Deus: The Eurynome Code, Book Six

by Gorman, K.

  Well, technically, that was true. But they’d have a lot more problems if gravity suddenly stopped working. Like lack of oxygen due to the atmosphere fucking off. Half the ships would be broken, too.

  She breathed in deep and rolled her shoulders, waiting, listening to the bend and rustle of the grass. Feeling the stares of more than a hundred people on her.

  The children were there, too, at the sidelines. Silent. Attentive.

  Ah, yes. What a good environment for them.

  Then again, they’d likely seen worse than what she was about to do.

  Then, with a blur of motion and the mechanical whir of his suit, Morelli made his move.

  He was fast. She’d give him that. Good, too. The suit dampened his footfalls, and he moved in a near-blur, a quick sprint that he had clearly worked hard to achieve. Within a single second, he’d drawn a blade, lunged across the distance between them, and stabbed into the space her head had been a second before, even tracking part of her dodge and following it with his attack.

  And all of that without broadcasting his initial intent.

  But she was faster.

  With the armor on, she didn’t have to worry about breaking her hand or wrist when she punched. She twisted out of the way, shoved his strike aside, and slammed the blade of her palm into his neck.

  He staggered, shot to the side, tried to counter, but she was on him before he could even turn.

  The rest of it was a brutal, bloody mess.

  She smashed a fist into the back of his helmet, cracking the glass. He struck out, smacked an elbow into her shin, but she just punched the glass again.

  This time, it broke, and she slammed her fist into the naked skull below.

  The metal plates of his cyborg head dented. He yelled out, bucked and tried to get out from under.

  She pulled out her knife, a nice, laser-tinged blade like he had just tried to slice her with, activated it, and stabbed it into his neck.

  Blood sprayed, then gushed. Some of it splattered across her armor when he jerked, one of his hands smacking harmlessly into her shoulder. When she pressed harder, leaning into it, the bone of his spine cracked.

  He went still.

  She pulled her knife out and stood. Then she stepped back, watching him bleed out.

  After a minute, she turned and left his body on the field, heading back to Tillerman.

  Perhaps a minute was early for brain death, and the man could still be saved, but not without interference. And she had things to do.

  “Looks like I got myself another nation to lead.” She sighed. “Please, find out who’s Second and have them brought up to the Artemide’s conference room. That aide from earlier can fill them in and give them the info-pack.”

  Malouf came up, offering her a clean cloth. “The Mars rep would like to speak with you.”

  “Thank you, Malouf.” She switched directions, veering to where she saw Kalinsky, Reeve, and the Martian ambassador standing at the edge of the now-dissolving circle. “Ah, yes, Ambassador Lang. Ride with me. We have so many things to talk about.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The door hissed shut behind her, and she blew out a breath, feeling the tension slide out of her chest and shoulders.

  Finally. She was alone.

  The meeting had lasted longer than she’d liked, and she was still wearing her armor. All she’d done was give it a quick wipe to get the blood off. And it had beeped every ten minutes, reminding her of the stack of faults her little tumble through Sasha’s portal had given her.

  The headache that had been threatening earlier had also decided to make an appearance, likely bolstered by the blow to the head Sasha had given her.

  Gods, she thought, turning into the room. I need a shower.

  You think you can get the armor off alone, or do you need an attendant to help you dress again? Tia teased.

  Oh, shove off.

  Still, it was a conundrum. A conundrum she decided not to face quite yet, instead veering into the suite’s kitchen, grabbing a drink and a meal pack from the counter, and stepping over to admire the view through the windows.

  The suite really was breathtaking. It had a nice ambience, with a warm, golden base as opposed to the glaring, impeccable white that took the rest of the ship―a suite definitely meant for relaxation and winding down. That also meant that the carpeted floor came in an unfortunate shade of tan more commonly found in cheap, vintage hotel rooms with smoke stains coating the walls and an extra layer of dust in the curtains. The furniture was sleek and modern, but comfortable. Now that she had a moment to examine it, she could see just how well it had been styled, though she gathered that, by its size, it had been styled for a much larger person than herself.

