Song of Scarabaeus (11 page)

Edie rammed the bolt home. There was something horribly barbaric about keeping humans confined with metal locks and cuffs and chains. In this instance, however, such quaint old-school measures would work to her advantage. Nothing but the attentiveness of the crew stood in the way of their freedom.

She found Zeke in the equipment holds.

“How is he?”

“He's fine. You'll let him out in the morning, won't you?”

Zeke shrugged. “That's up to the boss.”

For the next fifty minutes they worked in companionable near silence. If not for her anxiety about the escape, she'd have enjoyed the work. The security buoys were familiar but different enough to be interesting, and had she been concentrating better she might have learned something new.

She was constantly aware of the minutes ticking by. “Didn't you say something about supper?”

Zeke checked the time. “Sure, let's go. Cat's meeting us in the mess.”

He dropped his tools and left them where they fell. Edie followed him as far as deck three, then excused herself, saying she wanted a quick shower before eating.

She ran to her quarters and stuffed clothes for herself and Finn into her duffle bag. She grabbed the fake idents Cat had given her and slipped them into her jacket pocket. Her hands shook and she fumbled with the zipper. Only a few hours ago she'd made the mental switch from kidnapping victim to outlaw—not much of a step up, but free of the Crib, at least. Now she was going on the run from both the Crib and the rovers, with no idea of where she'd end up. She only knew she wasn't going to let the one person who depended on her die.

She hit Zeke's callsign.

“Zeke, I changed my mind. Not really hungry. I'm going to turn in.”

“What, you don't like my company?”

“I'm just tired. Another time, okay?”

She could almost see him shrug. “Okay. But you're missing out on Gia's famous curry.”

In the background, Cat muttered, “More like
infamous
.”

Edie removed her commclip and set her console to cycle through spec sheets. If anyone jacked into her account it would give the appearance that she was working and, she hoped, fool the crew for a while that she was in her quarters.

Her heart thudding, she returned belowdeck and heaved open the bolt on the cellblock hatch. Finn waited just inside, holding his boots. She thought she detected a flicker of relief in his eyes.

In silence she watched him pull on clean clothes. Then he slung the duffle bag over his shoulder and followed her out. She locked the bolt and headed for the external airlock.

“What's the plan? You got any arrangements portside?”

“No arrangements. We hop on the first ship that'll take us.”

He gave her an incredulous look as if to say,
that's it?
But, thankfully, said nothing. She was locked out of comms on the
Hoi
, so she'd been unable to contact the port, even to check the job boards.

Her crew key snapped the airlock, and her thumbprint
opened the gangway hatch. They ran down the narrow tube—four, three, two seconds from freedom…

One step to freedom. They entered the airlock and Finn hit the panel to cycle it. As they stepped into the slightly heavier but more stable gravity of Port Neuchasley, Edie's stomach flip-flopped.

Freedom.

She felt light-headed. With Finn a pace behind, she moved through the busy dock area toward sec-check. The checkpoint was not their last hurdle, but it might be the toughest. Time to find out if their fake idents were worth what Stichting Corp had paid for them.

Edie moved toward a gate with a short line. The officer was a young woman her own age, wearing a starched uniform with the Neuchasley logo stamped on her sleeve. The officer began to argue imperiously with a tourist in line.

Edie felt Finn's hand on her elbow.

“This way.”

He led her to a gate at the other end of the checkpoint, manned by an older security officer with a crumpled jacket and a bored expression. Edie handed over her ident and he swiped it, offering only a cursory glance in her direction.

“You got papers for him?” He nodded toward Finn.

Edie froze. The officer had mistaken Finn for a serf—or, rather, accurately identified him as one. The stubbled scalp was one clue, but there was something in Finn's demeanor that marked him, too. Edie had seen it all too often—the disinterested but wary look in his eyes, the hard expression.

Finn slapped his ident onto the desk, glaring at the officer with a harsh confidence Edie had never seen before. She watched his transformation in amazement. It was the perfect act of a respectable man insulted by the accusation that he was a criminal.

