Song of Scarabaeus (29 page)

She heard a sound behind them, from within the jungle. The strangled scream of something dying or half dead. Something human.

“Finn—wait!” She ran around the perimeter and found a place where the vines had been hacked away to make a large hole. It had partially closed over, but this must be where Haller and the two serfs on his team had entered. Cautiously, Edie climbed inside.

Haller had almost made it back out. He was only twenty meters from the entrance. His body hung from the overhanging vines, grotesquely distorted, bones sticking out through ripped flesh. This wasn't the work of slaters. Every part of his exposed skin was pierced by tendrils that snaked into his body. His chest cavity, partially open, pulsed with blood and muscle, the organs almost unidentifiable because they were covered in a mosaic of glassy growths. And body parts were missing. From the hips down there wasn't much left at all—the stumps of his legs blended into the undergrowth. Where his nose should be was a spongy nest harboring tiny crawling worms, and areas of his skull were cracked open.

Yet he was alive. The jungle was digesting him but it was also feeding him. Haller's eyes followed Edie, bright with fear.

Finn drew a sharp breath as he pulled up behind her. Nearby, buried under debris and vines, lay the body of the second serf on Haller's team. His flesh was shredded, his tunic riddled with the unmistakable signs of spur bullets.

“That guy got the better deal,” Finn said.

Edie glanced from the dead serf to Haller's mangled body and could only guess at what had happened. Something had spooked them, perhaps, or an argument had started for some reason. With Haller, it seemed, such incidents seemed to escalate quickly. If his shield generator had been damaged in the fight, the serfs' shields, connected to his, would have failed as well. Haller had shot one of them, and the other had run off and fallen victim to the slaters.

Haller gurgled blood and spittle as he dragged air into his lungs, his face twitching.

“Did you see…” he rasped.

Edie moved closer, sickened by the sight but drawn out of sympathy.

“Did you see all the colors?” He must be talking about the light show earlier. He had been here much longer than that, though. His eyes refocused on Finn.

“Wouldn't say n-no to a bullet in the brain. Can the Saeth sh-shoot straight?”

Finn turned on his heel and walked out.

“Finn!” Edie ran after him, tripping on the debris littering the ground. “You have to finish it for him. Please!”

He didn't slow down. “Not worth wasting a bullet.”

She grabbed his arm but he shook it loose, almost knocking her down. There was no point trying to wrestle the rifle from him. They were out in the open again, in the rocky foothills of a distant mountain range, and the skiff beckoned. She stopped and looked back at the jungle, her instincts telling her to stay near Finn, but she couldn't leave Haller like that.

And not so long ago she'd been thinking kindly of Finn for trying to save Kristos. He'd do that, but he wouldn't end this man's fear and agony.

“Finn, get back here!” She remained resolutely at the jungle's edge while he ignored her, striding on ahead. “You walk twenty minutes in that direction and you'll be out of range. You'll be dead!”

He continued up the rocky incline. She tried a different tack.

“I'll jolt you,” she yelled after him, tears squeezing from her eyes. “I'll zap your fucking brains!”

He stopped, turned slowly, and came back. Stepping up close, he glared down at her.

“What did you say?”

“Give me the rifle or I'll do it.”

He cocked his head as if calculating the likelihood she was serious.

“I'm serious,” she said, for good measure.

He gave her a slow, cold smile, turned and started retracing his steps up the slope. He didn't look back.

Damn
. She was furious, but it wasn't enough to break her promise to him.

She ran in the other direction, into the jungle, to confront Haller again. Finn wasn't stupid enough to go out of range. He would wait for her.

Suspended above her, Haller wept watery blood that made pink trails down his face. A white worm crawled over his skin, sucking up the tears, leaving puckered red marks in its wake.

“You can do it, there's a g-g-good girl.” His eyeballs rolled around in their sockets, as if he was having trouble controlling them.

“No spur,” she said.

“Ohhhh…” He sounded disappointed.

Haller's weapons were nowhere in sight. The rifle must be buried under the nest of vines that had formed around him, and as for his spur—if he'd been wearing it when this happened, she couldn't tell now. Most of his right arm was gone, blending seamlessly into the vines in a medusa-like tangle. His left arm bubbled beneath the skin, oozing a yellowish fluid, and tiny stalks sprouted along a deep split down the length of his forearm.

She had a blade, but she couldn't physically reach his chest or head, the two places it seemed likely a stab wound would kill him. She couldn't believe she was even considering doing such a thing.

