s a good idea?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  He touches the Maker’s mark at his collar again, staring at Auri.

  “But sometimes you just gotta have faith.”

  PLACES TO AVOID

  ▶ PIRATE ENCLAVES

  ▼ SEMPITERNITY

  FOR A DETAILED HISTORY OF THE WORLD SHIP, CLICK HERE.

  “Jie-Lin, wake up.”

  I open my eyes, wondering for a moment where I am. I remember the argument on the Longbow’s bridge. Tyler and Kal and Scarlett and Cat. Bright light. But now I’m lying in a soft bed. A warm glow around me. Posters on the walls I recognize, a familiar stuffed toy squirrel beside me.

  My room.

  I’m in my room.

  “Jie-Lin?”

  I look up, and sitting above me is a face I never thought I’d see again. Round cheeks. The lines across his forehead that my mom used to joke were there from the age of fifteen, because the world surprised him so much.

  “Daddy?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you, Jie-Lin.”

  He pulls me into his arms and I can feel his chest shaking because he’s laughing and he’s crying and I’m laughing and crying, too. And all the things I could have said, I should have said, are filling my head because he’s not dead and it’s not too late and I try to pull away and speak because there’s so much I want to say.

  But I can’t.

  I can’t pull away. He’s holding me too tight. And I can’t breathe and I can’t speak. I push hard, forcing him off me, but it’s like he’s made of tar. Pieces of him come with me as I pull back, long strings of him stretching between us like human taffy. Seeping in under my skin.

  “Let me go!”

  He looks at me and smiles, and his irises are shaped like blue flowers.

  “Ra’haam,” he says.

  “Let go!”

  “Ra’haaaaaaam.”

  * * *

  • • • • •

  “Aurora?”

  I open my eyes, heart thundering. Scarlett’s sitting beside me, Zila and Kal standing above me. My mouth is dry as chalk and I ache all over. But slowly, I realize I’m still here. Not there.

  A nightmare.

  I don’t know whether to be relieved or heartbroken all over again. I’m not home, not back in my room. I’m on a spaceship a million light-years from any of it. Everyone’s still gone, my dad is…

  Scarlett hands me a cup of water, concern and suspicion in her eyes. It’s not lost on me that Zila has her hand on her pistol. That Kal is armed, too, watching me with those cool violet eyes from over near the door.

  “Do you remember what happened?” Scarlett asks.

  Images flash in my mind. Me throwing Scarlett into the wall. Blood on my lips. Raised voices. My dad’s skin melting into mine like taffy. One image burning brighter than the rest. A name.

  “Sempiternity,” I murmur.

  Zila and Scarlett exchange a glance, and the redhead nods. “We’ve been Folding for almost four hours. We’re nearly there. Tyler asked us to bring you up to the bridge in case you…see anything.”

  I blink hard to rid myself of that image of my dad. The pieces of him melting into pieces of me. Wincing as Scarlett helps me to my feet, I note we’re in some kind of habitation area. Bunk beds and lockers and gunmetal gray, Aurora Legion logos on the walls. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror. The shock of white in my bangs, the white of my right iris. I don’t know what any of this means, but it feels like a stranger looking back at me. Helpless. Angry.

  “I know you all think I’m crazy,” I murmur.

  “Nobody thinks you’re crazy, Auri,” Scarlett says, touching my arm. “You’ve been through a lot, we all know that.”

  “The Hadfield was bound for Octavia III, Scarlett,” I say, low and fierce. “I studied years to get on that mission, you don’t forget something like that. Every spare minute was training—memorizing maps, rock climbing, orienteering competitions. And all of it with one goal in mind: Octavia.”

  She gives me a sympathetic smile, but shakes her head. “Auri, we checked the records. Octavia III is uninhabitable.”

  “THAT’S WHAT I SAID,” comes a small chirp from my pocket. “BUT DOES SHE LISTEN TO ME? NOOOO—”

  I clap my hand over Magellan to shut him up. “Why don’t we go check it out, then? I know the composition of the atmosphere, the layout of the continents—I’ll show you where Butler settlement and the outposts are, I’ll—”

  “Octavia III has been under Interdiction for hundreds of years,” Zila says.

  “And the last time we set an alternate course, you almost destroyed the ship.” I look over at Kal as he speaks, and his expression is unreadable as always. But remembering that footage of me attacking Scarlett, holding the ship in place while it shook and my eye burned white, it’s hard to argue with him.

  “Seems like this is where you’re meant to be,” Scarlett says. “And maybe we’re heading where we’re supposed to go, too.”

  She touches my arm again, and her smile is warm and kind in comparison to Kal’s frosty stare. I can’t help but smile weakly in return. She voted to take me back to the academy, but now their course is set, I realize…

  She’s trying to be nice to me.

  “Come on,” she says. “Ty wants you on the bridge.”

  I don’t miss the glance Zila and Kal share as we leave the room, or the fact that Zila’s hand hasn’t left her gun the whole time we talked. But together, we make our way down a long corridor, Kal in front, Scarlett beside me, Zila walking behind. My bones creak and my pulse is pounding and I’ve got one mothercustard of a headache.

