by Amie Kaufman
“The Trigger.” I nod to the statue in her hands. “Does it tell you anything?”
She simply shakes her head.
“We all just risked our tail sections for that little thingamajig,” Cat growls. “You’re telling me it was for nothing?”
“I don’t know. It feels…right. It’s supposed to be here with me. But I don’t know how to use it.” Aurora shakes her head, looks up at Tyler. “Listen, why don’t we just go to Octavia III and check the planet out? If these colonists—”
“We can’t,” Cat interrupts. “Interdiction, remember?”
“CORRECT,” comes a digital voice from Aurora’s belt. “THE PLANET HAS BEEN OFF-LIMITS BY ORDER OF THE TERRAN GOVERNMENT FOR SEVERAL HUNDRED YEARS.”
“Well, does anyone know why?” Aurora demands.
The device beeps. “ACCORDING TO RECORDS, EXPLORATORY PROBES DISCOVERED AN AGGRESSIVE PATHOGEN IN THE ATMOSPHERE OF OCTAVIA III. GALACTIC INTERDICTION WAS INVOKED TO STOP THE VIRUS GETTING OFF-WORLD.”
“But it looks like it already has!” Aurora says, pointing to the screen.
“We should definitely report this to the authorities,” Scarlett says.
I nod to the GIA corpses up on the screen. “These people are your authorities.”
“Well, whatever we do,” Cat says, “we can’t just charge off to bloody Octavia. The penalties for breaching Interdiction are scary bad.”
“SHE MEANS THEY KILL YOU,” the device offers. “LIKE, REALLY PAINFULLY.”
“Yes, thank you, Magellan,” Aurora sighs.
“HEY, NO PROBLEM,” he replies. “I ONLY MENTION IT BECAUSE YOU’RE SOMETIMES NOT THE BRIGHTEST SPARK IN TH—”
“Silent mode,” she says.
Aurora hangs her head, staring at the Trigger in her hands. I can see the struggle in her. She wants to know the truth about what became of her loved ones. The colony that supposedly never existed. But at the same time, she knows what this squad has already risked for her. The danger she’s brought among us. And it seems she’s unwilling to ask us to risk our lives for her again.
“Auri, do you remember the fight outside Bianchi’s office?” Tyler asks. “What you did to the ultrasaur?”
“No,” she whispers.
I feel the fear in her swell. I do not wish to accuse her of lying, but I suspect what she says is untrue. That perhaps part of her does remember. It’s just that the rest of her does not wish to.
“Maybe this…power you have has something to do with the Trigger?” Tyler offers. “Can you try to—”
A soft alert sounds through the bridge, a series of warning lights flashing on the displays. Cat turns to her controls, and Tyler jumps behind his own station, his fingers flowing swiftly over the console.
“Something just pinged us with LADAR,” Cat reports. “Got a reading…. Behind us, heading seven sixty A-12 gamma four.”
“Main display,” Tyler says.
Cat complies, pulling up visual of the craft that has tripped our proximity alarms. I feel the mood drop around the bridge as the image flickers to life.
I have lived among Terrans for two years now, but I still have difficulty processing how singularly ugly their ships are. Syldrathi vessels are moments of beauty frozen in titanium and time. They are our songs to the Void they sail inside—graceful patterns and gentle curves and smooth, shimmering skin.
The destroyer chasing us is crude by comparison, with a flat snout and all the blunt elegance of an object made purely for function. The Terran Defense Force logo is emblazoned on its dark hull. Its name painted in white.
“Bellerophon,” Tyler says.
“We knew they were en route to the World Ship,” Cat shrugs. “Looks like they finally caught up.” Her voice is casual, her bluff as good as ever, but she knows what we all know. Princeps is aboard. The first among equals who pursues Aurora with such perfect single-mindedness.
“Hey, at least we can report to the authorities now…,” Fin says.
Our Alpha’s voice is tense as he speaks.
“Cat, can we outrun them?”
