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

by K. Gorman

  “I’ll have the light shut off,” she continued. “When I hear the Powersuit—whatever it is—get to the end, I’ll turn it back on. Hopefully, that’ll distract it enough for you to get back down the second hall before it gives chase. If it doesn’t, I’ll blind the whole fucking back area in white, and you make a break across the mid-space and take an alternative route.”

  She swallowed. “I mean, I hope it doesn’t give chase at all, but—”

  He stopped her. “Give me a shout if you aim to blind. I’ll close my eyes. Where will you be?”

  “What?” She looked at him, confused.

  “Where will you be when all this is happening?”

  She made a gesture through the closed doors. “The back area. I’ll wait until it’s at the far end, lock the door behind it, and meet you at the other stairwell.”

  Gods, she felt like such a shit saying that. He was the one taking all of the risk—and she’d come up with this plan.

  “Good.” He nodded. “That sounds safe. Okay, go.”

  Her jaw slackened. “Really? You’re okay with this plan? I’m worried.”

  “I’ll be fine. I have my blaster,” he reminded her. He gave her a quick, one-armed hug. “Go. Be safe.”

  That’s my line.

  But she didn’t voice the thought. Instead, she doused the light at the end of the hall with a thought and focused on keeping her shoes quiet on the floor. She gritted her teeth as her light energy slid into her chest with the feel of raw silk. She sent a silent thank you to whatever gods were listening—if they existed—when the door only gave a slight creak under Marc’s touch.

  Inside, the darkness in the stairwell was as thick as the forest.

  Well, better make this as convincing as possible. She sparked a small light and let it cast a dim glow over the space, the same way a backsplash from a flashlight might look. At the other end of the small transversing hallway, the slight glow from what she knew to be an overhead exit sign mounted on the opposite side of the door bathed the back hallway in red.

  The steady thump of footsteps on the first floor came to a halt.

  She froze. They sounded way closer than she’d figured.

  Gulping a breath of air, she eased her way across the space and peered over the railing to the stairs below.

  The double-door at the bottom of the stairs gleamed back at her, its burgundy surface and aluminum push bar catching the light. Its exit sign was broken, a dark crack splitting down its middle, which explained some of the darkness.

  She glanced to Marc and lifted an eyebrow. Ready?

  He gave her a quick nod.

  She leaned out and let the stones fall.

  They dropped to the floor with a series of scurrying cracks, as if someone had dislodged them.

  She doused her light and jumped for the open threshold, heart pounding. Holding her breath, wincing at the small taps her shoes made as she minced her way as fast and quiet as she could, arms pinwheeling out in a cartoonishly absurd picture as she tried to keep her feet silent—gods, why had she decided to put her shoes back on?—she sent another silent thanks as she cleared the threshold.

  Relief spilled over her chest as she made it around the corner two meters past it, ducking around the nursery room that jutted out to bring the hallway even with the next, the glow of the exit sign behind her.

  On cue, Marc let his door shut—just a quiet click of a closing latch.

  She let out a slow breath.

  Perfect.

  Except, their adversary had not yet moved. There hadn’t been a single sound from them since before she’d let the stones drop.

  Tension tied a solid knot in her gut and froze her shoulders. She listened hard for any creak or crack, trying to ignore the electric fear that blazed through her nerves.

  Below, the door clicked open.

  She held her breath as a set of steps, quieter than the last, moved up the stairs.

  Go to the front. Go to the front. Go to the front.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, straining to listen, cringing against the wall.

  The person—she was pretty sure it was a person at this point; their movements were too smooth and unpredictable for a drone or sentinel—stopped at the top of the stairs.

  Pausing to consider their options?

  She didn’t dare move. They were so close, she could almost feel them there.

  From somewhere at the front came a sound of a desk scraping against the floor—as if someone had bumped it in the dark.

  Marc, likely trying to lure the person his way.

  They didn’t budge.

  Instead, rustling came from the stairwell, then a high-pitched, supersonic whine.

  A weapon?

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

  She considered doing something with her light energy—she still had the stuff from the room at the end of the hall buzzing around in her body—but then, the person moved, their quiet, metallic footsteps shifting them away.

  Toward the front.

  She almost sagged with relief.

  Except, that whine was getting closer to her.

  She tensed as she spotted a small shadow sliding its way toward her.

  Before she could react, a tiny drone, no bigger than a hummingbird, flew around the corner.

  She backed away, eyes wide, mouth slacking open.

  She didn’t need to register the lens on its bottom to tell it had a camera. The footsteps paused in the next hallway.

  As she backed up, her own shoes making a quiet tap that she couldn’t wholly silence, they turned back in her direction.

  She bolted.

  The hallway rocked as she turned into a sprint, her leg already halfway to stiffness from her recent jaunt down the hill. She had only cleared half the floor when the person skidded into sight behind her. They yelled something after her. The word itself didn’t make sense to her, but the commanding tone suggested he wanted her to stop. She got a glimpse of a humanoid, arms pumping like some Olympic sprinter, metal encasing them like a morph of quicksilver—wearing a suit like Nomiki’s, perhaps?—as she raced up the hallway, feet pounding beneath her.

