Aurora's End (The Aurora Cycle #3)(69)

“Fuck,” I say.

The computer beeps.

“Fuck,” I repeat, louder.

LEAVE MESSAGE?

“FUCK!” I shout, swinging at the air. “Fuck! Fuck! FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”

I sink down to my haunches. Breathe a heavy sigh.

“Yeah, okay,” I admit. “That feels a little better.”

But not much.

Adams is probably slammed, a voice whispers in my head. He’s the joint commander of a spacefaring peace corps, hosting thousands of delegates from hundreds of worlds, trying to keep the galaxy from spiraling into a dozen different wars. It’s the night before the summit. He won’t have time to breathe, let alone answer private comms.

He’s probably not even carrying his uni.

And I see it again. Like a splinter in my mind, digging deeper each time. The image of the academy blowing itself apart from within. The shadow rising beyond. That voice at the edge of hearing, pleading, begging.

… you can—

“Fix this, Tyler,” I snap, wincing in pain. “I know, I know already!”

So this is it.

After all this way. All that risk. I’m at the goal line and can’t even warn my own team about what’s coming.

My squad’s gone, I’ve got no line to station command, I’m shoot-on-sight for Terran and Legion personnel, and the Ra’haam is somehow going to blow this station and everyone in it to pieces.

And there’s nobody to stop it but me.

I slip a fresh supply of rations through the hatch into the detention cell, ignoring Cohen’s roar of protest, de Renn’s vows to rip my spine out through my … well, I won’t go into detail, but it sounds like it’d hurt.

I pull the brim of an Aurora Legion cap low over my eyes and turn up my flight suit collar, whispering a prayer. My pulse pistol is stuffed down the back of my pants, the blade Saedii gave me strapped to my wrist.

The thought that I’m alone here is a stone in my chest.

The knowledge that I’ve trained years for this is iron in my spine.

And the memory of that dream, that shadow rising …

“Get moving, legionnaire.”

? ? ? ? ?

First rule of tactical: Knowledge is power.

I have no idea what the Ra’haam has planned, and there’s any number of ways it might trigger an explosion if it got an agent on the station.

But from that vision repeating in my head, I know the explosion comes from inside Aurora Academy, blossoming out like a burning flower and engulfing all around it.

The Galactic Summit is scheduled to begin 09:00 Station Time tomorrow. It’s 15:57 ST right now, so I’m on the clock in three different ways.

I’ve got forty hours, if all goes well, until maintenance crews find Cohen and Co. stuffed in that detention cell and the alarm is raised.

Worse, I’ve got an unknown number of hours until someone notices Cohen hasn’t reported in to her deck commander. Maybe they’re too busy to notice for a while. Maybe they cut her some slack because she’s usually a high performer. Or maybe that tips them off that something’s up.

But regardless, I’ve got seventeen hours and three minutes until the summit begins. So it’s time to get to work.

If I know anything about politicians, galactic or otherwise, I know the night before they get to work, they’re probably going to the bar.

So, seems I need to get myself a drink.

I bail out of the Longbow loading bay into a crush of foot traffic—a group of dockhands, mech and tech crews, and a handful of legionnaires returned from duty. I make it through the first two security checkpoints without much drama. Rioli’s flight suit is a little snug in the crotch (not to brag), but I look enough like him to flash his ident tag and pass muster with the overworked security teams.

This is kid stuff, though. Once I get though decontamination and on to the metal detectors and biometrics—facial tracking, retinal scans, DNA idents—I’m screwed.

Fortunately, I was best friends with one Catherine “Zero” Brannock.

Cat was so named for her perfect score on the pilot’s classification exam in our final year—the sims never landed a single hit on her. And one of the ways Cat got to be such a gamebreaker behind the stick of a Longbow over our years here at Aurora Academy was stealing flight time.

See, I knew Legion regulations like the back of my hand. But Cat knew the station itself like she knew her own name.

Me, her, and Scar all went to school together for five years on Terra—three snot-nosed TDF military brats. The first day of kindergarten, Cat cracked a chair over my head after I pushed her in the back. I’ve had a nice little scar through my eyebrow to show for it ever since. But when her folks got divorced, her mom got assigned to the Lunar Defense Array, and Cat moved with her. She grew up aboard stations, and she knew them inside out. So when we all turned thirteen and signed up for the Legion, Cat made it her business to get to know this station, too.

She used to sneak down here after hours, doctor herself a fake flight plan, jack one of the older ’Bows, then go get practice time, flying so close to the academy’s hull she wouldn’t be detected by its LADAR sweeps. I used to tell her she was crazy for doing it—she could always practice in a simulation, and if she got caught, they’d expel her for sure.

“It’s one thing to fly a sim,” she used to tell me. “It’s another to dance the black. And when it’s my moves keeping your ass in one piece out there, Jones, you’re gonna thank me.”