Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle #1)(101)

“Enough, Finian. Even if there were chimps here, that was two centuries ago, and …” Tyler trails off, no doubt thinking the same thing as the rest of us. Patrice Radke and her fine, ferny friend were here two centuries ago as well. Didn’t seem to stop them from roaming the galaxy.

Maker’s bits …

“Weapons,” says Kal simply, and when we continue, everyone’s holding one.

I don’t hear the rustle-rustle again.

Aurora leads us on through the spiny fronds, the suffocated trees, thick pollen falling around us like sticky blue rain. Our biosuits are soon covered with it, and we have to be careful about the fronds, too—the suits are tough, but not indestructible. It’s a couple of hours and several battles with the undergrowth later that we crest a hill, and find Butler colony in the valley before us.

Or at least, the ruins of Butler colony. Every building is wreathed in that green-blue foliage, crawling with creepers, every squared-off shape and hard angle softened by the plants surrounding it. The vines crawl over the concrete and steel, the spores tumble through the sky, swirling in faintly luminous showers.

It’s kinda beautiful. Until I remember my dream of this same blue pollen falling on the surface of my homeworld. I picture Auri’s star map. The red spreading out from those marked stars like a bloodstain.

And then, my heart’s thudding in my chest again.

It takes me several limping steps to realize Auri has stopped at the top of the hill. I see tears rolling down her cheeks as she gazes down at the colony, and with her faceplate in the way, there’s nothing she can do to stop them. I stay where I am, but Scarlett leaves my side and treks up to her.

“If the Hadfield had made it, I’d be down there,” Auri says quietly, but her voice carries. There’s no competition, nothing to drown it out.

“But you’re here,” Scarlett says gently. “And you’re with us. I didn’t know your family, but I think they’d have been glad to know you found a squad to be a part of.”

Aurora sniffs, deep and inelegant. “My dad left my mom when she got scrubbed from the Octavia mission. In a way, she and my sister had already lost him. But when the Hadfield disappeared, they would have felt like they’d lost both of us.” She shakes her head. “And I just … I can never help them. I can never go back and tell them I was okay.”

She sniffs again, her voice quavering.

“The last time I spoke to my dad before I left Earth … we were fighting. I said things I didn’t mean. And they were the last things he ever heard me say. You don’t think about that when it’s happening. You think family’s always going to be there.”

Everyone’s quiet, the breeze stirring up the falling pollen and slowly rippling across the strange plants all around us, setting them softly shivering.

I have no idea how to reply. My family numbers in the hundreds, so the concept of alone is just … impossible. Though I’ve felt isolated many times, often singled out and often separate, I’ve never been alone like Aurora is now.

“I think,” says Zila slowly, and I brace for incoming tactlessness, “that if your sister and mother were given a choice between you being dead or believing you were dead and never knowing they were wrong, they would choose the latter. If my family could be alive, but the price would be my ignorance, I would pay it.”

And what is there to say to that?

Miraculously, Aurora offers Zila a small, watery smile.

Our girl out of time isn’t just grieving for her family, she’s grieving for herself—none of us knows what she is anymore, even as we follow the trail she’s laying down for us. But she must wish for some hint of normality. And we all know what that’s like.

It feels … companionable as the seven of us set off again, the strangest group of misfits that ever trekked across an abandoned alien planet beset with creeptastic plants and besieged by military forces. But it’s probably another twenty minutes’ hike to the colony, and my stomach feels like it’s full of greasy ice and everyone is quiet as the grave. It’s clearly time to lighten the mood.

“So,” I say. “About these chints—”

“Chimps,” Tyler says, long-suffering already.

“Whatever. You still have any of those?”

“They’re extinct,” Cat says. “Just like you’re about to be.”

“Very funny, Zero. Anyway, are you sure you’re not making them up? They sound ridiculous. I mean, hairy dirtchildren who fly spaceships and have almost identical DNA to you lot?” I scoff. “I don’t think they exist.”

And that’s when a snarling, furry pitch-black humanoid thing with jagged yellow teeth that would put an ultrasaur to shame comes screaming out of the undergrowth and straight for my face.





31


    Auri




Fin crashes to the ground, the biggest chimpanzee I’ve ever seen in my life landing straight on top of him. Thick greenery blooms from its eyes, its back is covered in a tangle of beautiful flowers, and when it opens its mouth to snarl its defiance at him, I see reddish-green leaves all the way down its throat.

Terror surges through me as it brings both hands down against his faceplate once, twice, sending his head bouncing back against the earth. Kal already has his rifle trained on it, but as if it knows, the thing grabs at Fin’s shoulders and rolls the pair of them, throwing him around like a rag doll and using him as a shield.