gone all the way sideways. But she shouldn’t be up here.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She starts walking, making a beeline for Cat’s pilot console. It’s about now I decide that, whatever the deal is here, our beautiful heroine Legionnaire Scarlett Isobel Jones has just about enough of it.
My hand slips to the disruptor pistol at my waist, and I climb to my feet.
“All right, lovely lady, if you—”
Her right eye lights up with a soft, flickering glow, pale as moonlight. She raises her hand without looking at me, and an invisible blow to my chest slams me back into the wall. I gasp, trying to draw my disruptor, but Aurora curls her fingers into claws, her eye burns a brighter shade of white, and there’s a force pressing on my wrist, stopping me from raising the weapon.
“Ezigolopai,” Aurora says, in a voice that sounds nothing like her own. Hollow. Reverberating, like in an echo chamber. “Emevigrof.”
I feel pain, as if some invisible grip were grinding my knuckles together. I let the disruptor go, and as it clatters to the deck, the pressure eases.
My heart’s thudding in my chest and cold sweat is breaking out on my body. I realize I can’t move a muscle, my throat compressing so I can’t even speak. Aurora peers at the pilot’s console, head tilted, lashes fluttering. Her right eye is still aglow, her hair is moving slightly, as if in a breeze. With her free hand, she begins typing commands, fingers blurring over the keyboards.
“Wh …” I wince, trying to force the words out of my crushed throat, my clenched teeth. “What … y-you … doing?”
Her nose starts bleeding. A thin line of red, rolling down over her lips. She doesn’t stop typing to wipe it away and I realize she’s messing with the nav system. Setting a new course. She’s a novice, totally untrained, zero flight hours. Maker’s sake, she’s spent the last two centuries asleep in the Fold.
How does she know how a Longbow’s nav system works?
“Ytinretipmes,” she whispers. “Doogdoog.”
I hear the engines alter tone, the subtle shift of a course change. The blood’s flowing down over Aurora’s chin now, pattering on the console. She turns to face me, hand still outstretched. Her right eye aglow with a soft, warm light. My stomach’s full of ice, fear hammering in my temples. But as much as I strain, it’s like there’s some hidden weight, pressing me back into the wall.
I can’t move.
I can’t fight.
I can’t even scream.
Aurora shivers, blood slicking her chin. Her brow furrows, lips moving slowly, carefully, as if she’s straining to pronounce her words.
“T-t-ttrig-ggerrrrr,” she says, pointing to herself. “Trigg—”
I hear the familiar BAMF! of a disruptor burst. Aurora’s eyes widen, and she staggers. The pressure holding me in place relaxes, and I collapse to my knees. Zila’s at the door, weapon in hand trained squarely on Aurora.
One blast from a disruptor on Stun setting is enough to drop a full-grown Rigellian stonebull, but somehow, Aurora’s still standing. She turns and Zila fires again, pistol flashing. Aurora falls to her knees, groaning, raising one hand toward our science officer. Her right eye burns like a sun. And with the kind of callousness that earned her twenty-seventh disciplinary citation, Zila keeps firing.
BAMF!
BAMF!
BAMF!
Until Aurora crashes face-first onto the deck.
“Zila,” I moan.
BAMF!
“Zila!”
BAMF!
Zila blinks, looks at me, finger still on the trigger.
“Yes?” she asks.
“She’s d-down,” I groan, my head splitting. “You can s-stop shooting her now.”
Zila looks at her disruptor. Down at the unconscious Aurora, sprawled on the deck. And maybe for good measure, maybe just for fun, our science officer gives the comatose girl one more blast.
BAMF!
“Interesting,” she says.
•••••
“We should just space this crazy slip right now,” Cat spits.
We’re gathered on the bridge, standing around the unconscious body of one Aurora O’Malley. She’s seated in one of the auxiliary stations, mag-restraints around her wrists, though I’m not sure how much good that’ll do if she wakes up. Cat, Zila, and I have our disruptors trained on her in case she decides on a repeat performance of her “attack the gorgeous yet totally down-to-earth space diplomat” routine. I’ve got time to notice now that Zila’s wearing a new pair of earrings—these ones are small golden chains with tiny charms in the shape of weapons hanging off them. There’s a gun, a knife, a throwing star.
Did she stop for a wardrobe change before coming to my rescue?
Kal is standing silently by the doorway, a thoughtful pout on those oh, so shapely Syldrathi lips. But at