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

by K. Gorman

  Eventually, though, the road widened, converged. Pounded dirt shifted to more well-tended gravel, then to a soft mix of an asphalt substrate she’d seen used only a few times, then to smooth concrete. The drainage ditches disappeared. A center line—bright red in the Novan style and with perforated mirrors that gleamed under their headlights like jewels leading down the road—formed, vanished, and returned a few minutes later. On either side, the hedges grew shorter and thinner. Overhead, the black bars in the sky remained for nearly an hour, the longest anyone had ever recorded them. Then, they vanished. The stars behind them returned, as if they’d never been gone at all.

  To them, she thought, watching them shimmer through the top of the side window, some of their distant energy working itself into her veins, it doesn’t matter if the Shadows take us all or not. What do they care if Dr. Sasha switches out a planet on them? Only Aschere and Sirius would be affected, and even then, not by much. The pull of Nova’s gravity against them is not terribly large, in terms of stars.

  It was a somewhat sobering thought, albeit a bit too philosophical for her normal bent, which told her that her brain was still working through the panic and trauma of the escape, no doubt spurred on by the panic and trauma of previous escapes, and had become somewhat ungrounded and detached. Gone was the adrenaline-fueled intensity and the raw, uncensored fear. Now, she was just tired and still not wanting to think about how many people had died that night.

  Pranav is dead, she thought with a pull at her chest. And Ma and Lang. And Warren. That’s as many names as she knew, but her mind supplied the faces.

  A tremble of emotion threatened to overwhelm her, and she shoved the thoughts away.

  She didn’t want to deal with them. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  They passed through the small town she’d seen before, turning onto the highway that converted to its main street on the outskirts. Barely more than a collection of small, flat buildings—all bare, industrial, and utterly lacking the usual Novan flare—it was empty, the buildings dull and lifeless, devoid of movement. At this time of year, even the planet’s bat population was still in hibernation. Only a few insects mingled around light sources.

  It passed quickly, but was soon followed, a few kilometers down the road, by another town, this one bigger. A series of long, low greenhouses bumped up on their left, their white coverings gleaming under the moonlight, then switched into a warren of boxy warehouses, the ten largest ones that fronted the road over five stories tall to accommodate the largest spacefaring freighters, probably to ship out the area’s grain and fruit crops to the major export base that sat in close orbit.

  Suburbs came next, with several gated communities piled over ten stories high in a set of discus-shaped levels that mirrored Liber Pater and Pomona’s famous, leveled architecture, then a number of flat, blocky, two-story apartments for the less-rich.

  Eventually, Baik pulled into a lot at the edge of a raised rapid-transit line and shut off the engine. The car sat in silence for a minute, and Baik’s seat made a rubbery groan as he leaned back and flexed his wrists. Then he undid the safety harness, popped the door, and stepped out. He left it open as he strode off, stretching his legs as he pulled a netlink out of his pocket and flipped its screen into the air.

  As the cool air hit her face from the open door, Karin looked around at the others. “So… Are we all getting out to stretch, or are we staying here?”

  Beside her, Colahary shot her a caustic look—which she felt she didn’t really deserve, since she’d been so helpful earlier—then reached over Laika and popped the door to the right. Laika scrambled out of his way, her eyebrows shooting into her forehead as he stalked off. Her gaze traveled to Karin, and she gave a small shrug.

  Good enough for me. She wiggled after them and pulled herself out the door. The air didn’t have a bite to it, but the subtle chill did more to wake her up than the mugginess inside had done—despite the car’s top-of-the-line climate control, seven people were never meant to fit inside. She blinked and wrinkled her nose, trying to shake the odor that had been building over the journey, then grabbed her jacket closer to her as the cold worked its magic.

  It wasn’t, all told, that chilly. She’d just acclimatized to Nova Kolkata’s warm nights and hot, humid days, and before then, she’d been in Bau on Enlil, which differed only in that it was an average of two degrees cooler and had about eighty percent less humidity in the air.

  On the side of the lot, a few drab, concrete buildings rose up, either one of which or both having been converted into a hodgepodge mix of smaller businesses and apartments. Patches of concrete indicated where renovations had taken place—a new ventilation valve here, a rough, empty surface where something had been covered up there, bits and pieces where the proprietors or inhabitants had taken the improvement process on themselves, then neglected to remove the wire or re-bar poking out from the side. Two auto-painted advertisements took up large squares of the plain gray façade, their paint visible under the overhanging lamps that shone down to illuminate them. At the base, a few cracks and breaks in the building’s surface indicated its age.

  Marc came out on the other side of the vehicle, following David. As the rest of the group fanned out around them, they exchanged a look over its roof.

  It hadn’t escaped her that now, with less guards, no locks, and a ton of urban spaces to hide in, would be an excellent time to get away from their captors.

  She doubted, however, that it had escaped Baik’s and the other soldiers’ notice, as well. She noticed that the others had taken their guns with them, and that someone had relieved Marc of the firearm he’d been given.

  Trying not to draw attention to herself—which was impossible, considering who she was—she turned away with a frown, bringing one hand up to rub against her other arm. Her footsteps made quiet taps as they came to a stop by the edge of the lot.

