Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle #1)(69)

The bartender shrugs, tops me up, and turns back to their other customers.

This place is a dive, neon-lit and smoky, deep in the low-rent section of the World Ship. The band is loud and abrasive, the floor sticky. It’s the kind of place you end up at three a.m. when you want to brawl or bang. Not sure which way I’m leaning—yet.

Tyler.

I slam back the cheap ethanol in one shot, wince at the chemical burn in the back of my throat. Try to figure out why I’m so mad. Is it really because he’s seriously considering this scam? Or because of who he’s doing it for?

“You must believe, Tyler.”

Tyler’s good at believing. Admiral Adams knew it. They went to chapel together every Saturday. You’d think religion might not have survived in the age of interstellar travel. The notion of faith was all but dead as humanity started reaching out to the stars. But after we discovered first one, then ten, then eventually hundreds of species, it didn’t really escape anyone’s notice that all of them were bipedal. Carbon-based. Oxygen breathers. The odds of that were just too remote to be plausible. Stuff like that doesn’t happen by chance.

So hey presto, say hello to the United Faith.

I touch the Maker’s mark at my collar. That perfect circle etched in silver. Wishing I believed like Tyler did. Because I can’t. Because I won’t. Because even though we’ve been friends since I busted that chair over his head in kindergarten, because even though I followed him to the end of the Milky Way, he didn’t believe in me—in us—the way he believes in her.

“O’Malley,” I growl, nodding to the barkeeper again. They’re about to pour when a gloved hand covers the mouth of my glass.

“Please allow us.”

I turn, wondering if this is my bang for the night. My muscles tense as I realize it’s the exact opposite.

It’s wearing charcoal gray, head to toe to fingertips. Its face is hidden behind a featureless mirrormask, elongated and oval shaped. I can see my dull reflection in the surface. My eyes wide with surprise.

Holy crap, GIA.

I rise from my chair and a second gloved hand clamps down on my shoulder. There’s another behind me, I realize. Sitting with my back to the door in a bar this loud, liquored this hard, they’ve snuck right up on me without me noticing.

Sloppy.

I’ve got no chance here. But my hand wraps around my glass in preparation for my swing anyway. If you gotta fall, fall fighting.

“Please refrain from unnecessary violence, Legionnaire Brannock,” the first agent says, its voice sexless and hollow. “We only wish to speak with you.”

“Everything okay here?” the barkeep asks, those three eyebrows rising again.

I look at the G-men. The pistol bulges beneath their jackets, the distance to the door. Crunching the odds as the music crashes in my ears and the booze thumps in my blood. And slowly, I sit back down in my seat.

“We’re good,” I say.

“Another drink?” the G-man asks.

“If you’re buying.”

“The Larassian semptar,” the GIA agent says. “Three, if you please.”

The barkeep complies, pouring us three bullets in three fresh glasses. The second operative sits on my other side, staring at me in the mirror behind the bar.

Once old three-eyes has shuffled off to serve their other customers, the first agent reaches into its gray suit. Moving slow and deliberate, it places a uniglass on the counter in front of me. Above the device I can see a small holographic projection of a third G-man—the creepy badass dressed all in white who nabbed the others aboard Tyson station. From the instrumentation behind it, I can tell it’s standing on the bridge of a Terran destroyer.

“Good evening, Legionnaire Brannock,” the figure says, its voice expressionless. “We have not been introduced. You may refer to me as Princeps.”

“Charmed, I’m sure.”

I lift my glass to my lips and tip it back slow. Taste smoke and faint sugar and notes of sheer bloody adrenaline on the back of my tongue.

The other two glasses sit in front of the operatives.

Untouched.

“You are a very long way from home, Legionnaire Brannock,” the small holograph says.

“No home like the black,” I reply, smiling around the old Ace saying.

“The insides of the cells at Lunar Penal Colony are not black,” Princeps replies. “They are gray. No sky. No stars. Just gray. Forever.”

“You trying to scare me, G-man?” I hold out my glass to the bartender again with one rock-steady hand. “Because I’m shaking.”

“I know it is difficult to see,” Princeps says as the barkeeper pours. “But there is a way out of this. For you, and your squad.”

“We do not want you,” the one behind me says in my ear, electronic voice crawling on my skin. “We only want Aurora O’Malley.”

“The rest of Squad 312 will be free to leave once she is in our hands.” Princeps nods. “Return to the academy. Your careers. Your friends. Your life. You need not throw away all you have worked for, Legionnaire Brannock.”

I blink hard. Shake my head. “I’m sorry, Princess, could you repeat that? I couldn’t hear you over the sound of all the shits I don’t give.”

I slam back my shot, stand up slow.