  But—where should she go?

  Two sets of stairs were coming up. The first one, closer to her on the right, led to the rest of the levels above them and didn’t lead back down. Perfect for her original mission of distracting this guy—that voice had definitely been male—but really shitty for her since it led into an uphill trap with no link back into the front levels.

  The second, farther down the hall on her left, would take her straight back to where Nomiki had met her.

  AKA, the place she was trying to get this guy away from.

  Frankly, she didn’t think she’d make that one. He’d already closed half the distance between them, despite her efforts.

  Fucking hell.

  She jerked for the right door.

  But, just as she’d slammed into its surface and made to haul it open—the push bar was not on this side—the entire world exploded behind her.

  A wall of numbness crashed through her body. She dropped to the floor with a strangled yell.

  The metal man jogged up beside her, pointing a weird-looking blaster at her.

  Well, so much for that.

  A groan slid out of her throat. Parts of her body shook, the numbness riding through like a tide pounding against a rocky shore—except she was the rocks. Her breath came in agonized fits, a spasm of pain searing at the corner of one lung.

  She gritted her teeth, trying to get a better look at the weapon.

  What was that? Clearly not a blaster, or she’d be bleeding.

  With a frantic thought, she realized that she couldn’t tell if she were bleeding or not. The numbness was too all-encompassing.

  “It’s okay.” His voice spilled over, the System Standard stilted and odd.

  Her gaze clamped onto his face—his head was shaven, like Marc’s, and carefully-cut facial hair shadowed his angular jawline. A darker skin
tone than hers, washed out in red by the nearest exit light down the hall. His tone was soothing, probably a response to the panic on her face.

  “My name is Scaro Prell, Specialist First Class of the Menassi Tri-Quad Expeditionary Force. I will not harm you.”

  She flinched as he squatted next to her. The metal on his suit fit together like ship plates, except it must have been lighter—if anyone were running around with actual ship plates for armor, she doubted they would have caught up to her, no matter how slow her sprint was. It melded over his body in a similar fashion to Nomiki and Jon’s armor, fitting his contours like a very thick second skin. Bulges at his thighs indicated where weapons were hidden. There was a burned smell about him, as if he’d walked through a hot-shod machine smithy before chasing her down in the hall. From his aircraft ejection, perhaps?

  “I’m Karin,” she managed, cringing as a wave of numbness rode through her face at the action.

  “Hello, Karin. I can tell from your communications device that you are not from here. Care to tell me where you’re from?”

  He tilted his head as he said the last. For the first time, she noticed the flickering green light on the side of his right temple.

  It appeared to come from beneath the skin.

  Subdermal implants? Alliance had a few of those.

  She gave herself a little shake, her mind flicking back to his question.

  Then, laughter wheezed out of her.

  Not from here.

  “Mate, I was born here.” Pain pushed into her ribs at her back—a result of the drop—and her laughter cut off with a wince. “You’re the one who’s not from here.”

  The numbness began to leave her left arm, one of the furthest from where the weapon had blasted her—hells, they were going to have to rename blaster to something else if whatever he’d shot her with was common usage—but she kept it still, not letting him know. Her mind felt clearer, too, which made her suspect his weapon carried more than a simple paralytic agent.

  “Yes. And I suppose you have a crater on Luna to sell me, as well?” His stare had narrowed. He gave her a second, more careful study.

  Then, Marc stepped through the far stairwell and shot Prell’s drone from the air. His blaster leveled on the man a second later.

  “Let her go, and you can have the building.” Marc’s tone was calm and even, his aim steady. “We were just leaving, anyway.”

  Her jaw tensed, and her breath quickened as she attempted to read the scene. Marc hadn’t come closer—wasn’t even trying, which was unlike him. In the few fights she’d seen him in, he’d tried to close the distance. Had Nomiki found him? Or Jon?

  She tried to wiggle her toes, to force the numbness to move along. It felt like constant waves of rain hitting the underside of her skin. It remained in her lower half and right side, but she could feel where its edges were receding.

  “Babe?” she asked.

  His gaze flicked to her. “Are you okay, Rin?”

  Rin? That was Nomiki’s name for her. There was something more in what he was telling her.

  With a glance to Prell, she attempted to wriggle herself upright. She got about halfway before the numbness in her right arm stopped her.

  “I’m okay. I mean, I think I am—” She winced as the numbness panged through her ribs and aimed the grimace at Prell. “This will go away, right?”

  “That all depends on if I want it to go away or not.” Though his attention fixed on Marc, he pointed his weapon at her chest. “Lie back down.”

  Her breath caught, eyes fixing on the end of his gun. It didn’t have the photoplasmic lens of a blaster, but there was something else—concentric black rings that emanated out from its point.

  She eased herself back onto the floor.

  Marc took a step forward. “Let her go. You can have the building.”

  “And why would I do that when I have such a perfect hostage situation.” The way he pronounced the end of ‘hostage’ had a more breathless quality with his accent, as if he were accustomed to making a different, softer sound in its place. “She just told me she’s from here, which makes her part of my mission.”

