Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle #1)(35)

This was my vision. The cuffs, the pain, and the same words screamed over and over in a voice so hoarse I could barely recognize it as my own.

“I don’t know. Please, I don’t know.”

It’s only when two helmets tilt to look down at me that I realize I’m already whispering my reply. I’m already pleading, and they haven’t even asked me the first of their impossible questions yet.

“Ms. O’Malley,” one says quietly, voice perfectly even, perfectly neutral, cold as the vacuum outside the thin walls of this ship. “Believe us when we say we’d prefer to do this the easy way.”





12


    Tyler




“Well, isn’t this cozy.”

I glance up at Finian. He’s leaning against the burnished steel wall, black eyes fixed on me. His exosuit gleams silver in the light of the fluorescents overhead, humming softly as he reaches down to the water cooler beside him.

“The decor’s a little sparse for a meeting room, though,” he continues, sipping from a disposable cup and looking around. “I know you Terrans aren’t the most stylish race in the Milky Way, but I swear this looks more like a holding cell.”

“Oh, do go on,” Scarlett says, leaning forward on our bench and batting her eyelashes. “Honestly, I could just listen to you bitch and moan all day, Finian.”

Finian takes a bench and sighs. “I’m too old for this crap.”

Zila tilts her head. “You are barely nineteen, Legionnaire de Seel.”

“Yeah. And I’m too old for this crap.”

“Knock it off,” I growl. “All of you.”

We’re in a square room, five meters a side, benches running along the walls. Scarlett’s sitting beside me, Zila opposite, Kal as far as he can be from all of us and pouting like a goldfish. Everyone’s on edge after almost getting flatlined by those Unbroken, and I’ve gotta keep a lid on it. But the thing of it is, I’m close to the edge myself. Finian’s right. When they hustled us aboard the Bellerophon, a dozen troopers escorted us to a room to “await debriefing.” But with the locked door and the blank walls, the box they’ve tossed us in does look an awful lot like a detention room.

I can feel the destroyer’s engines thrumming through the seat beneath me, the massive ship plunging through the black, back toward the FoldGate. I’m trying not to remember the way Auri looked at me as they dragged her away, one white eye and one brown, both fixed on me like I was her last hope.

“Please, Tyler. Don’t let them take me.”

Poor kid. Everyone knows staying too long in the Fold is bad for your brain, but I’ve never heard of exposure changing someone’s eye color before. Whatever’s happening to her, I didn’t quite realize how bad she’d got it.

I hope they can help her somehow.

Maker knows I couldn’t. …

“Get your bloody hands off me, you gremp-fondling sack of—”

The door hisses open, and a couple of TDF goons in full tac armor shove my Ace into the room, swearing all the way. Our escort told us she’d be brought to join us once she and the Longbow docked, and it doesn’t look like it was an easy ride. Cat’s red-faced, her fauxhawk mussed. She has her stuffed dragon, Shamrock, stowed inside her flight jacket, and she’s looking about as mad as I’ve ever seen her. As she steps up to the bigger trooper, he slaps the door control and seals her in with the rest of us. Her boot leaves a scuff on the plasteel as she kicks it, shouting at the top of her voice.

“Yeah, you better run, you gutless prick!”

“Cat?” Scar asks, rising to her feet. “You okay?”

“Do I look okay?” she snaps. “No, I look ready to kick the crap out of the next”—another kick hits the door—“TDF goonbag who pops up on my scopes!”

“Cat,” I say, standing up. “Take a breath.”

“They flatlined them, Tyler!” she shouts, whirling on me.

I blink. “What? Who?”

“The refugees!” Cat snaps, arm flailing at the door. “Taneth and the rest! As soon as I docked in the Longbow, the TDF obliterated the entire station. It’s gone!”

Finian’s voice is a whisper. “Great Maker …”

I blink again, trying to make sense of what Cat is saying. Scarlett sinks back down to the bench, her face pale.

All eyes turn to Kal.

Out Tank’s traditional Syldrathi cool doesn’t shatter, but the line of his jaw is tense as steel as he stands and prowls across the room. He braces his hands against the wall, hangs his head, muttering beneath his breath. I don’t speak Syldrathi half as well as Scar, but I know the words he’s using are curses.

“Kal?” Scar asks quietly. “Are you okay?”

I can see the anger in his eyes as he turns on her. I can see the struggle inside him. But his voice is as empty and cold as the vacuum outside.

“A hundred of my people,” he says. “A hundred songs now silenced. A hundred lives and thousands of years, lost to the Void. Not content to let us be butchered by our own kin, now Earth joins the Unbroken in our slaughter?”

“I’m sure there’s some explanation,” Scarlett says.

“They were Waywalkers,” Kal says, stepping closer to my sister. “Sages and scholars. What explanation is there for that?”