  As we step out onto the bridge, the others turn to glance at me, but only for a moment. Looking at the huge screen above the central console, I can see we’re coming in to dock at what must be Sempiternity. Cat and Tyler seem occupied navigating us through a maze of ships and docking stations and loaders and shuttles surrounding the most amazing sight I’ve ever seen in my life.

  The future is grimier than I expected. Dirtier than it was meant to be. Sempiternity kind of looks like an inside-out termite nest, with endless additions bulging in every possible direction. So many glittering lights and strange shapes and odd angles, thousands of ships molded and bolted and welded into one giant World Ship.

  “Holy cake,” I murmur.

  How did I know this place existed?

  How did I know its name?

  And how did I drag our ship to a halt and turn it toward this mashed-together world of hundreds of thousands of ships that all ended their stories here?

  If I can answer even one of those questions, I’ll be closer to understanding what’s happening to me. Why my own government’s trying to erase every trace of me. I’m aching to set a course for Octavia, to see if anything’s left of the colony I know was there. But this thing that’s overtaking me has led me here, to Sempiternity.

  So I’ll follow this path, try and understand why it’s twisted in this direction. Hope it’s brought me here because this is where my answers are.

  Scar helps me to a seat at an auxiliary station, then takes her place around the central console. I know I should be watching the amazing station we’re slowly moving toward, but instead I find myself looking at the squad around me. At these six young soldiers I’ve suddenly found myself thrown together with. The strangers my life seems to depend on now.

  Squad 312.

  I wonder what makes them who they are.

  What’s driving them to even be here.

  Cat’s attention is mostly on steering through dozens of vessels coming and goin
g, detaching from the messy sides of this sector, or clamping on to airlocks and joining the throng. But she’s watching me out of the corner of her eye as well, her gaze flicking my way like clockwork every thirty seconds or so.

  She doesn’t trust me.

  I don’t blame her.

  Tyler looks kind of peaceful, really, all things considered. Shaggy blond hair hanging in bright blue eyes fixed on his readouts. He’s picked his course, it seems, and for better or for worse, the decision’s made. Still, I have a long way to go to win over him and his sister, and I’m not even sure what I want them to know or believe about me.

  Next along from Tyler is Fin, white hair spiked above his white face, so hard to read behind those black contacts that cover the whole of his eyes. It’s hard to even tell where he’s looking sometimes. Between that and the equally effective shield of sarcasm, it’s tricky to know who he is, either. Right now he has his head down—he’s fixing or modifying something in the forearm of his suit with a magnetic screwdriver. Zila takes her seat at the station beside him, but her dark eyes are still fixed on me, as if I’m a puzzle she can figure out with sufficient study.

  Kal’s glancing at me occasionally, but I can’t get a read past those eyes of his. He’s over six and a half feet of long silver hair and lithe muscle, and he looks like he’s on his way to counsel Gandalf or something. He acts like he’s better than me, though, I know that. Liability, he called me. Beneath concern. I suppose just because he’s an alien doesn’t mean he can’t be a total jerk.

  They’re all suspicious of me to one degree or another. Some of them are scared. And I’m scared of myself, but I’m trying to be brave. I don’t know what’s happening, but I want to figure it out as badly as they do. To know where I’m headed, and why. How I can do the impossible things I’ve done. But I barely even know what I’m running from, let alone to.

  Still, this station might hold all my answers. Like Scarlett said, maybe we’re going exactly where we’re meant to go.

  There’s a gentle bump as we come into berth, a series of thuds and a brief chorus of electronic noises as we lock on to the docking system. Cat’s hands dance across consoles as she powers down the main drive. She kisses her fingertips and presses them against her monitor screen, then the stuffed dragon sitting above it. The thrum of our engines slowly dies, the computer noises fall quiet. Everyone looks at everyone else, wondering what comes next.

  “We need three things,” Tyler says, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

  Fin looks up from his home repair job, answers without missing a beat. “I’ll take a fresh pair of pants, a professional masseuse and a shot of Larassian semptar.”

  Tyler nobly presses on. “Shelter, intel, and a change of clothes. So Fin got one out of three right. This place is run by interstellar pirates, so we won’t get far in these uniforms.”

  “We need four things,” Cat corrects him.

  “We need to know why Aurora brought us here,” Zila supplies.

  And of course everyone looks at me again. And my muscles ache from what I guess was my seizure before, and the echoes of my nightmare are still lingering inside my head, and I’m tired, and I still don’t know the answer.

  Scarlett comes to my rescue. “I’ll go shopping for the clothes. Place like this, it won’t be hard to find a market. And I have better taste than all of you put together.”

  Tyler looks mildly wounded. “Hey, I—”

  Scarlett aims a withering glance at her brother, and he wisely falls silent.

  “I have a cousin here,” Fin says. “I can get us a place to lay low.”

  Zila blinks at him. “That ventures into the realm of coincidence.”

  “Not really,” he says, wiggling his hand in a so-so gesture. “I mean, if you want to get technical, he’s the second cousin of my third mother once removed on my matriarch’s side, but we generally just say ‘cousin.’ ”

  “Second of third…?” Ty tilts his head, and I can practically see some of the others counting on their fingers and toes, trying to make the connection.

