Children of Scarabaeus Read online

  The simple words struck Edie like a bodily blow. She staggered into the seat at her console. He died…he died… Her mind repeated the phrase, washing out all other thoughts, until she realized Beria was still talking.

  “He talked about you often, Edie, and he was so thrilled to hear from you.” Beria looked down at her tightly clasped hands resting on the console on the other side of the Reach. “He was sick, as you know. He seemed to be doing well on the meds, but…he had a sudden seizure. It’s never happened before. It was very quick.”

  Beria still hadn’t looked up. Edie felt like her blood had turned to icy sludge, like it was struggling to push oxygen through her body. It’s never happened before. Now those words started repeating in her mind.

  Beria composed herself and looked up. Her eyes had taken on a desperate, haunted look that broke Edie’s heart.

  “Edie, take care of yourself. He told me before he died that he wanted the very best for you.”

  Beria’s face faded as the message ended. For a few minutes Edie could only sit slumped in her seat, riding out the shock.

  He had a sudden seizure. It’s never happened before.

  She felt the truth to the core of her soul: Natesa had had Lukas killed. Because he’d said too much, or because Natesa resented his influence over Edie, or…

  A second realization hit at the same time—she could never prove it. Natesa would never admit it. And accusing Natesa would get her nowhere. Lukas was dead and there was nothing she could do to get justice for him.

  And if Natesa could kill Lukas that easily, she could kill Finn, too. There were so many ways. An “accident” with the rigs where he worked. An “accidental” separation beyond the leash’s boundary that triggered the bomb in his head. Execution for kidnapping a Crib citizen—Natesa had made it clear that was still on the table. Or if the leash was cut, she could send him away and hire an assassin and Edie would never even know. Finn would disappear, and she’d never know if he was dead or alive.

  She had to warn him.

  She ran though the busy, noisy workrooms and alcoves and hangars on Deck G, pushing past workers, winding her way around equipment, barely seeing the organized chaos around her, ignoring shouted warnings to slow down and watch out. She couldn’t find him. Reason kicked in at last and she stopped at a general access console to check the scheduling. Finn was assigned to the loading bay today. She was going the wrong way.

  She backtracked, forcing herself to walk at a steady pace. It was only then she noticed that she was being followed. The same stocky man in utility coveralls always seemed to be nearby, a few steps ahead of her or a few steps behind. Checking equipment, clearing walkways, greeting other workers with brief words…He was always there.

  Immediately her thoughts went to her illegal activities with the crack. Her guilty conscience heightened her awareness—more than likely making her paranoid. How could a utility worker know what she was up to? She’d returned the biocyph module to the lab, moving it to a rear rack so no one would use it for a long while. She’d carefully timed her visits to the lab and was certain no one had seen her with the module—but even if they had, Aila had remained unsuspicious, so her story about a random exercise for the children should hold.

  No, this man must be coincidentally going in the same direction. He was simply taking his time, pausing to chat along the way. When she took a deliberate wrong turn and he didn’t follow, she breathed a sigh of relief.

  But when she looked back again, she saw that he’d headed down the corridor leading to the loading bay. Was he after Finn instead? Alarm bells went off in her head, tensing every muscle in her body. Natesa had dealt with Lukas…now she was after Finn.

  Edie turned on her heel and hurried down the same corridor. She heard a man’s voice, low and accented, and Finn’s reply. She followed the sounds around another corner.

  Finn and the man clasped forearms in a manner that signified more than just a formal greeting. It was a show of comradeship. Despite their physical differences, this man and Finn were mirror images. The same bearing, the same expressions of mutual respect even though they appeared never to have met before.

  This, then, was one of the Saeth. Edie hung back, feeling silly for being paranoid, feeling ill equipped to deal with this moment while Lukas’s death was so fresh in her mind.

  As she watched the men interact, the truth unfolded before her eyes. Finn belonged with the Saeth. Lukas’s future had been stripped away years ago, as had hers, but Finn had a life to return to. Their two worlds had nothing in common. For one ridiculous, selfish moment she hoped the leash would never be cut and she could have him near forever, whether in her world or his.

  She caught Finn’s eye over the man’s shoulder. He, noticing Finn’s attention was elsewhere, turned quickly. He didn’t seem surprised to see Edie.

  “She’s with me,” Finn said.

  The man nodded, and Edie could see he already knew that.

  “We wanted to catch the two of you together,” he said. “That’s why I followed you here.”

  “We?”

  As the query left her lips, Edie sensed someone coming up behind her. Finn’s expression changed as he saw who it was. A tall woman brushed past Edie, her confident stride exuding both power and sensuality as she approached Finn. All Edie saw from the back was shiny auburn hair, neatly bobbed, and the same meckies’ coveralls that everyone else on the deck wore—she somehow made them look like high fashion.

