Deus: The Eurynome Code, Book Six

by Gorman, K.

  “Awfully, but better than you guys in the initial wave. Percentage reports suggest a current rate of Shadow infection of 53.6%. However, roughly two thirds of the system collapsed into infighting. Otherwise, we would have more than two nations making the venture into Sol.”

  “Yes, it’s you and Finlai Center Core, correct?”

  “Yes, correct.” Tillerman’s lip curled. “Our Center Council, which is the closest we get to a unified Centauri governing body, thought the Shadows were ghosts. Please, tell me they aren’t ghosts.”

  A few Shadows had come into sight beyond the door, their forms shifting and undulating. They stood quietly, unobtrusive, but Karin felt their presence like an itch at the back of her shoulders.

  More wandered into view through the shuttle’s forward windows, occupying the place where the two Alliance soldiers had been.

  “They aren’t ghosts,” she confirmed. “They’re pan-dimensional entities with a connection to the human psyche.”

  “Oh,” Tillerman said, her tone flat with incredulity. “Is that all?”

  “No.”

  Karin closed her eyes and let out a breath.

  Gods, I’m the new Grand Regent. I have an army.

  More than an army. From what she’d seen, she had one of the most powerful fleets in this sector of the universe, except for the other Centauri nation currently in orbit. Although Fallon had been able to stand against them, the Centauri clearly had access to major firepower, and neither Fallon nor the Alliance had brought much of their fleets across the gate.

  Sol, if she was Grand Regent, why hadn’t Fallon used that? And why hadn’t Fallon told her about it? Instead of dumping the entire Menassi Tri-Quad fleet in a nearby field, why hadn’t they mobilized them to help track Sasha? Centauri clearly had the gear for it―just one look at their ships made that obvious―and surely, they could have come up with some sort of system of checks and balances to protect against any…problems.

  Then again, why didn’t they let her explore her new powers?

  Fuck. I can’t believe this actually happened.

  It didn’t feel real.

  But it was. She’d seen it in that cyborg’s eyes when she’d shoved him into the wall, and again in the pilot.

  And in the woman before her now.

  Fuck. I can order them to do whatever I want. I can order them to find Sasha.

  After a moment, Tillerman walked the few steps to the door, her head tilting up to take in the cloudy black mass that was the sky in this world.

  “There aren’t any stars. Is this a planet? Is there a universe beyond that, or is this an isolate?”

  “I don’t have a clue. Fallon won’t conduct tests.” Her mouth twitched. “I suppose you guys would conduct tests if I wanted you to.”

  Tillerman snorted. “We are Centauri, and you are our Grand Regent. We’ll do basically anything you tell us to do.”

  “‘Basically anything’?” she questioned, a smile touching her lips. “So there are things that are off-limits?”

  “Yes. Very specific things. You will get a list from the Center Council.”

  She let out a breath.

  I could send them after Sasha.

  She buried the thought. She had other things to ask about. She needed to know how this worked.

  “If the Center Council allows slavery, I’m not sure they’ll forbid much I disagree with.” She shook her head, disgust twisting her lips. The former Grand Regent, Azrikam Devnath Leisler, had planned to put a ‘slave tag’ in her frontal cortex and have her as a ‘living doll’ by his side. “How many slaves do we have?”

  “Three,” Tillerman answered. “All former criminals with behavioral deficits.” Her mouth twitched. “One of your best navigators is a slave.”

  She ground her teeth.

  Yeah, that will have to change.

  “They were looking for you, back in the compound,” Tillerman said. “Wondering where you’d gone.”

  Karin ground her teeth. She’d only been gone for thirty minutes―and half of that had been spent in the other world, waiting for Tillerman. She hadn’t received any messages on her netlink. Nothing major, anyway.

  Which meant that Fallon had known she and Soo-jin had gone into the Shadow world.

  And if this reaction doesn’t just tip those warnings bells…

  You already knew they’d been watching you, Tia reminded her.

