now, like Kal just pulled me out of his hat. I feel him shift his weight, fold his arms beside me.
“Hi,” I say.
Solid opener.
Scarlett frowns at me. “Um, what’s she doing here?”
“The Unbroken first,” Kal says. “Questions later.”
I’m guessing the Unbroken are the violent faction he mentioned, and the looks on the faces around me send a finger of ice curling down my spine.
Tyler simply nods. “Cat, I want you flying perimeter in the Longbow. Keep out of sight. Kal, you’re on our defenses. That Wraith is gonna be on us in ten minutes unless we give them a reason not to be.”
The girl with the tattoos that I saw in the infirmary brushes roughly past me, the elevator doors rattling closed behind her.
Kal glances at me, but soon strides over to a series of consoles. I want to ask what’s going on, but considering the mood up here, I figure I should try to keep out of the way instead. So, I back up against the wall near an older-looking Syldrathi man. My heart’s beating a mile a minute, and a part of me wants to find a small space and hide. It’s too much. I can almost cope with two centuries in cryo, if I don’t think too hard about everything that entails. I can deal with stowing away aboard some ship with a bunch of strangers. Being lied to by everyone around me. But actively under attack might be a bridge too far.
I wish I could say the room’s full of trained operatives clicking together like a well-oiled machine, but they’re anything but. The Legionnaires are talking over one another, shouting questions without waiting for answers, their voices rising to a frantic note. If this is the squad Ty didn’t want to lead, I see his point—nobody’s listening, and from the outside, it’s obvious how badly everybody should be.
I glance at the old man next to me, who’s the only one not doing something. “I’m Auri,” I offer quietly. And then, feeling the need for more formality, in the face of his perfect posture, I offer a small bow. “Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley.”
He looks at me quizzically, like I’m a dog that just performed an amusing trick. “I am First Walker Taneth Lirael Ammar, young Terran,” he replies, his voice deep and cool. “You may call me First Taneth.”
“The people on the warship …” I try to swallow, my throat raw and aching. “Will they kill us?”
“Most assuredly,” he says, in the same voice he used to give his name.
Well, son of a biscuit. This is going from bad to worse.
The joke sounds weak in my own head, and my breath feels oddly shallow, as if someone’s squeezing my chest. I can’t die in the middle of a conflict I don’t even understand, on a space station, two hundred years into the future.
Can I?
There are things I should have done before a moment like this came. I still haven’t even tried to look up my mom, or Callie, find out what happened to them. Through all the long hours jammed in that packing crate with Magellan, I never felt ready to see them reduced to names and dates on a screen. Or worse, missing like Dad. So I didn’t try at all, and now I might never get the chance.
Kal’s voice breaks over the noise around me, the chaos of the squad’s shouted questions and instructions. “Station defenses will not be adequate to fend off the Wraith. We must break out all available weaponry and prepare for a boarding action. The Unbroken will show us no mercy.”
The Betraskan boy replies, his voice dry, as though the situation’s somehow funny. “Our combat specialist’s advice is gather up the sharp cutlery and pointy sticks, then run face-first at certain death? You know, I like you, Kal.”
The other boy raises one perfect silver eyebrow. “You have a better plan?”
“We could ask the Unbroken out to drinks, flirt a little, talk this thing out?”
“You are not much of a warrior, are you, Finian?”
“Well, you’re not much of a—”
“Shut up, Finian,” Scarlett says, exchanging a glance with her brother. She tilts her head and he lifts his chin, and something passes between them. They have the same language of siblings I have—had—with my sister.
I wonder if Callie went on to become the composer she dreamed of being.
I wonder what it was like, to only have mom there in the audience, trying to clap hard enough to make up for dad and me.