  “Family reunions are tricky for Betraskans,” Fin smirks.

  “Go find your cousin,” Tyler says. “Take Cat with you.”

  Cat blinks. “I should—”

  “I’m not sending him off solo. Nobody moves alone. Scarlett, you’ll take Zila. I’ll take Kal and Auri, we’ll do some recon. Maybe Auri will see someone or something she recognizes, and we’ll get a better idea of what we’re supposed to be doing here. Using our currency accounts will give away our location, so everyone give up whatever creds you’ve got on you.”

  * * *

  • • • • •

  There’s nobody to check our IDs or ask any questions as we make our way out of the airlock and into a long hallway lined with heavy doors. It’s made of a transparent material, and I can see that an umbilical corridor snakes away from every hatchway. Each one connects to a ship at the other end, like we’re part of one big bunch of grapes. And beyond the ships, I can see the stars, dimmed by the station lights.

  “It’s beautiful,” I whisper.

  “It’s ghastly,” Fin says beside me, dismissing the glories of the galaxy with a wave of his hand. But even though he’s grumbling, I realize he might be attempting conversation. And it’s not like anyone else is talking to me right now.

  “You don’t like stars?” I ask.

  “No,” he says quietly, lacking his smirk for once, and staring at the floor. “A lot of those stars actually died millions of years ago. It’s just they’re so far away, the light they created before they died hasn’t finished reaching us yet.” He waves at the galaxy beyond the glass. “You’re looking at a sky full of ghosts.”

  “Well, that’s depressing.”

  “My people live underground,” he shrugs. “Wide-open spaces, not so much.”

  “And you signed up as a space soldier?” Scarlett scoffs beside us.

  “Yeah.” He winks. “Intriguing, aren’t I?”

  Scarlett rolls her eyes as we reach the end of the docks. With much flashing of globes and beams of light cutting over our bodies, another airlock runs us through some kind of scan and then opens into a promenade bustling with life and light and noise. With the stars safely out of sight, Fin seems a little more at ease. He squares his shoulders and claps Cat on the back.

  “Let’s go find some crash space, eh?”

  “Never say the word ‘crash’ to a pilot, Finian,” Cat scowls. “And if you touch me again, I’ll feed you your fingers.”

  “I like you, Zero,” he grins, managing to make the nickname sound only a tiny bit like he’s making fun of her. “Don’t ever change, okay?”

  Cat shoots an accusing glance at Tyler, and she and Finian slip off into the crowd to scout out somewhere for us to go to ground. Scarlett and Zila head for the marketplace, the bulk of our money in their pockets (or in Scarlett’s case, down her bra) in search of disguises. I’m left with Kal and Tyler, one on either side as I gawp at the crowd around us.

  Many of them are human, and most of them are at least human shaped. There are healthy numbers of Betraskans, mostly dressed in dark colors that match their contact lenses, their skin as white as paper. I realize none of them wear the whole-body frame that Fin does—I’d wondered if they were common among his people, but I guess it’s just him.

  I spot a couple of silver-haired Syldrathi in the distance, but closer are other…aliens, I guess. I see midnight-blue skin and scaly red, I see eyes covered by yellow-lensed goggles and hidden deep in the folds of damp gray faces.

  I stare at a pair in sweeping silk robes that flow like water behind them and at a cluster of figures no higher than my waist, with the heavy build that I guess comes from living in a high-gravity environment. There must be dozens of species I haven’t seen before here, and none of them are paying me a moment’s notice.
/>   “So, where are we going?” I ask.

  Tyler offers me a tired grin. “The place the latest gossip always is. A bar.”

  We head off into the crush, and the crowd grows thicker as we move away from the docks. Kal moves out in front, and the look in his eyes seems to do wonders to protect our personal space. He walks tall, almost prowling, one hand close to his weapon. Most people take one look at the three crossed blades marked on his forehead and give us a wide berth.

  It doesn’t take long for us to locate what I presume is a bar, its facade clustered with glowing lights and strange neon letters. We head in through a narrow door, so low that both the boys have to duck. A faint light glimmers inside the doorframe as we’re scanned, and the air tastes like cinnamon and rubber. We pause inside to let our vision adjust, and I take in the space around us.

  Holy cake, this place is unbelievable.

  It’s kind of like a cross between a sports bar and a Wild West saloon, spread over three rotating, circular levels. Bodies of all shapes and sizes are packed onto barstools and into booths, heads bowed in quiet conversation. There’s five…things? People? Both?…in the corner, playing strange, beautiful music. They have transparent skin and tentacles instead of fingers.

  I clench my jaw so it doesn’t drag on the ground.

  There are tables on the edge of the room, layered in fluorescent yellow. They’re covered in brightly colored stones—round, square, jagged—laid out in intricate patterns that clearly mean something to the players jostling for position around them. I see a blue-skinned woman with a high-domed head, dressed in a tunic that almost seems to be a continuation of her blue skin—it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. She smiles, then delicately nudges a green rock forward with a long stick, pushing another stone aside. A chorus of shouts goes up from the crowd. Delighted or angry, I can’t tell.