The Eurynome Code: The Complete Series: A Space Opera Box Set

by K. Gorman

  A ripple of bile came to Karin, and she had a sudden image of the tank. Cream-colored, with rounded edges, and a sick, green light flashing from its waters. Under the table, her fists tightened.

  “Oh, Jesus. I remember it now.”

  “Right? Real fucked up shit. That’s when we started to lose our memories.”

  Soo-jin sat back with an audible thump. Her coffee sat untouched on the table. “Ah, child experimentation. Everyone’s favorite illegal kind of mad science.”

  “Technically legal,” Nomiki said. “Earth defined lab-raised test tube projects as subjects, not beings. Kind of a loophole meant for single-celled organisms and insects, but major parts of Earth neglected to update their laws.”

  “Wow. That’s… fucked up.”

  “And… why were they conducting these experiments?” Marc asked. “What was their end goal?”

  “Oh, you’re going to love this.” Nomiki sat up. “They had this whacked-out belief about human consciousness. Thought humanity was all connected or some shit and that, given the right circumstances, they could reach through the collective consciousness and… look for something, I guess.”

  “And instead, they got mutants?” Soo-jin raised an eyebrow. “I mean—no offense, Kar—but what the fuck? Did they get distracted?”

  “Who the fuck knows, right? I think in the beginning, they were using us as consciousness farms. A kind of microcosm using the so-called ‘pure’ form of beings created in the image and psyche of old god and goddess stereotypes to tap into higher pieces of our brain.”

  “High is one way to put it.” Soo-jin said. “Clio’s bounty.”

  A tone sounded through the Nemina’s internal comms. Karin stiffened as she recognized it.

  Ship alert.

  “Ten hells.” Soo-jin scowled at the doorway. “What now?”

  Karin rocked forward and leveraged herself up. “Let’s find out.”

  Chapter Three

  The ship sat on the Nemina’s scans looking only a little larger than some of the stars in its background. Impossible to classify from this far. Karin waved Cookie off from even trying when he made for his nest of computers perched on the free space of the navigation dashboard.

  As she sat in the pilot’s seat and brought up the scan data, Nomiki leaned over her shoulder, her gaze intent on the screen. “Reeve? Can you—?”

  “On it.” Reeve, the second-last into the room, ducked around Marc and disappeared back around the corner. His footsteps rang on the metal corridor floor, moving away.

  “He’ll tap into his equipment, see if he can find anything,” Nomiki said. “Nemina’s a bit…”

  “Old?” Marc suggested.

  “Vintage, yes.”

  The chair rocked a little as Nomiki leaned her elbow on the headrest. Her wrist ran alongside Karin’s head, fingers dangling just at the edge of her vision. For a second, she couldn’t take her attention off it.

  After so much time away from Nomiki, it felt odd to have her right next to her, as if nothing in the world had happened. A part of her wanted to lean her head against her wrist, but that would have been weird, especially among current company. They might have encouraged close family units among the members of the compound—especially those deemed siblings as she and Nomiki had been—but the real world was a little less touchy-feely. Besides, she and Nomiki never had been very close like that.

  “So…” Karin tapped a finger on the dashboard, then directed her gaze up to catch her sister’s face. “Fallon?”

  Nomiki made a partial shrug. “For now, anyway.”

  In the light of the dash, her normal tan had been washed out from her features, rendering them in a kind of blue that complicated the normal green of her irises. She had a more delicate face than Karin, with sharper features and narrower eyes. Some function of her genetic mix made her dark hair sit natural against her features rather than turn it into an incongruent juxtaposition like the one time Karin had dyed her hair to match.

  She watched her for several seconds, taking her in. “Money in the bank?”

  “Yep.”

  “And Reeve?”

  “Supervisor, of a sort. He’s higher-up than his rank indicates. Trusted to keep me on task.”

  Marc, standing to their side with his arms crossed over his chest, lifted an eyebrow. “He just left you to go back to his ship, alone.”

