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

by K. Gorman

  She let go of his wrist, slipping it back around to the controls.

  He didn’t move.

  “My right arm’s almost all better, and I can start to feel my butt again,” she informed him. “If the feeling doesn’t come back, we have two doctors on board, at least one nano device, and the backing of both Fallon and Alliance command, both of whom want to see me healthy. I’ll be fine.”

  He patted her shoulder. “Thanks. I’ll go help strap things down.”

  “Make sure they get that Cradle in a safe place,” she called after him.

  After a quick check of the Nemina’s sensor data—which verified that, yes, there were still three living, warm, people-sized organisms in the building a few hundred meters away, along with a shitload of random, smaller things in the forest—she toggled the screen to the outboard cameras and waited, drumming her hands along the edge of the dashboard. Anxiety ate away at her gut. It felt like bile, as if she’d coughed up her stomach, picked out the acid, and dropped it in with her other organs. The Nemina’s bridge hummed and whirred.

  With a weird, clicking sensation, the feeling returned to her legs.

  She blew out a breath, massaging the left one. Truth be told, that numbing had worried her. Marc had likely picked up on that, given his last behavior.

  She flexed her fingers. The muscles in her arms still shook. Two half-moon imprints had formed on the flesh of her palm from where her fingernails had dug in. Her jaw tensed as she resisted the urge to clench them again. She studied the cameras. On the Nemina’s long-range sensors, three ships had turned their way.

  Come on, Nomiki. Get back here.

  Rumbles came from the back hall, along with the normal scrapes and bangs.

  Then, shouts.

  She frowned, twisting her neck as voices rose in the aft portion of the ship. Had something fallen? Or was there other drama?

  Cookie was on board, wasn’t he?

  She toggled the left-hand camera feed to an internal source, flicking past the view of the empty hallway behind her and the dim view of the open ramp. Tasuhada—Shinji—appeared in the third screen, backing away from the recreation area he and Takahashi had taken over as their lab set up.

  She flicked into the rec room feed and sucked in a breath.

  A Centauri soldier stood at its end, holding a gun to Cookie’s head.

  “Fuck.”

  Her heart stopped, fear jolting through her limbs. Nearly everyone else was there, forming a loose half-circle of serious expressions around the door. Marc was at the front, his arms up, palms out in a universal gesture of peace. Karin could hear the low rumble of his voice carrying up the suddenly-quiet hall, the tone too low to understand at this distance.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

  She stumbled to her feet, forcing her formerly-numb legs to move. The chair fought her, twisting into her knee. She pried her way past, scanning the area for any weapon she could get her hands on.

  No. The closest blaster was probably in Marc’s cabin.

  Before she could move, the Centauri acted.

  She watched in dull horror as he tossed Cookie aside like a ragdoll and lunged for Marc.

  “No!”

  She jerked her way to the bridge door, hauling herself around the manual control panel. Shouts and yells broke out down the hall. Her knee shook hard, propelling her into the next wall. She lunged across the corridor and smacked the door panel for Marc’s room. When she jumped past, pain rang out across her knuckles as they rapped on the still-opening door. Her light came on with a fury, dousing the entire room in a bright, undulating white, throwing shadows off with every pulse.

  She scanned it for weapons.

  There.

  She grabbed the blaster from the holster hanging on his locker, killed the light, and made for the door.

  The fight had spilled through the central corridor. Both doctors backed past the intersection, arms lifted, heading for the open ramp. Soo-jin ran into sight a second later, slammed into the outside of the Mess wall to stop, and leapt across the hall to smack the door panel of her room.

  “Soo!” Karin yelled.

  She didn’t answer, but Karin could take a guess—Soo-jin was cabin-sharing with Baik, these days. At least one of them would have a weapon in there.

  She limped down the corridor as sounds from the fight escalated. The blaster made a subsonic whine when she flicked it on, giving her hand the tiniest vibration. Her body shook, adrenaline zipping through her nerves like snaps of electricity. Her breaths came short and shallow, hissing at every hitch of her knee. She didn’t remember banging it, but a twinging pain occurred whenever she took a step.

