by K. Gorman
First time, but hopefully not the last.
Although, frankly, if all went well, she wouldn’t have to get back into Centauri armor again. Unless she decided to actually continue being the Grand Regent.
Maybe Marc will consider a move. I bet, as Grand Regent, I get pretty nice accommodation.
Yes, Tia said. He can be the Grand Escort.
I’m not sure if that’s a real position, she replied.
Of course, even that thought meant she’d have to retain her Eurynome powers. Which meant that, if she went on like this, she’d continue to be a psychopathic person with a violent streak.
And if she returned to the old Karin, she’d likely be challenged to personal combat and die horribly. And likely be absolute shit at commanding a fleet.
But, none of that mattered if she couldn’t do this. Until Sasha was defeated and the universe safe, it was useless to speculate about the future.
She let out another breath and bowed her head forward. Then, after a moment, she pushed off the table and headed to the sani, where a mirror hung from above a sink.
Her reflection stared back, blond hair pulled back and tied in a tight bun. The lines and curves of her face looked still and tense, the skin around her eyes puffy. There was no smile around her lips, nor the usual slip of worry that used to linger around her brow. Her eyes were quiet and intense, locking on with the intensity of a hunting wolf.
She hardly recognized herself.
But then, she wasn’t herself anymore. She was Eurynome.
Goddess. Warrior. Mother of Creation.
The silver armor, with its unsubtle curves and gleaming plates, suited her.
In the other room, the plates and mess from their earlier meal still sat at the main table.
Just an hour ago, maybe a bit more, she’d been laughing with her friends. Stealing grapes from her sister’s plate.
She closed her eyes.
Nervous? Tia asked.
Technically, that’s impossible, she reminded her. But I can’t help but feel…something.
Just like she felt the echoes of her previous emotions for Marc, she felt the specter of nervousness. It traced across her body, but couldn’t sink in. Instead, it felt like her body was very aware of her situation. It was tenser than normal, and not all of that had to do with her new abilities.
She took a long, deep breath, rolled her shoulders, and let it go.
Then, she pivoted on her heel, headed for the main table, grabbed a handful of grapes from the nearest abandoned plate and a powermeal pack from the counter, and left the room.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It felt odd, stepping back onto the Nemina’s ramp, hearing the familiar thump of her steps with the unfamiliar give of the boot’s sole. Like she was wearing someone else’s skin.
The running lights were on, the interior lit. The walls, floor, and air hummed with the subsonic whine of the ship’s warm-up period. Her eyes followed a narrow scrape on the air lock’s wall from when a few Fallon soldiers on Nova Kolkata had been helping Marc haul in the materials for his rec room remodel.
Voices murmured in both the front and back parts of the ship. Tillerman, dressed in a silver combat suit that was a bulkier variant of her own, followed as she turned up the aisle with the crew cabins and to the bridge.
Reeve was already there, in the pilot’s seat, where she’d known he would be. Marc and Baik flanked him, looking up when she entered.
She paused, gave the screens a glance, then headed for her usual spot at the navigator’s dashboard, making a gesture to the crash seat next to it for Tillerman.
“Marc, I’d like you on the sensor station. You likely know it best. Reeve, how is Freccia doing?”
“Freccia is ready.”
“Good.” She reached forward and pressed the internal comms button on the dashboard. “Tylanus, there’s another crash seat on the bridge. I’d like you to be up here, please.”
In the rear of the ship, he raised his voice and said something in response. Then, after a brief exchange with Jon, who he’d been speaking with, his shoes tapped on the prefab floor, thunked on the metal plate between the posterior part of the ship and the first airlock hallway, and headed toward the bridge.
She let out a breath and brought up the camera feed. Then, her new inner ear communicator gave a light ding.
“Regent, Captain Tavano on Freccia 34, using communications code 912.” His accent gave the numbers a breathless tilt, as if he were normally lighter with his tongue. “We are ready at your signal.”
She pressed the comms tab on her wrist. Without an implant, they were using work arounds. “Thank you, Captain.”
She glanced over to Reeve. “How’s our warmup?”
“Warm-up is finished. We are ready to go.”
“Good. Pull the ramp up for me and tell Jon and Nomiki to get their asses into a crash seat. Marc, did you put the cannelloni away this time?”
On one if their recent flights, his souvenir purchase of canned cannelloni had put a dent in the refrigeration unit and had almost taken out their coffee machine when he’d left it unsecured for a spin-out maneuver.
“We ate it,” he said.
“Good. Please, strap yourself in. Tylanus, I’d like you here.” She pointed to the crash seat next to Tillerman when he poked his head around the corner. After a moment, the two decided to switch seats so that he sat closer.
His knuckles bumped past her arm as he settled in. In her mind, she felt something dark settle. A glimpse of the Shadow appeared, then vanished.
Hmm. Was it still inside her? No, it had definitely been outside of her body during her last transverse of the Shadow world.
In the middle of the ship, the ramp closed. A notification appeared in the corner of her screen to indicate the ship had confirmed an air lock.
