Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(126)

I wonder if there’s any chance we’re going to live to find out who it was.

“I am alive,” she declares.

“What h-hit us?” I demand.

“A stray railgun round, I believe.” She shakes her head, a stream of blood dripping from the split in her brow as she stabs at her controls. “Perhaps a fast-moving chunk of debris.”

“Damage report?” I cough, looking around the smoking cockpit.

“Engaging secondary guidance systems and auxiliary power. Control should be back online momentarily.” Her fingers dance on her consoles. “But the power coil is critically damaged. Engines are offline.”

The Weapon pulses again, the brightest it’s ever been. The impact hasn’t knocked us too far off course—we’re still staring down the barrel of those massive crystalline lenses. Still right in its firing line. But we’ve got no momentum.

We’re dead in the water.

Looking into the Weapon, I can see a collision of rainbow-colored energy coalescing like the eye of a storm. I know space is a vacuum, that sound doesn’t travel through it, but I swear, I swear I can hear a sound. Building slowly. Rushing past the edge of hearing now. Louder and louder.

And all of us know it.

“It’s going to fire,” Zila says, just a tremor in her voice.

“We’re not going to make it,” I whisper.

“Yes, we are,” Finian growls, dragging on a breather mask.

I raise an eyebrow. “Fin?”

“Engines offline sounds like a job for the best Gearhead in the whole damn Aurora Legion, if you ask me.”

“You can fix it?”

“One way to find out.” He flicks his wrist, and a multi-tool extends from the arm of his exosuit. All the fear I heard in his voice before has totally evaporated, replaced by his razor grin. “And let’s be honest, it’s been way too long since I did something incredibly dashing and heroic.”

“I’m coming with you,” I say, dragging off my harness.

“Be careful,” Zila tells us. “Be quick.”

Finian grabs my hand, slams open the cockpit door.

I drag the breather over my face.

And we run.





41

THREE ONE TWO


Aurora

Kal crumples to the ground, the familiar violet and gold of his mind overwhelmed by the dark, dried blood of his father’s. It’s only as darkness descends over him completely that I realize he was still touching my mind, right up to the last second, the lightest of connections.

One he couldn’t give up.

One I never completely burned away.

Deception and devotion. I sensed them both in him.

Only one is for you, he said.

The Waywalkers scream above me, their voices rising in a discordant wail.

And as his father leaves Kal lying there like he’s nothing, turning back toward me, I remember something else Kal told me.

Love is purpose, be’shmai.

Love is what drives us to great deeds, and greater sacrifices.

Without love, what is left?


Tyler

The Fold is on fire. Flames burning in black and white.

TDF fighter ships swarm through the dark, explosions lighting the night around me. The wreck of a Syldrathi Banshee hangs off the Kusanagi’s bow, lifeless and black. Another one is drifting, leaking fuel vapor and thin wisps of fire, spinning away in a slow spiral from the ongoing battle.

But the other two Banshees are cutting the Kusanagi to bits.

The tactics nerd in me is totally enthralled by the battle, but honestly, I’ve got bigger things to worry about than the free-for-all going on around me. Bigger things, even, than the war probably raging around Earth right now.

Problem is, these TDF escape pods are basically missiles, made to fly away from the ship you just ejected from as fast as their little engines will boost them. The Fold around me is full of debris—junked fighters, massive tumbling chunks of Banshee, arcs of burning plasma. And while this pod might look like a fish and move like a fish, it steers a lot like a cow.

I wrestle the controls, speaking into comms as I blast farther away from the slaughter.

“Saedii, this is Tyler, over?”


Finian

I grab wildly at the handrail, nearly falling down the companionway in my rush to reach the engines. Everything’s built just fractionally too big for me—those tall Syldrathi bastards.

I yelp as my foot slips off the step, and Scarlett grabs me from behind, somehow holding me by one arm until I regain my balance. I don’t waste breath on thanks—we make a barely controlled descent to the hallway and break into a run.

A part of me is aware I’m running to try and get my own death back on track, and that’s not something I ever saw coming.

But Scarlett hasn’t let go of my hand now that we’re on level ground. And that’s not nothing.

The engine room door is sealed, and I stretch out one hand for the touch panel—then yank it back at the last second, horrified at what I nearly did.

The warning light beside the panel is flashing red.

I lift up on my toes (tall bastards) and take a look through the viewport.

Oh.

“What’s happening in there?” Scarlett demands.

When I don’t answer, she shoulders me aside. And even though she’s not our strongest mechanical talent, Scar knows what stole my words away the second she sees it. Inside the engine room, gas and fluids are venting into space.