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

by K. Gorman

“He’s on the bridge,” Soo-jin continued. “But, last we saw, there were at least five Shadows in there with him. We can’t take that many alone.”

  “Of course, of course—and we wouldn’t expect you to, either. He’s one of ours. We ought to be leading the charge.” He lifted his head with a gesture toward one of the men at the side of the room. “Bill, you—”

  “Why didn’t we answer the Alliance?” Charise, finished with her medical duties, flashed a hard look toward Karin and Soo-jin. “We saw your alerts. You make trouble?”

  Sol. Karin shifted, aware of the room’s stares. “No, we just—”

  “Alliance wants you pretty bad.” A girl to her right with the same thick hair and rounded expression as Charise lifted a glowing netlink screen in her hand. “You were top of the latest update.”

  Charise’s scowl deepened. “We don’t work with lawbreakers. We all agreed on that, right at the beginning.”

  By the way she glanced around, looking at the others who had gathered in the hall, Karin thought she was referencing something beyond the conversation.

  “We haven’t broken the law.” Soo-jin’s voice, calm and long-suffering, silenced the room with its usual bluntness. “They just want us because Karin’s the only one that can heal this stuff.”

  “Then why is it she’s running from them?” Charise narrowed her eyes. “Sounds to me like she could do a lot of good.”

  Her jaw stiffened as the crowd shifted, their gazes pinning on her again, and a low rash of anger crawled through her shoulders. The woman’s gaze was narrow, accusing, stabbing her to the spot like an entomologist’s needle through a dead insect.

  She balled her hands into fists at her sides.

  “You have no idea what’s happening out there. How many Lost do you think have been taken? A few hundred? Maybe a thousand? Enlil alone had 470 million.” She hissed a shallow breath through her teeth. “How many do you think I could heal? It’s taken over an hour just to clear this ship—and we’re still missing one.”

  Silence met her. Her jaw tensed again, and she pulled in a shuddering breath. Something pricked at her eyes.

  “Even the most conservative measure put us at over ten billion in need of help if we factor in Fallon and the outer communities.” Soo-jin put a hand on her shoulder, her low, reasonable voice carrying over the hall. “By my estimate, that would take Karin several lifetimes—and they’re still coming.”

  She narrowed her gaze, giving the crowd a slow scan. “You all had that dream, right? With the ruins? Every time you have that dream, a Shadow will come.”

  She paused again, letting her statement sink in.

  “Now, are you guys going to help us rescue your second officer and get the engines back online, or are we going to piss around here while you try and fuck us over some wanted posters?”

  A stunned silence met her words, and Karin saw more than a few raised eyebrows in the crowd. After a few seconds, Soo-jin tilted her head and touched Ethan’s shoulder. “Sorry.”

  The sigh he made had a comedic touch of overdrama. “I promise I won’t tell my dad.”

  She ruffled his hair.

  “Good kid.” Then, she lifted her eyebrows at the crowd, meeting their stares again. “Are we good?”

  The silence that followed, and the narrow-eyed frowns that some of them exchanged with each other, didn’t seem promising. Charise’s own face tightened. By the twist to her lips, and the way her stare bore into Karin’s forehead, she had quite a lot more to say.

  But Arren spoke up first. “Yeah, we’re good. Right, people? Ready to get Christops now?”

  Some tones of agreement sounded promising, but they were few.

  Watching Charise, Karin didn’t relax, but a part of her felt relieved.

  At least we’ll get to rescue Ethan’s dad.

  But, as the woman held her stare, her gaze flinty and sharp, Karin had a feeling she wasn’t done with this yet.

  Maybe she could talk to her later and explain more. Smooth things over.

  “All right, then,” Soo-jin said. “Let’s make a rescue plan.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Plan’ ended up being a bit of a misnomer. There wasn’t a whole lot of tactics involved, just a scraggle of volunteers and cobbled-together weapons. The Ozark’s people were colonizers. Settlers. People who’d wanted to get away from the violence of the inner worlds and not bring it with them.

