I admit this is a lot of trouble just to make a phone call.
It took me two days Folding without a break to reach the Aurora FoldGate in time for the Galactic Summit, and my brain is a little fried as a result. Not as bad as the members of Squad 303, who’ve spent the last forty-eight hours welded into a detention cell. But still, my headache isn’t playing around.
I tried to explain my side of things to Cohen and her squaddies as I slipped their rations through the tiny hatch in the door, but they weren’t really in the mood to listen. On the plus side, I’ve learned some choice new Syldrathi insults if I ever bump into Saedii’s lieutenant Erien again.
Security around the FoldGate into the Aurora system was just as heavy as I expected. With the galaxy on the brink of a dozen wars, and representatives from every sentient species in the milieu arriving for the summit, I honestly had no hope of sneaking in here undetected.
But now, thanks to Cohen, I don’t have to.
“Passcodes received, ident confirmed, 303,” comes the reply down comms. “You are cleared for landing in Bay Omega, Berth 7420.”
“Roger that, Aurora,” I reply. “7420. Out in the sticks, huh?”
“Yeah, apologies, 303. We’re slammed up here with the influx of civis. It’s gonna be a while before your ship gets a refit and refuel, too. Forty hours at least. Report to your deck commander for debrief.”
“Understood,” I smile. “You folks have a better one. 303, out.”
Perfect.
Better than I hoped, in fact. The main hangars are obviously full of governmental envoy ships. With the station this busy and with the help of Cohen’s passcodes, I can slip through undetected, log in to the station’s network as soon as I dock, and warn Admiral Adams with time to spare.
Well … that’s the plan, anyway.
I look across the glittering silver spires of Aurora Station, marveling at the fleets gathered here. Beautiful and sleek, hulking and huge, hundreds of designs, all moving through the dark like they’re dancing. I’ve always loved starships, and I can’t help but smile at the sight. But my stomach sinks as I spot a group of familiar shapes silhouetted against the Aurora star—a Reaper-class carrier, supported by half a dozen heavy destroyers.
It’s the delegation from Earth. Probably Prime Minister Ilyasova herself, dutifully escorted by the Terran Defense Force.
I feel more than a little crushed at the sight of them. My dad devoted his life to protecting our planet—first as a member of the TDF, then in the Terran Senate. I signed up for the Aurora Legion because I wanted to give my life to the same cause. And now my own government thinks I’m a traitor.
The thought that they’d shoot me on sight leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
I bring the Longbow into the bay, through the slow ballet of other Legion ships, alien vessels, loaders, SecDrones, autolifters, skiffs. Even this far from the main hangars, the place is a madhouse. Busier than I’ve ever seen. It’s a little tricky to navigate, truth be told.
I wish Cat was here… .
I suddenly realize that the last time I saw this station was when we left on our first mission. All of us together. Squad 312 forever. It seems so long ago now. So far away. But I push aside thoughts of my friends, my sister, all I’ve lost. Focus on what I need to do. Because Maker knows they’d want me to.
They all gave up so much—gave everything—to get me this far. And I’m not gonna fail them.
My Longbow comes into berth, umbilicals and docking clamps snaking out from the airlock to secure my ship. Hardline cables plug into the ’Bow’s computer system, downloading trip data and logs. And after a forty-eight-hour Fold, a few cases of assault against fellow legionnaires, misappropriation of Legion resources, deprivation of liberty, and one count of what is definitely galactic piracy, I’m finally in the station network.
Like I say: hell of a lot of trouble just to make a phone call.
But hey, I’m a pirate now.
Yarrrrr.
I know the admiral’s private uniglass number by heart. It’s only accessible via the Aurora Legion network aboard the station. It’s for senior command members and his closest friends within the Legion. And for his friend’s son—the boy he mentored all through his years at the academy.