She pressed the comms tab on her wrist again. “Captain Tavano, we’re ready here. Please arrange with Captain Arnelli for departure. Once we get the signal, follow us out on the route path.”
“Yes, Regent,” came the reply.
An alarm sounded in the hangar outside. On the cameras, the few techs and soldiers who were still left in the room headed toward the exits, and a countdown timer appeared in the corner of her screen.
I’m not sure how the Centauri and Fallon systems integrate so well, but I will assume that it is Centauri doing, she remarked.
Tia laughed. Still pissed at Fallon?
Of course. Aren’t you?
Oh, yes. They’re lucky you were in charge. I would have killed Crane, tactically advantageous or not.
She leaned back in the chair, watching the hangar doors on the rear camera. Thirty seconds until open.
“How are you doing?” she asked Tylanus.
“Fine.” His voice was velvet smooth. Deep, with a warm cadence. “You?”
“Also ‘fine.’ Do you think she’s hurt the kids, yet?”
“No. And she can’t do them all at once. She would have to get them one by one, if they weren’t willing.”
A slip of anger smoldered across the center of her chest, and her mind churned. She resisted the urge to bare her teeth as her Program’s protective streak ran through her.
She was Eurynome. These were her children, all of them. Her responsibility. And Sasha had taken them.
All she wanted to do was save the kids, rip Sasha apart, and come home. And she was pretty sure that, were she still the old Karin, she would be feeling much the same.
Eurynome only heightens instincts that were already there, Tia said.
They were already there because you coded them into my genetic makeup, she replied.
She shook her head, scattering the thoughts. “Do you know where she’s keeping her Cradle?”
“Yes,” he said. “She’s built it into the main temple.”
It took her a moment to process that.
Temple?
“Don’t tell me she built it on a mountain, and she named the mountain ‘Olympus.’”
She closed her eyes. “So, here we are, three people designed after varying interpretations of Grecian Creation Myths, and we’re going to go to her new temple and kick her off Mount Olympus?” She leaned her head back and met Baik’s stare across the room. “Can you fucking believe this?”
I wonder what new world she made that makes her think it’s so much better than this one, Tia thought.
“Ten seconds,” Reeve said. “Everyone belted up?”
She clipped her harness in, then reached forward and hit the internal comms. “’Miki, you good?”
“We’re good,” came the response.
Then, the hangar doors began to open, and the two ships lifted off with a subtle jerk and the silent burn of their ion thrust.
The journey out proved uneventful. With the Nemina in the lead, they slipped out of the hangar and flew toward Earth. Two support vessels from the fleet broke formation and came with them, a last-minute addition to the mission―they would stay in this world at a distance from the UN-designated site and provide backup and support, either during the mission or after, in closer range of Karin’s warping abilities.
If they suddenly needed an army to fight their way to the temple, she would have one.
With the tracking signatures on the right of the screen and the Nemina’s thrust engine vibrating the floor, they turned right and headed into Earth’s gravity well.
Soon, cloud-swirled brown, blue, and green vision of the globe filled the viewscreen.
They were above the Pacific, with an easy view of North and Central America.
“Finlai Center Core on screen,” Reeve said.
She saw them, her nav dashboard lighting them up in green at the side of the window. Three ships had broken formation and were heading closer at a non-intercepting angle.
Irritation slipped into her blood. She tapped her comms button. “Captain Arnelli?”
“Yes, Regent?”
“Please use your own discretion if Finlai Center Core makes a move in my absence. Do whatever you need to defend the fleet.”
“Yes, Regent.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
Tillerman chuckled. “You’re giving him a lot of leeway.”
“Shouldn’t I be? Or does Centauri prefer its captains in choke holds?”
Shaking her head, she glanced at the nav screen and flicked a few switches on the dashboard to toggle the windows with the camera views. Behind them, the gleaming gold and white form of the Artemide had engaged her thrusters and was accelerating further into her orbital range.
She switched to the frontal camera and sat back, watching Earth approach.
Then,
“Eos.”
She jumped in her seat, part of her suit kicking the wall with a hard clunk. She barely felt the impact in her ankle.
The Shadow stood behind her, less than a foot from the back of her chair, its form slowly shifting and undulating, its borders blurred in a mirror’s edge that was hard to directly look at.
Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, it dissipated, unfolding into a fog and vanishing from view.
By the intake of breath around her, she wasn’t the only one who’d seen it.
She turned her gaze to Tylanus. “Any comment on that?”
“No,” he said. “Shadows are weird.”
“And they’re outside your jurisdiction, being not creations of your mother’s, yeah, yeah.” She sighed. “Right, well. Same plan. Reeve, take us down.”
Twenty minutes later, they landed in Canada.
The Saskatchewan prairie surprised them by being relatively warm and verdant for a late-Fall month. Though ten degrees wasn’t particularly warm, considering she’d been basking around with Brazil as a base for the past week, it was far warmer than the minus-four-to-eight-degree range of Tia’s memory―especially since they’d landed at night.
Climate shift, she thought to Tia. It happened all around the world, helped along by the nuclear bomb drops.
