Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle #1)(20)

Scarlett grins. “It does seem a shameful misappropriation of Legion resources.”

My eyes are still locked on Tyler’s.

“I could’ve had any squad I wanted, you know that, right?”

“And I love you for sticking with me, you know that, right?” he replies.

Hmm.

There’s that word.

I pretend not to hear it, reach into my flight jacket and pull out Shamrock instead, propping him beside my displays. His fur is soft and green, and stuffing is leaking from a split in his stitching. I should get around to fixing him. …

“What’s that supposed to be?” Finian asks.

“It’s a dragon,” I reply. “Present from my mum. He’s for luck.”

“It’s a stuffed toy, how is it supp—”

“Shut up, Finian.”

“… Okay, are you hitting on me? It feels like you might be hitting on me.”

“I’ll be hitting on your face in a minute, you fu—”

“Legionnaire de Seel, can it,” Tyler says smoothly. “Again, Legionnaire Brannock, preflight check is complete. Pretty please with sugar on top, would you be so kind as to take us out now, thank you.”

I glance at Ty and he raises that scarred eyebrow and his lips curl in that infuriating lady-killer smile, and dammit, I realize mine are doing the same.

“I’ll be your best friend?” he offers.

And just like that, my smile falls away. I exchange a glance with Scar, then turn to the console and stab in my commands. Our Longbow purrs like a new kitten and the vibration of her engines shakes us in our seats, and for a moment it’s easy to forget the impulse to punch those dimples right off Ty’s face.

My arse, this is what we signed up for.

I tap my throat mic. “Aurora Control, this is Squad 312, requesting permission to launch, over.”

“Permission granted, 312. Good hunting, over.”

I glance over my console to the members of my squad.

“Right, hold on to your undies, kids.”

Our thrusters fire, pushing us back hard into our seats. The walls of the launch tube rush past us and the beautiful black opens up in front of us, glittering with tiny pinpricks of white. And all of a sudden, it doesn’t matter that I’m on this jank mission with this jank squad, doing a job a trained gremp could do. Because I’m home.

Sailing out from Aurora’s arms, I look into my aft-view monitors. They show another dozen Longbows, silver and arrowhead-shaped, rocketing through the dark. I can see the academy in all her glory; a city port of smooth domes and twinkling lights and impossible shapes, floating on nothing at all. The g-force from our thrust keeps the weightlessness away, but I can feel it anyway, just outside our Longbow’s skin.

The big empty.

The place where I’m the best at what I do.

“Squad 312, gate beacon has you locked. You are clear for Fold entry.”

“Roger that, Aurora. Pour me a shot, I’ll be back for last call.”

My fingers flit over the controls, guiding us toward the huge, hexagonal shape floating off the academy’s shoulder. I can see the Fold waiting inside the gate’s flashing pylons—that beautiful swathe of black, punctured by a billion tiny stars. Speeding toward it, I’m lost in the moment. Feeling the ship beneath me, around me, inside me. Slicing the empty like a knife.

“Course programmed,” Tyler reports. “Feeding to navcomp.”

His voice brings me back to reality. I remember who we are.

Where we’re going.

Where we’ve been.

“I’ll be your best friend?”

We push past the gate’s horizon and into the colorless sea of the Fold. The ship shudders as the impossibility of distance becomes meaningless.

The colorscape around us shifts to black-and-white. Signal beacons light up my scopes—thousands of FoldGates blinking out there in the brightness. Like a room full of hexagonal doors, with a new sun behind every one. A 3-D map flickers to life on the central console above our stations. Tiny readouts, scrolling data, a small red pulse indicating our current position.

“Horizon’s clear,” I report. “No FoldStorm activity. Should be smooth sailing to Juno. Navcom is estimating … six hours, twenty-three minutes.”

“Roger that. Walk in the park.”

Tyler unbuckles his safety harness and stands, stowing his flight jacket behind the copilot seat. His tank top sleeve isn’t long enough to cover the tattoo of the academy’s Alpha Division on the swell of his right bicep. Along with my full sleeves of dragons and butterflies, and the hawk across my back and the phoenix across my throat (yes, it bloody hurt), I have a similar tat to Ty’s.

Mine is the Pilot Division sigil, of course. But we got them in the same place. Same time.

I find myself thinking about the night I convinced Tyler to get inked with me. Shore leave on Cohen IV. The last time I ever saw him have a drink. The pain of the fresh design on our arms and the liquor in our veins and the thrill of graduating into our final year crackling in the air. Just you and me, Tyler. Staring at each other across that barroom table and all those empty glasses.

“Best friends forever, right?”

The colors around us are monochrome, because that’s just how it goes inside the Fold. Tyler’s once-blue irises have turned to gray, and he’s staring at the main viewscreen with a totally weird expression.