Aurora Rising

by Amie Kaufman

  And in the distance, in that stillness, I hear a shuddering, chuddering roar.

  “Son of a biscuit,” O’Malley whispers.

  “Why don’t you just swear like a normal person?” I mutter.

  She smiles then, like I’ve said something funny. Glancing at me with those mismatched eyes. “Sorry, but…do I seem normal to you?”

  Yeah, okay, fair enough…

  Another roar rings through the enclosure. The vibration shakes my belly, sets my teeth on edge. Tyler pulls out his uniglass, punches in a set of commands, throws it hard, back toward the ramp we just came from.

  “What the hells are you doing?” I hiss. “That’s a Legion-issue uniglass! It’s more valuable to us than the Longbow!”

  “Just keep moving,” he whispers.

  He’s out in front, moving sure and steady—he aced his zero-gee orienteering exam, after all. O’Malley follows, careful and quick. I’m guessing maybe she practiced for this sort of thing in her colonist training, because for once, she looks like she knows exactly what she’s doing.

  I can hear earth being torn up, timber breaking, another bellowing roar. Tyler makes a fist, bringing us to a halt. And peering over his shoulder, my stomach turning to solid ice, I see it.

  It’s about the scariest thing I’ve laid eyes on, and again, I’ve seen Dariel in his undies. It looks like the Maker took every monster from under every bed of every child ever born and squished them into one great big über-monster—and then made a creature that’d eat that monster on toast with a glass of OJ and the morning news.

  It’s as big as a house, all teeth and claws, sinewy legs flailing as it scrambles for purchase in the zero gee. It’s got its hands dug into the black earth, and apparently it’s not stupid, because it’s using its front claws to pull itself about. It snuffles the air with a blunt, snotty snout and roars again, spit flying from its mouth, black pupils dilated in five emerald-green eyes. The reptile part of my brain is just screaming at me: Run! Go! Get out! Because there’s apex predators and there’s Apex Predators. And then there’s the Great Ultrasaur of Abraaxis IV.

  “It can smell us,” I whisper.

  “That’s Bianchi’s office.” Tyler points, somehow cool as ice.

  I see the glint of a polarized silicon wall through the undergrowth, a hint of the spotlights and furniture in the office beyond. The wall is perfectly clear, but there’re no seams. No latches. No hinges. Nothing.

  “How we gonna get in there?” I whisper.

  “Faith,” he murmurs with a smile.

  I scowl at the ultrasaur. “Is faith gonna get us past that thing?”

  “Not faith.” Tyler waggles his eyebrows. “Hormones.”

  In the distance, I hear a sound. It’s faint, tinny—about the quality you’d expect coming from a uniglass’s speakers. It sounds like two chainsaws trying to have sex.

  The ultrasaur falls still, perks up, its eyes wide. The sound repeats again—it’s the recording from Finian’s presentation, looped on playback, over and over. I look at Tyler and he grins, and much as I still want to punch him, I can’t help but grin back.

  It’s a bloody mating call.

  “You smug son of a b—”

  The ultrasaur roars, slavering, spitting, bellowing as it scrabbles across the enclosure. It leaves huge gouges through the earth, ripping up trees in its wake as it struggles to get closer to Tyler’s abandoned uniglass. Its teeth are bared, eyes flashing, great clods of shrubbery ripped free as it disappears into the thick foliage.

  “It seems more…annoyed than excited?” O’Malley says.

  “You’d be annoyed too if you thought there was another male in your house, cruising for ladysaurs.” Tyler nods toward the office. “Come on.”

  Ty pushes himself hard off the nearest tree, moving quick now. I dart behind him, O’Malley bringing up the rear, waves of ridiculous tulle floating around her in the zero gee. Ty slows his dive with a handful of thick vines as he draws close to the silicon barrier, catching me as I come sailing in. O’Malley lands beside us, her mismatched eyes alight, seemingly energized at the thought of being so close to the prize. There’s some metal under the earth here—brackets for the wall, I’m guessing, and Ty activates his magboots, heels clomping on the turf.

  “How we getting through this?” I hiss, thumping my fist on the glass.

  “When all else fails, just blast it,” he shrugs.