The officer picked up the ident with a small shrug of apology. Edie held her breath as he checked and double-checked the readout that told him Finn was a registered miner from
Pelingrat, a large colony just within Crib borders. He waved them on without further question. Behind them, the young officer whose line Edie had almost joined was still giving the tourist a hard time.

The main concourse of the station was a riot of color and noise. Edie was used to the busy crowds of Talas Prime, but that station was much smaller than Neuchasley and somewhat more remote. She pressed against Finn, drawing courage from his strength and confidence. Despite the open construction of the common area, its hyperactivity and stark patches of light rendered the atmosphere claustrophobic. Mezzanines jutted out from the walls, linked by steps and small elevator cars. Holos flashed information and advertisements from every wall.

They found a console and pulled up the departures board. This was where outgoing ships placed work-for-passage ads. With no money, it would be their only way to get off the station quickly.

“There's a couple of commercial haulers looking for engineer tecks,” Edie said, scanning the holoviz. To her ears, her voice sounded breathy, nervous, hyped up on adrenaline. For the first time in her life she was doing something truly independent, and it terrified her.

“Engie tecks? You know what that means, right?” He appraised her blank look. “Scrubbing the fusion rings, degaussing the injectors. You get paid in radiation, carcinogens—take your pick.”

“What about a freetrader?” She pulled out the ads, magnifying them on the holoviz. “Mostly small family-owned vessels. Ah, no good. They're offering passage for cash and goods. We're a little short on assets.”

“Check the Fringe-world vessels. We have one asset they need—you.” He indicated an ad that had caught his eye. “This one's leaving in an hour.”

He sent a brief text message. Edie couldn't see clearly what he was writing, but caught the phrase
wet-teck
—halfway to
an admission that she was a cypherteck. Perfect bait for any desperate Fringer.

“You really want to go to the Fringe?” Despite her desire to escape the Crib, she hadn't fully accepted the idea of stepping quite that far into the unknown.

“Don't care where we go. We can jump ship along the way.”

A face appeared on the holoviz—a young woman with worn features framed by tight sandy curls. She peered at Finn with open curiosity.

“Tilda Skardi, captain of the
Drakkar
. You an op-teck?” Her accent was thick and stilted.

“No. I have one. D'you want her?”

“Already have an op-teck on my crew. She does wet-teck?”

“The very wettest.”

“A cypherteck? She can fix biogenerators? Med stuff?”

“She can fix anything you want. Nanoteck, sequencers, seeding biocyph—”

Seeding biocyph: the magic phrase. Tilda Skardi's eyes sparked greedily, and then narrowed.

“We have no seeding equipment on board.”

“Of course you don't.” Finn gave her a wry smile. There wasn't a Fringe-world ship in the Central zone that didn't trade in biocyph. It was the most valuable commodity on the Fringe, where people had no means of making the technology for themselves and very few skills in fixing it when it broke. They needed cyphertecks, and the Crib wasn't about to share them.

“And what about you, Garrison Wyle?” Skardi said, reading Finn's fake name off her holoviz. “Any special talents?”

“Where she goes, I go.”

She wrinkled her nose as she considered him. “Not such an impressive talent, Mr. Wyle.” She cut audio and spoke urgently to someone out of view before turning back to Finn. “Okay, we'll meet—the
Drakkar
, dock B43. We'll give her a little test, check her out.”

“We'll not come on board until we've checked
you
out,”
Finn said. “Find a booth on the docks.” The booths were in safe neutral territory, on the far side of sec-check so they could leave in a hurry if they had to. And it was a weapons-free zone.

Tilda scowled again. Her gaze slid to the side as she scrolled through data.

“Okay. I put a hold on booth B4–11. See you there in fifteen minutes.”

Finn nodded and cut the link. Edie had to admit that she had a newfound respect for the man. She'd worried about how they might survive alone, with her almost complete lack of knowledge about the worlds beyond Talas and his years of crushing imprisonment. Seeing the way he negotiated gave her hope they'd make it.

