Blood Ties Read online

  Reeve’s video feed seemed more an afterthought than anything. It popped up in the corner of her screen, along with a direct link to the readings his own ship was receiving.

  “Too far to tell, even for us. Coming from around Caishen is my best guess.”

  “Of course it is. It’s the local happening place, relatively speaking.” Nomiki gestured to the simplified star map that ran along the base of the screen, indicating the small dot that represented Caishen. “I assume it’s tracking our way? Tangential or direct?”

  “Direct. Quick speed. Must have caught up when we slowed.”

  “That’ll change when we start moving again,” Marc said.

  “Yeah, I expect we can lose them,” Reeve agreed.

  Soo-jin, however, leaned forward in her chair at the sensor station. “Karin, you happen to remember the ships from Caishen? There were nine there, right?”

  “Nine docked. Eleven plus if we count Agni and Enmerkar and however many they may have sent out,” she confirmed. “That netlink we stole might still have it in its cache.”

  Soo-jin lifted her head, caught Cookie’s gaze from beside her, and jerked her head toward the aft of the ship. “That’s your department. I left it on my bedside crate.”

  “Got it.” He squirmed past them on his way out. “I’ll check the history.”

  “It may auto-hide the cache, which’ll take him longer. Not that it matters.” Soo-jin squinted toward the main screen. “At this distance, we can’t cross-check the ident or model since we don’t have it. And I vote that we don’t wait until we can, considering we’re still, you know, escaping.”

  Except, of course, they’d just been caught. By the same people that had allowed them to escape in the first place.

  Karin looked up at her sister. Nomiki’s game face played subtler than Marc’s—a trait honed over a lifetime of survival choices. Even in the compound, she’d never relaxed. Everything had always had its degree of distrust with her, as if, even as a child, she’d sized things up like a battlefield.

  Enyo. Sister to Ares, in the Greek pantheon. Sister to Karin in timing, genetic parenting, and the alphabetization of their projects’ names.

  Nomiki’s eyes narrowed at the screen. “I agree. We should get a move on. Figure it out on the way. Reeve? I’d like to spend time with my sister, with your leave.”

  “Yeah, we talked about that.” He hesitated on the feed, eyes squinting and chin dipping toward his chest in an unconscious movement as the pause deepened. “I need someone to watch me sleep, then.”

  “I’ll go,” Marc said. “Just let me grab my stuff. Is Fallon still stocking standard hospitality packs?”

  “Yep. Toiletries covered.”

  “Be right over, then.” He caught Karin’s glance as she looked over her shoulder, pausing before he left. “We’ll talk,” he told her.

  She nodded.

  Cookie flattened himself to the outer wall as Marc passed him around the corner. His gaze followed his cousin for a few seconds, and his mouth opened as if he were going to say something, but he turned onto the bridge with a shake of his head, gesturing with the netlink he’d found.

  “It’ll take some time to crack.”

  Across the room, Soo-jin snorted. “Me with my ball, you with your ‘link—guess we all have our little projects.”

  A spike of alarm went through her. In the confusion and busyness since she’d awoken, she’d forgotten Soo-jin had grabbed one of the electric-shooting ball weapons that had been chasing them through varying places and stored its deactivated body on board.

  Gods, what if it wakes up?

  Above her, a perplexed frown bit into Nomiki’s brows. “Ball?”

  “Tell you about it later.” She leaned forward and brought the navigation dashboard back to fore. “Chamak, right?”

  “Yeah. Here’s a config,” Reeve said. A notification chimed as he shared his route-map with her, already planned. As Alliance ships had auto-config routes for approved trade arteries, she guessed Fallon ships had theirs built in, as well. A time-saver. Maybe even a life-saver if someone knocked out the main pilot. “I imagine you have a lot to catch up on.”

  “I think we all do.” Karin tapped the route into the dash and watched the computer process it across her map. “Received. Thanks.”

  A hand brushed her shoulder as Nomiki stepped away. “I’ll grab my stuff. Talk soon.”