  With a roar, the fight careened into the intersection.

  Marc dodged back, avoiding two swings from the Centauri that looked aimed to behead him, his weight light on the balls of his feet, arms up. The next swing had him bowling into the two doctors, who scurried out of the way. Their shoes clanked on the ramp.

  Karin leveled the blaster at the Centauri’s head and started firing.

  He snapped back at the first blow—and the second and the third, movements similar to how she’d seen Nomiki dodge.

  His head swiveled toward her.

  In the next instant, he charged.

  Still firing, she stumbled over her feet to get back. He dodged again, this time a simple flinch of the head—her aim was not the greatest—and then, he was on her.

  It felt like getting hit by a car. Pain erupted in her wrist and hip. She had a sense of flying, the world turning over. The blaster tugged away from her fingers, and a blow landed on her chest. She hit the floor, the back of her head bouncing off the metal plating. Pain flared, bright and omnipresent, wiping out her vision for an entire second.

  When it cleared, the Centauri stood over her, aiming the blaster at her head.

  Baik leapt on his back and pulled him away. The bolt sniped into the deck next to her face. Sound cracked like a cannon in that ear, almost immediately drowned away by a dull, droning ring. The smell of burning came to her nose, along with the coppery scent of blood. Parts of her head and neck went cold with pain, as if she’d been sprayed simultaneously with boiling oil and dry ice.

  Bolt-splash. I’ve been hit by the splash.

  She struggled to breathe. Her lungs felt stunned. Her head lolled over, the pain turning into stinging heat. When she peeled herself off the deck and into a sitting position, pain stabbed through her wrist. The bones clicked together.

  That’ll need nanos. And, with the thought, so mundane in the midst of the fight, she knew she was going into shock.

  She fought against it, clawed her way back to being present. Forced herself back into the situation.

  Baik and the Centauri had moved a few meters away, midway between her and the intersection of the two halls. Baik was bleeding. He thrust an elbow up between them, forcing the Centauri back, and followed it up with three quick jabs, all of which were blocked. The Centauri moved in a blur.

  Soo-jin erupted out of the cabin at the end of the hall. Karin watched her feet stop and plant. The bottom half of her body jerked, as if she were throwing something.

  The Centauri twisted. Metal rang out, and the knife skipped off his armored wrist.

  He caught it, flipped it, and stabbed it into Baik’s neck.

  Baik’s eyes went wide. His hand went to his throat, too late, fingers fluttering. The Centauri jerked the blade out. Blood gushed, spilling onto the floor.

  Karin watched Baik stumble back, already sliding down the wall.

  No. No, no, no.

  Soo-jin screamed. In the next second, the Centauri turned back to Karin. His bloodied fist still clutched the knife.

  Light flared under her skin, rising like a fine smoke. With a yell, she slammed it into his eyes.

  He flinched back, one hand snapping partway to his face before it slowed.

  Marc cracked a gravball bat across his head. It lit a spark and made a sharp clink, as if it had hit metal.


  Her eyes widened, staring.

  Was his body made of metal, too?

  For a moment, the man didn’t move. His head tilted, as if he were listening. She saw his throat move.

  Then, he turned. The knife dropped from his hand. Before it even hit the floor, he’d whirled and shoved Marc down the hallway with the force of a freight car. The gravball bat clattered against the metal walls and floor. The next blow was a feint. Marc dodged, realized too late, and was slammed down to the floor.

  The Centauri was on him in the next second, raining down blows.

  “No!”

  Pain raged through her arm as she pulled herself up. The bones in her wrist clicked. She switched to her other arm, hauling herself up the wall, stepping over Baik’s legs. Blood pulled at her attention. There was a spill of it now, spreading down his front and to the floor below. He was still alive, still trying to move, one hand trying to hold in the gush that pulsed from the wound on his neck.