  “Do you think those things followed us here?” she asked.

  The nearest soldier—Laika, whom she’d decided to talk to after the woman’s eyebrow-raised shrug at Colahary’s attitude a minute ago—glanced over from where she stood a few feet away, then returned her gaze to the perimeter.

  Beyond the parking lot, the shadows in between the buildings encroached on their vision. At their back, on the road Baik had pulled into the lot from, the streetlights shone down in a yellow hue over its bumped and broken concrete. The translucent glass of the rapid transit system lifted into the air to the right, visible between two buildings. Its modern design and underlighting made it look almost like a fairy tale amid the rough, industrial neighborhood—or a piece of Pomona, the second of Nova Earth’s twin capitals—transplanted into a place that didn’t share too much of its famed aesthetics. She followed its slope up, only catching sight of its magnetic rail as it curved along the next street up. She hadn’t heard any trains, but it had only been a minute.

  Laika didn’t reply for so long that she thought she wouldn’t answer, or had thought Karin had intended her question to Marc, but after a half-minute of scanning their surroundings, she spoke.

  “Maybe. Who knows?” She shrugged. “They managed to find us on the mountain.”

  The way she said it made Karin frown. “Have they not gone there before?”

  “Nope. First time.”

  Hmm. “Baik said your guys’ energy shifts started a month ago. When did the monsters join the party?”

  “Three days ago.”

  “Oh.” That changed things a bit. Before, she’d assumed that the monsters had been part and parcel with the energy shift—and Baik had even implied it, if only by not mentioning the monsters’ more-recent introduction—but now, it was not the case. She guessed that, since Nova Earth had successfully found a way to halt or stall her progress, Dr. Sasha had stepped up her game with these things.

  So far, they’d proven very effective.

  “I didn’t know that,” she said a few seconds later, feeling dumb.

  Laika gave her a sidelong look, then
turned her attention outward. A tassel of hair had come loose from her ponytail, straggling down the side of her face. Blonde, like Karin’s. The other woman, Seras, had a more olive complexion, though her features were darker and more angular than Baik’s.

  Laika jerked suddenly, one hand going to the comms link in her ear, then spun her head around. Karin followed her gaze to see Baik waving from the other side of the lot, the netlink bright in his other hand. The other soldiers had already gathered around them.

  She gave Karin a wave, her head dipping in a ‘we’ll-talk-more-later’ gesture, and started over.

  Marc joined her side as Laika jogged away, closer than she’d stood, his back straight and arms crossed over his chest. After a few moments of scanning the perimeter and the streets beyond, he leaned in toward her, an arm going around her shoulders and pulling her close, head dipping as if to comfort her or talk about something private.

  “It strikes me that, with a bit of luck, we could get away from them.”

  “I had similar thoughts,” she said.

  “You sure you can’t do that invisible thing with your power?”

  “Very sure.”

  “Then we’ll have to go at night. You can make cover, then, like you did before. Think you can pull down a whole block like you did in Takao?”

  She assumed he didn’t mean right now, since it was obvious their captors were keeping an eye on them and expecting an escape, which meant that they’d have to hope for some luck either later tonight or sometime tomorrow night.

  “Yes, I think I can.” She glanced up, meeting his gaze with a raised eyebrow. “And it was two blocks, thank you very much.”

  “You are a magical woman.”

  “Yes. I know.” As he gave her a squeeze, she leaned into him, allowing herself to enjoy the way he felt. The position was a little awkward, with her shoulder bumping up into his ribs and her neck making an awkward angle as she swiveled her head back and tilted it against his arm, but it worked for the moment. “So, play it by ear and try not to look too scheme-y?”

  “Pretty much.” He paused. “And keep hydrated. Make sure you eat.”

  She nodded. His hand around her arm tightened, not pulling her in any closer but giving her a snugger hold. He laid his face down near hers, his breath tickling her neck. After a minute, she shifted so that she was right in front, and his hands were around her.

  They stayed like that for another five minutes, rocking with a quiet, slow beat, until Baik called them back. They all piled back into the Lemoore and drove off again.

  It wasn’t until the next morning, when the dawn had lightened the city around them, first with a red-gold hue that stretched its fingers over the haze of high cloud visible just through the square window in the top of the vehicle, then with a stark, white-gray hue as it fully rose, that Karin began to notice that things were very wrong.

  Though she’d dozed at intervals along the trip, usually jerking awake to some bump or shake, or some mid-point of conversation, her mind felt like it had been filled with bricks. Raw, dry eyes peeked out at the streets around, noticing just how dense the urbanization had grown—a sign they’d hit one of Nova’s super-cities. Cramped, its levels rising in blocks and squares, with streets and sub-streets curving in to form secondary streets and roads above them, the city had an aesthetic more akin to an ant colony or a rat warren than anything human-made.

  As they approached the upcoming turn-off, a street that would curve up into the next level, an edge appeared, its side turning dark as it made an inverse mirror of the city around it. Beyond it, the air fluctuated, like taking a block of ice and being presented with the cuts and imperfections it had flowed with.

  Nova Earth’s famed disc-levels.

