Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle #1)(117)

And somehow it’s all right.

“Goodbye, Tyler.”

Because

I

know

he

loves

me

.





35


    Tyler




She’s gone.

We’re in space above Octavia III, floating in orbit. Our flight from the colony in the stolen shuttle is just a blur. Our limping trek up from the planet’s surface in our wounded Longbow is muddier still. The ruins of the Bellerophon and Bianchi’s stealth fleet drift through the black around us, starlight glittering among the wreckage.

I’m sitting on the bridge in my copilot’s chair, looking at the pilot’s seat beside me. Shamrock sits there, shabby green fur and broken stitches, staring back at me with accusing plastic eyes. A single thought is burning in my mind.

I couldn’t save her, and now she’s gone.

Aurora’s star map is projected onto the central display. A holographic rendering of the entire Milky Way, spinning forever around its black hole heart. Out in the spirals of its arms, twenty-two planets are burning red in all that darkness. Twenty-two warning signs. Twenty-two question marks.

Finian and Zila have finished our repairs—the Longbow is Fold-worthy again. I only need to punch in the coordinates to the navcom, give the command, and we’ll be on our way. Except I’m not. I’m sitting there, elbows on my knees, motionless.

The others are gathered around me. Battle-worn and weary. Bruised and bloodied. Silent in our grief.

Seven, now six.

All of them are looking to me.

And I don’t know what to do.

We’re still fugitives. A rogue squad, hunted by the TDF and GIA and probably the rest of the Legion, too. Even if we weren’t kill-on-sight status among Terran personnel, we can’t go back to Aurora Academy—the GIA will almost certainly be waiting for us there. And with all we’ve discovered about Octavia, about the Ra’haam, about those twenty-two planets that this thing is … incubating on, we can’t risk Auri falling into their hands. Not after all we’ve already lost.

We can’t go home again.

“This defeat is a victory.”

We all look at Auri as she speaks. She seems older somehow, this girl out of time. Harder. Something fiercer burning behind her mismatched eyes. She stands small, slender but straight-backed, with Kal by her side. And she’s looking at me, hands balled into fists.

“What?” I say.

“That’s what Cat said to me.” Those eyes of hers shine with grief, her voice trembling at the memory of their final moments together. “One of the last things she said, Tyler. ‘This defeat is a victory.’”

Scarlett shakes her head, her cheeks wet with tears. “How?” She paws at her eyes, smudging mascara across her skin. “How?”

“We know our enemy now,” Auri replies, pointing to the map. “We know where the Ra’haam is sleeping. We know it wants to consume every living thing in the galaxy, until we’re all part of its whole. We know the Eshvaren fought a war against it, a million years ago, and they beat it. We know they suspected it might return, and they left weapons to fight it. We know I’m the trigger for those weapons.” She looks around the bridge at all of us. “And we know we have to stop it.”

“How?” Finian demands. “Every GIA agent we’ve come across is infected by this thing. Who knows how far it’s spread? Sorry to rain on your parade, friends, but your whole Terran government is suspect.”

Aurora’s face pales at the reminder. I can tell she’s thinking of her father—what was left of him—holding out his hand down there on the surface.

Jie-Lin, I need you.

But her eyes harden. She shakes her head.

“The signs of infection on a person’s body are obvious. Colonists infected here on Octavia must have infiltrated the GIA, got the planet interdicted to help keep it hidden. But if they could spread the infection person to person, there wouldn’t be any humans left after two centuries.” She glances at the star map, those pulsing red dots. “I don’t think the Ra’haam is strong enough to spread while it’s sleeping. I think it can only infect people who stumble onto one of these nursery planets. But it’s still mostly dormant. It’s weak. We still have a chance.”

“To do what?” Zila’s voice is quiet. “How do you fight something like this?”

“With the weapons the Eshvaren left us. With me. If we can stop the spawning it talked about, if we can keep these twenty-two planets from spreading the infection through their FoldGates, maybe we can stop this thing once and for all.”

“We’re wanted criminals,” Scarlett points out. “We attacked Terran military ships and broke a Galactic Interdiction. We’re going to be chased by every government in the galaxy. We can’t rely on anyone for help.”

Kal folds his arms. “Then we do it alone.”

“The six of us?” Finian scoffs. “Against the whole galaxy?”

I reach under my shirt for my father’s ring, hanging on the chain around my neck. I feel the metal against my skin, wonder what he’d say if he could see me now. I’m staring at the star map. Thinking about the odds arrayed against us. The impossibility and insanity of it all.