Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(31)

“Hey, you,” Auri says, smiling at Kal.

“Hey,” I say, sounding like a chirpy idiot. “Bad dreams for you too?”

“I don’t know what woke me up,” Scarlett admits. “I was just …”

“… uneasy,” Kal finishes.

I wonder about that uneasiness. I know Kal’s mother was an empath, and if his sister inherited some of her gift, maybe he did too? Maybe he picked up on Auri’s bad dream. Doesn’t really explain why Scarlett can’t sleep, though …

The silence stretches, Auri letting talk of her dream recede like it’s in the rearview mirror, Kal and Scarlett reaching for a better reason they drifted out here.

Well, this is about as cheery as a tri-soul departure ceremony.

“All right,” I say. “I got another half hour before I go off watch. Since nobody’s sleeping, what say we teach Stowaway here how to play frennet?”

“I am familiar with the game, but not the rules,” Kal replies.

I reflect for a moment that no Betraskan at Aurora Academy would ever have considered socializing with Kal, let alone teaching him how to play a game—not with his Warbreed sigil tattooed right there on his forehead.

“No problem,” I tell him. “Howsabout I give you and Auri a lesson, and we put some of those shiny new credits to use?”

Scar gives me a wink that says she knows I’m on cheer-up duty, and she approves, and I work hard to make sure I don’t give her a big, dumb smile back.

I know the three of them would take over my watch if I asked so I could get to work on my suit, but half an hour of this feels more important. After our strategy talk earlier, we all know there’s hard times ahead. I figure there’s no harm in making a little light for ourselves, here in the dark.

“I’ll go get drinks,” Scar says. “Fin, why don’t you pull up the program?”

“Okay,” I say, swiping through the ship’s submenus to find a decent frennet program, and pulling up a 3-D screen to project on the console. “So in the first round, there are seventeen dice in play.”

“Seventeen?” Auri splutters.

“Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you.”

A small line appears between Kal’s brows, a sign of great concern.

“No mercy, Finian,” he says. “We learn by losing.”

“I never said I was gonna go easy on you, Pixieboy,” I grin, assigning the player tokens. “You, my pointy-eared friend, are about to learn a great deal.”

“Mmm.” His violet eyes sparkle at the joke. “We shall see.”

“You know, if you don’t wanna risk any of that newfound wealth, there’s another version we can play. Strip frennet.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah,” I grin. “Everyone bets a piece of clothing per pot, and the loser has to take it off. Makes things more interesting.”

I admit I feel a perverse sense of delight as Kal’s eyes slip involuntarily to Aurora, and I see a flush of heat spreading across her freckled cheeks.

“I do not think that is appropriate,” Kal says.

“Hey, I didn’t know Syldrathi blushed with their ears.”

“I am not blushing,” Kal glowers.

Scar returns with the drinks tray balanced on one hand and flicks my ear as she passes. “Stop being a bastard, Finian.”

“But I’m so good at it!”

Scarlett grins and shakes her head, and her smile makes me smile harder in return. We get down to it, and in the end, Kal isn’t the only one who ends up learning a great deal. I learn that Auri starts snorting when she giggles too hard. I learn that Kal has a deep, booming laugh you can feel in your chest. I learn that Scarlett cannot be bluffed, no matter how hard you try. And I learn that maybe I don’t suck at Peopling as much as I suspected.

We stay up past my watch. We play way longer than we should.

But hey, nobody’s thinking about bad dreams anymore.





8

AURI

I don’t know how well the others slept in the Fold—my dreams were disjointed and weird—but I’m still better rested than I was before. The aches of Saedii’s agonizer are fading, though I’m guessing I won’t be invited to her place for the holidays anytime soon. It was strange to wake up while we travel this way. Everything on the ship was cast in black and white by the Fold, and it felt like I was still dreaming.

But now I’m in the Zero’s airlock, busy suiting up with Fin and Kal while Zila diligently checks our spacesuits. My gloves click into place, and she takes my hands in hers, turning them over to confirm the seal. Zila pins my hair back from my face—my own hands are too unwieldy in my gloves. I guess I should have thought of that in advance. I’ve had a short lecture from Tyler, and a half hour’s practice in the low gravity available in Finian’s room, which is all anyone ever needed for a space walk, right?

That’s right. I’m about to walk.

In.

Space.

The Jones twins are up front in the pilot’s and copilot’s chairs, guiding us ever closer to the Hephaestus salvage convoy, the Hadfield, and the black box inside. I can see a display of it from the long-range cams on our hull, and it’s like . . . well, it’s like something out of a science-fiction movie. The convoy is huge—hundreds of ships, all in various states of disrepair, from “mildly beat-up” to “let’s hope it has a good personality.” The shapes and sizes are mind-boggling: sleek and beautiful or bulky but functional or holy cake what. Each ship is being hauled by a much smaller tug, marked with the burning cogwheel of Hephaestus Incorporated.