  Ethan’s mother, she’d learned, had been killed in a Nova Earth inner city. That’s why his stepfather had decided to head to the outskirts.

  The Ozark was a passenger runner. They’d been scheduled to make an empty run to Clemens, the planet just beyond Amosi, grab the colony there, and shift them elsewhere. One of the moons, probably.

  Whatever the case, none objected to her plan to bring the Ozark back to Caishen. She hadn’t brought up the subject of taking some fuel rods for the Nemina, but they had another five days of talking for that.

  Although—maybe they shouldn’t head off to Caishen just yet. Getting closer increased the chance of capture. And the chance that Charise, or one of her sympathizers, might get on the comms to Hopper and get them arrested.

  Of course, if she tried to help the people at Caishen…

  Maybe she could make a deal.

  No. That was stupid and risky. Too many factors involved. Hopper would take the deal, for sure—he had his wife to think about—but Caishen was an Alliance station. Once his wife was healed, she couldn’t trust him not to backstab her.

  Her jaw clenched. They’d left Charise behind in the Mess, but she could still feel the woman’s eyes on her. Staring. Accusing.

  She shook the feeling off and returned her focus to the hall. Now was not the time to scheme. They had a job to do.

  Sometimes, the Shadows had a way of manipulating the lights around her. It didn’t matter that the bulbs were still intact and functioning, or that the power was on with no faults—the Shadows just turned them off. It had happened at Songbird, where every single light in the complex had been rendered useless, and also in the cargo hold when Soo-jin had been taken.

  She could do it, too, to a certain effect. Take the light and absorb it into her skin. But she had a feeling that the Shadows had a different tactic they employed, like the flip side of her coin.

  Yet another reason she suspected Seirlin Corp’s involvement. As if the ruins, and her lights effect on the Shadows, weren’t proof enough.

  So far, though the Ozark still ran on emergency reserve protocol, this was the only hallway that hadn’t flickered on when they opened the door. She stared through the open threshold, her flashlight beam piercing a few meters into the darkness to catch two metal struts near the side. Dormant light tubes gleamed back at her from the ceiling, their white casing giving a ghost-like tint.

  “Get ready,” Soo-jin told the group. “Shadows move fast.”

  A quiet anxiety filled her stomach as they filed in. Someone had set the door to stay open, letting in light from behind them, but it wasn’t long before the darkness swallowed them. The taps and clicks of feet and weapons made a blurred echo down the length of the hall. Closer, the sounds of quick, shallow breathing filled her ears. Flashlight beams swept over the same style of pipes and struts she’d seen in most other hallways, but the mercurial tint of their light turned them at once alien and unfamiliar.

  They can probably turn flashlights off, too. A bulb and battery pack was not altogether different from the dead, hard-wired fixtures above them.

  The thought made a jolt of energy pulse under her skin. Her light, not quite pushing through, sat in the cell structure of her muscles and bones, making it tingle.

  She’d never figured out how it worked. Even after their escape, away from the brainwashed confines of the compound where her ability had seemed so normal, comparatively, and introduced to the idea that what she did was not possible, she’d never been able to figure it. She’d practiced slowly, moved the energy inside her, felt its subtleties itch thro
ugh her bones, but the whole process seemed impossible. Even augments needed a support system for what they did—surgical preparation.

  Of course, she’d had quite a few surgeries in the compound, only some of which she remembered. Maybe she did have a support system, albeit undetected and invisible to every normal clinic she’d visited.

  They’re taking our memories, Rin.

  A shiver of fear ran through her as some of the group paused ahead, midway down the hall. One person had jogged ahead to the opposite door, his light searching the corners for Shadows in an unpracticed mimicry of a soldier’s sweep. As he came back, the beam cut through the dark, catching parts of the walls and ceiling in a quick, jerky arc. Darkness swallowed the end of the hallway behind him. She felt it all around her, too, pressing at her back and shoulders. A sense of emptiness that pricked at her consciousness in a much different way than her light did.

