Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle #1)(25)

The female glares at me with cold violet eyes. She replies in our own tongue. “Your voice, my hands, First Taneth.”

Tyler Jones looks at me with one eyebrow raised in question. I bow in reply, assuring him all will be well. The rest of my squad accompanies the Waywalkers into an elevator that looks older than Taneth, and twice as decrepit.

“You kids play nice, now.” Finan de Seel smiles.

The elevator rises slowly to the upper levels, clunking as it goes. It shudders to a brief stop for no apparent reason, and our Gearhead thumps the control panel to get it moving again. Finally, my squad disappears from sight.

I find myself alone with the female.

She is tall, willowy. Her skin is tanned, her hair silver, tied back from her brow and spilling in gleaming waves over her shoulders. Now that we are out of sight of the Terrans, she allows her disdain for me to show more openly, curling her lip, hatred glittering in her eyes. I know she is scanning me telepathically—my mother was also of the Waywalker Cabal, and she taught me the signs. I can feel the gentle press of Aedra’s mind on my own as she skims my surface thoughts.

I glance down to the hand on her psi-blade, see the glyf encircling her forefinger. She seems young to have answered the Pull. And yet, from the single teardrop inside the circle, I know her lifelove has already returned to the Void.

“May the spirits guide him home,” I offer.

She moves. Swift as a sunbeam. An arc of energy springs from her psi-blade’s hilt; mauve, crackling, reflected in her eyes as she raises it to my throat.

Something surges inside me as she brandishes her weapon.

The call in my blood.

The Enemy Within.

But I push him back. Forcing myself to be calm.

“You may have deceived those childlings you call your comrades,” she growls, “but I see your soul. You are born to brutality. Drenched in the blood of our homeworld. You and all your wretched kin.”

I know this song. Every Syldrathi cadet at the academy sang it. Every Syldrathi I have met since our star was burned to ashes. The glyf at my brow tells them who I am before ever I have a chance to speak. But I speak anyway, hoping the tune will be different this time.

“The Unbroken are no kin to me,” I say. “The Starslayer betrayed us all when he destroyed our homeworld. I bleed as badly as you.”

“Not yet, Warbreed,” she spits. “But speak to me again, and you shall.”

I look into her eyes, fighting the urge to meet rage with more rage. To succumb to what I was raised to be. The call is so strong, the anger so real, it feels like a flame in my chest. Threatening to burn me alive. Screaming for release.

Instead, I bow slowly, my palms upturned. Slower still, she lowers her blade. And turning to the Longbow’s airlock behind me, I clomp inside, busying myself with unloading our medical supplies.

I do not blame her for hating me.

I try to speak every time.

But the song is always the same.

?????

“Kal, this is Tyler, do you read?”

The voice crackles from my uniglass as I step back into the cargo bay for the fifty-third time, placing the med container on the loading ramp with a thud. The containers are large, almost too heavy for me to carry. The work would pass twice as swiftly if Aedra would deign to help me, but she simply follows as I work, one hand on her psi-blade’s hilt, eyes on me at all times.

“I read, sir.”

“How’s it going down there?”

I glance at Aedra, who is studying the wall and trying to appear as though she is not listening to my every word. Her lip curls to hear me call a Terran “sir.”

“Slowly,” I reply.

“Well, take your time, we’re gonna be a while. Zila is getting life support back up to speed. Finian and Cat are checking defenses.”

Cat Brannock scoffs on her channel. “Such as they are.”

“It’s not exactly state of the art down here,” Finian de Seel agrees. “Their missile grid has been cobbled together from the skiffs they flew here in, so the good news is they probably couldn’t have shot us down even if they wanted to. But that’s also the bad news. Short-range scanners should be back online any second, though.”

“I will be finished unloading the supplies within the hour,” I say.

“Roger that,” my Alpha replies. “Anything you need in the meantime, sing out.”

“I would like to ask a question, sir.”

Scarlett Jones pipes in. “Is it the one about where babies come from?”

“No.”

“Someone’s going to have to explain it to you sooner or later, spunky. …”

I suppose she is trying to be funny.

“Since Syldra’s destruction, there are millions of Syldrathi refugees scattered over the galaxy. All of them in need. All without home or succor.”

“I’m not hearing a question, Legionnaire,” Tyler Jones says.

“Of all the places they could send us, why would Legion Command choose here? A derelict station in a nowhere system, with only a hundred people aboard?”

I can tell from the silence over the feed that my comrades were all asking themselves the same question. We may be the dregs of Aurora Academy. Most of us are in this squad because nobody else would have us. But it seems we are being punished for something we haven’t done yet.