We load ourselves into the airlock, and soon enough we’re stepping out onto the freezing surface of the Eshvaren planet. I glance at Aurora, remembering the last time we did this, on Octavia III. She was a nervous wreck back then, struggling to come to grips with who she was. But now she takes the lead, marching across the crumbling rock. The landscape is gray and lifeless. The arctic wind is blowing at hundreds of kilometers an hour, but the atmo is so thin, it’s barely a breeze.
Even the air in this place is dead.
Kal and Zila carry disruptor rifles, me and Fin walking with hands on our pistols. There’s no real sense of danger here as we follow Auri. Nothing close to the strange, otherworldly hostility we met on Octavia III. I’m struck by it then, how unfair that is—that the Ra’haam got to go on, and the race that gave everything to cut them away ended like this. I feel sad. Small. Cold despite my suit.
We march for twenty minutes, up a steady rise, until finally we find ourselves on a bluff overlooking an impact crater: a massive, circular indentation in the skin of this dead world, stretching to the horizon. But in the center of it, I’m astonished to see—
“A doorway,” Finian whispers.
At least, that’s what it looks like. It’s huge—at least ten kilometers across. Open like a mouth to the sky, it leads into a vast, dark passage beyond. The surface of this planet is a wasteland, but the tunnel interior is virtually untouched by the elements.
“Should it … be open?” I ask, uncertain.
I glance at Aurora sidelong, feel the tension coming off her in waves.
“Be’shmai?” Kal asks, looking at her intently.
“This is where the crystal city was, Kal,” she says, her voice not quite her own. “This is …”
She shakes her head.
“All of you. Hold on to me, to each other.”
She offers her hands, still staring into the abyss below us. Kal takes her right one, and I take her left, holding tight. Zila grabs Kal, and Finian locks fingers with me, giving me a small squeeze of reassurance.
“You okay, Stowaway?” he asks Auri.
“Just hold on,” she replies.
I feel it tingling on the back of my neck. A power, a rush, a greasy tang in the air. And without warning, I’m lifted off my feet, up into the colorless sky.
I gasp, tempted to shriek girlishly for a bit. And, looking at Aurora, at her mouth pressed thin, her eye burning with blinding white light, I realize she’s the one doing this—moving us with nothing but the power of her mind.
When the Ra’haam attacked us on Octavia III, she lifted us to safety then, too. Kept the Ra’haam at bay. But she was barely in control of it—I got the feeling she wasn’t even really herself, just a puppet for the power inside her. But I can see, I can feel, she’s herself now. This is Aurora, wielding the gift the Eshvaren gave her like a master. Lifting us up like we’re kids’ toys, over the blasted landscape, down into the crater, and then into that long, dark tunnel beyond.
“Wow,” Finian says, watching Aurora’s face.
“I concur,” Zila murmurs.
We move into the tunnel, accelerating under the force of Auri’s will. I can feel that each of us is having a time of it, each reacting to this display of newfound power in a different way. Kal takes it best—he probably got a taste of this in the Echo, after all. I can feel his adoration as he looks at his girl, admiration at how far she’s come. But again, I get the feeling he’s uncertain somehow. About what, I can only guess.
Zila is looking at Auri with something like fascination. Taking readings on her uniglass. That big brain of hers in overdrive. Fin is a little more gobsmacked, and I’m right there with him. Less than a day ago, Auri was a tiny, frightened kid, afraid of using this thing inside her for fear of hurting the people around her. Now she wields it like she was born to it. Like this is exactly what she’s supposed to be doing.
We leave the surface behind. The light of the red dwarf we’re orbiting fades, but the light from Auri’s eye illuminates the tunnel before us. The shaft is kilometers across—so big I can’t see all the