Children of Scarabaeus Read online

  “Don’t you ever look beyond the immediate mission, Finn? You need a job done so you find the most direct way to do it. Don’t you ever wonder how the job fits into the big picture?”

  “I’m a foot soldier, not a general,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  “Saving the Fringe worlds is a job for a general.”

  His eyes narrowed. “There are no generals on the Fringe. That’s why our Liberty War turned to shit. Until the Fringers figure out a way to act together, foot soldiers are all they’ve got.”

  “I would just like to know if I’m doing the right thing. If the end justifies the means.”

  “Freeing billions from oppression? That end doesn’t need much justification. And your means aren’t hurting anyone. The kid will be fine.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Edie’s console beeped for her attention.

  “That’s the call from Anwynn.” She slipped into the seat and waited for the sat network to hook up. As she waited, she thought about Finn’s attitude. His philosophy didn’t quite sit right with her. Galeon might be fine, but Pris was not. Edie couldn’t just forget that. Finn’s extreme focus on the mission was a useful skill for a Saeth, but he was in the real world now. The plight of the Talasi children, the fate of hundreds of Ardra worlds…These problems, under Edie’s nose, weren’t as easy for her to ignore.

  Finn left the room just before the call came through. She was grateful that he respected her privacy. At the same time, she wished he and Lukas could meet. She wanted Finn to know what Lukas had meant to her. She wanted Lukas to know that even though he’d disappeared, she wasn’t alone anymore.

  A minute later, Lukas came on the line. Edie had a smile ready for him. It failed to materialize when she saw his appearance. He looked dreadful, his gaunt skin pale and tinged with yellow, and around his eyes were purple rings.

  “Thought someone was having me on,” he said, an eyebrow quirked. “But it’s really you.” He sounded the same, his gentle gruffness taking her back almost ten years to a time when she was an unreliable teen in awe of Bethany and somewhat afraid of him. He’d been a solid wall of muscle then, even in his midforties. Now his prison garb hung loosely from his shoulders.

  Edie swallowed and tried to sound cheerful. “Yes, it’s really me. They finally told me where you were.”

  She didn’t have to explain who “they” were. Lukas knew. He’d been a loyal Crib citizen all his life, and a decorated milit, but he knew Edie’s feelings about the Crib.

  “So, here I am, missy,” he said.

  “Lukas…” Edie’s voice cracked from the strain of seeing his desperate situation. “Why are you there? They told me you’d turned traitor. I know it can’t be true.”

  Lukas shifted in his seat. “Where are you? The trace here’s telling me you’re on a Crib ship.”

  “Yes. I had a little adventure over the past year, but I’m back with CCU now. Tell me what happened.”

  “Well, I raised some objections all those years ago, and your boss Natesa didn’t like that.”

  “Objections to what?”

  “After Bethany died…” He cleared his throat, started again. “After I took over guarding you, I guess I took more notice of what the program was doing to you. I made…complaints. They hired me to protect you and I tried to do that. Seems they didn’t want me to be anything more than a bullet-stopper. Natesa didn’t want to know. Then I found out she was going after the Talasi kids. Wanted more cyphertecks just like you for her big project. That was the last straw.”

  “So they got rid of you to shut you up?”

  “That’s about it. Called me a traitor and shipped me here.”

  “I was afraid it was something like that. I only just found out about Natesa’s school, and realized they set it up about the same time you disappeared. At the time they told me you’d retired. It all happened so suddenly. One day you were just gone.”

  “Sorry it turned out this way. But it’s not so bad here, you know. I got married.”

  “Really?”

  “Three years ago. Her name’s Beria. She takes care of me.”

  Edie had to ask the obvious question. “Are you ill?”

  “Some degenerative thing. I have good days and bad.” Edie didn’t want to ask which today was. Lukas looked barely strong enough to hold himself upright in the chair. “They’ve got me on meds and it helps. Doc says I’ll be around for a good many years.”

  “Are they going to let you out?”

  He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t know. But I’ve got Beria. Life is good.”

