Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(98)

“This is the place,” Auri says, her voice like steel. “Where they made the probe. Where they made the Weapon. I can … see them. Feel them.” Her brow creases, and she presses her fingers to her temple. “Their echoes. Their voices.”

She looks at Kal, reaches for his hand.

“I know where we need to go.”

Kal nods, eyes glittering. “I would follow you to the end of all things, be’shmai.”

The rest of us look tired, wired, halfway between shabby and comatose. As usual, Kaliis Idraban Gilwraeth doesn’t have a single silver hair out of place on his head. But there’s something different about him, too.

Something I can’t quite put my finger on.

“What happened in the Echo?” I ask, looking between them.

“Was your training successful?” Zila says. “Can you wield the Weapon?”

Auri looks out on the dead world below us. I can feel fire in her. A heat, burning like a sun. But also … uncertainty?

She looks at Kal. Squares her jaw, curls her fists.

“Let’s just find it first.”

· · · · ·

We touch down seventeen minutes later, after a frictionless decent into the atmo-free skies above the Eshvaren world. Zila politely suggested she be allowed to take the controls—well, as polite as Zila gets anyway. After my time at the stick, having somebody who knows what they’re doing flying us was a welcome relief.

There are no oceans on this world anymore, no continents, but we touch down somewhere near its south pole. Zila brings us in for a perfect landing: a gentle thump and a soft navcom ping are the only indicators that we’ve landed at all.

“You’re just showing off now,” I smile.

“Yes. But do not fall in love with me, Scarlett. I will only break your heart.”

I laugh and throw her a wink. “I’m too tall for you, remember?”

Her lips curve in a small smile, and she tucks one dark curl behind her ear. I notice that her stare lingers on me even though she’d usually look away.

Interesting …

Soon we’re gathered in the docking bay, gearing up. The Zero is equipped with enough enviro-suits for the whole squad. They’re bulky, ugly, scandalously drab—fitted for us personally and neatly stored in lockers marked with our names. Zila’s assisting Fin with pulling his over his exosuit. Auri and Kal are helping each other change with the casual ease of people who are absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent sleeping with each other now.

Lucky girl.

Of course, my musings on the extracurricular activities of Mr. Perfect Hair and Little Miss Trigger are brought to a crashing halt at the sight of Tyler’s locker. One glance at his name stenciled on the metal is enough to make my stomach drop and roll inside me. Despite where we are, the scope of all we’re doing, I find myself worried sick again. I know we’re saving the damn galaxy here, that we’re doing exactly what he’d order us to do. But he’s my twin brother, and I’m still wondering, hoping, praying he’s okay.

Fin seems to pick up on it, sliding a little closer, trying to ease the tension.

“Good thing these suits are heavy-duty,” he jokes, nodding at the spectrograph beside the bay door. “Definitely not bikini weather out there.”

“Shame.” I smile weakly in response. “I look amazing in a two-piece.”

“Hey, what a coincidence, me too.”

But it’s not his strongest effort, and as he speaks, he glances at Tyler’s locker. Swallows hard.

“He’s gonna be okay, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I sigh.

“Seriously,” Fin says, looking around to the others for backup. “After we’re done here, we’ll get him back, Scar.”

Kal bows, which is Syldrathi for a nod. “I vow it on my honor.”

“No question,” Auri agrees, steel in her voice.

“I know this is difficult, Scarlett,” Kal continues, looking at me intently with those picture-pretty eyes. “But we are on the right path here. Of all people, Tyler Jones would understand that.”

I buck up a bit, stand a little taller. Buoyed by these people around me, these squaddies who’ve become my friends, friends who’ve become my family.

I sniff and nod, drag my helmet down into place. “I know he would.”

Fin pats me a little awkwardly on the shoulder.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s go find this damn shooter.”

We load ourselves into the airlock, and soon enough we’re stepping out onto the freezing surface of the Eshvaren planet. I glance at Aurora, remembering the last time we did this, on Octavia III. She was a nervous wreck back then, struggling to come to grips with who she was. But now she takes the lead, marching across the crumbling rock. The landscape is gray and lifeless. The arctic wind is blowing at hundreds of kilometers an hour, but the atmo is so thin, it’s barely a breeze.

Even the air in this place is dead.

Kal and Zila carry disruptor rifles, me and Fin walking with hands on our pistols. There’s no real sense of danger here as we follow Auri. Nothing close to the strange, otherworldly hostility we met on Octavia III. I’m struck by it then, how unfair that is—that the Ra’haam got to go on, and the race that gave everything to cut them away ended like this. I feel sad. Small. Cold despite my suit.