Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(125)

I can see her.

“Cat?” I whisper.

“Yes,” she breathes.

“You can … hear me?”

“Yes,” she whispers. “It’s me, Ty. It’s me.”

I thought she was gone. I thought I’d never have another chance to speak to her. To tell her everything I should have told her when she was alive. I know nobody gets a second chance like this. I know I should tell her how I felt about her, how I’d do things differently if I could, how I always loved her and always will. I know she’d want to hear it. I know she’d want to know. And my stomach is a knot and my pulse is hammering and I can’t deny what my heart is telling me. She is in there. Looking out at me with those strange new eyes.

But in the end, that just makes it worse.

“I’m sorry I failed you, Cat.”

Because she is in there.

“All I can do is promise not to fail you again.”

But she’s not in there alone.

And I raise the disruptor rifle in my arms. And I see her face twist, and I get a sense of something vast, something ancient, something awful behind the glow of her eyes. And I pull the trigger, spending the last of the rifle’s power, and the shot strikes the thing that’s Cat and the thing that isn’t, sending it sailing back in a spray of gray blood. And then I’m up and moving, running across the corridor and diving through the escape pod hatch. Slamming it shut on its screams.

“Tyler!”

I’m sorry.

“TYLER, DON’T GO!”

I’m so sorry.

And I slap on my safety harness.

And I hit the Eject button.

And I blast out into the burning Fold.





40

SCARLETT

Zila flies like a demon, but she’s no Cat Brannock.

Everything around us is chaos. Ships of every shape and size, little one-man fighters all the way up to the biggest that TerraFleet and Betraskan battle command can throw. The whole solar system seems on fire. But crazy as it sounds, I find myself thinking of my bestie. My roomie. My girl. If Cat were behind the stick of this junker, she could’ve made it dance. There’s not a pilot alive who could touch her.

But now she’s gone.

Tyler too. And Kal. And Auri.

Fin, Zila, and me are the last ones together.

Three of seven.

The engines are howling, pushed into the redline as we tear across the black toward the Weapon. Zila had to swing out wide, finally throwing off the two TDF fighters on our tail, weaving through a burning storm of bullets and missiles and I don’t know what else. Her fingers blurred as she calculated our trajectory, aiming us toward one of the thinner support pillars holding those massive crystal lenses in place. We’re flying right into its face now. One last doomed charge to save our world.

And maybe the entire galaxy.

“Forty-five seconds to impact,” Zila reports.

Honestly, I have no idea if this has any chance of working. I have no idea if we’re doing the right thing. But the medallion around my neck glints as I look down at it, red alert lights playing on the diamond surface as the alarms around me scream.

Go with Plan B.

I was never a believer. Never bought into the idea of the Maker, or the United Faith. Ty and I used to fight about it all the time—how silly it seemed to me, how obvious it seemed to him. But in the end, he believed hard enough for the both of us. And I don’t know exactly how we’re going to pull this off, but Aurora Command told us we were on the right path.

Know that we believe in you. And you must believe in each other. We the Legion. We the light. Burning bright against the night.

And as we charge toward our deaths, I find myself looking around at the last few members of Aurora Legion Squad 312. And I realize it’s like Tyler says.

Sometimes you just gotta have faith.

“Thirty seconds,” Zila says.

I swallow hard. Heart thumping in my chest.

“You okay?” Finian asks softly.

I look at him beside me, the Weapon looming larger in front of us every second. I can tell he’s scared. I know what he wants to hear. That this is the right thing to do. That I’m sure. That even though I’m only eighteen years old and I still had my whole life ahead of me, it’s okay. Because this is for something bigger than we are. This is for something greater.

But that’s bullshit.

I’m scared to death.

“No,” I tell him.

I reach out and take his hand.

“But I’m glad you’re with me, Fin.”

And then it hits us. A missile. A pulse blast. I’ve got no idea. But we’re rocked hard, the impact like a fully loaded freighter, smashing me back into my chair and forward into my harness. Stars burst in my eyes. The displays in front of me spew sparks and die, alarms roaring, fire suppressors firing, filling the cockpit with chemical fog. I can taste blood in my mouth, my head is ringing, my— “Scar, are you okay?” Fin shouts, unbuckling his harness.

“I’m … o-okay … ,” I manage.

He kneels at my side, checks me over. “Zila?”

Our pilot straightens behind her flickering, spitting control panels, dragging a thick curtain of black curls out of her face. For the first time, I realize she’s wearing the earrings that were waiting for her in that Dominion Repository vault. The little hawk charms someone left for her, knowing she’s never without her golden hoops.