  His perspective was incomprehensible to Edie. While she fumed at yet another Crib injustice, his entire world had shrunk to one woman.

  “Don’t give up, Lukas.”

  “Me? Of course not. But I’ve accepted things.” He leaned forward. “What about you, missy? Are you staying out of trouble?”

  Possible answers flooded Edie’s head. She’d been kidnapped, run with rovers, turned a distant planet into a mutated disaster, and now she planned to undermine the Crib by liberating the Fringe worlds. No, she hadn’t stayed out of trouble.

  But Lukas didn’t need to know any of that. The last thing she wanted was to make him worry. He’d protected her, and now she’d protect him.

  “Trying to,” she said. “Natesa has me working on an experimental project to terraform advanced ecosystems.”

  “Project Ardra. I knew about it from Bethany.”

  “Seems to be yet another way to feed the Crib’s greed.”

  “Is that what you think Ardra is?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lukas looked away, troubled, as if waging an internal battle over whether to say something. When he didn’t respond, Edie changed the subject.

  “I have a new bodyguard, Finn.” Not strictly true—Finn wasn’t her bodyguard anymore, but she wanted Lukas to know she was safe.

  “Hmm. A milit?”

  “No.” Feeling bold, and because she thought it might appeal to Lukas’s sense of humor, she added, “He fought for the other side.”

  Lukas’s face grew animated for the first time and his brow rose with interest. “How did that happen?”

  “Long story.”

  “I’ve got something to say to him. Put him on.”

  Edie bit her lip. She didn’t want to force Finn into this, but she couldn’t deny Lukas. “Hang on.”

  She got up and put her head around the doorway. Finn lay on the couch in the dark. His face was turned toward her and he was awake.

  “Lukas wants to meet you.”

  Finn frowned, but followed her back to her room. He leaned over the console to put himself in Lukas’s view.

  “So you’re her bullet-stopper now,” Lukas said brusquely. “She said you fought in the Reach Conflicts. Who’d you fight for?”

  It was the same question as What planet are you from? The Fringe worlds had never really managed to put together a cohesive allied force during the Reach Conflicts, so for the most part each planet fought for itself. Except for the Saeth, of course, and Edie didn’t imagine Finn would reveal that.

  “You mean what did I fight for. I fought for independence in the Liberty War,” Finn said, using the Fringers’ term for that conflict. He managed to inject some bitterness into his words, a reminder to Lukas that they’d been enemies over that goal.

  Lukas’s eyes narrowed, as if he was deciding how to put the younger man in his place. Edie was relieved when he kept his tone light. “Well, congratulations, son. You won.”

  Edie knew that wouldn’t go down well. Despite the treaties that guaranteed no Crib interference, the Fringe worlds would never have real independence until they no longer had to rely on Crib technology to maintain their worlds.

  Finn had cast his eyes down, formulating a response. Eventually he looked up and said, quietly, “I would say I’m still fighting for it.”

  Lukas looked grim, but to Edie’s surprise there was understanding in his eyes
. Like her, he surely felt disillusioned by the Crib after what they’d done to him. Edie had the sudden urge to tell him about the cryptoglyph, to explain her grand plans to help the Fringers and dismantle the Crib’s strangle-hold. To make him proud of her. But she couldn’t be sure this conversation wasn’t being monitored. If the Crib found out about the cryptoglyph, they’d destroy it. The lives of billions of people—current and future generations—depended on keeping it secret.

  “Okay, I’ve got two things to say to you,” Lukas said to Finn.

  “Go ahead,” Finn said warily.

  “Come to think of it, I guess I don’t have to tell you this first one. Don’t trust the Crib.”

  “Never have.”

  “There’s more going on than they’ve told her.”

  “Such as?”

  “No,” Edie broke in. “Lukas, I don’t want you getting into trouble.”

  “More trouble than this?” He grinned, revealing a gappy row of yellowing teeth. “I’m not afraid to speak out, you know that. Here’s what they won’t tell you. There’s widespread famine across the older Central planets. That’s why the Crib relies increasingly on resources from the Fringe. It’s not greed so much as necessity.”