  Marc had called this the ‘horror movie filter,’ the way the flashlights cut through the hallway.

  Actually, she suspected that term had applied to their entire trip last time, when they had been wandering through what had essentially been a ghost ship, still reeling from the first Shadow attack and exceedingly aware of how vulnerable they were. The Ozark had been when they’d first discovered the Lost.

  Gods, Marc. A niggle of worry threaded through her brain, tightening the skin on her forehead. It’d be days before she heard anything back from them.

  “We should send the others in ahead of you,” Soo-jin said beside her. “We can’t risk you getting disabled.”

  Her head jerked up. “What? No. I’m going in with you.”

  “Actually, she’s right.” Arren, wielding one of the few blasters in the group, swung up to her other side, checking its charge reading. “You’re a vulnerable asset, so you stick to the back. That’s how it is in the military, right, Nick?”

  Nick, near the front with the other blaster, nodded. “Yep. Vulnerable and valuable to the back, unless they’re crucial to the front line.”

  She frowned. “I am crucial. My light hurts them.”

  “So do guns and knives and sticks.” Arren finished his check and turned his blaster down, tip aimed at the floor. His eyes caught the light as he looked her way. “You can come after us and shoot the light over our heads, right?”

  Right. But it still felt like she was leaving them to take the shots for her. ‘Cannon fodder’ was a popular term in netgames, but she’d never liked the term when it applied to actual, living humans. Even the Border Wars had used bots for their front lines.

  “Just stay back, Kar. Do what you can.” Soo-jin lifted her head up, surveying the group. “We about ready?”

  Her jaw stiffened as the rest of the group moved past her, grouping around the door. Varying weapons stuck out from the group: pipes, wrenches, a couple of hammers, someone with one of the metal trays from Mess. She jammed the flashlight into her back pocket and took a moment to flex her fingers.

  Light shivered to the surface like a fine mist, then thickened to its regular milk-like consistency. Her skin tingled as she pushed it around with a thought, making it swirl against her palm.

  Ahead, Nick keyed in the door’s emergency override. The panel at the side remained dark. For a split second, Karin thought they were done, that they couldn’t get through and would have to find another way in.

  Then the door hissed open.

  No one said ‘go.’ Everyone just surged forward at once. Footsteps tapped and slapped on the floor, and the sounds of heavy breathing filled the air. Gaps formed ahead of her, and she found herself being pulled forward. She ducked her head through the threshold of the door, funneled through a narrow hallway, ignoring two passages that branched off on either side as the group’s motion dragged her forward. Light staccato-ed ahead of her. Someone gave a great, wordless yell, like a battle cry. A gun cracked, then another.

  Then everything descended into chaos.

  She spilled out onto the bridge, veering sharply to avoid the first set of desks, and nearly ran into the navigation chair. People were fighting. A Shadow slammed into a person along the wall and sent him sprawling. She lost them a second later as both blasters cracked, spraying light onto the other side of the room. The bridge had a low, stepped design, each level leading toward the front windows. Feeling for the edge of the desk, she eased down to the next level, then lifted her head to survey the Shadows.

  Six of them. Maybe more. Already, some had fallen. One man, barely more than a boy, lay limp as his friend dragged him away, a darkness trickling from his forehead. Another lay half-forgotten under the console, tucked away between the chairs. His hand hung over the lip of the floor, dangling over the step on her level.

  But the people had the advantage. Despite the Shadow’s odd, unintuitive movements, they lacked weapons. And they could be hurt.

  As she watched, Soo-jin lunged forward and knifed one through the arm. It let go of the man it had grabbed.

  Two blaster bolts froze it in place.

  Dead.

  They were winning. They could do this.

  Keeping part of the desk between herself and the action, she lifted her hands, searching for targets. Light flowed from her fingers like a sliver of moonshine.

  Movement made her turn. At the front of the ship, right where the black windows met the metal walls, two Shadows unfolded out of the darkness and straightened.

  She didn’t hesitate. Whirling, she thrust her hands forward. Light exploded from her hands like twin missiles.

