Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(32)
From what Ty said, these tugs are mostly engine, made to haul much bigger vessels across space or into starports. They don’t look too scary, but the convoy is also accompanied by a small fleet of heavily armed cruisers. I can see them on the display—wedges of gleaming silver, moving in the predictable flight patterns of pilots who’re bored out of their minds. Nobody here is expecting to get robbed. The ships they’re hauling are all broken-down pieces of junk, after all.
And, speak of the devil, out on the fringes of the convoy, there she is.
The Hadfield is huge, battleship-shaped, her hull blackened and torn. The last time I saw her, this ship was considered state of the art. She was the biggest Ark-class vessel Earth had ever made. She carried ten thousand colonists and the hopes of an entire planet. And now all of them are dead except for me.
For the thousandth time, I wonder why I was the one to survive. Why, of all those innocent people, the Eshvaren picked me to be their Trigger. Looking at the derelict floating out there in all that black, I feel a shiver run down my spine, something whispering in the back of my—
“Aurora?”
I blink, realize Zila is looking at me expectantly. “Huh?”
“Lean down, please.”
I do as I’m told, then bend forward so she can ease my helmet on.
Ty transmits from the bridge. “All right, we’re almost good to go here. The tac-comp and I have been analyzing their security flight pattern, and there’s a gap in their sweep every thirty-seven minutes.”
“We are still twenty-five hours from the convoy’s destination at Picard VI.” Zila snaps the latches into place, her voice suddenly muffled in real life, but crystal clear over my comms system. “Their security should not be on particularly high alert.”
“Agreed—most of them are flying on autopilot,” Tyler says. “But nobody take that as an invitation to dawdle. Get in, get what we came for, and get out. Anything else is a bonus.”
By “anything else,” he means anything I can contribute. Fin is boarding the Hadfield to download the contents of the black box. Kal is there for our protection. And I’m there in case I see anything that reminds me of … well, anything, really. Whatever happened to me, or how. Given we’re not even sure what we’re searching for, we’ll take whatever clues we can get. But I hope that finding out what the Hadfield’s systems remember about the moment I was … transformed … will at least set us on the next steps of our path.
“The Zero has stealth mode engaged,” Tyler continues. “And her cloaking tech is top-shelf, so we’re not going to show on any of their scopes. But these people still have eyes to spot us. So make sure you don’t draw any attention to yourselves.”
His sister’s voice chimes in. “We’ll be in position in ninety seconds.”
On our displays, I’m watching a tiny red dot that represents us, sidling up to the convoy through the gap in the security patrol’s flight paths. I watch us weave in and out of the fleet under Tyler’s expert hand, and my stomach is about to crawl right out of my mouth. Zila is checking Kal’s helmet seals now, up on her toes to reach.
“You will have sixty seconds to reach the Hadfield before the security fleets adjust formation and the gap closes,” she says.
“Just don’t look down, Stowaway,” Fin grins.
Zila backs out of the airlock, closes the door. “Good luck.”
We’re sealed inside now, only one more door between us and space. My palms are damp. I can feel a cold trickle of sweat running down my spine.
“Opening outer door in ten seconds,” Zila reports over comms. “Secure positions. Grip the wall restraints in case of sudden movement.”
I push both my hands through the straps, anchoring myself firmly, even though there’s no real reason I should fall out of the ship and into the endless vacuum. Still, I’m not about to pass up any safety precautions right now. I mean, I trained to travel through it, sure. But there’s a big difference between being loaded into a cryopod and shot through space, and actually, you know, walking in it.
The outer door slides open, and son of a biscuit, that is Space right there.
It’s really big.
I mean, obviously it’s really big; it’s literally famous for being really big. And yet somehow, this is different from seeing it through a viewport or monitor.
This is the first time I’ve understood that I could float through space forever.
Kal is beside me, resting one gloved hand on my arm. His gaze is calm, his voice gentle. “All will be well, be’shmai. Finian and I will assist you.”
It turns out Fin equaled Ty’s perfect score on his zero-grav orienteering exam—apparently the outcome of years spent sleeping in it. He nods sagely. “I’ll be right there, Stowaway. These superhero good looks aren’t just for show.” He shoots me a grin, then crouches over the launcher, all business. “Time check, please, Scar.”
“Fifteen seconds,” she reports. “Ten, nine, eight …”
Up on the bridge, Tyler adjusts his controls, and the endless view of space is replaced by the port side of the Hadfield, a stretch of pitted metal filling our view through the open hatch. According to the displays, we’re now flying in perfect parallel with the derelict: same speed, same heading, maybe fifty meters apart.