Our Ace shakes her head. “They’ll catch us over a long enough distance. A Longbow is slower than a destroyer, and they’ve got a lot more fuel. And not to harp on it, but we don’t actually have a bloody heading. I’m just flying in a straight line here and trying to make it look fancy.”
Scarlett nods, folding her arms. “And if we stay in the Fold too long without cryo, we’re all going to start losing it.”
“We need a course,” Cat agrees.
All eyes turn to Aurora. She’s looking at the Trigger in her hands, turning it this way and that, like a puzzle.
“I…” She shakes her head. “I don’t know—”
BAMF!
The flash from a disruptor lights the bridge up white. Aurora is slapped backward by the blast, the Trigger rolling from her fingers onto the deck. In the space of a heartbeat, I am on my feet, overcome with sudden and impossible fury. Zila is standing in front of Aurora, weapon in hand, peering at the girl with unreadable eyes.
“Yeah, she really likes that thing,” Fin says.
“Zila, are you insane?” Scarlett demands.
“I am testing a—”
Zila gets no further. I lash out with an Aen strike to her shoulder, numbing her arm and sending her weapon clattering to the floor.
Stop it.
But the Enemy Within is loose now. The sight of Aurora unconscious on the floor finally sets the beast free from his cage, howling in dark delight. The killing song fills my veins as I reach toward the fallen pistol. My pulse is screaming. My vision razor sharp. My finger closing on the trigger as I raise the weapon to Zila’s head.
Stop. It.
Something hits me from behind, knocking the disruptor away. I roll to my feet, lashing out at my enemy, feeling my knuckles hit bone. I hear my father in my head then. Urging me on. I feel his hand on my shoulder, guiding my strike into Tyler’s throat. I sense him laughing as my Alpha grunts, as his blood sprays and he staggers back, breathless. Cat hits me from my flank, but I twist free, blood on my knuckles, hands rising, heart hammering.
Stop.
The Enemy is all I am at that moment. The Pull setting him free. Even here in the Fold, my vision is red. I cannot breathe. Cannot think except to know that Aurora is hurt, she is unsafe, she who is my all, my everything, my—
“KAL, STOP IT!” Scarlett cries.
Stop.
It.
I close my eyes. Fighting with all I have. The Enemy is so strong. The Pull is so deep. So very loud. They would be hard enough to resist alone, but together, they are stronger than the forces that hold my cells together, that bind the universe into one. It is like nothing I have known. I cannot explain. Cannot rationalize it.
But I must master it.
There is no love in violence.
There is. No love. In violence.
And so, slowly, I open my eyes.
The bridge is in disarray. Tyler is rising from where he fell, blood on his chin. Cat is on the floor, holding her ribs. Zila is pressed back against the wall, staring at the chaos with wide eyes and sucking on one tight black curl of hair.
“It was set to Stun,” she whispers.
“And we were all getting along so well, too,” Fin smirks.
I am at Aurora’s side. Everything I have tried to hide is now bubbling to the surface. The walls of ice that guard my feelings utterly shattered. My heart is thundering against my ribs.
She has been knocked unconscious by Zila’s disruptor blast, her head lolling against the velocity couch, eyes closed as if sleeping.
But she is well, I realize.
All is well.
“Is everyone okay?” Tyler asks, his voice rasping from my blow to his throat.
Slow nods in res
ponse.
“Kal, you told me you had a handle on this!” he says, glaring at me.
“I am sorry,” I say. I am aghast at what I have done. To have lost myself so completely. “I…I did not mean…I did not know the weapon was set to incapacitate. And seeing Aurora in danger…”
I shake my head. Trying to find the words. But how can I describe what it is to fly to those who have never even seen the sky?
“I am sorry,” I say again, looking at Zila. “De’sai. I am shamed.”
“Legionnaire Madran, explain yourself,” Tyler demands, turning on the girl.
Zila blinks, takes a moment to focus. “It occurred to me that Aurora has mostly manifested hidden gifts when asleep or unconscious. I thought—”
“You thought shooting her without warning would be a good idea?”