How to kill him mercifully with her bare hands? She could no longer tell where he ended and the jungle began.
The vines rippled over and within his body, pulsing with life. With a shudder Edie realized the jungle was not going to kill him, not for a while. It was integrating him into the ecosystem. The men who died had been torn apart by the slaters for food. Kristos had died quickly, in the end. Zeke had avoided that fate for as long as his shield lasted, and then he too was devoured. But Haller had been taken alive, his body invaded by cyphviruses, and the biocyph was using his living cells as the machinery to create something new, as though he were a welcome part of the ecosystem.

“Do something.” His voice was thready and raw, his eyes stark with terror. “I can feel it inside me, thinking my thoughts. Nooo…I'm th-thinking its thoughts…We…I don't like it.”

“I can help you.” She hardly dared acknowledge to herself that she'd thought of a way. “But I need you to help me.”

No way to tell if he was still listening. One of his eyeballs caved in, pulled through from the inside, and the remaining eye lolled about.

“Someone on the
Hoi
planted that flash bomb,” she said, and a ragged eyelid blinked over his eye. “Someone wanted Zeke's team dead. Who did it? The captain? One of the engies?”

From what was left of his throat, Haller made a sound that might have been a snort of derision. “What're you doing here, teckie? Lag said you were…d-d-dead.”

Ignoring the non sequitur, she tried again, worrying that he would become delirious before she could get anything helpful out of him. “Listen to me, Haller. I can give you a quick death—that's what you want, isn't it? Tell me who betrayed us. Was it rads? Did someone give away our position? Was it you?”

“I would never hurt you. It was…I didn't think it could be. Didn't think. But t-two ambushes, what're the odds? It's the baby…” Haller rambled on, making no sense. His voice was a hoarse whisper, and she moved closer to hear. “…a b-b-baby grandson. He wants out.”

“The captain? Haller, are you talking about Rackham?”

“Rackham…he's no war hero, let me t-tell you that. Listen to the trees…” He drew a breath and cried out, but the sound was nothing more than a silent, coarse rush of breath. “Can you hear them? Why did you never do what you were told? J-jump when I tell you, teckie. Do what you have to. Make it all go away. Th-that's an order.”

Edie's shiv swam before her eyes. She pushed up her sleeve and cut into her forearm, inside the elbow. Using the tip of the blade, she dug the implant out of her flesh. There was no pain—at least, the pain didn't register.

She focused on the shard of plaz from her arm, a centimeter-long sliver, slippery with blood. It contained several months' worth of the drug that kept her alive. Even small doses were lethal to non-native Talasi—a few seconds in contact with Haller's bloodstream would be enough. She just needed to deliver it.

Edie grabbed the vines, finding footholds, climbing closer to the shreds of Haller's body. His single eye watched her. Open wounds all over his torso leaked blood, some infested with worms.

“Are you…are you going to do it?” Haller slurred the words through distorted lips.

“Yes.” Her voice cracked on the word.

“All over now. All over…”

She could only get close enough to reach his arm. She pressed the implant against the torn flesh, taking care to keep a hold of one end between her fingertips. His muscle tissue twitched as the tiny device, sensing no neuroxin in Haller's blood, pumped the drug into what remained of his body.

Haller convulsed and the vegetation attached to him shook. The neuroxin was acting faster than she'd expected. Before she could jump away, the jungle began thrashing like a crazed beast with something distasteful caught in its jaws. Worried she would lose her grip on the implant, Edie withdrew and closed her fist around it. She slid down the vines,
landing on her back, and rolled free of Haller's nest. Above her, the vines snarled and writhed, ripping apart his flesh.

The jungle thrummed with rage. Edie struggled to her feet, jamming the implant into the pocket of her jacket, and ran clear of the megabiosis. She scrambled up the incline, following the path she'd seen Finn take.

She looked back only once. The jungle seethed around the gaping hole where Haller had been entombed and then collapsed in on itself, crumpling and compressing, sealing the wound.

 

Edie climbed for only a few minutes before she came upon Finn, hunkered down against a rock. He faced away from the slope, not watching for her approach, though he must've heard her. He took a swig from a water tube. He didn't ask what had delayed her, didn't comment on the patch of blood soaking through the sleeve of her jacket, if he even saw it.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he looked up at her, squinting against the high sun, and said flatly, “Don't ever threaten me again.”

Her mind still reeling from what she'd just seen and done, she gathered together every gram of willpower to fight back the anger and more tears. He'd refused to help a dying man with one merciful bullet.