I must have dialed him a thousand times, for advice, for a debrief, for a game of chess. He and my dad served in the TDF together, and he looked in on me like Dad would have wanted him to. We went to chapel together every Sunday for years. And somehow, for some reason, he’s the one who put me on this path, who put Aurora O’Malley on my ship, who left those gifts for us in the Dominion vault on Emerald City.
My hands are still shaking as I punch the numbers into the station comms system, staring at my reflection in the glass monitors. Adams and de Stoy know something about the Ra’haam, the Eshvaren, all of this—at times, it seemed they knew what was coming before it actually happened. And yet, if my vision is true, somehow they don’t know the Ra’haam plans to blow up this academy and the entire Galactic Caucus aboard it.
The vidcall connects. My heart lurches as the admiral’s face appears on the screen—heavy jaw, scarred cheek, salt-and-pepper hair shorn to stubble.
“Admiral—”
“Hello, you’ve reached the private number of Seph Adams. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to answer. Please leave your details and I’ll get back to you.”
CLICK.
The face disappears.
The screen goes dark.
I blink.
“You’ve gotta be kidding… .”
I stare at the glass, a flashing prompt that reads LEAVE MESSAGE?
“No,” I rise to my feet, voice rising with me. “No, you have got to be kidding me!” I drag my hand back through my hair, my patience splintering into a million glittering pieces. “I escape GIA captivity, I get stabbed, beaten, and chewed like a jetball in Unbroken custody, talk my way out, get myself captured again and then take out an entire squad of Aurora legionnaires, steal their ship, drag my ass halfway across the sector, risk capture and summary execution, and I get your MESSAGE SERVICE?”
LEAVE MESSAGE? the computer prompts.
“I don’t get it!” I bellow. “How could you know to leave us the Zero, Admiral? To send us that coded message? How could you know about Kal getting shot, about me being captured, about Cat not making it off Octavia, and not know to ANSWER YOUR DAMN UNIGLASS?”
I don’t curse. I consider it a sign of poor self-control. Scar used to say swearing was a natural impulse—that it’s a proven stress reliever and dopamine-release mechanism. But if you’ve got something important to say, it’s worth taking the time to say it without resorting to language you’d hear in a toilet. I can count the number of times I’ve said a bad word on one hand.
“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.”
And that’s exactly what I do. As I duck out of the crush of the main thoroughfare and into a slipway between the auxiliary fuel dumps, crawling on my belly beneath the tanks and into the tertiary ventilation duct, I whisper thanks to my friend.
Wishing like hells she was here.
It takes me five hours to work through the vent system—I don’t know my way around anywhere near as well as Cat did, and Aurora Station is huge. But I have Rioli’s uniglass to light the way, and I slowly traverse the labyrinth of intakes and junctions, the metal lit up by the screen’s soft glow, until finally I emerge in the bowels of the station’s recreation levels.
Crawling out of the duct, I strip off my flight suit, realizing I’m covered in grime and dust—they really oughta run the sweeper drones through these vents more often. Fortunately, underneath, Rioli’s uniform is mostly clean.
It feels weird wearing the white stripes of a Legion Ace across my shoulders, but at least I’m inside the decontamination perimeter now—security shouldn’t be anywhere near as tough. And acting like I belong, I march into the bright corridors, past a few techs and some younger cadets, and out onto the main promenade of Aurora Academy.
Honestly, the sight never fails to take my breath away.
It stretches out before me: a long crescent of polished chrome and gleaming white plasteel. It’s packed with people—a flock of cadets and legionnaires mixing with officials from the planetary delegations, press agents here to cover the summit, and the usual multitude of staff and instructors and crew.
The columns rise into the sky above me, the promenade itself curves away into the distance before me, the storefronts of the shopping district to my left, the cool greens and blues of the arboretum to my right.
Above us, the ceiling is transparent, the station angled to showcase the burning light of the Aurora star, a scattering of a billion suns behind it, the majesty of the Milky Way on display. And in the promenade’s heart, towering above us all, are statues of the two people who made all this possible.