  Yes, but I didn’t think it was this closely. Aren’t I allowed to have breaks? Turn my phone off? They didn’t even try to contact me.

  She sighed.

  “I’m not sure I trust them anymore. They were supposed to be helping solve this Shadow attack problem, but lately, their actions have been counter-intuitive to that goal.” She scrunched her nose and squinted up at Tillerman. “How much do you know about me?

  “Not much. That you’re a person with special powers, and very dangerous. That you’re trying to oppose someone who is trying to replace the universe.” Her head ticked up. “You said that was true. Is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please, tell me about this woman who wants to take over the universe,” Tillerman said. “I’ve heard so awfully little about her.”

  “It’s…complicated. The CheatNotes are that she and I were both genetically engineered from embryonic conception using a blueprint based on models of different mythological deities―and yes, I know how fucking weird that sounds. It was some fucked up psychology and genetic engineering experiment. Anyway, my sister and I murdered our way out to freedom and a normal, non-mutated life, but this person―Dr. Evangeline Sasha―was modeled after Program Chaos, a creation entity, and, somewhere along the way, she decided that she needed to make a whole new world to protect her son.”

  Actually, Sasha was apparently planning to make the whole new world out of her son. Karin had long ago stopped asking questions.

  Tillerman’s eyebrows had slowly risen.

  She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

  Karin shrugged. “Like I said, it’s fucked. But there it is.”

  “Yes. There it is,” Tillerman echoed.

  “Eos.”

  They both flinched as the thought-voice touched their mind. A cold, creeping sensation slid under Karin’s skin, like a clammy hand touching her spine.

  Outside, the Shadow watched from the ground, its stare fixated on her.

  She recognized it. The one that had been following her in the Macedonian complex.

  Gods, they were still calling her Eos.

  She let out a breath and rubbed the bridge of her nose again. “Ignore that. I have no idea what that’s about, but they haven’t been attacking me for a while.”

  “Uh huh,” Tillerman said. “So, about this Dr. Sasha who wants to take over the universe―you can stop her?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s why I went into that tank in the lab downstairs. I have now been genetically engineered enough to oppose her powers. The problem is that I need to find her to kill her. I also have to find the two scientists that created this mess in the first place. They’re on my murder list, too.”

  In her head, Tia beamed at her. Thank you for thinking of me and making our vengeance your priority.

  Tia, I’ll always have time for murder.

  “I see,” Tillerman said.

  “Dr. Sasha’s son, Tylanus, showed up yesterday,” she said. “Fallon has decided to keep him sedated. Apparently, they’ve got a team of experts coming out from Nova.”

  “Does he have powers, too?” Tillerman asked.

  “Yes. Though his mother is the one built to recreate the Grecian deity Chaos, she built him to recreate Tartarus. Similar to Chaos, it is both a person and a place. The hell where they sent the mythological Titans to live out the rest of their immortality in prison.”

  Tillerman was silent. In the thin light of the ship’s running bulbs, her stare was flat.

  “Yes. It’s a lot.” Karin crossed her arms over her chest. “So, how many people do I no
w have under my command? One thousand? Three? And how good are they at finding people?”

  “Eight hundred and thirty-three thousand enlisted troops, with two hundred warships and two cryo storage supply vessels. We brought twenty carrier warships and three hundred thousand troops into Sol. The rest are guarding our home against attack. You have an excelled position in the Prime.”

  Karin’s jaw slackened.

  Holy shit.

  You became an empress. Congratulations.

  Congratulations, indeed. Suns. She still couldn’t believe this was actually real.

  Yes. Too bad I don’t want it, she thought back. I have Sasha to deal with.

  They could help with that, Tia thought. Especially if Fallon is railroading us for whatever reason.

  We need to find out what the hell is up with them. I don’t get it―they used to be so good.

  Your goals aligned then, Tia thought, echoing an earlier argument. Something must have changed. Centauri could be useful.

  “Huh.” Within seconds, her mind recovered from the shock and went spiraling, churning over tens of new logical paths with the new information. “And how many of them want to kill me?”