 

Hovering holos signposted the way to Dock B, and Edie was relieved that it took them farther away from the
Hoi Polloi
's location in Dock C. Port Neuchasley's offensive décor became progressively shabbier as they moved away from the main concourse.

They took an open elevator down to the fourth level of Dock B and found the area almost deserted. There were only two sec-check gates, and only one was manned.

“Leaving so soon?” The security officer's computer told him Edie and Finn had boarded the station only twenty minutes earlier. Edie opened her mouth to invent an excuse, but Finn took back their idents with a nod of thanks to the officer and nudged her through the gate. Apparently he didn't want to risk getting caught up in chit-chat with a stranger.

A multilevel honeycomb of booths lined one side of the dock. The tiny rooms were designed for waiting, trading, liaisons, even spending the night for those who wanted a cheap alternative to a portside hotel.

Edie walked to the opposite bulkhead, which was lined with angled windows. Each one overlooked a docking bay, some containing a berthed ship, others darkened and empty.
Unlike the
Hoi
's berth via an extendable gangway, smaller ships that could handle grav landed inside the docking bays at Neuchasley.

Edie stopped at B43, the
Drakkar
. It was much smaller than the
Hoi
, although the
Hoi
was excessively large considering the size of its crew. Under the
Drakkar
's bulky belly sprawled a three-pronged landing foot.

“Zed-class Raven.” Finn's voice, so near, startled her. He leaned on the railing beside her.

“Is that good or bad?”

“It's small. Just enough mass to get through a jump node. Crew of three, maybe four. They won't want me tagging along.”

“They'll have no choice.”

They exchanged a look, and written on his face Edie saw an edginess that unnerved her. Did he think she'd leave him to die if it was her only way out? She wanted to reassure him that she wouldn't do that, but what was the point if he didn't believe her? She'd helped him this far. If that wasn't enough to convince him, mere words wouldn't help.

They would make this work. Disappear, find a way to put together enough creds to cut the leash.

She focused on the
Drakkar
again. “It looks reptilian. Kind of ugly.”

“I think she's charming.” He stared at the ship for a long moment. “Come on.”

He pushed back from the railing, slinging the duffle bag over his shoulder. She followed him to the booths.

“Don't give away too much to these people,” he said as they started up the metal steps. “They already want you. Don't make them desperate to have you.”

As if lack of trust in Edie wasn't enough, now he seemed worried they might grab her and leave him behind. The crew of the
Drakkar
probably had no reason to take him. Another mouth to feed, another pair of lungs sucking air.

They climbed several flights to reach B4–11. The room's screened plaz wall was turned off, so they could see inside.
Tilda Skardi waited at the table. Behind her stood an older woman with the same curly hair. A relative, probably. From her limited interactions with outworlders on Talas Prime, Edie knew these traders frequently worked out of family-owned ships. Despite the ramshackle state of their vessel, it was an expensive piece of hardware that required generations of family money to fund.

Finn hit the door panel and it slid aside. The older woman tensed and Tilda stood, and both of them stared at Finn. They shifted awkwardly on their feet, looking like they wished they were carrying weapons. There was an automated checkpoint between here and the bays that prevented weapons coming through.

They turned their attention to Edie and their expressions took on a hint of hope. Hope that Finn had told them the truth, that she was a cypherteck, that she could help them.

As Edie followed Finn into the booth, she noticed a child on the floor, a girl of about six, her unruly blond hair puffing out like a cloud around her face. She sat cross-legged, oblivious to the people in the room, and amused herself with colored disks—some sort of toy.

“This is Amma, my sister.” Tilda indicated the other woman.

Amma nodded a greeting, stepped forward, and put a small med unit on the table.

“That's a biogenerator,” Tilda said. “It's not working so well. You fix that, you're welcome on board.” She deliberately avoided looking at Finn, excluding him from the offer, at least for now.