“I don't understand why you wouldn't help.”

“Yes, you do.”

The brutal honesty of his reply disarmed her. Yes, she understood. His experiences meant he didn't think like she did. She just hadn't thought that would make him immune to human suffering.

That was an unfair assessment. He'd tried to help Kristos and the serfs in the engine room. He'd already explained himself: he wasn't going to fight for someone who considered him worthless.

“Then you must understand why I threatened you,” she said.

“I understand you were angry. I don't understand why
you'd make a threat you had no intention of carrying out.” He got to his feet and rubbed the back of his neck. “You had no intention of jolting me, right?”

“Right,” she conceded grudgingly. “Please don't tell me this was another test to see if I'd keep my promise.”

“No. This time I trusted you. I didn't help because Haller deserved what he got.”

No one deserved that. But she wasn't in the mood to argue the point. Right now, what mattered was getting off this rock.

“He thinks Rackham betrayed us. If that's true, the
Hoi
probably left orbit hours ago.”

Finn didn't look surprised. This was, after all, a confirmation of what they'd already suspected.

“Let's get back to the skiff.” He started up the slope. “It can accelerate faster than the ship. We might stand a chance of catching up before he reaches the jump node.”

And then what? They still had to convince Rackham to let them board, which would be a tough task since he apparently wanted them dead.

“Maybe we can count on the engies.” Edie didn't even remember their names.

“They've gone! The
Hoi
's not in orbit.”

Dwarfed by the landing foot of the skiff, Cat yelled across the scrub. She must have seen them approaching and left the airlock. Finn jogged the last fifty meters across the plateau, a natural ledge cut into the foothills. Too tired to run, Edie trudged after him. To her right lay a desolate view over the valley, and the megabiosis they had escaped stood out clearly—a tight button on the landscape hiding its deadly secrets within.

She heard Cat's exclamation as the navpilot saw their shields were off, and Finn jerked his thumb in Edie's direction, as if that explained everything. Cat stared at Edie accusingly.

“You're supposed to be…Where's Haller and Zeke?”

“Dead.”

“No…Zeke…?” Cat looked out over the megabiosis as if she might catch a last glimpse of him. The aura from her e-shield glinted.

“I'm sorry, Cat. The flash bomb killed Zeke and the rest of the team. It triggered a defensive reaction in the jungle, and it looks like that spooked the serfs on Haller's team. I don't
know exactly what happened, but Haller lost his shield and the cyphviruses got to him. He didn't get very far inside.”

Cat shook her head. “I dropped him off about an hour after nightfall. Lost contact a couple of hours later, but he'd told me not to leave the skiff under any circumstances. In any case, I still had repairs to do.”

“There was nothing you could have done, once his shield failed. Even if you'd retrieved him.”

Finn climbed the ladder to the exterior hatch. “Is the skiff ready to fly?”

Cat looked taken aback by his take-charge attitude, and Edie anticipated an argument. But Cat seemed to think better of it. She surrendered her position at the top of the chain of command and spoke to him as an equal.

“Yes, it's prepped. But the
Hoi
's gone. Last I heard from them was ten hours ago. Corky was supposed to come down on the other skiff but he never did. I thought at first there might be a rad ship in the system, or that patrol vessel, and that they were maintaining comm silence.”

“No,” Edie said. “Rackham is responsible for the bomb.”

Cat's jaw dropped. “Are you sure?”

“That's what Haller thought. And it makes sense. It had to be someone who knew the shield frequency of the BRAT, and knew our landing site.”

“I suspected…” Cat looked devastated, like she couldn't quite get her head around it all despite the plain evidence. “The skiff was sabotaged, I'm pretty sure of it. Somebody…Rackham didn't want us to leave this planet.”

“Then let's surprise him,” Finn said. “Can we trust those engies?”

“Yes, absolutely. They wouldn't have abandoned us without a fight.”

“Then let's hope they succeeded in stalling him for a few hours.”

Finn snapped the hatch and Cat cried out in horror. “Hey! You can't come on board stuffed full of retroviruses from
the planet. Isn't that contagious?” She turned to Edie. “You said there was no cure.”

Edie moved past her, climbed the ladder, and joined Finn at the airlock. “It's okay. I reprogrammed the BRAT when our shields failed so it wouldn't make retroviruses to infect us. And since you haven't been exposed to the cyphviruses at all, the planet doesn't even know you're here.”

Below them, Cat wavered, one foot on the step.

“You can't leave us here, right?” Edie said. “You have to trust me. I fixed everything.”