  A smile tugged at the corner of Nomiki’s lips.

  “He did just, didn’t he?” She turned her head to give Marc a direct look, and Karin felt the chair shift as she leaned her weight more against it. “Are you suggesting something, former-soldier Jones?”

  “Comms call.” Karin leaned forward to accept the notification. “Shush.”

  Reeve’s video feed seemed more an afterthought than anything. It popped up in the corner of her screen, along with a direct link to the readings his own ship was receiving.

  “Too far to tell, even for us. Coming from around Caishen is my best guess.”

  “Of course it is. It’s the local happening place, relatively speaking.” Nomiki gestured to the simplified star map that ran along the base of the screen, indicating the small dot that represented Caishen. “I assume it’s tracking our way? Tangential or direct?”

  “Direct. Quick speed. Must have caught up when we slowed.”

  “That’ll change when we start moving again,” Marc said.

  “Yeah, I expect we can lose them,” Reeve agreed.

  Soo-jin, however, leaned forward in her chair at the sensor station. “Karin, you happen to remember the ships from Caishen? There were nine there, right?”

  “Nine docked. Eleven plus if we count Agni and Enmerkar and however many they may have sent out,” she confirmed. “That netlink we stole might still have it in its cache.”

  Soo-jin lifted her head, caught Cookie’s gaze from beside her, and jerked her head toward the aft of the ship. “That’s your department. I left it on my bedside crate.”

  “Got it.” He squirmed past them on his way out. “I’ll check the history.”

  “It may auto-hide the cache, which’ll take him longer. Not that it matters.” Soo-jin squinted toward the main screen. “At this distance, we can’t cross-check the ident or model since we don’t have it. And I vote that we don’t wait until we can, considering we’re still, you know, escaping.”

  Except, of course, they’d just been caught. By the same people that had allowed them to escape in the first place.

  Karin looked up at her sister. Nomiki’s game face played subtler than Marc’s—a trait honed over a lifetime of survival choices. Even in the compound, she’d never relaxed. Everything had always had its degree of distrust with her, as if, even as a child, she’d sized things up like a battlefield.

  Enyo. Sister to Ares, in the Greek pantheon. Sister to Karin in timing, genetic parenting, and the alphabetization of their projects’ names.

  Nomiki’s eyes narrowed at the screen. “I agree. We should get a move on. Figure it out on the way. Reeve? I’d like to spend time with my sister, with your leave.”

  “Yeah, we talked about that.” He hesitated on the feed, eyes squinting and chin dipping toward his chest in an unconscious movement as the pause deepened. “I need someone to watch me sleep, then.”

  “I’ll go,” Marc said. “Just let me grab my stuff. Is Fallon still stocking standard hospitality packs?”

  “Yep. Toiletries covered.”

  “Be right over, then.” He caught Karin’s glance as she looked over her shoulder, pausing before he left. “We’ll talk,” he told her.

  She nodded.

  Cookie flattened himself to the outer wall as Marc passed him around the corner. His gaze followed his cousin for a few seconds, and his mouth opened as if he were going to say something, but he turned onto the bridge with a shake of his head, gesturing with the netlink he’d found.

  “It’ll take some time to crack.”

  Across the room, Soo-jin snorted. “Me with my ball, you with your
‘link—guess we all have our little projects.”

  A spike of alarm went through her. In the confusion and busyness since she’d awoken, she’d forgotten Soo-jin had grabbed one of the electric-shooting ball weapons that had been chasing them through varying places and stored its deactivated body on board.

  Gods, what if it wakes up?

  Above her, a perplexed frown bit into Nomiki’s brows. “Ball?”

  “Tell you about it later.” She leaned forward and brought the navigation dashboard back to fore. “Chamak, right?”