  He pulls out the disruptor he took from Bianchi’s guards, sets it to Kill, and gives me a nod. I do the same, cranking the power up to max, and we both unload on the glass. There’s a bright flash of light, a searing sound. The shots melt the wall’s surface, leaving a black, charred scorch mark a few centimeters deep.

  Problem is, this sucker is at least half a meter thick.

  “Um,” Tyler says. “Okay.”

  “Um, okay?” I say, incredulous.

  “Is there an echo in here?” Ty asks.

  I hear a small electronic beep from inside O’Malley’s belt.

  “IF I MAY VENTURE AN OPINION—”

  “No, you bloody can’t!” I snap. “Silent mode!”

  We hear a distant roar, the sound of towering trees being torn out of the earth by claws as big as swords. I glance over my shoulder, back to Tyler.

  “Please tell me ‘When all else fails, just blast it’ wasn’t your only play?”

  Tyler blasts the wall again, melting another couple of centimeters. He frowns, blows his mop of hair out of his eyes. “I really thought that’d work….”

  “Great Maker,” I flail. “This from Mr. One Hundred Percent on My Military Tactics Exam?”

  Ty raises his scarred eyebrow. “Cat, I hate to shatter your opinion of me, but this is probably as good a point as any to confess I’ve been pretty much making this up as I go since the Bellerophon.”

  Another roar shakes the foliage.

  “Mothercustard,” O’Malley whispers.

  We turn and see it.

  See it seeing us.

  Its mouth is open, showcasing row upon row of razor-sharp fangs. Its breath is like a blast furnace, its claws are dug deep into the ground, ruptured earth and shredded plant life floating in the zero grav around it. Its five eyes flash with rage, a forked tongue flicking the air as it drags itself closer to us. I look up, see glass above me. Glass behind me. Monster in front of me.

  We’re boned.

  “Cat, break left, take Auri,” Ty whispers, killing his magboots and gently lifting off the ground. “We work our way b—”

  Whatever Ty’s command was going to be, he never gets a chance to finish it. The ultrasaur tenses its muscles and springs, the zero grav letting it sail right at us like a fang torpedo.

  I grab O’Malley’s hand and we kick off the wall, hear the sound of a massive body colliding with the polarized silicon behind me.

  The ultrasaur roars, claws scrabbling on the glass, and I risk a glance over my shoulder. Tyler has kicked off the ground, up to the ceiling high overhead. He hits the roof hard, shoulder crunching into the glass. But he’s moving again, lunging back toward the ground just as the ultrasaur crashes claws-first into the spot he’d been floating a moment before.

  “Tyler!” O’Malley screams.

  I know it probably won’t make a difference, but I crack off a shot with my disruptor anyway, rewarded with a satisfying sizzle as the blast burns a hole in the ultrasaur’s side. The shot doesn’t do any real damage, but it gives Ty a few seconds to gather himself and take another spring, back in the direction of the feeding hatch.

  Except now I’ve got Beastieboy’s attention.

  It roars and lunges at us, and I’m barely fast enough to leap aside, dragging O’Malley with me as I hook my fingers around an outstretched tree branch and shift our momentum. I feel the talons slice through the air behind me, just a b
reath from my back. I kick off the tree, bring us up through a tangle of branches, crack off another shot over my shoulder. I hear Beastieboy roar, smell sizzling flesh, feel O’Malley beside me. Heart hammering. Mouth dry.

  I’m back in the flight simulator. The day we graduated into our streams. Fellow cadets gathered around me. Instructors watching dumbfounded as I weave and roll. Cheers growing louder as the KILL SHOT notifications keep flashing, as I keep firing, the weapons an extension of my fist, the ship an extension of my body, as the final miss tally flashes up on the screen and they cheer my new name.

  ZERO.

  ZERO.

  ZERO.

  Something big hits us from behind, sends us both pinwheeling into the office wall. I realize it’s a tree, that this thing is smart enough to be able to throw. I guess you don’t get to be the last surviving member of your species by being a dunce. I hit hard, O’Malley crashes into me, cracks her head on the glass, leaving a bright smudge of red behind her. I bite my tongue, the breath driven from my lungs in a spray of spit and blood as I lose my grip on my disruptor.