Not quite everything. She couldn't fix Scarabaeus.

 

Their only option was to chase after Rackham and trick, bribe, or beg their way on board the
Hoi Polloi
. Edie strapped herself into the seat next to Cat, who was running through a quick syscheck.

“Haller seemed to think Rackham had a gripe against the client,” Edie said. “Do you know anything about that?”

“I never heard him speak a word against Stichting Corp. I mean, no more than the usual crap we all bitch about.” Cat still looked stunned. “What about the last mission? Oh god, did he have Jasna killed? I don't believe it.” She sounded like she believed it all too well—she was just having trouble digesting it.

She slapped the holoviz controls and the skiff powered up, its steadfast vibrations sending a surge of relief through Edie.

“And Zeke…” Cat's voice cracked.

“I'm sorry.” Edie briefly touched her hand. “I know you could have left the planet hours ago. I know you stayed here for Zeke, not for me.”

Cat was staring at something on Edie's jacket. “What is that?”

Edie followed her gaze. Her breath caught as she saw the faint glow emanating from her pocket. Sensing her distress, Finn jumped up. Edie took the neuroxin implant out and
wiped off the blood and dirt. The reservoir that comprised one half of the device was glowing electric-blue.

“My implant. I used it to kill Haller.” Edie stared at it, her heart thudding.

“You killed Haller?” Cat said. “Poisoned him?”

“I did him a favor, believe me.”

Finn grasped her wrist to steady it and stared at the implant. “Why is it glowing?”

“It glows when it's empty.”

She felt the shock wave of his reaction, mirroring her own.

“Why the hell did you do that?”

Edie glared at him.
Because you wouldn't!
“I didn't know this would happen. I thought it would just pump in enough to kill him.”

She should have thought before she acted, but her desire to help Haller had been instinctive. His flesh and blood had merged with the ecosystem—she hadn't just dosed him, she'd dosed the entire megabiosis. The implant's pump had drained itself dry trying to keep up.

“I should've just shot him,” Finn said.

“Yes, you should have.”

His expression hardened at her blunt reply, but he said nothing. She knew he regretted his action, or at least understood hers, and wasn't going to defend himself.

He pushed up her sleeve to examine the small wound inside her elbow. “How long can you survive without neuroxin?”

“I don't know. It breaks down fast. When it's gone, my body will start breaking down neurotransmitters instead.”

“We have to get you to a medfac,” Cat said.

“No.” Edie tipped back her head against the seat as her world closed in. “Neuroxin can't be synthesized. I have to go home.”

Home to Talas. Home to Natesa's clutches.

Her eyes met Finn's and she saw him in chains again, or worse.

“Let's deal with our problems one at a time.” Cat pulled back on the control stick. “Let's catch that evil bugger.”

The skiff lifted off smoothly from the scrub, raising whorls of dust in front of the screen. Edie closed her eyes, not even wanting a last look at Scarabaeus.

She opened them minutes later to the safe emptiness of space.

 

As soon as they set a course toward the jump node, the
Hoi Polloi
appeared on their scopes. Finn leaned over the copilot's chair as they all examined the holoviz.

“At least he's still in-system,” Cat said, “but he must have left orbit hours ago. He's only twenty minutes from jumping.”

Edie pointed at the comm switch. “Can you contact the engineers? Assuming they're on our side.”

“Of course they're on our side. And no, not without Rackham knowing about it. All external comms go through the bridge.”

“Then you have to persuade Rackham. Beg him to take pity on you. Tell him you picked up something valuable from Scarabaeus to add to his collection.” Edie exchanged a glance with Finn. They
had
picked up something valuable, but trading it to a rover would be a last resort. And a cryptoglyph was not pretty enough to add to Rackham's museum. It wasn't enough to tempt him.

Cat's hand lingered over the comm. Her hesitation made no sense. Why would she want to be stranded out here?

Finn ran out of patience. He leaned over to hammer the switch. “Call the damn captain.”

“Wait.” Cat blocked his fist before it made contact. “There's another ship coming. I don't mean CIP. I made…arrangements.” She looked from one to the other, gauging their mood. “I made a deal with the infojack, Achaiah.”

“What kind of deal?” Edie kept her voice level but her blood ran cold.

“He's giving me a new ident, passage to the Fringe—freedom.”

“What does he get in return?” Finn said.

Edie's knew the answer. “Me.” She glared at Cat, recalling the liaison between the navpilot and the infojack at the medfac. “He's going to double-cross Stichting Corp, sell me again, get paid twice.”

