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 …