Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle #1)(90)

The Trigger shatters, shards of metal spraying across the bridge. A splinter cuts my cheek, another whistles past my throat, the screaming in my ears rising. And there, floating in the air before Aurora, is the diamond that once sat in the sculpture’s chest. It is larger than I first thought—its bulk was mostly hidden, like an iceberg beneath an ocean’s surface. It is glowing now, and its surface is carved with a complicated tracery of spirals.

Aurora beckons and the gemstone floats toward her, coming to rest in the palm of her small hand. As it touches her skin, a projection made of pure light fills the entire bridge. A kaleidoscope of tiny bright pinpricks, billions of them, whorls and spirals and patterns that any cadet at Aurora Academy would recognize.

“That’s the Milky Way!” Cat shouts over the rising screams.

The entirety of our galaxy.

The gemstone shimmers, pulses. And out among that vast collection of glittering star systems, despite the monochrome of the Fold, dozens of suns turn to red. The only splash of color in the black and the white, crimson as human blood. The screaming in the air becomes almost deafening. I feel cold panic in my belly without quite knowing why. I can feel it among my squad mates too, the faint latticework of their minds crackling with instinctual terror. It is a primal sort of fear. The fear of the talaeni as the shadow of the drakkan’s wings fall over its back.

The fear of prey.

I look at the projection, fighting the terror in my chest. I see our galaxy laid out before us, all around us, spiraling around the tremendous black hole that lies at its storm-wracked heart.

An impossible sky, shimmering and pulsing with tiny red dots of illumination.

And I realize what it is we are looking at.

“It is a star map!” I shout over the screaming.

The galaxy begins to move. As if time were flowing forward. Swirling around that gleaming black heart, faster and faster. An endless spiral, billions of stars interacting and coalescing, flaring and dying.

The systems closer to the heart spin faster, overtaking the slower stars on the outskirts, flowing over and through them, the force of their passing sending out ripples through the starlight. A cosmic ballet. Hundreds of thousands of years in the blink of an eye. And the red begins to spread, out from those few illuminated stars, the stain flowing like blood until the whole galaxy is drenched in crimson.

Aurora looks at me. Her white eye flickering with inner light, the blood now pouring down her chin and spattering on the deck beneath her. I feel the Pull roaring in my veins at the sight of her bleeding. The desire to protect her overwhelming all thought and reason. She points at the images on the central display. The GIA agents, their faces dead and overgrown.

“Ra’haam,” she says.

“You are hurting her!” I say, stepping forward.

“Gestalt,” the thing in Aurora replies, pointing at the crimson stain. “Beware. Ra’haaaaaa-a-ammm.”

“Release her!”

I reach out, grab her hand. I feel a cold so fierce it burns. I feel the deck drop away from my feet. I feel the vastness around me, how small I am, one tiny mote of animated carbon and water amid an ocean of infinity.

All that I have lived through. All that I have suffered. The destruction of my homeworld. The collapse of my culture. The mass murder of my people. My mother. My sister. My father. The war without and the Enemy Within.

All of it feels meaningless.

“Alllllll,” Aurora says. “Burrrrrrrn.”

Then she closes her eyes, and collapses into my arms.

“Holy flaming nadsacks, is she all right?” Cat asks.

Zila rushes to Aurora’s side, scanning her vitals with her uniglass. The Longbow has stopped shaking, that awful screaming cut off like someone snuffed a lamp. Tyler and the others are staring at the remnants of the star map as it slowly fades from view, like spots on the back of your eyelids after you look at the sun.

“Heart rate is normal,” Zila reports, and I sigh with relief. “Respiration normal. Everything is normal.”

“Um.” Scarlett raises her hand slowly. “I beg to differ.”

“Seconded,” Fin replies, his eyes wide.

Tyler’s eyes are still fixed on the fading star map. That spreading stain has receded once more, leaving those original star systems still picked out in burning red in the black and white all around us.

He shakes his head, glances at me, then down to the girl in my arms.

“Take her to sickbay. Zila go with him. Make sure Auri’s all right.”

I glance at Zila, but she seems composed again, despite our confrontation. And so I nod, lifting Aurora as gently as a sleeping babe. As we walk off the bridge, down the corridor toward the sickbay, I hear Scarlett’s voice, soft behind me.

“What the hells does this all mean, Ty?”

But the door slides closed before our Alpha can answer.

And I am left inside the silence.





27


    Zila




I stand over Aurora’s unconscious body, a med-scanner in hand. She is laid out on a bio-cot in sickbay, and I am reviewing her vitals. It is almost five minutes since I stunned her—she should be conscious any moment now.

“Is all well?” Kal says softly behind me.

“There is nothing of concern in her readings.”

“… I meant you, Zila.”