In Cat's guilty silence, Edie's mind raced. She glanced at Finn, knowing he was thinking the same thing as she was. Achaiah had created the leash and he might be the only one who could deactivate it. Could they make a deal with him in exchange for the cryptoglyph from Scarabaeus? The idea of handing over something so precious to an infojack curdled Edie's blood. He might simply sell it to the Crib, and the Crib would destroy it, thus preventing it from ever reaching the people it was supposed to help.

But she'd promised Finn they'd cut the leash, no matter what. Perhaps Achaiah would accept something else in payment. With Cat's help, perhaps they could persuade him to do the right thing.

Then again, why count on Cat's help? She'd planned this from the start. Her change of heart three days ago suddenly seemed less impressive.

The silent conversation passing between Edie and Finn had gone over Cat's head. Perhaps she thought they were about to turn on her, because she panicked. She jumped up to explain herself.

“You think you're the only unwilling crew members on the
Hoi
?”

Finn stepped between her and Edie, grabbing Cat's arm to jerk her away. Cat shook him loose but her temper flared.

“We're all prisoners of the client. We're all forced to serve—one way or another.” Cat jutted her chin, defying them to question her explanation. “Even imbeciles like Kristos, who thought he chose this life of adventure and crime. Even Haller, who convinced himself he was happy being
bribed to serve a noble cause. We knew we could never leave. This is my ticket out.”

“At our expense,” Finn said.

Cat ignored him. “He'll save your life, Edie! He won't let you die—he'll get your meds, somehow. What difference does it make anyway? Rovers are rovers—your situation won't change.”

Edie found her callousness hard to swallow. “What about Finn? What if the next rover crew decides they don't need an unwilling serf hanging around?”

With visible effort, Cat calmed down and dropped back into the pilot's seat. Despite the ache of betrayal by a woman she'd finally convinced herself was on their side, Edie felt sorry for her. There was something good in Cat, something that had made her try and do the right thing a few days earlier. Something that could be reached.

Edie tried to reach it. “With your help maybe this can work out. We need Achaiah to cut the leash. At least that protects Finn's life. So change the deal. We can pay him with what we have—the skiff, the equipment down below.”

“You really don't have any idea how much you're worth, do you. We have nothing to give him to match the price he'd get for a Crib-trained cypherteck. In any case, infojacks deal in information and skills, not things.” Cat looked at them, pleading for understanding. “I never wished any harm on either of you. I mean that.”

“Act like you mean it.”

Cat closed her eyes for a moment, her expression troubled as she came to a decision. “Okay, I'll do what I can. We just need to sit tight for a few days—”

Edie's hopes faded. “A few
days
?”

“We're three days early for the rendezvous.”

“Three days plus however long it takes to procure neuroxin from Talas…It could take weeks. I don't have that long.” Perhaps it was only Edie's imagination, but the muscles in her limbs already felt weak—the first sign of neuroshock.

“I have contacts,” Cat said. “We'll get your drug somehow. We just need a good thief.”

That didn't convince Finn. “There must be some medication that can help. What exactly is happening to you?”

“Neuroshock,” Edie said. “It's a catastrophic failure of several key biochemical pathways. An amino acid cocktail might help for a while, but I need neuroxin. There's none on the
Hoi
.” As she said the words, she remembered…there
was
neuroxin on the
Hoi
. “Rackham's talphi cocoon—it's full of neuroxin. If I can figure out how to extract it, it should keep me alive a few days.”

Finn turned to Cat. “Talk to Rackham and get us back on the
Hoi
.”

“I thought you wanted to cut that leash?” Cat said.

“Finn's right,” Edie said. “I—we could be dead in three days. We're back where we started—we need that cocoon on the
Hoi
.”

“You sure that's what you want to do?”

“It's our only option.”

“Okay.” Cat gave a lopsided grin. “Zeke always boasted he had contacts at every port. I know some people, too. I'll find someone near Talas and persuade them to buy or steal what you need.”

“How was Achaiah going to board the
Hoi
?” Finn asked Cat. “By sweet-talking his way through the airlock?”

“He gave me a worm that I planted in the system. When the time came I was going to activate it, and it would give him access to the ship's main systems—weapons, engines, nav control. He could effectively shut down the ship for a few hours. Then he was going to board and…well, with my help, grab Edie.”

“Can the worm be triggered remotely?” Finn asked.

“Edie could do it.” Cat looked expectantly at her.