  That’s fine. We can just call that ‘Jon’s chair.’

  Jon wasn’t as large as the former Grand Regent had been, but he did have trouble finding chairs that fit him.

  Fuck, I haven’t even seen the bed yet. I bet it’s enormous, she thought.

  Most likely, Tia replied. Especially given how many bed partners he apparently entertained.

  She gave a snort. Now, Tia. We’ve only met two of them. People can have more than two bed partners in a lifetime. Hells, I’ve had more than two bed partners in my life, and I’m a pretty prudish twenty-seven-year-old who was sheltered most of her life.

  Tia gave a long-suffering sigh. Karin, sometimes you are just no fun to joke with.

  She chuckled softly, giving her head a shake, then raised the drink to her lips.

  She made a face when she noticed a watered-down tint of red on the side of her index finger’s glove. Nose scrunched, she set the beverage down on the nearest table and began examining the forearm of her suit for a release switch.

  Farther down the wall of windows, Soo-jin blinked up at the movement. “Is that you, Legs?”

  Karin’s eyebrows rose. She didn’t think her legs were particularly long or fantastic, but she’d take the compliment. “And if it is?”

  There was a slight pause.

  “Well, I notice that we’re all still alive and the world is still here, so I guess it went well.”

  “You haven’t heard?” She glanced over. She didn’t recognize the bottle Soo-jin held, but the smell gave her an idea of the proof. Soo-jin’s liver would let her know its displeasure in about six hours, she predicted. “You been drinking here, alone, all this time?”

  Soo-jin made a vague, wobbling gesture to the starscape. “It’s a beautiful view to die by. Less stressful than being on the bridge. Or the conference room. Or anywhere else on the ship, really. Even engineering was stressful.”

  Ah. So she had explored the rest of the ship.

  Good.

  “Did you at least get laid?”

  Soo-jin pouted. “No. I was too busy being a whiny little bitch pining over Baik.”

  Well, at least she was admitting it.

  “Ah. Sorry for taking him away.”

  “Did you bring him back?”

  “Yes. He was in the meeting a few minutes ago. I suppose he must be somewhere on the ship.”

  Karin cringed, thinking back to the meeting.

  Well, they had hammered stuff out. And they had gotten everyone on the same page. Sort of.

  Fallon was trying to insist on everyone being on their page, citing some bullshit reason or another, but she knew an attempt at power manipulation when she saw one. Alliance, at least, was playing nice. As were Mars and the UN, the former having now sent a team to investigate if their planet, satellite, and station territories housed one Bernard Corringham and, if not, when the hells he had left, and the latter having an actual physical address for Elliot Corringham in Japan.

  We should go kill him. It’d be easy. Like cutting pie.

  Thank you for that, she thought back to Tia. Now I’ll never be able to eat pie without thinking of cutting someone’s throat.

  No, they were waiting for Mars, for the moment. That, and they were regrouping.

  She a
lso had an entirely new Centauri nation to bring into the fold. The poor Finlai Commander had been thrown into the conference room with little to no context for what was actually going on, either with her or with the situation. She’d met with him after, then she and Tillerman had sent him the aide from earlier to catch him up.

  She didn’t even know what her new nation included. Nor did she precisely care.

  They really need to re-examine their systems of government. At the rate I’m going, we’ll have control of their entire system in about five years, give or take.

  I suppose that’s one way to unify them under one government, Tia noted dryly.

  I suppose.

  She gave up fiddling with her forearm, let out a big sigh, and held it out toward Soo-jin. “Soo, come take this suit off me.”

  Soo-jin’s face split in a broad grin. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She sprang up, wobbling slightly, and tiptoed her way over. The bottle smelled even stronger up close, and its glass bottom made a clunk when Soo-jin set it down on the nearest tabletop.

