Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(117)

He throws up his hands, his power rolling in the space between us. The Weapon trembles as I force him back, his boots skidding across the crystal. As the power rages around us again, cascading over us in waves of blue and red, the beautiful, powerful man before me takes an unwilling step back. I push outward, crashing into him with everything I have, and he staggers with a grunt of effort. His elegance is crumbling, his poise is fading, and he leans forward like a man battling the wind, those silver braids whipping out behind him. Midnight blue swirls around me in a growing storm, thundering as I harden my voice.

“You’ve corrupted the gift we’ve been given, Caersan. You’ve chosen years of power for yourself, trapped in a dying galaxy, over millennia of life for hundreds of species.”

My power crashes into him as I summon everything I have. The force of me, the power inside me, pure and unhindered, hits him like a tidal wave. He flails, torn off his feet, and sails back into the wall, smashing into the crystal with a thunderous crack. I strike him again, again, again, as a tiny line of purple blood spills from his nose and down over his lip. My midnight blue begins to consume the old blood it battles, surrounding it, silver twisting over gold. And finally, he collapses to the deck.

“One life isn’t too much to pay,” I tell him.

I take another step toward him, bathed in glittering midnight.

“Nor are two, Starslayer.”

He looks up at me then, braids draped around his face, and I see the pride and hatred crackling in his gaze. I feel his power swell, and I force myself to focus, to keep my hold on him firm. Kal steps forward in the storm, shouting over the roar.

“Aurora!”

But I ignore him, my eyes fixed on his father.

“I can feel it,” I tell him. “What you lost when you fired it.”

Caersan closes his fists, the air crackling. “What they took from me.”

“And once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.”

“Yes.”

I smile at that. “Which means you’re less than you were, Starslayer.”

I reach deep inside myself, ready to finish it.

“Less than me.”

“Perhaps,” he whispers. “But you are failing to account for one thing.”

There’s a sudden flicker in his presence that I don’t like, that makes me wary.

“And what’s that?”

“That I am not alone.”

His power flares, like a sun rising over the horizon, and the crystal in the walls around us responds, lighting up from within.

That’s when I see them, no longer hidden in the shadows, but lit from behind by blood-red light. Row upon row of Syldrathi, hundreds of them, are pinned against the walls of the chamber above me by some invisible force. Their eyes stare at nothing, their hands stretched out to either side.

“Mothercustard,” I breathe.

The glyfs at their brows tell me they’re Waywalkers. All of them. And a shudder goes through me as I suddenly realize why the Unbroken have been hunting them across the galaxy.

Every Waywalker cries out, fingers flexing, face contorted. The sudden flow of their power into Caersan is like being caught by a wave, tumbled end over end until there’s nothing to do but hold your breath, lungs bursting, fighting to last a second longer, praying to whoever’s listening for air.

His eyes—so like his son’s—lock onto mine as he speaks again.

“I am a warrior born. I carved my name in blood among the stars while you slumbered in your crib. I am Warbreed. I am Unbroken. I am an eater of worlds and slayer of suns. I am not less than I was before, child. I am more.”

He stands slowly, arms outstretched. The power around him doubles, triples, a psychic tempest of blood-red and glittering gold. The chamber around us, the whole Weapon, trembles, the screams of those Waywalkers filling my mind.

And I realize with creeping horror that he’s been holding himself back.

“You have given me your best, little Terran,” he says.

Slowly, the Starslayer curls his hands into fists.

“Now I will give you mine.”





36

TYLER

It’s called a gremlin.

In the Terran war-propaganda posters I studied for conflict history in fourth year, gremlins were depicted as tiny, malicious humanoids with pointed ears and claws. But they were basically a way for pilots to keep up morale. Equipment failures got blamed on gremlins, so pilots got to avoid pointing the finger at the flight crews they depended on to keep them alive, and the war got won.

Nowadays, gremlin is a nickname for any number of portable counter-electronic devices—signal killers, network jammers, or, in the case of the miracle I’ve just discovered in my boot heel, electromagnetic-pulse generators.

How could they know?

I glance up at Saedii, who appears to be ignoring me for the benefit of the camera above our cell door. But she’s caught a glimpse of the gremlin in my heel, and sharp as she is, she knows exactly what it can do for our predicament.

The ones who left that for you, she continues. How could they know?

I have no clue, I admit.

How did the Terran marines not discover it? Surely they scanned you?

The heel looks shielded. Whoever put this here knew I’d need to hide it.

How? Saedii demands. How is this possible?

Doesn’t matter. We need to get out of here. I don’t know where we’re headed, but there’s literally no place the Ra’haam can have chosen that will be good news for us. And the Unbroken and TDF are probably tearing each other to pieces by now.