  She cringed. Yeah, maybe she shouldn’t have told him that. She’d thought he’d take that to mean she was an Earther, not someone born specifically in this compound, but perhaps he’d picked up the truth in her tone.

  An amiable smile cracked his lips. He flashed the grin to Marc as he made a gesture to Karin. “Let me guess, she is your close friend? Your, how do you say it in System… partner? Is that close?”

  “Light. That’s how we say it. She is my light.”

  She gave the ceiling a flat stare. That was about as unsubtle a cue as he could have made it. The light from the room in the other hallway still buzzed through her bones, adding to the amount she carried regularly, the same way a person carried blood in their body, except with energy. She could only half-feel it now due to the numbness, but it was still there. It was still accessible.

  “What, now?” she asked.

  “Forever and always,” Marc said, continuing the netdrama-inspired quote she’d inadvertently started, his voice breaking in what might be misconstrued as regret and heartache but spoke to her as fear and tension. “Yes, now.”

  Focusing on the ceiling, she splayed the fingers of her left hand and called on her power. Light burst in a circle above them. Startled, Prell jerked his gaze up.

  In the next second, he was engulfed.

  The door burst open from the other stairwell. Baik, Jon, and Nomiki charged in.

  Marc skipped a few blaster rounds toward Prell before the others crowded his line of sight. With the light in the way, she couldn’t see what, precisely, Prell did, but the first two cracked off something hard and sent a sheet of sparks to the ground, and the third sailed right through, nailing the wall at the far end of the hall.

  “Watch out!” she yelled, struggling to get up. “He’s got some kind of stun weapon!”

  He rolled out of her light column and was on his feet faster than she could track. His face twisted, gun leveled on her head.

  Nomiki’s knife slammed into his wrist.

  Sparks flew. The pulse-shot went wide with a concussing, electronic yaw, visibly rippling the air. Prell yelled, the knife’s blade stuck half in his wrist.

  In the next second, Jon slammed into him.

  The two collided against the wall and slid together, metal crunching into wood. Nomiki followed, her other knife raised like a stabbing blade.

  Running footsteps hammered around her. A blaster fired—Nomiki’s—and tocked the wall where Prell’s head had been. Prell and Jon struggled together, moving fast. Prell’s gun fired again, this time nearly hitting Marc who was sprinting toward her. He jerked back as the near-invisible pulse shot past him. The paint on the wall next to him shifted with a series of tiny dimples.

  Then, Baik was there. He grabbed her under the arms as she struggled up against the numbness and hauled her back. Marc slipped past as Nomiki and Jon pushed Prell farther down the hall. By the time she and Baik reached the door, Marc was there to help pick her up.

  They carried her between them down the stairs, each with one arm under a shoulder. When they hit the landing, Marc passed his blaster to Baik without a word and pulled her onto his back. She did her best to pull her legs up around his waist. When she failed, he did it himself.

  She clung tight to his shoulders, her right arm still shaking with numbness. “Was there just the one?”

  “We think so. Everyone’s waiting for us around back.”

  Baik hung back as she and Marc led the way through the second side entrance—the one they hadn’t broken. Her stomach flopped at the view, the openness of the field and the sky making her feel vulnerable.

  A blaster round flashed in a window. A series of muffled cracks and yells, at least one of them female, came through the open door.

  “Fucking tits, I hope there’s only one of them.”

  “He looked heavily modified.” Bai
k cast a worried glance to the second floor windows.

  “Well, so are they—and there’s two of them,” Karin said. “I assume they’re planning to meet us at the ship?”

  Or perhaps an undisclosed location?

  “Yes. She said to lift off if we become at risk. If that happens, they will meet us at the warehouse you two abandoned the car the first night of your escape.” He gave her a quizzical look. “I assume you know where that is?”

  She grunted. “It’s easy enough to find.”

  The rest of the group waited in a loose collection at the back of the building. Soo-jin’s face was grim and serious when she saw her, the moonlight placing odd shadows around her eyes and cheeks. She stood slightly apart from the rest, shoulders back, bag over her shoulder, the spare blaster held in her left hand with a casual practice.

  Karin lifted her shaking arm from Marc’s shoulders and pointed for the field.

  “Ship. Go.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Nemina’s interior was a welcome sight. They piled in, Marc carrying her down the forward aisle while the rest—Soo-jin, Baik, and both doctors—headed for the aft to strap things down. They carried the Cradle between them, detached from its tank and tied off in a sling made from what looked to be one of the sheets that had been covering the equipment.

  Marc deposited her in the pilot’s chair. She immediately checked the engines, satisfied to see that the warm-up sequence was almost complete.

  “Three minutes,” she told him, reaching forward to engage the rest of the dashboard and run through a flight check. “Cookie done good.”

  “I’ll let him know.” He made to leave, but paused. He gave her another glance-over, his gaze lingering on the legs she had still yet to move. “Are you okay to fly?”

  Though his question was professional, his tone made it more. After a quick skim through the first block of the start-up log, she reached back, felt for his wrist, and gave it a squeeze.

  “They’re un-numbing right now. If they don’t do so in time, I’ll call either you or Soo-jin to lift her off. I can coach you if it gets bumpy.”