  Her vision swam. She drew a breath, trying to focus through the shock and pain. The sounds of hitting wet meat came from ahead. She wasn’t sure how she got there, but she was at the Centauri’s side in the next moment, looking down in dawning horror at the mess that was Marc’s face. Blood darkened a large patch of his shirt. His jaw was offset, eyes half open. The orbital bone, as well as part of his cheek, had been crushed in, the wound still too fresh for swelling. Marc had stopped fighting, his arms limp and unconscious on the floor.

  “Okay!” she yelled, her voice tumbling out in a panic. “You win! Stop!”

  The Centauri ignored her. His hand smacked against Marc’s face again. She saw the detail as it impacted his cheekbone, the force of the blow making his entire body jerk. Blood came up on the man’s metal knuckles from where he’d broken skin. He swung back for another blow.

  She dipped, then swayed back up. She didn’t remember picking up the gravball bat, but it was in her hand when she straightened.

  It made a solid thunk when she hit him in the head. A dent appeared, looking like a divet on a round, brown-skinned moon. She saw it vividly, the way the Nemina’s hall lights fell over from the intersection ahead. The way the man’s head jerked when she hit it.

  His face snapped to her, eyes still blazing from her light. Then, he lunged.

  She deflected him one-handed, ducking her shoulder and turning away from his movement. Her right fist darted out, punching a blow into the area beneath his shoulder blade as he moved past. Pain erupted in her arm on impact. The world seemed to rotate as he slid away, and she realized she was moving. The edges of her body prickled as if they’d gone to sleep. She watched him turn, spin to face her. She felt herself move.

  In the next second, she was in his face, ripping at his throat. The hand with her broken wrist tried uselessly to follow along.

  Her right forefinger curled around a joint in his armor and hauled on it. Blood flooded over her fingers, reminding her of Baik. The armor peeled back under her grasp, metal flexing, bending, turning like the top of a sardine can. The Centauri yelled, and some part of her gained satisfaction at his pain.

  She snarled, putting on more pressure, forcing her fingertips in. If she could get inside…

  His hand darted out. Pain erupted in her chest.

  She had a half-breath’s awareness of movement—of being shoved back—before her head slammed into the wall, and everything went dark.

  Chapter Twenty

  Pain struck her consciousness like roots from a tree. She was aware of movement around her. Light. A feeling of floating, and air shifting around her. Voices, most of them foreign, speaking with a staccato-like language she didn’t understand. A few terms of System slipped in—Sirius, for one, Earth for another. Smells came to her, the fresh scent of pine passed her by, mixed in with the same burned metal scent she recognized from the two Centauri soldiers.

  The smell of blood was the most overpowering. It slid across the front of her brain as if someone had jammed a whole copper bandage of it up her nose.

  Time slipped. So did her ability to stay conscious.

  The world quivered.

  For a second, she saw Tia, the brown-haired woman from her vision—she stood over a black desk, a small holographic monitor pulled straight across its surface. She glanced up as if she had noticed her.

  Then, she was gone, back into blackness.

  When she woke, she was in pain.

  A hard, dusty floor cradled her body. Her chest felt frozen. She coughed out a breath, wincing as a stab of pain shot through her lungs. Her eyes fluttered open. Straight ahead, a line of light made a slight reflection off of one side. After a few seconds, her brain aligned what she was seeing with where the gravity was coming from, and she realized she was looking at the bottom of a door.

  With a sinking feeling, she realized that she recognized it.

  They’ve put me in the compound.

  It wasn’t her specific room they’d locked her in—the light, and the angle of the hallway, was all wrong, and it had a different feel to it, as if it were on the opposite side of the hall—but one just like it. The dresser was on the right of the door this time, close to her head, and the door’s hinges were on the wrong side. By the dust that coated the floor, and the mesh of footprints that marred it, she guessed they’d dragged her in here.

