Aurora's End (The Aurora Cycle #3)(95)

“Esh!” I shout.

The Echo. The Weapon itself. This p-personification of us … all are linked. As it is damaged, so t-too are we. We cannot h-help you.

Another tremor passes through the ground. Lightning cracks the shattered sky above. I can feel them out there, bleeding in slow motion, one by one falling under those impossible numbers. I’m not sure what Esh even means, but every second we spend speaking, my defenders are dying.

I look around the Echo, to Esh itself. Mind racing.

“If this place and the Weapon are linked …”

I reach toward the closest object, lying in a hundred rose-colored pieces on the grass. I can feel the remnants of the energies in this place. See the way it used to be in my mind’s eye, all those months I spent in here with Kal, clear as glass. And as my eye begins to glow, I pull the pieces together, reforming it in the palm of my hand.

A single, perfect flower.

In answer, outside beyond the Echo, I feel a tiny crack in the Weapon’s hull stitch itself closed.

Yes, Esh nods. You s-see.

I close my eyes, slow my breathing, slow my mind, taking in my surroundings—real and virtual—and attuning myself to both. I can still sense the others beyond—quick brushes of Kal’s familiar mind, of Tyler’s, even, and of Lae’s. I can taste their fear and courage, their grief as their friends fall, their fury at the thing taking them away. And above and around it all, I can feel the creeping unnaturalness of the Ra’haam.

It wants me… .

I trained as a cartographer for the Octavia mission for years. And walking here in the Echo every day with Kal, I couldn’t help learning the shape of this place. I draw that memory close, remembering what this place was.

The way it can be again.

But it’s so big, to hold it all inside my head… .

Hard as I try, I can’t… .

“I can’t,” I hiss, trembling hand outstretched.

You must.

I reach out both hands, face twisting as I try to hold it all.

“We’re running out of time, help me!”

But Esh only shakes its head.

“I can’t do this alone!”


Kal

We are failing.

The Ra’haam has pushed us back, Tyler’s crew falling one by one as we give ground. The crystalline floors are awash with blood, the stink of death hangs in the air, and the enemy simply keeps coming.

“Lae, fall back!” Tyler roars, blasting from behind cover.

She dances among those awful figures, null blade aglow, cutting down a flower-eyed monstrosity lunging for Dacca’s back.

“Back where?” she shouts.

She speaks truth—we can retreat no farther. Behind us is the entrance to the throne room. If the enemy reaches my father and Aurora, all hope will be—

A shot hits my legs, thick and viscous. It is like … glue, pinning my leg to the floor. Another strikes my belly, and I fall, covered in more of this sticky ooze. I realize I cannot move, stuck like an insect in amber, and horror unfurls as I understand the Ra’haam does not wish to kill us—it wishes to subdue us, drag us into its awful singularity.

“Kal,” Tyler roars, “look out!”

I slice at the hands grasping at me, scream a denial in my mind, reaching for Aurora, refusing to let it end like this. And I flinch as a burning arc of energy, deep red like dried blood, scythes through the oncoming Ra’haam.

Another blast hits them, a sphere of raw psychic power smearing their bodies upon the walls, leaving only broken corpses in its wake.

Tyler blinks in astonishment. Lae only snarls. But I realize who has saved us.

“Father …”

He stands above me with hands outstretched, clad in black steel. His eyes are bruised, lips and chin smudged with violet where he has wiped away the blood. I can see the cracks in his face run deeper, his fingers trembling—just the slightest signs of strain from his ordeal.

But his eye burns like a star. And much as I hate him, I feel the Enemy Within surge as he shatters my bonds with a wave of his hand.

“No child of Caersan dies on their knees, Kaliis. Fight.”


Aurora

I can’t do this alone.

As the battle rages on outside, I’m giving everything I have—as much as those outside are giving—to mend the tears in the Echo around me. But there’s so much of it. It’s too big.

I try to drag the images into focus, remember the way this place once was. Walking through rolling fields of flowers with Kal beside me, his hand in mine, and at the thought of him, a part of me reaches for him, across the ocean between us, and it’s then I realize.

It’s then I see.

I can’t do this alone.

But I’m not alone.

He’s with me. Always. And not just Kal, but Tyler, too. I can feel him out there, his crew beside him, all those people—survivors I never even got the chance to meet, children and warriors, fierce and frightened, standing with the last of their loved ones or alone, the last of their kind.

Every one of them is fighting and dying, the future of the galaxy in the balance, giving everything for the chance of a different yesterday.

“I’m not alone,” I whisper.

—I’m with a pilot named Simann, trying desperately to shake the Weeds on my tail, and I knew this moment was coming, but the fear is like ice in my gut, and I reach out to the holo of my husband on the dash and I know everything will be all right because I’ll see him again soon, and