Song of Scarabaeus (15 page)

“Those dead BRATs—that was my doing, Finn. I saved Scarabaeus from terraforming seven years ago.”

His eyes narrowed. “How?”

“During our final ground check—they drop the BRAT seeds from the ship, and then go down to check a few at random. The last one was on an island. A beautiful place.” She swallowed, caught in a wave of churned-up emotions. “My trainer finished up and we were ready to leave. She told me to jack in, take a look at the BRAT priming. She was pissed off at me—I'd wandered off earlier, doused my
e-shield—so she just left me alone with the BRAT. I wasn't supposed to do anything, just look and learn. But an idea came to me. At first I didn't even dare…” Edie drew a deep breath to steady her voice and control the bone-deep trembling in her body. “For the first time in my life I had power. Power to control the destiny of an entire world.”

Finn stared at her intently, and she guessed her emotions were turbulent enough to be flooding across the leash.

“So I planted a kill-code lock. It's one of the first things they teach you—how to lock down the biocyph, shut it off. I set a time-delay on it, wrapped it all up in a housekeeping tier to hide it. Real simple.”

“Why did it affect
all
the BRATs?”

“Because they talk to each other. They have to, to coordinate the terraforming. Just like the keystones these rovers make that send a message to all the other BRATs. The kill-code was transmitted across the planet after we left orbit. A year later, the scout probe reported the BRAT seeds were dead. I couldn't believe I'd succeeded. And no one ever suspected. They'd already moved on to the next project.”

“If you saved Scarabaeus, if it's unharmed, why are you terrified of going back?”

Edie sighed. “I saved Scarabaeus because I wanted it left in peace. We should leave it alone.”

“It's just a rock and some bugs.”

“Right,” she muttered, turning back to the starscape. What had given her the ridiculous hope that he'd understand? Why should he care about Scarabaeus? Yet he was right. If only she could put aside her emotional connection to the planet, she'd see Scarabaeus for the soulless rock and biomass it really was. Any other view would be as absurd as that of the eco-rads.

For a long moment Finn said nothing. Then, “You can shut down an entire terraforming operation, but you can't dismantle this thing in my head?” He didn't sound resentful, but his question stung her conscience.

“I'm sorry.”

His reflection in the viewing port gave a nod of acceptance as he stared at his hands. His fingers laced and unlaced.

Edie looked at the stars. Cat was right—it was peaceful, and Cat had found her place in that emptiness. It would never be enough for Edie. She craved the freedom, but it left her in a spin. She needed to know where she was headed. Perhaps the fantasy of helping people like Inga and her family was nothing more than a placeholder, a random lifeline because she had to be sure of
something
.

The only thing she was sure of right now was Finn.

He caught and held her gaze in the reflection. A massive physical presence, so strong and sure of himself in many ways, but powerless to take charge of his situation or to control his future. It gave him a vulnerability that made her heart constrict in her chest—a momentary pang of sympathy that she pushed aside without examination.

“I get this feeling from you,” she murmured. “You move through the universe like you're on another plane. It never touches you. I know you started out caring about something, and now it's gone. Or they took it away. Nothing matters to you.”

His answer came reluctantly. “Truth is, the universe bewilders me. I gave up a long time ago trying to make sense of it.”

He looked away self-consciously, and after a while he stood up and waited for her to follow.

Tilt, one of the most popular low-g sports in the Crib, was played in a controlled variable gravity zone. On board the
Hoi
, some time in the past, someone had hooked up leftover gravplating on all six walls of the gym and this served as the Tilt arena. As Edie soon discovered while watching a match in progress, the random system failures affecting other parts of the ship were even more apparent here, and the variable gravity was rather too variable. At unpredictable times the plates would give way and drop all four players from various heights, wherever they happened to be within the three-dimensional field. Seeing the guys trying to maintain their dignity was comical, to say the least.

Cat had bowed out of the match after the first two rounds, to be replaced by Kristos. Haller, who had somehow ended up on the same team as Finn, seemed relieved about the switch, while Zeke still hadn't stopped grumbling about his new partner. Cat was amazing in low-g, launching herself off the walls and accurately judging distances and angles as she maneuvered through the hoops of light projected into the arena. Her skills had unbalanced the teams to such an extent that even Kristos's fumbling moves hadn't made much of an impact on her team's lead.

“Your bodyguard moves well,” Cat mused.

Realizing Cat had noticed her watching Finn, Edie flushed. There was a languid grace about him in regular gravity, at odds with his size, and this translated well to low-g where his movements looked natural even if his skill at the game wasn't particularly noteworthy. In fact it looked like he'd never played before, although he clearly had experience with low-g.

Having already completed their morning workouts, she and Cat had left the men to their sport and retreated to the kit room, which overlooked the gym. It had its own gravplating that kept them stable, but still Edie's stomach lurched each time the plates beyond them unexpectedly switched direction.

Edie's gym shoes were off, and Cat was painting the tops of her feet with rosy-brown ink—a striking effect on her pale skin. The fine brush tickled. The normality of the activity was at odds with the way Edie felt. Two full days had passed since her escape attempt. Two days keeping out of Haller's hair, dutifully attending the morning CPT sessions, and spending her shifts with Zeke and Kristos as they prepared the rigs. Always with Finn in the background. Now that he'd fully recovered from the poison, Zeke put him back to work and he did it without complaining. He wasn't free, but at least he was receiving better treatment than a labor-gang serf. And Haller seemed satisfied that he'd learned his lesson and would not cause further trouble.

“So tell me,” Cat said with a sly look, “is he housebroken?”

“He's clean and basically polite, if that's what you mean.” Edie stopped herself from elaborating on Finn's other attributes, like the intriguing confidence she'd glimpsed on Neuchasley, and the way he made her feel safe.

Cat gave her an exasperated look. Enunciating carefully, she said, “What I mean is, are you grinding him?”

“That would be a bad idea.”

“Speak for yourself!”

Edie didn't want to put a dampener on the girl talk now
that she and Cat were getting along, but she had to explain. Even if it meant revealing more than she'd intended. “Back on Talas, when I was in the training program, my trainer and her bodyguard were lovers. I don't just mean they shared a bed. They were very close. When she was killed by a rad, he blamed himself.”

“Was it his fault?”

Yes
. Lukas and Edie had each claimed a share of the guilt. He and Bethany had had a fight that day, a petty personal squabble. He'd left her alone for a while so they could both sulk. The stowaway eco-rad had come looking for her and found Edie first. And so Bethany had walked in, defenseless, when Lukas should never have left her side in the first place.

“Their relationship complicated things. They should've kept it professional.”

They gazed at Finn again. He glided past, twisting through a hoop of light just before it winked out. The point registered, and a green holo cube, his team's color, stabilized in the area. Haller and Finn's combined abilities made them the better team in theory and they should have overtaken on the scoreboard a while ago, but they would rather lose the match than work together. Only Kristos's ineptitude and Zeke's frustration was losing the blue team the territory Cat had won earlier.

The gravity shifted again and all four players floated upward in the opposite direction from a new set of linked hoops materializing below them. Zeke began the charge to secure them.

“Well, you can send him my way any time,” Cat said with a grin, and then waved away that notion with a flick of her hand. “Listen, if you'd worked around lags for as long as I have, you'd think twice about loosening the reins. Forget those psych evaluations that say he's a sweetie. He'll turn on you if he sees the opportunity.”

Haller had tried scaring her the same way, but Cat had no
reason to exaggerate and her words sent a shiver through Edie. She didn't want to believe that could ever be true.

“Zeke said he was a Saeth. Do you know what that is?”

The paintbrush in Cat's hand froze over Edie's big toe. Then she laughed mirthlessly.

“A Saeth, is he? Now I know why Zeke wouldn't tell me much about him before our mission to Talas Prime.”

“I don't get it. Finn won't talk about it. Zeke told me to ask you. What's a Saeth?”

“The Saeth were rogue independence fighters. Top of the Crib's most-wanted list. Assassins, basically. They were from the Fringe, but all the Fringe governments denied any knowledge of them.”

“So who did they work for?”

“Who knows? Themselves, apparently. Their own private army with their own agenda. Their activities helped prolong the war and disrupted the new independence treaties. You know, I sympathize with the Fringers and I can understand the Crib, but the Saeth turn my gut.”

Cat stared at Finn with a new glint in her eye. Edie did her best to add some perspective.

“Hey, the war's over. He's a lifer with a bomb in his head. Is that enough to settle your stomach?”

Cat grinned, lifting Edie's foot to examine her handiwork. “I guess so.” She glanced up, chewing her lip. “In case you're wondering—in case anything happens to him—I didn't know about the leash. We used him to grab you, but I was told he'd be freed afterward, and that's what I promised him.”

Edie nodded, watching Cat screw the lid on the ink, unsure of what to believe. She was sure, however, that Cat's motivation for explaining herself had more to do with wanting to form a connection with Edie than any real concern about Finn.

“Is this finished?”

“Yes. It's already dry.”

Edie admired the artfully painted scrolls and dots all over
the tops of her feet. It had been a long time since she'd done anything to make herself pretty. She looked up to see Cat examining her throat.

“What's this?” Cat reached out to pull the neck of Edie's tee down.

Instinctively, Edie put up her hand to cover the beetle shell.

“What is it? A jewel?” Cat moved Edie's hand and peered closer. “It's beautiful.”

“It's just a shell.”
Turquoise and black.

“Where did you get it? Was it expensive?”

“It's not worth anything. Having it implanted cost a small fortune—at least, it was a lot when I was a teenager.”

“So it doesn't come out?”

Edie shook her head, hoping Cat wouldn't ask more questions.

“Hey, you wanna have fun with the boys?” Cat grinned at her confusion. “Come on. I couldn't stand it if Haller won.”

Cat pulled Edie to her feet and indicated the scoreboard, which showed that Haller and Finn were now ahead by a narrow margin. The arena had more green territory than blue. Kristos flailed around ineffectually while Zeke yelled instructions and cursed the kid's mistakes.

“You can jack in and control the grav,” Cat said. “See if you can't tilt it a bit in Zeke's favor.”

“I don't even know the rules of the game,” Edie pleaded, but Cat had already brought up the control screen and the holo rotated between them.

“I'll tell you what you need to do. Quickly—Finn just took another point.”

“Wait—what if I want Finn to win?”

Cat stood back, hands on hips. “Your choice, but would you rather Haller won or Finn lost?”

She had a point.

 

A kidnapped cypherteck and her unwilling bodyguard were the last couple on a pirate ship that would be invited to the
captain's supper. At least that's what Edie thought. Cat, however, insisted that they were both expected to attend the rescheduled event—and that it wasn't optional. What made Edie nervous was that for two days she'd expected a reprimand from the captain about her and Finn's escape attempt, but Rackham had taken little interest.

“He's made himself scarce on this trip,” Cat told her. “Not that he's usually the life of the party, but he barely knows it happened. It pissed him off at the time, but it was nothing more than an hour or two's inconvenience. Haller played it down, Zeke even more so, because neither wants to get blamed.
Unauthorized shore leave
is the official verdict.”

The upside of the event was that Haller would be on duty, on the bridge. It made the idea of supper more palatable.

“You should put on a dress,” Finn said. They were in their quarters cleaning up.

Edie wrinkled her nose. “I'll put on a dress when you comb your hair.”

He grinned and ran his hand over the thick dark fuzz on his scalp. It was growing back in, balanced by the evening shadow along his jaw. “Couple more weeks, then.”

Her face warmed at the idea of wearing a dress for Finn. She had the strange feeling they'd just made a deal.

By the time Edie and Finn arrived, the captain was already there, along with Cat, Kristos, and Zeke, and two engineers whom they had not yet met. The engies, Yasuo and Corky, were introduced but didn't speak a word to Edie. The younger one, Yasuo, spared Finn a dubious look. Corky, the beefy, tattooed chief engie, seemed more interested in working his way through the captain's expensive wine.

The dining room was the best-dressed room on the ship. It was easy to forget you were aboard a shabby long-range mining vessel when surrounded by genuine wood, richly woven fabric, and handmade knickknacks from all corners of the Reach. And Rackham, it turned out, was not only a collector of exotic furnishings and artwork but also a connoisseur of fine food. Gia was used to serving up bland meals
en masse for the crew, but was also capable of extraordinary culinary feats, according to Cat.

Finn seemed to know his place—he went to sit in the galley off the mess, from which Gia was serving. Rackham didn't miss a beat on the war story he was relaying as Edie slipped into a chair and kept one eye on Cat to follow her lead in the proper use of the cutlery as everyone tucked into soup. Edie was amused to see Kristos doing the same thing—watching Cat and trying to sit upright and tilt his plate properly, taking small spoonfuls and using his napkin.

Rackham had some sort of antique weapon on the table, and began describing its features to Kristos, who apparently hadn't seen it before.

“It's a recoil-operated semiautomatic, point-four-five cartridge. Only seven rounds in the magazine plus one in the chamber, but with a slug that size you don't need more than one. Weighs a little over a kilo. My ancestors' standard issue firearm for a century. Timeless design.”

Kristos looked like he wanted to touch it, but Rackham didn't offer.

“If you're going to get the job done, you want a weapon with stopping power,” Rackham continued. “What does a spur do? Peppers 'em full of tiny holes, and even if you can stop 'em coming, they get patched up in no time. To get what you want, use maximum force. That's the only way to play the game.”

This was only the second time Edie had met Rackham, and his detached air chilled her blood. While Haller enjoyed his one-on-one power games, she had the feeling that Rackham could be far more ruthless on a grand scale. Perhaps that was something he'd learned in the war.

“I have a few other law-enforcement items of interest,” Rackham told Kristos, nodding toward a cabinet displaying his collection. “Couple of holographic ident cards that predate the Crib. A nineteenth-century sheriff's badge from Old Earth—hardly a scratch on it. Handcuffs almost as old as
this gun. If you have a spare moment or two, I'll show you.”

Zeke smothered a snort by turning it into a cough. He didn't seem to think Kristos would be getting much free time on this trip.

“Sha'nim,” Rackham said suddenly, carefully laying aside his weapon. Edie hastily swallowed a mouthful of delicately spiced stew that Gia had just placed before her. “Lancer was telling me on the bridge this afternoon that you're a native of Talas.” It was unlikely Rackham hadn't already known that, even if he hadn't been directly involved in her kidnapping, and the shift in topic was awkward. “That world warrants a couple of sentences in every history holoviz. I remember reading about the Talasi. That case over there—” He drew the attention of his dinner guests with a sweep of his hand. “Gia, open that case, will you, and fetch me what's inside. You'll recognize this, Sha'nim.”

He smiled smugly as Gia hurried to comply. She withdrew the contents of the display case with trembling hands and carried the object to Rackham as carefully as she might handle a soufflé. The captain took the egg-shaped item from her—his hand was large enough to palm it comfortably—and held it up for all to see.

Edie stared in astonishment at the talphi cocoon. Secreted and molded by the female of the species to carry her eggs while on the wing, such cocoons had been a commonplace find during her childhood. What was unusual about this one was simply that Rackham had it in his possession.