  She turned to watch the stars while Soo-jin gave her a small circle, her grin turning into a frown as she tried and failed to find the catch-release. “What the fuck? Did they grow this on you?”

  “No. There’s gotta be a way to make it release. I mean, I bet it comes off when the battery kicks out, but…I really don’t want to wait three days for that, and I really don’t want to have to call Lieutenant Seki in to judge me again.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I feel you.” Soo-jin poked her head around her shoulder. “Activate your HUD.”

  Karin tapped her wrist, and the screen popped up. Soo-jin reached around, grabbed Karin’s arm, and began to type. She scrolled through several menus, hit a few commands, then gave a ‘yeehee’ of victory as she deactivated the suit from the power menu.

  The suit gave a beep, then the panels lifted off, revealing the skintight gel suit underneath.

  That was something Karin could deal with on her own.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “No problem. Just remember: you owe me now.”

  She smiled. “What do you want?”

  “Bring me up to date on everything, then bring me on your next mission.”

  She considered it. “I don’t know where I’m going yet, but it will likely be dangerous. The short answer is that Sasha isn’t entirely evil and I have now brought her aboard, and we’re going after the really evil guy, Bernard Corringham, who was in charge of the Eurynome Project and who may or may not have made himself into a god.” She paused. “He most likely did.”

  “Oh-oh. Huh. Okay, I think I heard you and Tia and Nomiki talking about that part before, actually. So he actually did it?”

  “Yes. And that is why Sasha decided to end the world and rewrite it.”

  “Okay, a bit dramatic, but I can see where she came from.” Soo-jin frowned. “So, like, he really actually did it?”

  Karin grunted. “We don’t know if he had a full Cradle when he did it, or if he did it with one that was incomplete―but yes, he actually managed to do it.”

  “Sol, this is so fucked up.”

  Tell me about it. We didn’t even get into the part where a shitload of dead children’s Cradle ghosts helped herd the living children back into ships and then watched us all fly away. While telling us how to win this war. Or the part where I, quite literally, made a Titaness submit her crown on top of Mount Olympus.

  She lifted her hand to rub her nose, paused when she re-noticed the blood, pulled the gauntlet of lifted panels off, and repeated the gesture. This time, there wasn’t any smeared blood, and the gel suit gave a nice, cooling sensation.

  But the gel suit had not developed any boundaries during the past three hours, and she was really tired about having it mold into the crack of her ass. Amongst other things.

  She scrunched her nose and made a sound of disgust. “Gods, I need a shower.”

  “Didn’t you just have one? Like, recently?”

  “I need another one.”

  “Maybe you should stop killing people in bloody ways. Just whap the next guy on the head or something. I bet your backhand is killer.”

  She laughed, imagining herself bitch-slapping the next challenger to death and walking away.

  It could work.

  She sighed, looking around, then pulled off the rest of the suit’s panels and put them on the table next to Soo-jin’s drink, stripping fully down to the gel suit.

  “Yeah, I’m going to have a shower. See you on the flip side.”

  “See ya. I’ll see if I can get someone to fix this armor for you. Looked like it was fucking up.”

  The last she saw, Soo-jin had her netlink out and was poking around the different parts on the table, her eyebrows in a concentrated frown.

  She closed the door between them and turned to survey the room, revisiting the luxury now that she had the time to do so.

  Unlike the rest of the suite, this room had been done in a shiny black tile that reflected her body when she walked inside―or would have, if she hadn’t been wearing the jet-black gel suit and thus rendering herself practically invisible to its surface.

  A sink stood close by, a gorgeous cut of ceramic shaped into a thick, shallow bowl that looked like it simply suspended on the wall. The mirror sat above, hung in a similar suspense. At the opposite end of the room, a tub large enough for ten people―or Leisler and his cybernetics, comfortably―took up the full width of the room, made from the same ceramic as the sink. A flat, square showerhead hung above it, with a secondary showerhead closer to the rim of the tub, probably for washing hair. Or junk. Next to it, a stack of fluffy towels towered on the end of a large wooden bench and what looked like a hand massager.