“It was a calculated risk, sir,” Zila says. “If I warned Aurora, the probability of a calamitous defensive reaction increased dramatically.”
My squadmates exchange looks, unsure who poses the greatest threat to them—Zila or myself. It may be inexcusable, but at least I have a reason for the violence of my reaction. Zila…It is as though she simply does not fit here. As if she is fundamentally incapable of understanding what is done and what should not be.
Tyler closes his eyes, rubs his temples.
“Zila, you’re the smartest person on this ship,” he says. “You might be one of the smartest people in the whole Legion. Do you know what your problem is?”
“I…would be happy to hear your feedback, sir,” she replies.
“Your problem is that you know how everything works except other people.”
She blinks at that.
I think I see tears gleaming in her eyes.
“I am—”
Cat curses and scrambles back as Aurora stands bolt upright. Her muscles are tense, her whole body rigid as steel. Her eyes are open, her right iris burning white. Her hair is blowing as if in a breeze, a faint nimbus of dark light tracing her body. This close to her, I can feel current crackling off her skin. Taste sodium on my tongue. Feel a force thrumming in the air and in my chest.
“Well, well.” Finian raises one pale eyebrow at Zila. “You called it.”
“…Aurora?” I ask.
She stretches out her arms, rising slowly off the floor.
“Nnnu-u-uuh,” she says.
“Auri, can you hear me?” Tyler asks, stepping forward.
The static pulses. I can feel the hair on my scalp rising. The Longbow is shaking, the power flickering, a faint screaming building in the air. Aurora turns those burning, mismatched eyes on Tyler, the light about her shimmering black.
Scarlett approaches slowly, apparently fearless, hands raised before her.
“Who are you?”
The ship trembles around us, the screaming grows louder and the light flares darker as Aurora struggles to speak.
“N-nnnotwho,” she replies. “Whatn-nnnotwhonotw-w-whoWHAT.”
“All right, what are you?” Scarlett asks.
“Eshvarennnnnn-n-nn,” she replies.
My pulse quickens at the word. The name of the Ancient Ones, extinguished hundreds of millennia ago. The first of us to find the Fold. The first of us to walk the stars. I look to Finian in triumph, watching the skepticism melt from his black eyes. Aurora tilts her head, and my heart lurches sideways as blood begins to spill from her nose and dribble down her chin.
“What do you want?” Tyler demands, steadying himself as the ship shudders.
Aurora makes no reply. Turning to the cabin around her, she spies the Trigger, lying where it rolled beneath the main console. She reaches toward it and the statue trembles in reply, rising up from the floor seemingly of its own accord. Her eyes narrow, and she curls her fingers into a fist. Cracks appear on the Trigger’s surface, the sound of splintering metal echoing in the air.
I step forward, hand outstretched. We all risked our lives to attain that sculpture, we all—
“No!”
The Trigger shatters, shards of metal spraying across the bridge. A splinter cuts my cheek, another whistles past my throat, the screaming in my ears rising. And there, floating in the air before Aurora, is the diamond that once sat in the sculpture’s chest. It is larger than I first thought—its bulk was mostly hidden, like an iceberg beneath an ocean’s surface. It is glowing now, and its surface is carved with a complicated tracery of spirals.
Aurora beckons and the gemstone floats toward her, coming to rest in the palm of her small hand. As it touches her skin, a projection made of pure light fills the entire bridge. A kaleidoscope of tiny bright pinpricks, billions of them, whorls and spirals and patterns that any cadet at Aurora Academy would recognize.
“That’s the Milky Way!” Cat shouts over the rising screams.
The entirety of our galaxy.
The gemstone shimmers, pulses. And out among that vast collection of glittering star systems, despite the monochrome of the Fold, dozens of suns turn to red. The only splash of color in the black and the white, crimson as human blood. The screaming in the air becomes almost deafening. I feel cold panic in my belly without quite knowing why. I can feel it among my squadmates too, the faint latticework of their minds crackling with instinctual terror. It is a primal sort of fear. The fear of the talaeni as the shadow of the drakkan’s wings falls over its back.