  “Yeah. Here’s a config,” Reeve said. A notification chimed as he shared his route-map with her, already planned. As Alliance ships had auto-config routes for approved trade arteries, she guessed Fallon ships had theirs built in, as well. A time-saver. Maybe even a life-saver if someone knocked out the main pilot. “I imagine you have a lot to catch up on.”

  “I think we all do.” Karin tapped the route into the dash and watched the computer process it across her map. “Received. Thanks.”

  A hand brushed her shoulder as Nomiki stepped away. “I’ll grab my stuff. Talk soon.”

  The air cooled behind her as her sister left, and the absence pulled at her senses like a belated memory. Too late, she caught a scent that turned her head after Nomiki about a second too late, a deep frown pressing her brow, and a flash of browned grass, tough earth, and scorched air ran across the front of her mind. She stared in the corner long after her sister had left, frowning.

  “Reeve’s right,” Cookie said, eyeing her from where he stood by the navigator’s seat. “You two got a lot of catching up to do.”

  A glance at the screen told her Reeve had cut the comms when she hadn’t been looking. Only the navigation route and the blurred, grainy picture of space that presented their pursuer remained on her screen. With the connection cut, a part of her relaxed as she realized they were alone.

  “That might be the understatement of the annum,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, just remember to tell us everything once you have it out. Or everything you think we should or need or want to know.” Soo-jin fiddled with the netlink in her hand, her legs curling up onto the chair’s seat as she retracted into one of the side-angled poses she used for long haul trips.

  “Will do.” Karin leaned forward to double-check Reeve’s transferred route and accept it into the system. After a few seconds, she input the confirmation code. With a direct transfer from a Fallon military ship, the Nemina’s system didn’t need her navigator license to accept the code. A good thing, probably, considering it broadcasted every time she did. A small beep sounded, and the tiny dot of Chamak Udyaan, their destination, pulsed as it confirmed.

  She stared at it for a second, then got up to leave.

  Her sister would be waiting.

  The night of their escape, her room in the compound had had a muggy, tepid air that clung to her skin like a moist sheet. She lay in her bed, not moving, watching the line of green-yellow light at the bottom of her door, waiting for her sister to arrive.

  Unlike Karin, who’d gone to bed fully clothed, Nomiki had used the sight of her nightgown as a way of disarming the guards. Getting up at some point during the night wasn’t unheard of—they still shared a communal restroom down the corridor, after all—and Nomiki had taken to late-night conversations with some of the guards under the pretext that she couldn’t sleep.

  Nomiki was almost sociopathic, in that way. She could strike up a genuine conversation with one hand and, in a flash, slice your head clean off with the other. She didn’t blink, didn’t flinch. Karin doubted she felt remorse, either. But she did feel, and she did have a strong, vivid conscience behind her eyes.

  If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be taking Karin with her.

  A distant sound—a yell? Hard to tell—sounded, and Karin winced, images of the dead, slashed bodies of their nighttime guarding staff flashing across her mind. Her stare narrowed on the line of light at the door.

  Before long, a shadow crossed over its corner. The door opened with a click. Without a word, Nomiki slipped in and headed for the shelf where she’d left her hair elastic. By the time she’d finished and turned, Karin was standing and ready, her hands trembling at her sides.

  Nomiki gave her a quick glance-over. “Ready?”

  She nodded.

  They headed for the door.

  Taking a backpack would have been too risky when running. They had to be fast and quiet. Instead, they’d taken their belongings over the compound wall a week prior, piece by piece, and packed them into bags they’d hidden beyond the treeline. The compound security didn’t patrol the forest much anymore. Stupid of them, perhaps, but so was letting their staffing level fall so low. Had they kept the thirty guards Karin remembered from their childhood, Nomiki might have had some trouble—but ten?

  Her sister would cut through them like butter.

  Shoes in hand, socks silent on the worn linoleum floor, she kept several paces back from where Nomiki jogged close to the wall. Her sister’s nightgown billowed around her thighs, the bulging fabric making her look even smaller than she already was. She hid one arm away from her front, one half of the pair of scissors Karin had given her earlier clutched tight. Her sleeve had been rolled up past her elbow, making her brown skin stand out against the white. Her bare feet made soft sticking sounds on the floor as she moved.

