holding out one hand, and then her eyes flicker and become blue, her pupils turn to flowers, and she screams. I see Admiral Adams gazing down the barrel of a camera at me. I see Kal, clad in the same spacesuit he wears now, though the real Kal is still right at my side. A vision. A ghost. A future. He raises his hands as if to fend off a blow, and then a shot hits him square in the chest. He flies backward with an awful cry.
“KAL!” I scream.
I hear his voice somewhere in the distance, trying to call me home, back to the cryo vaults, back to me. But the vision, the ghost, the future Kal slumps against the wall behind him, a smoking hole in his chest, and the hurricane within me explodes in a welter of grief and anger and fear.
I can’t …
I
CAN’T
And I’m snapped back into my body and I finally lose my grip, and the force surges outward, raging away in a perfect sphere of destruction, Kal and me at the epicenter. The walls of the Hadfield peel outward and the cryopods about us disintegrate, the bodies tumbling away into the void. The deck beneath us crumples, and the ceiling above us is ripped apart, silver light spilling up and out of my right eye, shining like a beacon.
“Maker’s breath, what the fuck was that?” Finian roars.
Faintly I can hear the others yelling down comms, the Hadfield trembling about me, and I think Kal is moving, towing me with him. The power is coming off me in floods, the dam inside me broken, my hands pressed against the widening cracks.
Tyler’s voice penetrates the haze all around me. “Emergency retrieval! I’m locking onto their beacons, bringing the Zero alongside. Go, go!”
I can’t see Kal—all I can see is a rocky, barren landscape, the sand and rubble a faded gray, the shadows a deep blue, the sky above lifeless and dead.
I’ve never seen this place, but all I want is to go there.
Kal’s arms close around me.
The vision fades.
Everything turns black.
9
KAL
All is soundless.
The Hadfield’s hull peels apart in a perfect sphere of midnight blue, the cryo vaults demolished in a moment. Titanium and carbite buckle beneath the force of Aurora’s shock wave, and I hold her close as the belly of the mighty ship is blown apart from the inside out. Shards of plasteel and metal and glass spin outward into forever, and I engage the jet propulsion unit on my suit to hold us steady in the eye of the storm, this chaos my be’shmai has unleashed, her right eye gleaming like a lantern in the dark. And all of it, all of it, happens in complete and total silence.
“Kal, report!” Tyler demands over comms. “Finian, status!”
“I’m okay!” Finian shouts. “My underwear, not so much. What in the Maker’s name hit us?”
“Aurora,” I reply, holding her tight. “The bodies, being here … she saw something. She lost control.”
“Are you okay?” Tyler asks.
How could I be otherwise? How could I be anything less than perfect when she is in my arms? Her hair floating loose about her face in the zero gravity, lashes fluttering against freckled cheeks. The blinding flare in her right eye has dulled to a glow now, warm as firelight against my skin. I know her every line, every curve, pressing my fingertips against the visor of her helmet and tracing the—
“Kal, report!”
“Aurora is semiconscious,” I reply. “We are still in the cryo vaults. What is left of them, anyway. Hephaestus security will definitely know we are here. Orders, sir?”
“Hold position,” Tyler says. “We’re retrieving Fin, then coming for you.”
“Acknowledged.”
And I do. Hold tight, that is. Cradling Aurora to my chest. The Hadfield is a ruin, the hull around us ripped wide. The tug hauling us is desperately trying to slow down, and the stress of arresting our momentum is continuing to tear the Hadfield apart. A digital heads-up display is projected on the inside of my helmet, and I can see Hephaestus security ships swarming in the dark outside, imagine the panicked transmissions flying between them.
All chance of stealth is lost.
And we still do not have the black box we came here for.
“K-Kal?”
My heart surges as she speaks, and I look down into her eyes, onyx and pearl, and I feel the universe fall away beneath my feet.
“It is well, be’shmai,” I murmur. “All is well.”
“What h-happened?” she whispers.
“Your power. You lost your grip.”
“I’m s-sorry,” she whispers, looking in slow bewilderment at