  Edie stared at the holoviz. “Famine? That’s impossible. Those are the richest, most abundant worlds in the Reach.”

  “They were. Listen, they’d talked about this around Bethany years ago, when you were just a kid, Edie. Something’s been going wrong with the biocyph on the Central worlds. The way Bethany explained it to me, biocyph just can’t maintain the Terran ideal for more than a few centuries. It picks up too many errors. Failure is inevitable. Their ecosystems are falling apart. The older the world, the worse it’s affected.”

  “How is Project Ardra supposed to fix it?”

  “It doesn’t fix it. It provides resources to prop up those worlds. That’s all. And no one really knows there’s a problem, see. The Crib manages to cover it up by extorting resources out of the Fringe worlds. When crops fail, the government imports food. When the air degrades, they install expensive environment jigglers. Ardra will provide a new influx of resources.”

  “But that means…” Edie’s mind raced ahead. “Lukas, they’re using accelerated biocyph to terraform Prisca, the first Ardra world. If failure is inevitable, the Ardra worlds will fail a hundred times faster. They’ll only get a few years’ use out of those worlds before they turn to mash.” If the biomass of an entire Ardra world turned to mash…Edie shuddered at the thought of a planet covered meters-deep in the gray sludge of rotting biomatter.

  Lukas’s expression settled into a deep frown. “If you want advice from me, I can’t give it. I’m just a simple soldier. Served the Crib for twenty-five years. Then I said the wrong thing to the wrong ’crat and I ended up here. I don’t want to see you heading the same way. Now I didn’t tell you about this so you can get yourself into trouble trying to fix it. I just want you to be aware that they lie.”

  “I knew that.” She just hadn’t expected Natesa to keep her quite so much in the dark. Not just her—billions of Crib citizens were being deceived, unaware that their future was so close to being extinguished.

  “I have to get going, but I’m going to tell you the second thing.” Lukas returned his attention to Finn while Edie dragged herself up from depressing thoughts. “You’re a soldier like me, so I know you’ll understand. Keep your mind on the job. You got that?”

  Edie winced. Lukas was talking about himself and Beth any, about their relationship that distracted Lukas and—as far as he was concerned—resulted in Bethany’s death. Edie and Finn had already started down that path. Only the leash was stopping them.

  But Finn said, “Yes, sir,” without a hint of shame.

  “And you take good care of her.” Lukas’s voice took on the gruffness that Edie recognized as coming from deep-seated emotion. “She was a touch delinquent as a kid. Looks to me like she turned out okay. Don’t let her out of your sight.”

  Finn gave a curt nod while Edie’s eyes welled up at the familiar refrain. During the years Lukas had protected Bethany, and then Edie, it had been his way of reassuring them they were safe in his care.

  “Do you need anything?” she asked him. “Creds? Anything at all?”

  Lukas waved a mottled hand in a dismissive gesture. “I’m doing fine. Working half-shifts right now. I’ve got watered-down beer twice a week and I’ve got Beria.” His face flickered with pain—physical or emotional, Edie couldn’t tell. “Don’t you worry about me. And don’t call again, missy. This time-out’s using up my rec chits and I need ’em to pay for the beer.”

  She smiled at his admonishment. “Okay. I won’t. Not for a while, anyway. Good luck, Lukas.”

  He nodded and cut the link.

  “What am I supposed to do?” Edie said, more to herself. She felt more helpless than ever. The more she found out about Ardra, the worse it got.

  Finn straightened. “The fate of Crib worlds isn’t your problem.”

  “It’s not just Crib worlds. Humans have based their expansion into the Reach on doomed technology. The Fringe worlds are a few centuries younger, but eventually their biocyph will fail, too.”

  Finn had nothing reassuring to say. “I’m a little too preoccupied with my own survival until tomorrow to worry about humanity’s survival centuries into the future.”