  The air cooled behind her as her sister left, and the absence pulled at her senses like a belated memory. Too late, she caught a scent that turned her head after Nomiki about a second too late, a deep frown pressing her brow, and a flash of browned grass, tough earth, and scorched air ran across the front of her mind. She stared in the corner long after her sister had left, frowning.

  “Reeve’s right,” Cookie said, eyeing her from where he stood by the navigator’s seat. “You two got a lot of catching up to do.”

  A glance at the screen told her Reeve had cut the comms when she hadn’t been looking. Only the navigation route and the blurred, grainy picture of space that presented their pursuer remained on her screen. With the connection cut, a part of her relaxed as she realized they were alone.

  “That might be the understatement of the annum,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, just remember to tell us everything once you have it out. Or everything you think we should or need or want to know.” Soo-jin fiddled with the netlink in her hand, her legs curling up onto the chair’s seat as she retracted into one of the side-angled poses she used for long haul trips.

  “Will do.” Karin leaned forward to double-check Reeve’s transferred route and accept it into the system. After a few seconds, she input the confirmation code. With a direct transfer from a Fallon military ship, the Nemina’s system didn’t need her navigator license to accept the code. A good thing, probably, considering it broadcasted every time she did. A small beep sounded, and the tiny dot of Chamak Udyaan, their destination, pulsed as it confirmed.

  She stared at it for a second, then got up to leave.

  Her sister would be waiting.

  *

  The night of their escape, her room in the compound had had a muggy, tepid air that clung to her skin like a moist sheet. She lay in her bed, not moving, watching the line of green-yellow light at the bottom of her door, waiting for her sister to arrive.

  Unlike Karin, who’d gone to bed fully clothed, Nomiki had used the sight of her nightgown as a way of disarming the guards. Getting up at some point during the night wasn’t unheard of—they still shared a communal restroom down the corridor, after all—and Nomiki had taken to late-night conversations with some of the guards under the pretext that she couldn’t sleep.

  Nomiki was almost sociopathic, in that way. She could strike up a genuine conversation with one hand and, in a flash, slice your head clean off with the other. She didn’t blink, didn’t flinch. Karin doubted she felt remorse, either. But she did feel, and she did have a strong, vivid conscience behind her eyes.

  If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be taking Karin with her.

  A distant sound—a yell? Hard to tell—sounded, and Karin winced, images of the dead, slashed bodies of their nighttime guarding staff flashing across her mind. Her stare narrowed on the line of light at the door.

  Before long, a shadow crossed over its corner. The door opened with a click. Without a word, Nomiki slipped in and headed for the shelf where she’d left her hair elastic. By the time she’d finished and turned, Karin was standing and ready, her hands trembling at her sides.

  Nomiki gave her a quick glance-over. “Ready?”

  She nodded.

  They headed for the door.

  Taking a backpack would have been too risky when running. They had to be fast and quiet. Instead, they’d taken their belongings over the compound wall a week prior, piece by piece, and packed them into bags they’d hidden beyond the treeline. The compound security didn’t patrol the forest much anymore. Stupid of them, perhaps, but so was letting their staffing level fall so low. Had they kept the thirty guards Karin remembered from their childhood, Nomiki might have had some trouble—but ten?

  Her sister would cut through them like butter.

  Shoes in hand, socks silent on the worn linoleum floor, she kept several paces back from where Nomiki jogged close to the wall. Her sister’s nightgown billowed around her thighs, the bulging fabric making her look even smaller than she already was. She hid one arm away from her front, one half of the pair of scissors Karin had given her earlier clutched tight. Her sleeve had been rolled up past her elbow, making her brown skin stand out against the white. Her bare feet made soft sticking sounds on the floor as she moved.

  Karin paused as her sister froze mid-step, close to the next corner. Nomiki’s head tilted an increment off-center, listening.

  The quick step of boots came up from the next hallway, accompanied by the crackle of a radio.

  In the blink of an eye, Nomiki bolted into action and vanished around the corner.

  The guard’s startled yell turned into a coughing gurgle.