The Founders of Aurora Legion.
One is marble, brilliant white—mined from one of the last quarries on Terra. The other is solid black opal, veined with rainbow hues, transported all the way from Trask.
Their faces are serene, wise. Two women, Betraskan and Terran, enemies in a time of war who rose above the conflict between our peoples to forge something bigger than both of them. An alliance of the galaxy’s best and brightest. A Legion that fights for peace, named for the star the academy they built orbits.
We don’t even get taught their names here at the academy. They had their identities expunged from all official records because they didn’t want their own legend to overshadow the legend of what they built here.
It wasn’t about who they were—just as now, it isn’t about any one legionnaire, or even any one commander. It’s about what we all are together, as a whole. What we represent.
And on the plinth beneath them, carved into the rock, is the Founders’ mantra. Their promise to the galaxy. The words I’ve lived my whole life by.
We the Legion
We the light
Burning bright against the night
Alone as I am here, the sight of the Founders fills my chest with warmth. And as I look at the station around me, all these people gathered from the corners of the galaxy to fight for something more, all of them now under attack by an enemy they can’t even see, I whisper a soft promise.
“I won’t let you down.”
I cruise the edge of the crowd, cap pulled low—I’m not exactly a stranger here, and if a single cadet or legionnaire spots me, or some TDF trooper recognizes me from the feeds, I’m done.
I’m not even sure what I’m looking for, honestly, how I’m supposed to spot this threat I’ve seen in my dreams. But I can feel it inside me, pushing me on: the vision that brought me back to this place, shining like a light in this dark. Saedii told me I was a fool to come here, and for a moment, the memory of her makes my chest hurt. The thought that I’ll probably never see her again …
Mind on the job, Jones.
I cruise into the arboretum, watching the crowd. The foliage here has been gathered from across the Milky Way: gentle water trickling over heartcrystal falls from Ishtarr, whisperwhills from Syldra, fronds and flowers of every color from every world. But the rainbow of colors only reminds me of my dream, the crystal splintering around me, that shadow seeping through the cracks like black blood. Hoping against hope, I dial Adams’s uniglass again, cursing softly beneath my breath as I get his service.
“Hello, you’ve reached the private number of Seph Adams. I’m—”
CLICK.
Do I just leave a message?
How do I know he’ll even get it?
Can I honestly hang the fate of the galaxy on an answering machine?
“Well, aren’t you just a strapping slice of humanity.”
I glance sidelong at the voice. A Chellerian looms beside me, a drink in each of his four hands. His suit is a deep cerulean to offset the lighter sky blue of his skin. His shark’s-tooth smile could be adequately described as “dazzling.”
“Helloooo,” he says, drawling the word as if it tasted like hot chocolate. “And what’s your name, legionnaire?”
“I’m not a legionnaire. I’m a pirate. And kinda busy, no offense.”
“None taken, Captain,” he purrs, looking me over. “And do forgive me if I’m bothering you. I was just wondering whether those dimples of yours are standard Legion issue.”
“Nope,” I reply, scanning the crowd. “You need a specialist license and three years of training before you’re qualified to use them.”
“Aren’t you the little sasspot,” he smirks, twirling the stem of one glass.
“You should meet my sister,” I murmur.
“I’d love to. If that’s your preference. I thought Terrans had an aversion to that sort of thing.” He pouts, considering the glass of sparkling green liquid in his third hand. “Tell me, would it be forward if I offered you a drink? I seem to have rather a lot of them and I’m not even sure what this one is.”
“Listen, friend, I don’t want to …”
My voice fades out as I look at him a little closer. His voice is familiar. His face even more so. His suit looks like it cost the GDP of a small moon.
“I know you… .”
“Not as well as I’d like.” He offers the glass. “But we can remed—”
“You’re a newscaster,” I realize. “You work for GNN.”