  “Oh, several hundred, but I doubt more than a few will actually go for it,” Tillerman said. “Despite what you may think, the higher positions in Centauri society aren’t always highly coveted.”

  “Plus, I can literally slice people in half,” she said. “What about revenge-killing? I killed…quite a lot of your troops.”

  “There will likely be a few of those. But, as you said, you can literally slice people in half. That has a way of persuading people to give it up.”

  “Do you want to kill me? You’re second-in-command, after all.”

  Tillerman smiled.

  “What, for the Grand Regent seat? No, that is not my ambition. And, as you said, you can literally slice people in half.” She shook her head. “No, I think I’ll keep my retirement coming. Only another five or ten years, depending. I have a nice little apartment lined up on Jezebel. I’d hate to squander that.”

  Karin frowned. “Grand Regents don’t get to retire?”

  “No. The Grand Regent seat is for life.”

  “What if the Grand Regent gets old and infirm, or suffers a giant brain injury and becomes comatose?”

  “Then someone challenges them to ritual combat and we get a new Grand Regent.”

  Huh. Okay. She was starting to see how that system worked. A part of her was even getting excited about it―little flutters of giddiness brushing at the inside of her chest. If it were true, the whole Centauri governance system was absolutely, blindingly stupid and just asking for dictatorships and psychopaths at the helm, but there did at least seem to be more nuance to it. And maybe there were more cultural rules that made it work better.

  Otherwise, it had just been asking for someone like her to come along and mess things up.

  Gods, I can’t believe I’m actually Grand Regent.

  It felt like she was in a dream. A weird, hollow dream that she was too numb to wake up from.

  “So,” Tillerman said, bringing up her hands and counting on her fingers. “You need to find Dr. Sasha-the-Chaos-Goddess and end her dream of universe take-over, probably by killing her, and you need to find the two scientists that made you and kill them. Do I have that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what about the crazy doctor’s son, who Fallon now has imprisoned and sedated? Do you still trust them with him?”

  “Yes. They have a good humanitarian record and, from a logical standpoint, I can understand why they are keeping him sedated―he is dangerous.”

  “So are you,” Tillerman said.

  “Yes. So am I.” She let out a sigh and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m missing something. I think Fallon has been stalling me, but they wouldn’t do so without a reason. I need to find out what that reason is.”

  “You’re their enemy’s leader,” Tillerman said. “I’m sure that has something to do with that.”

  “In which case, they fucked that up. I had no idea I was the new Grand Regent. They didn’t tell me.”

  That, in itself, is telling, Tia said.

  “That’s an act of war, in some places,” Tillerman commented, echoing the sentiment.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Karin shook her head. “I don’t know. I am not a soldier, and I’m not anywhere close to a military leader. We’ll have to find a way to make this work.”

  Tillerman grunted. “We’ll make it work. I have my retirement to think of. Crushing destruction and infighting would put a damper on that.”

  “As would the end of the universe,” Karin said.

  “Yes, that, too.”

  She rubbed her eyes. “Okay, so, next steps…I’ll get Soo-jin to give you a netlink. That way, we can talk. I―”

  She stopped when Tillerman held up a finger.

  “Wait. I can do you one better.” With a surprisingly-graceful shuffle despite the bulky look of the cyberization, she managed to slip past her and up the short hall, stopped at a spot a meter down, close to where Karin had slammed the other cyborg into the wall. She paused, frowning at the damage. “Did you do this?”

  “Yes. It was self-defense.”

  “I don’t care. That’s vulnerable equipment.” She gave a sigh and poked at one of the panels. A holoscreen shivered up, and she quickly dismissed it, pulling a thin metal stick out of the wall. She pressed one end of it and fiddled with the holoscreen that came up for a few seconds, then handed it to Karin. “Here. This is one of our communicators. It will have better security.”

  “It will?” She turned the device over, someone dubiously. “Ours have been sealed by the Fallon tech spe―”

  “We’ve already broken through their encryption,” Tillerman said. “They’re not as smart as they think they are.”