  Natesa had her reasons for keeping the truth from Edie, and Edie didn’t want to reveal that it was Lukas who had told her—despite his assurances that he didn’t care, she wasn’t going to risk Natesa’s wrath or give the woman a reason to check her comm logs. But there was a way to “discover” most of the information for herself. She accessed Caleb’s sims and spent the morning running one in particular. It showed how the terraforming should proceed, using his new regulator code. It showed the installation of ag-teck and the billions of kilos of food the planet’s biomass would create at a rate of several crop yields per standard year. She forced the sim to cycle through several years until…

  There it was. Beyond ten years, the sim predicted increasingly erratic biocyph behavior, critical errors so pervasive that a ship full of cyphertecks could never hope to keep up with them, let alone the BRATs’ own self-correcting programs.

  Every planet touched by Project Ardra was doomed.

  She slapped her palmet on the desk in front of Caleb, its holo showing a late-stage sim of the planet below them.

  “How long is this sustainable?” she asked, her voice tight with anger.

  “Ah, you’ve found my sims. Those are the pinnacle of a lifetime’s work, you know.”

  “I’m sure you’re very proud of them. How many people can one planet feed before it rots forever, Caleb?”

  “A world with Prisca’s biomass can feed ten billion people.”

  “There are over two hundred billion people on the Central planets. You’ll need to terraform twenty Ardra worlds every decade. Even assuming they all work, which is unlikely, where will you find all these planets? The project’s specs have only identified two other suitable candidates.”

  “Two planets in this sector. We start local. In theory there are almost a hundred planets within a suitable distance that should have the required level of ecosystem complexity for—”

  “A hundred planets? That’s only fifty years of food, not allowing for any population increase. Then what? What happens after you’ve turned every living planet in the Reach into mash? Where will we live then? What will we eat?”

  Was this really the future for humanity?

  “Fifty years is a long time. We’ll have come up with a more viable solution by then.” At Edie’s incredulous scowl, he added, “People are dying now, Edie. Perhaps you don’t realize this is an emergency situation. Okay, not your fault—the Crib has hushed it up to avoid panic. But we’ve already had fifty years of decreasing output across Crib Central planets, each year worse than the last. We had to do something now. Especially with the Fringe worlds closing in.”
/>
  “What do you mean?”

  “Why do you think the Crib was so keen to sign those independence treaties in the end? They’d just found out that the Fringe worlds were affected by the same problem.”

  “But those worlds are newer. Some of them are centuries newer. Why is their biocyph already failing?”

  “We don’t know. All we can say is that the output indicators we use to measure productivity are declining there, too. And a lot sooner, in relative terms, than happened on Central planets. The point is, the Crib didn’t want to be saddled with the responsibility of taking care of the entire Fringe. It was happy to cut them loose.”

  “Just as long as they were forced to keep providing resources, under threat of extermination.”

  Caleb shrugged. “You come up with a better solution to this entire mess, I’m sure there’s a ’crat somewhere who’ll listen. Just remember, most Crib ’crats sit around pretending it’s not happening. Natesa spent years convincing Central to give Ardra a shot, and they’re still looking for any excuse to shut down the program because it’s too expensive or too ambitious or just because they don’t much like Natesa.”

  “What happens if Ardra fails?”

  “If this world fails, most likely they’ll cancel the entire program. There isn’t enough support at Central to get a second chance. And if the program’s canceled, the Crib will keep doing what it’s always done—it’ll take what it needs from the Fringe worlds.”

  CHAPTER 12

  As Edie made her way to the classroom, she gave Caleb’s words serious thought—for perhaps the first time, she was seriously considering the other side of the argument regarding Ardra. There must be another solution. There had to be. But until then…was this the best option? If the cryptoglyph freed the Fringe worlds and the Crib could no longer extort resources from them, the Central planets would need Ardra worlds in order to survive.

  That the Fringe worlds were also suffering the same output decline was the most worrisome part of the whole situation. Unlocking the BRATs wouldn’t solve that. The Fringe worlds were apparently still doomed to suffer ecosystem degradation and famine in their future. The cryptoglyph would free the Fringers from oppression and make the next few decades more bearable, but it couldn’t ultimately save their worlds.