  We bounce off the wall, sail back through the air. We’re spinning out of control. Nothing to hold on to. As I grab at her, I see O’Malley is out cold, eyes rolled up in her skull, tiny globes of blood floating from her split brow. I can see the beast over her shoulder, tensing for another spring. I hear a disruptor fire, Ty shouting.

  But its eyes are locked on me. I’ve pissed it off. You don’t get to be the last surviving member of your species without learning to hold a grudge, either.

  I look at O’Malley again. Her eyes are closed, her jaw slack, brow bleeding. I do the math. Figure we both don’t need to die. So I let her go and kick her away.

  She sails apart from me.

  The ultrasaur springs my way, roaring as it comes.

  Tyler fires again, I see a bright flash.

  The world is moving in slo-mo, I’m spinning weightless as that engine of teeth and claws flings itself right at me. But I find myself smiling. Because I’m flying.

  Here at the end, at least I’m flying.

  And then I hit something hard.

  There’s nothing there, but still I hit it—some invisible force that arrests my flight. Holds me in place.

  The ultrasaur is frozen too, hanging in midair and defying every law of momentum and gravity I know.

  It roars in fury.

  The air vibrates around me, the world goes out of focus. I taste salt in my mouth. I see O’Malley from the corner of my eye. She’s floating on air too, short hair rippling as if the wind were blowing. I can see her right eye is glowing, burning, her arms outstretched, a subsonic hum building like static electricity in the air around me.

  “T-t-ttrig-ggerrrrr,” she says.

  A wave of force rolls out from her, shivering, translucent, spherical. It flattens the undergrowth, crushes the trees, expanding in an ever-widening circle until it hits Beastieboy.

  And Beastieboy just…pops. Like a bug being squashed by some massive, invisible shoe. Its armored skin splits apart and its insides become its outsides and I turn my head and close my eyes so I don’t have to watch the rest.

  The enclosure shakes like it’s in the middle of a planetquake. There’s something soft and spongy under my feet. Opening my eyes, I realize my boots are now touching the floor.

  Maker’s breath, she’s moved me….

  O’Malley sinks down to the earth, arms still outstretched, blood spilling from her nose and floating in the air. Her eye is still burning with that ghostly white light, almost blinding. But I can feel her looking at me. Feel her seeing me.

  “Believe,” she says.

  She convulses once, then her eyes close and she passes out again, slowly curling into a fetal position and floating there like a baby in its mother’s womb.

  “Cat!”

  I turn and see Tyler behind me, shaggy blond hair drifting about his head in the zero gee. He’s clinging to the flattened tree line, spattered in ultrasaur blood. His face is pale, his blue eyes wide. But he’s pointing past me.

  “Look,” he says.

  I turn, look past the curtain of gore to the office wall. And I see that the force of O’Malley’s…well, whatever she just did…hasn’t just flattened the trees, torn the shrubs free, squeezed the Great Ultrasaur of Abraaxis IV like a very large and angry jelly doughnut. It’s also cracked the wall of Bianchi’s office open like an egg.

  She did it.

  We’re in.

  “Told you,” Tyler says.

  I look at him blankly, and he just smiles.

  “Faith.”

  POWERS OF THE MIND

  ▶ HYPOTHETICAL

  ▼ TELEKINESIS

  TELEKINESIS IS THE HYPOTHETICAL ABILITY TO MANIPULATE MATTER WITHOUT THE DIRECT APPLICATION OF FORCE—THAT IS, TO MOVE THINGS WITH THE POWER OF THE MIND.

  WHILE OTHER MENTAL POWERS, INCLUDING TELEPATHY, EMPATHY, AND MILD PRECOGNITION, HAVE BEEN WELL DOCUMENTED ACROSS SEVERAL SPECIES—MOST NOTABLY, SYLDRATHI, ILESARS, AND THE KELINRORI—THERE ARE NO SCIENTIFICALLY VALIDATED INCIDENTS OF TELEKINESIS. NO MATTER WHAT S’REN FROM ACCOUNTING TOLD YOU ABOUT HIS GREAT-UNCLE WAYBO AND THE SPOONS.

  “WE ARE AWARE WORLD SHIP RESIDENTS MAY CURRENTLY BE EXPERIENCING DIFFICULTIES WITH [GRAVITY]. PLEASE REMAIN CALM.”