Shouldn’t that have created a nuclear winter? Tia thought back. I distinctly remember hearing about ‘nuclear winter’ rather than ‘nuclear summer.’
I guess there weren’t enough bombs dropped to turn the planet into a wasteland, thankfully.
The grass was long and dry, its ends tipped with lines of seeds, and made a hissing sound where it rustled against the Nemina’s belly. The sun had set long ago―it was nearing eight p.m. local time, according to the Nemina’s dashboard―and the land was so flat, it felt like the sky went on forever.
Every so often, patches of bushier plants provided a darker contrast against the landscape.
Tylanus followed her off the ramp. He’d pulled his hair into a messy bun, and someone on her team―Tillerman, she suspected―had had him kitted out in basic combat protection. The armor wasn’t quite as sophisticated as her design, looking more like a cross between a diving suit and an armored leotard, but it did give off a Novan superhero black ops vibe.
Actually, Moon Sailor had run a spin-off focusing on Veronica, the elite super spy femme fatale character, and it looked similar to what her super spy black ops ex-husband had worn during the missions.
They’d passed Soo-jin in the hall mid-way through her first beer, and the woman had practically lusted after the outfit.
At least, she hoped it was the outfit she had been lusting after. For some reason, she really didn’t want to think about Soo-jin having a crush on Tylanus.
“All right, everyone ready?” she called, seeing the small squadron of Centauri gathered at the bottom of their ramp, their silver armor glinting in the lights of the ships.
“Yes, Regent.”
“Good. Switching over. Don’t shoot any Shadows.”
She glanced around, got an anchor on where everyone was, and pulled.
Energy thrashed through her mind. The world shifted around her. The sky and its stars vanished, and the throb of a headache flared briefly, then left. At one point, it felt like she was out of breath, like she was grasping to catch everyone and switch them over.
Then, it was like someone else took over and guided her hand.
Everything clicked together. The world stopped shifting.
And the Shadow stood behind her.
She turned around, opened her eyes, and faced it. “Hello, Shadow.”
“Eos,” it said, its voice leaving a psychic impression.
Beside her, Tylanus stood very still, watching it.
“You are going to her?” it said.
She frowned. “Yes.”
“You will stop her?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Then I will help you.”
And, with that, it stepped forward.
She had just enough time to squawk and jerk back before it funneled into a diaphanous form and rushed into her, sliding into her bones, smothering her.
For one full second, sound and light cut out. All she knew was darkness.
Then, the world came back.
Flecks of light floated in the air, evidence of her Eos powers. Around her, almost everyone had taken half a step forward or back, their expressions a mixture of shock, horror, and surprise.
“What the fuck was that?” Nomiki said.
She’d taken the longest leap, her laser-edged blade in her hand, the supersonic whine in the air indicating it was turned on.
In answer, she turned her attention to Tylanus and raised an eyebrow.
He lifted his hands in denial. “Hey, don’t look at me. I told you: Shadows are weird.”
“Your mother managed to use them. You, too.”
“Well, yes. We can communicate with them, even control them to a degree. They share a common thread with both of our powers.”
Right. Sure.
“In other words, they’re basically aliens.”
“Well, no. They are linked to the human psyche. Therefore, they can’t be alien.”
“You managed to talk through them,” she said. “So did Tia,
come to think of it.”
“Does it matter?” Nomiki said.
“No, I suppose not.” Guess she’d just have to take this one for the ride. She shook her head, then turned back to Tylanus. “So, how shall we do this? Where are you taking us?”
“I will take you to the base of the mountain,” he said. “Or as close as I can get to it without triggering her perimeter defenses.”
‘Perimeter defenses’? That sounded fun. Too bad they didn’t have any time to make a better plan. She’d done all she could to brief the Centauri on what they would face, especially with regards to the Shadows, the Sentinels, and any other possible monsters Sasha might have concocted in the interim.
I suppose she is a Creation deity. Making things is kind of her thing.
Her gaze scanned over the dark, brooding expanse of the Canadian prairie, then to the void-black clouds above. As before, the Shadow world had a band of lighter-colored atmosphere between the clouds and the horizon, the sky above blurring into columns as if by rain.
Tia, you still in there?
Yes. Not eaten by any weird Shadow.
Anything feel different?
No.
Good.
“Let’s go,” she said.
To her surprise, Tylanus held his hand out to her. “Take my hand.”
She frowned, lifting her hand to his. With a gentle grip, he clasped it and lowered it down so they hung between them.
Then, she felt him pull.
His power was different from hers. Where hers hit like the punch of a tide, his was subtler. The world didn’t so much twist and jump around them as it simply faded.
She watched as the details in the Shadow world slowly vanished to nothing.
For one solid second, there was nothing around. Everywhere was empty.
Then, light crept in. And sound. And scent.
The next thing she knew, she was standing in a long, green field, smelling the light tint of sweetgrass in the air and listening to the breeze rustle through the leaves.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Eva leaned in her office chair toward the bassinet, reaching through to tuck her fingers around Tylanus’ tiny elbow. He was sleeping right now, a rarity when she was in the office. He was an active baby, very bouncy, and with a cry that could pierce the air.