  By the time Karin had raced around the bend, skidding on her socks, he lay on the floor in a growing puddle of his own blood, his throat slashed. Nomiki backed away from his side as he twitched toward her, eyes wide, still alive, mouth forming a word he never got to voice. The scissor blade dripped a few drops of blood, then stopped. She held it away from her body, careful not to smudge it on the nightgown.

  Then, after a moment, she stepped forward and plucked the radio from his vest. Fixing it to the collar of her nightgown, she unwrapped a cord she’d kept under her other sleeve, plugged its jack into the set, and positioned the headphone over her ear.

  She glanced to Karin, gave her another quick assessment, then jerked her head away and headed toward the door.

  The plan had been to escape through the compound’s western side-door, sneak over the wall, and head out into the forest to get their bags. Instead, Nomiki led her straight into the lobby and, after a quick check behind the reception desk, slunk into the entrance hall and out through the main door that had been propped open. Cold air flushed over her skin as they moved out of the lit building and into the night. The moon hung high above them, nearly full—its light had not been a factor in Nomiki’s escape timing—and, though a couple of security lights hung above the main gate and a few others pointed over the wall, most of the lot remained dark. They aimed for the left-hand wall. There, she put on her shoes, used the bumper of a car for a boost, and scaled the wall.

  When she landed on the other side, a hush fell over her as the compound’s buildings vanished from sight. The tall, rough grass of the field stretched out ahead of her, along with the jagged treeline. The pale, thin lights from the compound gave the scene a ghost-like tint, picking out flashes of broken branches and naked bark among the trunks. As she stood up in the shadow of the wall, a second pull of cool air slipped through the fabric of her clothes. A frozen smell, half woody, half from a congealed sludge that pooled at the base of the wall, rose to her nose. Her mouth tightened into a grim line as she surveyed the grass and trees.

  It couldn’t be this easy, could it?

  Nomiki landed next to her. A pair of sneakers—ones she’d hidden under the bumper of the car earlier—covered her feet. The nightgown practically glowed in the dark. She’d tied part of it closer to herself to keep it out of the way. She gave Karin a glance, then led the way along the wall toward the front. They broke cover at the end, veering to the left to stay out of the camera’s view. After that, the trees weren’t far. The path they’d chosen funneled into an old game trail. They followed it for a few minutes uphill until it veered back out, putting them out close to the treeline again. There, they retrieved their bags from underneath a crossing of fallen logs and dusted them off. Nomiki pulled out her clothes from her bag, then paused. As she straightened, her gaze lifted, and her eyes narrowed back on the compound.

  For a long moment, she didn’t move.

  Then, she put her clothes back down.

  Karin frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  “No. I’m going back.”

  Her frown deepened. “Did you forget something?”

  “No.”

  Ah. So far tonight, Nomiki had been working as if in a job—one task to the next and the next until it was all finished. She’d seen her sister do it before. Kind of like watching an automaton at work, albeit a very smart, self-aware, and reactive automaton. She’d set herself a job to do tonight, and Karin suspected it had run something like ‘get my little sister to safety out of the compound.’

  Only now did the emotion—that grief and anger she’d stewed on for the last three years—show on her face.

  “You’re going to kill them, then?” Karin said.

  “Yes. Stay here. I’ll be back soo—”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes, and I don’t care what you think about it. I—Hey, what are you doing?”

  Karin shrugged off the rest of her backpack and put it on the ground. She met her sister’s incredulous gaze. “I’m going with you.”

  “No, you aren’t.” Nomiki frowned. “Karin, I’m going to kill them.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said. “And I’m going to help you.”

  They stared at each other for a long minute. Around them, the forest remained still and silent. Only the faint light of the compound illuminated the trees.

  Nomiki turned away. Her brow knit as she put her attention back on the compound, studying it anew. “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Nomiki said after another pause, the word somehow more genuine than when she’d been speaking before. More awkward, reflective of their age and humanity.

  Nomiki glanced down, both hands pulling at her nightgown before she remembered to keep the blood-seared scissor blade away from the fabric. With one hand, she untied the knot she’d made at her hip and let the fabric fall loose around her knees. “Okay, yeah. Let’s do this.”

