Calypso End: A Sci-Fi Thriller (Gunn and Salvo Book 3) by Joshua James

Author:Joshua James [James, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-07T22:00:00+00:00

19

K-Pop didn’t approve of underhanded dealings. He liked the honesty of a fistfight, where he could pit his strength again an opponent’s. A firefight was almost as direct. There was something just plain unfair about controlling people’s minds. White Cloud dealers were bad enough, but at least their customers had some level of autonomy in the matter. This thing with the Dolus was sneaky and low.

With the infected woman slung over his shoulder, he left the crowds behind, while Dab trotted after him.

“Do you think the general will be down there?” Dab asked, puffing with the effort of keeping pace. “Or would she just send the people she’s corrupted?”

“Hard to say.” K-Pop slowed down. “You’re the one who figured out that there was this whole conspiracy going on. If it was you in her place, what would you do?”

Dab stopped abruptly. “Oh, stars and satellites, when you put it that way…”

“What?” demanded K-Pop, a surge of irritation shooting through him. They didn’t have time to mess around, not if the general was going to try to pull the plug on Ilium. He forced himself to take a calming breath. He was lucky to have friends who were smarter than he was, and he didn’t want to alienate them now just because he was feeling impatient.

“We wouldn’t go down there,” said Dab. “We’d send the people we controlled, and we’d go to sabotage the evacuation.”

K-Pop grimaced, while the woman he was holding clawed at his back. That wasn’t fair, either. How come these people couldn’t do things by the book? What Dab had said made sense, but he still hated the idea.

“Can you hail him?” asked Dab. “See how things are going?”

Holding the flailing woman in place with one arm, K-Pop used his other hand to pull out his tablet. It pinged a dozen times, but Eldridge didn’t answer.

“Maybe he’s busy,” K-Pop suggested, but the skin on the back of his neck prickled.

“Maybe the general got there first,” said Dab darkly.

K-Pop sighed. Dab always jumped to the worst-case scenario, and today, he couldn’t really fault them. “What do we do now?” he asked.

Dab only hesitated for a moment. “You go to the core; we’ll go check on Eldridge.”

K-Pop unconsciously tightened his arm around the woman’s waist, and she screeched. “Shit,” he mumbled. “I don’t like this. I don’t like that we’re all split up.”

“So we should leave Eldridge to figure it out on his own?” Dab asked.

“I never said that,” K-Pop muttered.

If the goal was to keep all of them safe, it would have been one thing. They complimented each other. They knew each other’s weaknesses, and how to fill in the gaps.

But that wasn’t the goal. The whole point of coming here was to make sure that as many other people as possible got out alive.

If he hadn’t been prepared to risk his life to make that happen, he wouldn’t have set foot on Ilium in the first place.

“All right,” he grunted. “Check in with Eldridge.”

Dab nodded, backing away. “If we’re wrong, we’ll meet you by the core.

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