  She blew out a slow breath, then gritted her teeth. Careful, testing every movement, she wiggled varying parts of her body—a stab of pain rolled the rest of the breath right out of her when she tried her left wrist—then eased herself to a sitting position. Something coated the skin of her neck. When she lifted her hand to feel it, the bandage was rough to the touch.

  She found a second bandage on her broken wrist. Though, if the pain and look of it were anything to do by, it was only meant to provide a minimum of support.

  Exhaustion fell over her again. She leaned back until her shoulders hit the metal bed frame behind her.

  She thought about fighting the feeling, but only for a second. She was too tired. So tired that she couldn’t even bother to lift herself up to the bed.

  She didn’t remember moving, but her head was on the floor in the next moment.

  Time skipping. Probably not a good sign.

  She closed her eyes, and the world dropped out again.

  The click and squeak of the door awoke her. She opened her eyes just as two blue-and-yellow-clad soldiers lifted her from under her arms and dragged her to her feet.

  She yelled as pain stabbed through her wrist and chest, and the one on the left gave her a smack on the head.

  “Quiet!” he snapped, his System accent stiff and stilted.

  She gritted her jaw against the next wave of pain, a single thought slipping through the forefront of her brain.

  Yeah. That’s right. Hit the one who probably has a concussion.

  Although, now that she was paying attention, she wasn’t noticing some of the signs. No nausea, for one, which was always good in her book. Time had slid, and she had fallen in and out of consciousness, but everything seemed to be ticking along just fine.

  Maybe Takahashi had slipped her some emergency nanos during her last treatment. Hell if she knew why he wouldn’t tell her, though, but—

  Memory came crashing back. She sucked in a breath as the image of Marc’s bloodied and broken face came to her. Her entire spine stiffened.

  “Where’s Marc? Is he all right?”

  The one on the left smacked her again. “Quiet!”

  Then, with a murmured discussion over her head in their language, they hauled her out the door and down the hallway. Her feet dragged until she got them underneath her.

  The compound was a hive of activity. Every light was on, blazing a glare into her eyes—she guessed they had just left her room light off to give a better, more prison-y feel—and, everywhere she looked, people were checking and scouring every inch of the place. Her gaze darted around. Most of the dorm rooms were closed and locked, the hardware clearly visible. Soldiers, both the mun
dane, blue and yellow type that were currently hauling her along and the silver, metal-clad figures that had caused them so much trouble, moved and mingled around.

  At the end of the hall, she recognized the one who had beaten them all up. He stood casual, hands across his chest, feet splayed, deep in conversation with the older, normal-looking soldier next to him. Blood still dirtied his metal armor, growing grittier close to his wrists and knuckles, and a bandage covered the right side of his chest where she’d attacked. She stared at the blood on his hands, breath catching, the memory of them pounding into Marc—and then into her—coming back.

  He looked up as they approached, and the movement caught her gaze. He sneered as they passed, returning to his conversation with the normal-clad soldier next to him.

  They took her outside. This time, as her legs failed her on the short set of stairs, they did have to haul her, jarring her shoulders and pulling a spike of pain from her chest and wrist. Her failure earned her another smack in the head. She got her legs back under her as the concrete sidewalk turned into grass, blinking at the glare of lights that illuminated the scene. Four ships had landed. The two largest ones, bookending the small squadron on each end, had angular, flared-back designs similar to the corvettes she’d seen on the Manila’s cameras. Both had wide-open ramps and looked to be the centers of activity. The second-from-right matched the drone ship she’d seen earlier. The last one, next to the left-hand corvette-type model, was the smallest—a three-man ship that had a similar look to the Skim Birds the Alliance used to transport delegates and other important personnel.

  Her gaze lingered on the Skim Bird.

  Of all of them, it looked the most futuristic with its bubble-like front window and wings that angled from its back like a starburst.

  They hauled her to the right-hand corvette. She kept her feet up the ramp this time, the fresh air of the night seeming to bolster her strength and balance.

  The light helped, too. As they’d been walking, her power had been sapping off the excess like her own built-in solar panel.