Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle #1)(2)

Warning: Suit integrity breach. H20 reservoir compromised.

Uh-oh …

The girl in the cryopod frowns in her sleep like she’s having a bad dream. For a moment, I consider what it’s gonna mean for her if we make it out of this alive.

And then I feel something wet at the base of my skull. Inside my helmet. I twist my head and try to spot the problem, and the wetness sloshes across the back of my neck, surface tension gluing it to my skin. I realize my drinking tube has ruptured. That my hydration tanks are emptying into my helmet. That even if this FoldStorm doesn’t kill me, in about seven minutes, my helmet is gonna fill with water and I’m gonna be the first human I’ve ever heard of to drown in space.

If we make it out of this alive?

“No chance,” I mutter.

?????

“No chance,” the lieutenant says.

Three and half hours earlier, I’m standing in Aurora Academy Flight Control. The flight deck lieutenant’s name is Lexington, and she’s only two years older than me. A couple of months back at the Foundation Day party, she had too much to drink and told me she likes my dimples, so I smile at her as often as possible now.

Hey, if you’ve got ’em, flaunt ’em.

Even at this hour, the docks are busy. From the mezzanine above, I can see a heavy freighter from the Trask sector being unloaded. The huge ship hangs off the station’s shoulder, her hull battered from the billions of kilometers under her belt. Loader drones fly about her in a buzzing metal swarm.

I turn back to the lieutenant. Dial my smile up a notch.

“Just for an hour, Lex,” I plead.

Second Lieutenant Lexington raises one dark eyebrow in response. “Don’t you mean ‘Just for an hour, ma’am’, Cadet Jones?”

Whoops. Too far.

“Yes, ma’am.” I give her my best salute. “Apologies, ma’am.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting some rack time?” she sighs.

“Can’t sleep, ma’am.”

“Fretting on the Draft tomorrow?” She shakes her head, finally smiles. “You’re the highest-ranked Alpha in your year. What’s to worry about?”

“Just nervous energy.” I nod to the rows of Phantoms in Bay 12. The scout ships are sleek. Teardrop shaped. Black as the void outside. “Figured I’d put it to good use and log some time in the Fold.”

Her smile vanishes. “Negative. Cadets aren’t allowed in the Fold without a wingman, Jones.”

“I’ve got a five-star commendation from my flight trainer. And I’m a full-fledged Legionnaire as of tomorrow. I won’t go further than a quarter parsec.”

I lean closer. Push my smile to overdrive.

“Would I lie to you, ma’am?”

And slowly, ever so slowly, I watch her smile reappear.

Thank you, dimples.

Ten minutes later, I’m sitting in a Phantom’s cockpit. The engines heat up and the dock systems load my ship into the launch tube, and with a soundless roar I’m soaring out into the black. Stars glitter outside my blastscreens. The void stretches as wide as forever. Aurora station lights up the dark behind me, swift cruisers and lumbering capital ships moored at its berths or cutting through the dark around it. I shift course, feeling a rush of vertigo as gravity drops away, replaced by the weightlessness outside the station’s skin.

The FoldGate looms in front of me, about five thousand klicks off the station’s bow. Huge. Hexagonal. Its pylons blink green in the darkness. Inside it, I can see a shimmering field, shot through with bright pinpricks of light.

A voice crackles in my headset.

“Phantom 151, this is Aurora Control. You are clear for Fold entry, over.”

“Roger that, Aurora.”

I hit my thrusters, push back hard in my velocity couch as I accelerate. Auto-guidance locks on, the FoldGate flares, brighter than the sun. And without a sound, I plunge into an endless, colorless sky.

A billion stars are waiting to greet me. The Fold opens wide and swallows me whole, and in that moment, I can’t hear the roar of my thrusters or the ping of my navcom. My worries about the Draft or the memories of my dad.

For a brief second, all the Milky Way is silence.

And I can’t hear a thing.

?????

I can’t hear a thing.

The blob of water creeping up the back of my head has reached my ears by the time I get the cryopod unlocked, muting my suit alarms. I shake my head hard, but the liquid just slips around on my skin in the zero grav, a big dollop pooling on my left eye and half blinding me. Doing my very best not to curse, I pop the cryopod’s seals and tear the door open.

The color spectrum here in the Fold is monochrome; everything reduced to shades of black and white. So when the pod lighting switches to a slightly different kind of gray, I’m not sure what color it’s actually turning until …

Red alert. Stasis interrupted. Pod 7173 breached. Red alert.

The monitors flash a warning as I plunge my hands into the viscous gel, wincing as the chill penetrates my suit. I can’t imagine what dragging this girl out prematurely is going to do, but leaving her for the FoldStorm is definitely gonna kill her. And if I don’t get this show on the road, it’s gonna kill me, too.

And yeah, that’s still really gonna suck.

Luckily, the Hadfield’s hull looks like it was breached decades ago, so there’s no atmosphere to leech the remaining heat from this girl’s body. Unfortunately, that means there’s also nothing for her to breathe. But the drugs they pumped into her before they froze her will have slowed her metabolism enough that she can survive a few minutes without oxygen. With my water reserves still leaking into my helmet, I’m more worried about myself in the whole Not Being Able to Breathe department.