  Meant to separate people in high density areas while also allowing light down to the lower levels, the one they were about to pass through was a fairly standard example, an old type she recognized from when she and Nomiki had lived here and the type that had been in use for more than a century. Since then, the cities had started fancying them up. A little color combination here, a little high-brow artwork there.

  Nowadays, they’d been modified from the original, threaded with a substance that bent and amplified light to the levels below. They also tended to glow at night, with different colors depending on either who had funded it, what sports team the district typically rooted for, or in some cases, religious affiliations. In Liber Pater and Pomona, the original users of the disc architecture, the discs flowed up the sides of the steep mountains and cliffs that hemmed the city in, looking a bit like magical glowing fungi when seen from afar.

  Nova Earth was a special place.

  A few Lost collected on the side of the new road they came up to, drawn by the light of a city info-post, a bright, tube-like holographic display that shared news and updates from the feeds to passersby. With the sky above turning a bright shade of gray from the clouds, the growing daylight had put a granite cast over the buildings, robbing the display of some of its effect. Other holosigns flickered around, advertising everything from fine dining to foot massage parlors. There were even a few AI holos waiting patiently outside the lobbies of hotels and restaurants, their expressions of polite easiness never fading, though the day was hollowing them out, as well.

  But something was missing.

  “Where is everyone?” she asked, looking around. “I mean—I know you said you evacuated, but…”

  They passed another group of Lost, this time clustered around the light of a police signboard, dressed in a mix of street clothes and business casual. One woman, wearing pink, giraffe-themed pajamas, wandered up to them, her bare feet dark from street grime.

  As the silence in the car continued and some of the soldiers glanced around at each other and shifted, she snapped her attention to Baik. The outside light outlined his knuckles where they clutched the steering wheel. He stared carefully ahead, saying nothing.

  A pit dropped out of her stomach. She got a queasy feeling, as if she were falling. “Did something happen?”

  He cleared his throat. In the center mirror, his eyes glanced up, caught hers, then returned to the road. “Yes. That last attack took more people than we’d anticipated.”

  She swallowed. “How many?”

  “About ninety percent. We’re still counting.” His voice wavered, the first sign that the events that had unfolded were getting to him. “Hawkings-Navarro has stepped up their evacuations to Liberty in orbit. About a hundred and eighty thousand have made the trip, but…”

  She didn’t hear him. Her mind had stuck at the first number. “Ninety percent of the non-Lost population total, or ninety percent of those who had yet to be taken?”

  “The latter. Based on the numbers we lost in the camp just outside of the protection zone.” He glanced up again. “Not exactly a precise measurement.”

  “No, but it’s telling. And I’m guessing the city isn’t supposed to be this empty—” she gestured to the streets they passed. Nearly a million windows stretched up between her and the sky, but only a fraction of those had lights in them. And how many of those were automated? “—even with your evacuation. People would have stayed, right? People always stay.”

  “Yes. There were people here. I doubt there are anymore.”

  She doubted that, as well. She leaned forward, watching the buildings in the side window pass by for a minute. They crossed an intersecting street, and the architecture swayed and curved with it. A fringe of green slipped up between the road and sidewalk, tall grass with a few sprays of tiny white flowers in it.

  “You knew about this before. Why didn’t you tell me?” She didn’t wait for an answer, another realization running into her mind. “Hells, have you told Fallon, yet?”

  “Yes. We told them last week. That’s why they agreed to meet us.”

  “And what allowed you to get that transporter, or whatever it was, in range.” She shook her head, distracted for a moment. “How does that thing even work? You can’t even get
a live feed between Chamak and Tala.”

  At first, she thought he wasn’t going to tell her, citing military secrets or some other such thing, but then, he sighed, and his shoulders dropped. As he relaxed further into the seat and his eyes once again glanced up to meet her gaze in the central mirror, she realized that he had been driving all night, virtually non-stop. Another side-boost of his quicksave?

  “We used a series of connected chains. The Orcus provided the first of the chain, and Wardboro provided the last. Took about thirty minutes to transmit.”

  Her jaw loosened. “You sent us through message centers?”

  “No, we sent you through military relays. Your data was priority.”

  Well, didn’t that just make her feel better. “I assume you’re not going to tell me how it works?”

  “I couldn’t even if I tried. You’d have to ask the researchers that put it together. The science is beyond me.”

  And probably beyond me, as well, though she wasn’t going to admit that out loud. She assumed it was some sort of quantum energy science at work, and her knowledge of that was even less than basic. She’d been educated on Old Earth, not Nova Earth, and Seirlin hadn’t thought to include very many useful, up-to-date things in her education.

  When they’d gone through the gate, she and Nomiki had found out just how outdated and misinformed their knowledge was. About the only thing they could rely on was math. That, and the fact that Seirlin had provided the Cross-System Standard Language as part of their second-language curriculum. It had taken well over a year of intense study, but they’d become near-fluent. In the years after, they had been almost indistinguishable from other System-Second-Language speakers, which happened to include about forty percent of the system.

  “You should have told me,” she repeated.

  “And you would have cared? After we abducted and imprisoned you?”