  Chapter 4

  “Reeve’s higher-up than he puts out. He just hides it.”

  Nomiki sat on the bunk opposite her. With her fingers cupped over the side of the mattress and her arms rigid as she leaned forward, she looked more like the girl Karin had grown up with rather than the soldier that had met her at the Nemina’s hatchway. She rocked a little, too. An unconscious tick that only surfaced when she had the wherewithal to relax. The movement, and her sister’s closeness, brought a sense of immediacy to her mind.

  Nomiki was really here.

  As her sister’s gaze wandered around her bare cabin, a small, tight part of Karin slowly began to unwind.

  Her search was over.

  “He’s a sergeant, but he’s got inroads to the brass. Like he’s secretly a captain or something,” Nomiki continued. After a few seconds, she took her gaze off the edge of the locker on the wall and met Karin’s stare. “How about yours?”

  “Marc? I think he was a lieutenant when he served. Doesn’t really talk about it.”

  “And the others?”

  “Soo-jin’s the engineer, Cookie’s a tech head.”

  “Cool, cool. They treating you right?”

  “Fine. We’re friends.”

  “They seem rather protective of you.”

  “Yes. We’re protective of each other. I don’t want to leave them behind.”

  A hint of a smile caught the edge of Nomiki’s mouth, putting a tense ripple in her cheek. “So I gathered. We were asked to bring you all in, anyway, under the geas of asylum.”

  Unbidden, she felt one of her eyebrows arch higher into her forward. “The geas of asylum? Not guise with a 'u'?”

  Nomiki’s teeth flashed in a grin. “Right? Weird choice of term, isn’t it? Like they’re casting an asylum spell to lure you in or something. It is what they use, though. I confirmed it with Reeve. If you want to piss him off, just start referring to everything as the ‘geas of’ something. It’s good fun.”

  “I take it you two’ve become friends, as well, then,” Karin said.

  “He’s supposed to be my handler.” Nomiki’s grin widened. “Very good person to befriend.”

  “Ah, so it is a tactical befriending. Understood.”

  “Yes. Now, tell me about this almost-dying stuff. Are there people I need to kill?”

  Nomiki had put on a mock-professional pose, straightening her back and folding her hands over each other on her lap in the image of some secretarial assistant ready to take notes, but, behind her sister’s humor, a kind of dark seriousness shone in her eyes. It ran subtle, invisible except for someone who’d known her as long as Karin had. It rang of the dead, dark reality that sat behind Nomiki’s every action.

  Her abilities didn’t manifest as obviously as Karin’s. She didn’t have a magic light to point to and say, ‘there, that’s what I can do.’ Instead, hers spawned as a more insidious variety. Stronger than normal people, and much faster, with a host of instincts and mannerisms that always made her seem like the unsheathed blade in the room, as if the blood of her namesake war goddess really flowed in her veins.

  As the older sister, she’d gone farther in her treatments than Karin had.

  Briefly, images of their escape flashed through her mind. Blood on the floor. The bodies of guards slumped, out of their path. The small blade glinting in Nomiki’s hand as she reached down and unhooked the keycard from one man’s belt, along with a set of more normal keys. They’d stolen his personal car that night, a small sedan reminiscent of the Sirius system’s Senescals, except re-purposed from the last century. She remembered watching the road go past outside the car windows, the hard seat pressing into the underside of her thighs as she kept looking back, sure they’d be caught.

  Of course, there’d been no one left to catch them. Nomiki had made sure of that before they’d left.

  A grim smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “Maybe. Could have used you in Caishen.”

  She sure would have been helpful in their escape.

  “I’m here now,” Nomiki said. “Tell me what happened.”

  She held her sister’s eyes. Nomiki still sat poised, but part of the act had dropped, and her earlier smile had gone into a grim, serious cant. The moment drew out between them, stretching and silent. For a second, the room was so quiet, she could hear the vibration from the Nemina’s engines.