The fear of prey.
I look at the projection, fighting the terror in my chest. I see our galaxy laid out before us, all around us, spiraling around the tremendous black hole that lies at its storm-wracked heart.
An impossible sky, shimmering and pulsing with tiny red dots of illumination.
And I realize what it is we are looking at.
“It is a star map!” I shout over the screaming.
The galaxy begins to move. As if time were flowing forward. Swirling around that gleaming black heart, faster and faster. An endless spiral, billions of stars interacting and coalescing, flaring and dying.
The systems closer to the heart spin faster, overtaking the slower stars on the outskirts, flowing over and through them, the force of their passing sending out ripples into the starlight. A cosmic ballet. Hundreds of thousands of years in the blink of an eye. And the red begins to creep out from those few illuminated stars, the stain spreading like blood until the whole galaxy is drenched in crimson.
Aurora looks at me. Her white eye flickering with inner light, the blood now pouring down her chin and spattering on the deck beneath her. I feel the Pull roaring in my veins at the sight of her bleeding. The desire to protect her overwhelming all thought and reason. She points at the images on the central display. The GIA agents, their faces dead and overgrown.
“Ra’haam,” she says.
“You are hurting her!” I say, stepping forward.
“Gestalt,” the thing in Aurora replies, pointing at the crimson stain. “Beware. Ra’haaaaaa-a-ammm.”
“Release her!”
I reach out, grab her hand. I feel a cold so fierce it burns. I feel the deck drop away from my feet. I feel the vastness around me, how small I am, one tiny mote of animated carbon and water amid an ocean of infinity.
All that I have lived through. All that I have suffered. The destruction of my homeworld. The collapse of my culture. The mass murder of my people. My mother. My sister. My father. The war without and the Enemy Within.
All of it feels meaningless.
“Alllllll,” Aurora says. “Burrrrrrrn.”
Then she closes her eyes and collapses into my arms.
“Holy flaming nadsacks, is she all right?” Cat asks.
Zila rushes to Aurora’s side, scanning her vitals with her uniglass. The Longbow has stopped shaking, that awful screaming cut off like someone snuffed out a lamp. Tyler and the others are staring at the remnants of the sta
r map as it slowly fades from view, like spots on the back of your eyelids after you look at the sun.
“Heart rate is normal,” Zila reports, and I sigh with relief. “Respiration normal. Everything is normal.”
“Um.” Scarlett raises her hand slowly. “I beg to differ.”
“Seconded,” Fin replies, his eyes wide.
Tyler’s eyes are still fixed on the fading star map. That spreading stain has receded once more, leaving those original star systems still picked out in burning red in the black and white all around us.
He shakes his head, glances at me, then down to the girl in my arms.
“Take her to sickbay. Zila, go with him. Make sure Auri’s all right.”
I glance at Zila, but she seems composed again, despite our confrontation. And so I nod, lifting Aurora as gently as a sleeping babe. As we walk off the bridge and down the corridor toward the sickbay, I hear Scarlett’s voice, soft behind me.
“What the hells does this all mean, Ty?”
But the door slides closed before our Alpha can answer.
And I am left inside the silence.
I stand over Aurora’s unconscious body, a med-scanner in hand. She is laid out on a bio-cot in sickbay, and I am reviewing her vitals. It is almost five minutes since I stunned her—she should be conscious any moment now.
“Is all well?” Kal says softly behind me.
“There is nothing of concern in her readings.”
“…I meant you, Zila.”
My arm is still moderately numb from his nerve-strike, but there is no pain. I can only see concern in his eyes as I glance back at him. But that concern melts into relief as Aurora slowly stirs, raising one hand to her brow and moaning. I am forgotten as Kal takes a step forward, lips parted slightly, eyes on her.
“Wh-what hit me?” Aurora whispers.
“I will leave you alone,” I hear myself say.
“Zila…,” Kal says as I turn toward the door. “I truly am sorry. I sought only to take the weapon from you.”