  The entire bridge flashed white.

  The Shadows staggered back from the hit, and a roar went through her head, dragging across the front of her brain with a snarl. She winced at the force of it.

  Are they psychic?

  Despite her unconventional childhood, the only psychic experience she had came from show streams and netfiction.

  No time to question it now. Both Shadows had recovered. As one, they had stopped, their heads tilted to the side, pausing as if to consider her. Depthless, they silhouetted against the dark windows by their absence. Her reflection glimmered back from the glass, marked by light. Her power climbed along her arms, glowing upward like water, taking on a golden edge.

  “Watch out!”

  Soo-jin’s shout made her whirl. She jerked out of the way just in time to dodge a Shadow that charged her from the side. Its shoulder bumped into her, sending her scrambling against the back of the navigation desk. It billowed up as she recovered, changing like one of those wind puppets that had been snapped up by a changing gust. Bulbous, shivering, incomplete, it darted for her.

  Her light caught it in the chest. She skipped back as it fell forward, light and shadow flashing in her eyes. A cool, shivery feeling touched her skin as it made contact, sinking through her flesh like a ghost. She held her breath and closed her eyes as its torso fell over her head and rib cage.

  Then it was gone.

  A blaster bolt caught one of the other Shadows at the front of the bridge, followed in quick succession by another one that cracked into the second Shadow. She winced at the bolts being so close to the Ozark’s frontal glass. One small crack, and the whole window would shatter.

  But they didn’t go through and, a second later, the Shadows dissolved.

  Flashlights swept around, less erratic than they had been before. As she caught her breath, she realized that the activity on the bridge had slowed, replaced by a quiet, cautious silence. People stood around, checking the corners with their lights, surveying the place. After a few moments, some squatted down to check the wounded.

  A jolt of fear made her heart jump.

  Gods, had anyone died?

  But she saw one person move, and others. No one cried, or otherwise grieved, though their faces carried a grave seriousness as they performed basic medical checks.

  “All clear?” Soo-jin said, loud enough for her voice to carry across the bridge.

  “As far as I can tell, yes.” Arren, standing by the entrance door,
jerked his head toward the room. “Boys?”

  At his command, Nick and two others stepped forward. They performed a professional sweep, swinging their flashlights around, checking through the levels and the two and a half hallways that branched off, and she really didn’t blame them when they turned their lights to check under desks and chairs and even up toward the ceiling. The Shadows had proven impossible and scary. No telling where they might hide.

  She stepped to the side as they dropped down past her, feeling the floor reverberate with their boot steps. Then Soo-jin’s voice, softer this time, called her attention to the far end of the room.

  “Karin, over here.”

  Four people stood midway down a small half-hall that branched from the main bridge, their lights all on one person. A pang pulled at her heart as she recognized him.

  She had seen him once before, afar and in passing—a lone figure who had been sitting on the Ozark’s bridge when they’d first investigated—but her connection to Ethan, and the small, shared stories he’d told of his stepfather, made the ache in her heart widen through her chest.

  He’d wandered in close to the bridge’s manual override panels during the fight. They bulged from the left-hand wall, metal boxes full of analog switches and latches. Despite the ship’s standby status, most of them flashed green through the mesh grating that covered its sides. Christops Grivas looked much as he had when they’d first seen him. Clad in shipboard grays, he’d managed to keep away from the disheveled appearance the others had taken on.

  Perhaps the isolation had helped. With only the bridge to interact with, he hadn’t been able to get himself into too much trouble.

  Two people parted to let her pass, and their flashlight beams shifted on his body. His eyes found hers, blacker than pitch, holding a depthless edge of the Shadow inside him that pricked at her instincts.

  She relaxed.

  It’s over.

  But, as she let her light flare and lifted her hands, he made a sound.

  The low, anxious gasp stopped her in her tracks. Her eyes widened as his mouth dropped open. Saliva slicked his lips and shone in the beams. She stumbled back as he took a step toward her, one arm raising up, fingers pointing.