  Ah. Well, maybe not for a society several generations of tech more advanced than them.

  “We’ll keep contact, then. I’ll give you a more in-depth overview of everything so that you will have a better understanding.” She looked around. “How long does it take for you to warm this shuttle up and launch?”

  Tillerman didn’t even blink. “One second. Why?”

  “Oh, no reason.” She slipped the Centauri comms device into her pocket and stepped back.

  “Stay on stand-by for now, but be ready. I’m not sure I trust Fallon anymore.”

  * * *

  She switched herself and Tillerman back to the real-world ship, picked up Soo-jin from where she'd still been sitting in the navigator's chair, and took her back into the Shadow world for the trek back.

  Five seconds after she and Soo-jin returned from the Shadow world, her netlink began to ding with missed messages.

  Soo-jin chuckled as she grumbled. “Sounds like you were missed.”

  “I’ve barely been gone forty minutes. Sol, what if I was asleep? Or masturbating?”

  “That could make for an awkward conversation.” Soo-jin laughed. “But I guess it confirms one thing: Fallon’s definitely overstepping its surveillance bounds.”

  “Yep. I didn’t mind being watched―I get it. But they appear to be watching me enough to know when I go into the Shadow world.” She shook her head, distracted. “Suns.”

  She was Grand Regent, now. Fuck.

  And whatever paranoia she’d had about Fallon appeared to be coming true.

  A hollow feeling had sunk into her chest, and a numbness spread to every part of her skin. She flexed her hands back and forth, one of them feeling the hard edges of the Centauri communicator. Her mind whirled.

  It still didn’t feel real. And yet, it was.

  She took her gaze off the path to look at the communicator.

  “They used to be so good, though,” Soo-jin said. “Why are they blocking you now?”

  Karin blinked, dropped out of her thoughts.

  Right. Fallon. The ones who were currently acting shady.

  “I don’t
know. I guess they didn’t have a reason not to be. I practically dropped myself into their lap, solved their problems, and embraced their protection.” She pushed aside a large leaf in the path, ducking her head. After the relative cool of the Shadow world, the heat in Brazil was seething and wet, and the jungle around them seemed to hold it all in. She’d taken the long way around to make it seem like she and Soo-jin had just wandered off. “Our goals and interests aligned, and they had an organized, effective approach to attaining them.”

  Soo-jin squinted as she came up with her. “Has that changed? I assumed they still wanted to save the universe?”

  “As far as I can tell, they do―but I did not go into that tank just so I could waste my time on combat missions.” She shook her head. “Maybe it’s my new inherent paranoia, but it feels like they’re keeping me at arms’ length. None of my missions have been about exploring my new power, and they won’t tell me why.” She let out a breath and stopped, shaking her head. “I don’t know. Maybe I am fucking paranoid. Maybe they do have a plan.”

  “They didn’t tell you about being Grand Regent,” Soo-jin pointed out. “That’s pretty shifty.”

  “Maybe they didn’t want to put another thing on me.”

  “Maybe, but they don’t seem to mind sending you off on mission after mission. That’s pretty big. Have you told Nomiki any of this?”

  “No. They’d be watching her, too. Besides, I don’t know where she’d stand on this.”

  Soo-jin gave her a flat look. “She’s your sister. She’d stand with you.”

  “Yeah, I guess. Historically, she has helped me against her better interests.” She blew out a breath and tipped her head back, closing her eyes against the backdrop of the trees. “Fuck, I don’t know.”

  “Why don’t you just go off and try it?” Soo-jin suggested.

  “What?” Karin looked over at her friend sharply.

  “Just say you got a mental pull from Tylanus and he deposited you in another dimension.”

  “Tylanus is currently unconscious on a bed and under heavy guard,” she said. “I’m not sure they’d buy that.”

  “I dunno―he is pretty freaky.” Soo-jin shrugged. “Besides, what can they do about it? Reprimand you? Take your pay away? It’s not like they can hold you any more.”