  The prerecorded announcement spilling over the public address system is met with hundreds of outraged shouts from people already well aware of the problem. I push my way out of the turbolift, sailing into the grand bazaar and a scene of absolute chaos.

  People and goods and everything else float in the air, a tumble of colors and shapes, like confetti at a very angry wedding. As I pull myself to a stop on an access ladder, my gown billows about my waist in ripples of shimmering blue and glittering crystal. I’m feeling glad I decided to wear sensible underwear for once.

  “OUR TECHNICIANS WILL RETURN THE [GRAVITY] SERVICE SHORTLY,” the announcer assures us in a lilting female voice. “WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.”

  The announcement cycles through a dozen different languages, only four of which I can speak. The reaction from the residents is universal outrage. The savvier folks in the bazaar are wearing magboots like me—but that doesn’t do much for their wares, their livestock, their belongings.

  I keep to the edge of the bazaar, pushing myself along the wall, engaging my magboots only when I need to. It’s quicker to fly, and time is something we’re apparently way shorter on than we planned.

  “Kal, Zila, can you hear me?”

  “Affirmative, Legionnaire Jones,” Zila responds.

  “What’s your position?”

  “Almost at Dariel’s flat. ETA, forty-two seconds.”

  I reach the edge of the bazaar and consult the schematic on my uniglass, shaking my head. “Crap, I’m at least five minutes away.”

  “We cannot wait for you,” I hear Kal declare.

  “Three guns are better than two, Punchy.”

  “The World Ship’s technicians will have the secondary gravity generators online at any moment. If Finian and Dariel are compromised, your presence in a close-quarters battle will not outweigh the cost of delay.”

  I kick through a doorway, sail into another turbolift.

  “Are you saying I’m no good in a fight?”

  “I am saying this is no time for diplomacy,” Kal responds.

  “Listen here, you pointy-eared, prettyboy jer—”

  “We have arrived. I am going in.”

  I curse, hit the turbolift control, engage my boots as the thrust pushes me down. I hear a crashing noise over my uni comms channel, the sound of weapons fire. My heart is racing now, stomach in knots as I kick out of the lift and into the hab sector. I hear a scream over comms, disruptor blasts.

  “Kal?” I shout. “Zila, report!�
��

  More shouting, wet thuds, another scream. I hear Kal swearing in Syldrathi, and though his tone is ice-cold, I realize he’s far more creative at cursing than I thought.

  “Tiir’na si maat tellanai!” (Father of many ugly and stupid children!)

  “Kii’ne dō all’iavesh ishi!” (Stain on the undergarments of the universe!)

  “Aam’na delnii!” (Friend of livestock!)

  And with a sizzling crack of disruptor fire, my comms channel dies.

  “Kal?”

  I kick off a wall, gliding past two bewildered-looking boys crawling out of a storage cupboard, stripped down to their underwear. One of them is wearing an Uncle Enzo’s cap.

  “Zila, can you hear me?”

  I make the stairwell, engaging my magboots as I kick my way upward. My pulse is really hammering now, sweat in my eyes as I disentangle myself from this ridiculous dress, bustle it up and stab another channel on my uni.

  “Ty, I think Kal and Zila are in trouble, I—”

  I fall silent as I make it up to Dariel’s floor. There, waiting for me in the corridor is a figure in a drab gray suit. Featureless gray helmet. Looking over its shoulder into the den, I see Finian hunched in his chair, pale pink blood leaking from a split in his brow. I see bodies floating in the zero gee, the walls charred with weapons fire.

  The GIA operative stows a disruptor in its jacket.

  “LEGIONNAIRE JONES,” it says. “SO NICE OF YOU TO JOIN US.”

  THINGS TO MAKE YOU BLUSH

  ▶ CURSE WORDS

  ▼ BEST OF

  THE RANKING OF CURSE WORDS, FROM THE BLASPHEMOUS TO THOSE INVOLVING BODILY FUNCTIONS, WILL ALWAYS BE A MATTER OF SUBJECTIVE JUDGMENT. THAT SAID, IT IS WIDELY ACCEPTED THAT SOME OF THE MOST EFFECTIVE AND OUTRAGEOUS ARE: