Song of Scarabaeus (16 page)

“Isn't it magnificent?” Rackham turned the cocoon over in his hands. The iridescent surface wavered and bled like oil on water as it caught the light. “It was created by a native creature on Talas—a primitive flying mammal, I believe. I traded three cases of very good brandy for this beauty. Perhaps you can tell us more about it?” he prompted Edie, passing the cocoon to Cat on his left.

Edie opened her mouth to answer his question politely, but felt an irrational surge of annoyance at the idea of Rackham,
or anyone in the Crib, trading Talasi property and putting it on display.

“Talphi cocoons fall under the indigenous trade act,” she said. “It's illegal to transport them off Talas. The law was enacted two decades ago to prevent exploitation of the Talasi.” She decided not to mention that the law was also intended to protect the naïve—the cocoon contained enough neuroxin to kill everyone in the room but her.

Cat scowled at her, but Rackham was unfazed by what could have been interpreted as an accusation.

“And that's why it was so damn expensive. Still, well worth it in my opinion. I paid a high price for all these treasures. This dreadful beast”—he indicated the sprawling artwork in the corner behind him—“was a gift from a Fringe-world captain. I don't think she liked me. And in that chest over there is an antique Lourches songbird. A beautiful museum piece, although that particular one has never been played in my presence. I've no musical talent to speak of, and I can't persuade Lancer here to take it up.”

“Because I have mercy on your eardrums, sir,” Cat said tolerantly.

Rackham gave Edie an appraising look. He kept his eyes on her while addressing the room, like a king holding court. “What did you think of your brief trip to Talas, Lancer? The original natives were xenophobic, low-teck refugees from another failed colony world who somehow managed to tame that toxic planet and have thrived for centuries.”

“Thrived is hardly the word,” Cat said. “We never went dirtside, but on Talas Prime the news-caps were full of the troubles down on the planet. There's friction over trade agreements and whether or not to try and detoxify the ecosystem. Terrorism in the city is rife, despite the Crib's occupation. The economy's a mess. The city dwellers have used bio-bombs on the forests and the natives live in secluded camps. That was supposed to be a temporary measure but it's been—what, almost twenty years?”

Edie nodded, rolling a water glass between her palms, desperately uncomfortable under their scrutiny.

“Talas's ecosystem is toxic?” Kristos said. “How do the natives survive?”

The question was addressed to Edie, but she didn't respond. Rackham, however, seemed eager to share his knowledge. Edie should've guessed from his eclectic collection that he was more knowledgeable about colonial anthropology than the average Crib citizen.

“Their ancestors integrated biocyph strands into their genome. It was as illegal then as it is now. The Crib cut them off, but they were isolationists and didn't care. And eventually”—he looked directly at Edie—“your people were forgotten.”

Not my people
. She disliked being identified as one of them, and bit back the reflexive response. Why should she identify with people who had rejected her?

Rackham and Cat began debating the pros and cons of bio-bombs as a means of pest control, and the engineers excused themselves to prepare for the next jump—Corky quite obviously inebriated. Through the serving hatch, Edie watched Gia wait on Finn with a mixture of flirtatious smiles and motherly concern—quite different from the deference she reserved for the captain and crew. Finn responded with a friendly appreciation that startled her. After what Cat had told her about the Saeth, the normality of his behavior struck Edie as being entirely unassassinlike.

Rackham was distracted by a quiet but insistent beeping on his personal commlink. He squinted at the message, his brows crawling low over deep-set eyes, and then directed the transmission onto the holoviz so everyone could see. It was Haller, looking worried, awaiting instructions.

“Haller tells me a CIP vessel has been tailing us for the past few hours,” Rackham announced, as though he were commenting on the weather.

In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Edie felt the
heat of unvoiced accusations. Was the Crib coming after her? Of course she expected Natesa to send someone to find her, but surely the rovers had covered their tracks.

Zeke finally spoke up. “CIP has hundreds of smaller ships patrolling just outside Crib Central. Might be a routine patrol, coincidentally on the same course.”

“That's becoming less and less likely,” Haller said. “They followed us through the last two jumps.”

“Damn, we're only three jumps from Scarabaeus. Have they made contact?” Cat asked.

Haller shook his head. “They may think we'll take off if they voice any suspicions.” In contrast to Rackham's calmness, the XO's voice held an edge of alarm. “At this distance we can still outrun them, disappear into the nearest jump node, and claim Article Seven if they complain. They can't delay a commercial vessel without due cause.”

“We can't run,” Rackham said. “It'll look like we have something to hide and they'll hound us for the next century—you know what they're like.”

Now even his eyes slid toward Edie. For the first time, she wondered if Rackham opposed her presence on the ship. Maybe he'd rather Stichting Corp send the
Hoi
on safe survey missions instead of seeding ventures that required a valuable cypherteck to complicate his rover lifestyle. While the
Hoi
was a legally registered vessel that ordinarily should pass a Crib Interstellar Patrol inspection, there was no explaining away the presence on board of a cypherteck who had recently disappeared from her post under suspicious circumstances.

“Let's play it cool for now.” Rackham neatly folded his napkin and with a flourish of his finger called Gia for more wine. “We're well out of Central's control, so they're going to need a damn good reason to board us for inspection. We're a few hours from the next jump, at which point we'll diverge from our scheduled flight plan anyway. So they'll lose us in the node unless they get a hell of a lot closer in order to track us.”

“I'll let you know if they close in.” Haller signed off.

“Nothing to worry about,” Rackham said, taking a sip of wine, but the fingers of his other hand drummed on the tabletop. He thumped his glass on the table. “Dammit, this merlot should be served at seventeen degrees. This tastes like twenty-two, at least. Seventeen, Gia! Seventeen degrees is the correct temperature.”

Gia rushed to his side in a fluster. “It's the secondary refrigeration unit, sir, that powers the wine cabinet. Been failing all day.”

Cat rolled her eyes at Edie over the rim of her glass as the captain expressed at length his disappointment. Edie was only too grateful that his attention had moved on from her heritage to the precise temperature of his wretched wine.

Haller swiveled his console around to face Edie. “I've given you limited access. Figure out what's going on with these systems failures, and then jack out. Don't meddle. Don't try and fix anything.”

He'd woken her at three in the morning after a crowd of toms rattling the captain's air vents had driven Rackham to demand an immediate solution to the random failures affecting the ship's systems. Flickering striplights, screwed-up air mixes in the mid-deck quarters, the gravplating fluctuations during the Tilt game—these minor annoyances had kept the engineers on their toes. With a possible CIP confrontation coming up, Rackham wanted the source of the errors located before something more serious went wrong.

Edie's brain was still a little foggy as she slid into a seat, stifling a yawn. She pressed her fingertips against the dataport, trying not to appear too eager. An overwarm wine cabinet and a handful of misbehaving toms on a decrepit pirate ship didn't interest her, but Haller's failure to track down the problem was an opportunity for her to snoop around the
Hoi
's higher-level systems.

“Remember, I said don't fix anything.” Haller watched the holoviz as Edie filed through the systems routines.

“Wouldn't dream of messing with your precious ship,” she muttered.

Finn had come along to the briefing room, and Edie was glad. The two men detested each other, and that would never change, but the more opportunity Haller had to see that Finn was behaving himself, the less likely he'd be to carry out his threats against him. Finn was backed up against the bulkhead, arms folded over his chest as he watched her work.

The error log was now several thousand entries long. She ran it through a filter to detect any patterns. Nothing came up—the failures appeared to be truly random. She kept the holo running an uninformative loop that masked her datastream, just to see if Haller could tell the difference. She needed time to think and explore.

Slipping through the virtual door that Haller had opened for her, she accessed the
Hoi Polloi
's mid-level secure systems. Her splinter sorted through jumbled tiers, reorganizing them into music she could understand. Like much of the technology on the ship, the system had been patched up over the years with amateurish hacks. It remained surprisingly functional, and that meant the high-level systems were depressingly secure. Ideally, she needed to create a worm—a hidden, self-directed algorithm that over time could break through. But she was no infojack, and such sophisticated coding was beyond her expertise. In any case, there was nothing she could do from this console.

As she filed through the tiers, searching for ideas, Haller's on-edge voice broke her concentration.

“Well? What's going on? Did you find anything?”

She flashed up the error report, pulled back from the datastream, and returned her attention to Haller.

“As you can see, there are blips in here. Doesn't even qualify as a virus. They're not replicating or doing any permanent damage.”

“And they won't mess with major systems? I don't want any surprises.”

“It's not affecting any systems that require security access.”

“So how do we fix it?”

“You told me
not
to fix it. Sir.”

Haller scowled. “If that's all it is, fix the damn thing, teckie. Where did these blips come from anyway?”

Edie chased the blips as they played over the surface of the tiers, dipping into the melody of the programming at random—one disharmonious note here, another there. Simple mischief, like a flurry of playful sprites tickling the nose of the ship's systems. Distracting, but never quite enough to bring on a sneeze.

Distracting.

A shiver swept down her spine and her hands went cold. From the corner of her eye, she saw Finn shift position as her rush of anxiety sent a spike of awareness to his brain.

“Where did this thing come from?” Haller repeated, oblivious to her reaction. “Something we picked up at port, a bad piece of code—or what?”

“It's a distraction,” she said quietly, lost in the code.

It took Haller a second to catch on. She saw the spark of panic in his face before his eyes slitted as his mind started working again.

“You mean a diversion?”

“Yes.”

“Shit. Engineering has been chasing these problems around the ship like legless toms for three days…” He raked a hand through his hair and looked wildly around the room as though the answers might be found there, while Edie channeled the code visuals to the holo.

Finn came over and leaned on the console, taking in the information. “So, what should we really be looking for?”

“I don't know,” Edie said. “It's curious, though—the blips haven't spread from a common source. They've been introduced into the ship's systems over and over again during the last few days.”

“Does it matter?” Haller said. “You have my permission to get in there and fix it. Then maybe we can figure out what we're being distracted
from
.”

“Something keeps tapping in, feeding new code. There's no point clearing out these blips when new ones are appearing all the time.”

“Yes, but from where?”

“Maybe you have a stowaway,” Finn said sardonically.

Haller snorted. It was an insult to suggest that a ship the size of the
Hoi Polloi
could carry a stowaway this far out of port without detection. Haller's security wasn't that sloppy. “What about a hackscript?” he suggested.

“No, it's deeper than that.” Edie turned the layers over in her head, teased them apart to peek inside, noticed the pits and wrinkles in the clean coding, like high frequency dropouts in a poor quality recording.

Haller shook his head. “A worm, then? Seems like overkill, considering the kind of problems we've been having.”

“Maybe they're planning ahead,” Finn said.

Edie bit her lip to suppress a grin, because a worm was exactly what she'd been wishing for, although one that disrupted cleaner toms wasn't going to help her and Finn.

Then she found it. “I think they already succeeded.”

The holo displayed the bones of the ship, rotating slowly over the console. A series of orange dots ran the length of each corridor, and more glowed to life in the cargo holds, the gallery, the crew quarters, everywhere.

Haller squinted at the display. “What are those?”

“Access ports for the maintenance toms. They jack in to recharge, to receive instructions, to report their status. My guess—someone planted an infected tom, it infected more, and they've been injecting blips every time they jack in.”

“But toms can't affect any secure systems,” Haller said. “They can't do much of anything except clean up trash and fix leaky faucets.”

“If they're programmed right, they can also scurry about unnoticed, squeeze into tight places.” Edie called up the tom
roster and overlaid the current location of every tom on the ship. “And burn through locks.”

At least half of the toms were clustered in one location: belowdeck.

The cellblock.

Haller slapped his commlink and started yelling.

It took several tense minutes for Zeke to get out of bed, get to the cellblock, and report back. Three cells open, three serfs missing.

Haller finished updating the captain over the comm, then turned to Edie. “Can we get an idea of the lags' location—heat sensors, movement trackers?”

“The toms have thrown everything out of whack. We can't trust the sensors until I've cleaned out the blips and shut down the toms' access.”

“Get to the engine room and do it.” As he studied the holoviz, Haller kept the link open to Rackham. “Sir, telltales are reading that the armory is still locked up. But they showed the cellblock was, too. No way to know what's going on from here.”

The captain ordered Zeke, Haller and Kristos to the armory. He and Cat would secure the bridge. “If they get a hold of the rifles…” Rackham said tersely.

“They'll blow holes through the hull,” Finn said, finishing the thought. “They have a lot less to lose than the rest of you.” He eyed Haller, who was checking his spur as he headed out. “Hey. We need weapons.”

“How do I know you're not involved in this somehow?”

“He's never even met those serfs,” Edie pointed out.

Haller hesitated, self-consciously fiddling with the spur on his arm, no doubt considering the pros and cons of letting Finn roam the ship armed versus letting Edie roam the ship without adequate protection.

“Fine.” Haller went to a locker near the hatch, thumbed it open, and pulled out a spur. Just one. He tossed it to Finn.

“What about e-shields?”

“Unfortunately, we store them in the landing skiffs, ready
for dirtside missions.” He pointed at Edie, his face drawn. “Take the main route to the engine room and get the sensors up to speed. We need to be able to track those lags.” As his gaze rested on Finn again, his lips tightened. If he'd planned to throw any orders Finn's way, he changed his mind and settled for less. “I'll be taking that spur back and counting the rounds when this is over.” He left the room.

Finn slipped on the spur and checked it. “You ready?” Edie nodded numbly. “Okay. Let's go.”

“Wait. Finn.” She had to ask. “Was this…
Did
you have anything to do with this?”

He glanced over his shoulder from the doorway. “No.”

“I thought maybe it was another plot to escape or—”

“No.”

No elaboration, no explanation. She believed him.

 

They moved cautiously through the common room on deck one and climbed down to deck two using the aft access ladders. Emergency shafts ran around the inside of the hull, and it was more likely the escaped serfs would use those to get around than the open routes. Edie and Finn didn't want to meet up with the escapees—that was Haller's intention, not theirs.

Deck two was freezing cold and in total darkness. Edie walked into the void, touching the striplight at various points without result. Enviros were screwed up here. Finn went halfway down the next ladder to check below.

“Stay close.”

He was alert but calm, and she was surprised at feeling absolutely certain he could protect her. She hadn't felt that way since Lukas. Whatever Cat thought about the Saeth, Edie was glad to have an ex-Saeth on her side right now.

I won't let you out of my sight
. Lukas used to say those words to Bethany, and never forgave himself for breaking his promise. Then he said the same thing to Edie, and had kept that promise scrupulously until the Crib forced him to break it and made him disappear.

In the eerie, icy dark, she started expecting serfs to jump out of hatches and access covers. Backing up closer to the ladder, she waited for Finn's all-clear.

Something flickered at the far end of the corridor. She gasped—and then felt stupid as Finn darted up from the ladder well to see what the problem was.

She waved him down. “There's nothing there.” It was a striplight on the blink.

“Get back against the bulkhead,” he hissed. His head and shoulders were above the level of the deck, his spur aimed into the dark.

A shadow crossed the struggling striplight. Finn sprang into action, jumping onto the deck in a fluid, silent motion. He pushed Edie firmly behind him. She held her breath, flattened against the bulkhead, the length of her arm and thigh pressed against his side, the heat of his body soaking through her. She felt helpless and light, unanchored in the darkness and in danger of floating away. The solidity of his muscular frame pulled her away from the emptiness. His self-assuredness helped to ground her, but he wasn't bulletproof. And she was unarmed.

“Move into the light,” Finn said, not loudly, but with enough force to carry his voice down the corridor.

Another dart of movement as someone shot out of the infirmary. Then a thin voice quivered down the corridor. “Don't shoot!”

Edie almost laughed with relief. “It's Kristos.”

“Jezus.” Finn lowered his weapon, but when she started forward he crossed an arm over her to hold her back.

“You're supposed to be in the armory,” she called out to Kristos.

“No fuckin' way!” Kristos sounded both scared and petulant. Edie's eyes were getting used to the dark now, and she could see him edging his way up the corridor, casting fearful glances to the forward ladder well he'd climbed. “There's three serfs loose, did you know? I didn't hear any orders. I didn't hear.”

The kid was lying, but in his current state he wasn't going to be much use in any case.

Finn must have realized the same thing. “Stay on this deck,” he said. “Stay away from the skiffs and the emergency shafts. You got that?”

“I got it.” Kristos slapped open one of the hatches—his quarters. “I'm not coming out till it's over.” He slipped inside and locked the hatch behind him.

“Tough guy,” Finn muttered. “Come on.”

They went down to deck three, which was in better shape. The striplights were running on standby and enviros maintained a reasonable temperature. Instead of continuing down to the engine room, Finn hesitated in the shadows.

Edie drew an unsteady breath, wondering what he was planning. “We're supposed to—”

Finn held up a finger to silence her. He was watching the armory, forty meters down the corridor. Haller and Zeke emerged, talking in low urgent voices. The two men climbed up to deck two without noticing them.

“Armory first,” Finn said. “Stay close.”

She followed. Now was not the time to wonder how Haller would react to Finn's insubordination.

Her commlink buzzed and Haller spoke over an open line to all crew. “They got to the armory. Toms must've been burning the locks for a while, so it was open by the time they got there.” He sounded breathy from adrenaline and simmering panic. “They took the rifles—all five. They can't be shooting those inside the ship. And there's a couple of spurs missing.”