  Yeah. Leisler had been living the life in here.

  And now, he was dead. And she was going to take another nice, long shower in his bathroom and use another one of his fancy-dance towels to dry herself off. Then eat more of his food, and lead another mission with his crew.

  No, Tia corrected. He’s dead, and you killed him. By law, this is our shower. Our towel. Our crew.

  “We’re just here until we fix everything. After this, I’m going back to Sirius and taking the next three months off on a beach somewhere. If someone doesn’t kill me first.”

  You’d abandon these people?

  “These people need to choose a better election system. I never asked for this. They pushed, and I defended. It’s Leisler’s own damn fault that he didn’t try to negotiate, and it’s his own damn fault that he’s dead.” She sighed, her lips tugging into a smile as she once again took in the luxury. “Though I do admit, I could get used to this.”

  Yes. It is quite nice, isn’t it? Tia thought.

  She chuckled. “Yes. You thinking of keeping on after we part ways?”

  You never know. These people seem fairly open to cybernetically-enhanced people.

  “It’d be difficult to fight off challengers from a tank,” she said.

  Not if I could still access the Eurynome powers.

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Do you think you could do that?”

  With some modifications to the Cradle programming, I don’t see why not. I would need to become less of an isolated system, of course.

  It was odd to think about. That Tia had survived this long was a marvel in and of itself, of course, and that she had survived this long, in isolation, while still sane was another. From what she’d gathered from both Tia and Shinji, Tia’s Cradle was filled with outdated computer parts and built in a programming language that was over a century old.

  Upgrading would be…difficult. Although, less difficult since Tia was sentient and could, therefore, locate and solve many of the faults and errors that came up.

  They’d already connected her to a modern system, to let her explore its structure and language.

  “It could be doable,” she said. “They may even build you a body.”

  I do admit, it is nice to have one of those again, even if
it’s temporary.

  There was a wistfulness to the doctor’s tone, and Karin could feel the longing that came from the other part of her mind―a pulling at her own chest.

  For a second, she caught a sense of the closed-in isolation of the Cradle, the simulations and programs Tia had run just to keep herself going.

  Most of those, she noticed, had been centered around revenge.

  Tia had run several thousand simulations about killing both of the Corringhams. She didn’t remember all of them, but she did get an impression of violence, torture, and blood.

  She supposed she couldn’t judge. She’d had her own violent thoughts over the years, and the Corringhams hadn’t fucked her over nearly as much as they had Tia.

  Gods, seventy years alone in the Cradle. Likely one of the first AI-type beings in the universe, abandoned to its own devices and decaying architecture and left in a basement in a lab on Earth.

  What the fuck were the Corringhams even thinking?

  “It’s strange,” she said. “If Elliot claimed to love you so much, he sure as fuck dumped you in a shitty way.”

  Tia’s laugh was a huff of derision. I probably didn’t live up to his ideal of me. Too combative, too prone to thinking my own thoughts.

  “Sounds like he was looking for someone else.”

  He was. He just didn’t think so. Deluded himself. Wanted to try and ‘save’ me.

  “From your ALS?”

  That, and from my own thoughts. It was a rough time, and my mood became rather poor once the symptoms started hitting.

  Karin snorted. “I don’t blame you. I’d definitely turn into a pissy little bitch if I’d found out I was slowly and horribly dying.”

  They could cure ALS now, but that had only been a recent development.

  Tia laughed in her head. Yeah. I’m not sure I turned into a bitch so much as lost any patience I had for his fucking shit.

  “Yeah, I can definitely understand that. He seems like a real turd.” She rolled her shoulders. Then, she ran her hand down the gel suit’s release panel, shuddered as the nanos released the material and peeled it part of the way from her skin, then pulled the rest of the suit off.