  Karin paused as her sister froze mid-step, close to the next corner. Nomiki’s head tilted an increment off-center, listening.

  The quick step of boots came up from the next hallway, accompanied by the crackle of a radio.

  In the blink of an eye, Nomiki bolted into action and vanished around the corner.

  The guard’s startled yell turned into a coughing gurgle.

  By the time Karin had raced around the bend, skidding on her socks, he lay on the floor in a growing puddle of his own blood, his throat slashed. Nomiki backed away from his side as he twitched toward her, eyes wide, still alive, mouth forming a word he never got to voice. The scissor blade dripped a few drops of blood, then stopped. She held it away from her body, careful not to smudge it on the nightgown.

  Then, after a moment, she stepped forward and plucked the radio from his vest. Fixing it to the collar of her nightgown, she unwrapped a cord she’d kept under her other sleeve, plugged its jack into the set, and positioned the headphone over her ear.

  She glanced to Karin, gave her another quick assessment, then jerked her head away and headed toward the door.

  The plan had been to escape through the compound’s western side-door, sneak over the wall, and head out into the forest to get their bags. Instead, Nomiki led her straight into the lobby and, after a quick check behind the reception desk, slunk into the entrance hall and out through the main door that had been propped open. Cold air flushed over her skin as they moved out of the lit building and into the night. The moon hung high above them, nearly full—its light had not been a factor in Nomiki’s escape timing—and, though a couple of security lights hung above the main gate and a few others pointed over the wall, most of the lot remained dark. They aimed for the left-hand wall. There, she put on her shoes, used the bumper of a car for a boost, and scaled the wall.

  When she landed on the other side, a hush fell over her as the compound’s buildings vanished from sight. The tall, rough grass of the field stretched out ahead of her, along with the jagged treeline. The pale, thin lights from the compound gave the scene a ghost-like tint, picking out flashes of broken branches and naked bark among the trunks. As she stood up in the shadow of the wall, a second pull of cool air slipped through the fabric of her clothes. A frozen smell, half woody, half from a congealed sludge that pooled at the base of the wall, rose to her nose. Her mouth tightened into a grim line as she surveyed the grass and trees.

  It couldn’t be this easy, could it?

  Nomiki landed next to her. A pair of sneakers—ones she’d hidden under the bumper of the car earlier—covered her feet. The nightgown practicall
y glowed in the dark. She’d tied part of it closer to herself to keep it out of the way. She gave Karin a glance, then led the way along the wall toward the front. They broke cover at the end, veering to the left to stay out of the camera’s view. After that, the trees weren’t far. The path they’d chosen funneled into an old game trail. They followed it for a few minutes uphill until it veered back out, putting them out close to the treeline again. There, they retrieved their bags from underneath a crossing of fallen logs and dusted them off. Nomiki pulled out her clothes from her bag, then paused. As she straightened, her gaze lifted, and her eyes narrowed back on the compound.

  For a long moment, she didn’t move.

  Then, she put her clothes back down.

  Karin frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  “No. I’m going back.”

  Her frown deepened. “Did you forget something?”

  “No.”

  Ah. So far tonight, Nomiki had been working as if in a job—one task to the next and the next until it was all finished. She’d seen her sister do it before. Kind of like watching an automaton at work, albeit a very smart, self-aware, and reactive automaton. She’d set herself a job to do tonight, and Karin suspected it had run something like ‘get my little sister to safety out of the compound.’

  Only now did the emotion—that grief and anger she’d stewed on for the last three years—show on her face.

  “You’re going to kill them, then?” Karin said.

  “Yes. Stay here. I’ll be back soo—”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes, and I don’t care what you think about it. I—Hey, what are you doing?”