“Guilty as charged,” he smiles, waving to the press credentials beside his cravat, then to the small legion of assistants and crew behind him. “Lyrann Balkarri, at your pleasure. Hopefully.”
“You were reporting about the skirmish in the Colaris sector.”
“Hardly a skirmish, darling,” he pouts. “That little mess could end with Chelleria and Rigel at war again. Although I’m flattered you saw the feed. Our ratings were in the tank after Archon Caersan’s temper tantrum.”
I look him over more carefully. I can see the matte black button of a mic stud on his lapel. The gleam of a minicam in his top button.
“Wait … you’re not recording this, are you?”
His grin grows a little wider. “Never without consent, darling.”
“What are you doing on Aurora Station?”
“Well, aside from basking in the inestimable joy of those dimples, I’m reporting on the summit.” Lyrann takes a sip from a glass of frothing red, makes a face, and hands it to a flunky. “Luddia, darling, flush that out an airlock, will you? And have the chap who served it to me flogged.”
“Esteemed representatives.”
A hush comes over the crowd. I turn at the voice, heart in my throat. A massive holo is being projected in the air above the arboretum, the figure of a towering man with cybernetic arms and a full dress uniform decorated with a dozen medals and the star of the Aurora Legion.
“Admiral Adams,” I whisper.
“Honored guests,” he continues. “Legionnaires. On behalf of Greater Clan Battle Leader Danil de Verra de Stoy and myself, we welcome you to Aurora Station.”
The camera pans to the co-commander of the Legion, standing beside Adams. De Stoy is dour, hair drawn back in a severe ponytail. But her uniform glitters with medals, and her voice is as commanding as her presence.
“Many years ago,” she begins, “in a time of war, the Founders of our Legion forged an alliance that has endured for centuries. It is our fervent hope that even in these dark times, the races of the galaxy can unite again and shine a light that will banish the shadow growing between our stars.”
My belly turns a little at that deliberate choice of words.
Shadow.
Growing.
“Our last attendees will be arriving this evening,” Adams continues. “Tomorrow morning, before the summit begins, Battle Leader de Stoy and I will make a joint address that concerns everyone on this station and, indeed, in this galaxy.” He smiles, grim. “I urge the members of the press attending the summit not to sleep through your alarms. In the meantime, we would like to express our gratitude to you all for attending, especially Greater Consuls Mariun de Roy and Gense de Lin of the Betraskan Clan Coalition, and Prime Minister Tania Ilyasova of the Terran government.”
The camera tracks to the Betraskan consuls standing among their retinue and bowing at the ripples of applause. The screen then cuts to the Terran delegates, Prime Minister Ilyasova smiling and nodding thanks, her gray hair shimmering in the light. Around her are various ministers, attendants, and assistants. But my stomach rolls at the sight of her protection detail.
Should’ve known …
The Terran Defense Force would normally be in charge of ministerial security, and there’s no shortage of TDF troopers in Ilyasova’s retinue. But wherever you find a matter of Earth’s planetary security, you’re also gonna find agents of the Global Intelligence Agency.
They stand among the PM’s group, silent and still. Their suits are charcoal gray, head to toe to fingertips, their faces hidden behind featureless mirrormasks, elongated and oval-shaped. But I know what lurks beneath.
The Ra’haam is here.
“Are you quite all right, darling?” Lyrann asks, touching my arm. “You look as though someone’s danced on your deathstone.”
I swallow hard, jaw clenched.
“I’m all right,” I manage.
But I’m really not.
Because there among them, I see a familiar figure. Her face is covered by that mask, but I’d still know her anywhere. The body under that skintight nanoweave that I once held in my arms. My best friend in the world.
I can see her now, watching while I was tortured on the Kusanagi. Mold on her tongue and tears welling in her flower-shaped eyes as she begged me.
Tyler, don’t go… .
Tyler, I love you.
“Cat … ,” I whisper.