  “Jaron Solfinn Atellus,” the woman murmured.

  For a moment Edie thought she was addressing the other man. But she had eyes only for Finn. Jaron Solfinn Atellus. Finn’s real name. Edie had never heard it before.

  Finn drew in a breath and let it out shakily. Edie felt the emotion pouring off him as surely as if the leash’s interference worked in the opposite direction. As she watched the two of them greet each other with the same handshake, she knew at once who this was.

  There was a woman, Finn had once told her. Because of her, I took up a cause.

  Edie remembered the pang of jealousy she’d felt when he first told her, and now it returned with a vengeance. This woman was the reason Finn had joined the Saeth. This was his former lover, who had held so much influence over him as a younger man. Even ignoring her physical perfection, which wasn’t easy, Edie sensed a seductive charm rolling off the woman. No wonder Finn had followed her, and fallen for her.

  “It’s just Finn now.” There was a tightness to Finn’s voice that Edie had never heard before. She couldn’t tell if it was nerves or wariness or something else—in any case, it signaled a deep emotional response.

  “Finn. Short and sweet. I like it.” The woman turned to include Edie in the group, her dark-rose lips still curved in the affectionate smile she had bestowed on Finn. Her clear aqua eyes, highlighted with a smudge of black makeup, were mesmerizing. “So this is Edie Sha’nim.”

  Finn jerked his head at the woman. “Edie, this is Valari Zael.” His eyes were narrowed in concern as he looked at Edie. Her shock and grief, transmitted down the leash as indefinable white noise, were making him uncomfortable.

  The other man watched the reunion with interest. He had an easy smile on his face where Edie felt her own expression had frozen. He held out a hand to her.

  “And I’m Corinth.”

  Edie drifted forward a couple of steps, feeling out of her depth among three Saeth. She shook Corinth’s hand in the normal manner, and then Valari’s. She wanted them gone. She wanted to tell Finn about Lukas and warn him about Natesa. But these two people were their only hope of rescue.

  “How did you find Finn?” she asked, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “The Saeth picked up a signal from your chip a few weeks ago,” Valari said, turning back to Finn, “when you passed through an area of space that we routinely monitor. Blind luck. By the time we got to the Lichfield, they’d taken you. But we noticed a woman listed as part of your group, so we took her and—”
>
  “You found Cat?” Edie broke in.

  “Caterina Carmel, yes.” That was Cat’s new ident. “We thawed her out and got the full story from her.”

  Cat under a Saeth spotlight. That couldn’t have been pretty.

  “Is she okay?”

  “She was somewhat uncooperative at first. Rather abrasive, actually.”

  “She’s not that bad,” Cornith said, addressing Finn. “Anyway, she wants the same thing we all want—to get you out of here.”

  “Once we figured out where they were taking you, we used our resources to infiltrate Project Ardra,” Valari explained. “I volunteered for the assignment, of course, and chose Corinth as my second. And here we are, a couple of meckies with the appropriate security clearances. I work here on Deck G. As a utility teck, Corinth has wider access on the ship.” Her startling eyes went from cool professional to soft concern in an instant. “We thought you died with your men five years ago.”

  “The Crib put me on a labor gang as a lifer, tied my chip to a boundary marker to keep me in place,” Finn explained.

  “Yes, we could tell from our remote scan there was something wrong with your chip. That’s why Corinth is here. He’s the best teck we have.”

  “Edie’s a cypherteck,” Finn said. “She broke the boundary link—that’s not the problem.” He looked at Edie, signaling her to continue by tipping his chin.

  Edie pushed back thoughts of Lukas for now, as well as questions about Cat. “Rovers kidnapped me and forced Finn along for the ride with a leash,” she said. “They linked his chip to mine to turn him into my bodyguard. If we’re separated by two thousand meters, his chip explodes.”

  “Have you tried cutting that link?” Corinth asked.

  “No. It’s a biocyph lock. Unbreakable.”

  “I have some biocyph experience. I’ll give it a shot.”

  “You have a wet-teck interface?”

  He shook his head. “I use a dry–wet interface. I know that doesn’t impress you,” he added quickly, “but I’m pretty good.”

  A dry–wet interface was like using a fork to eat soup. Sometimes it gave you a different perspective on a problem, but it couldn’t in and of itself come close to what a cypherteck’s wet-teck interface could do. Edie doubted it would work when she’d failed.

  “I did make an attempt. The bomb is integrated into his chip,” she said. “Messing with it could kill him.”

  “I understand.” Corinth looked at Finn. “It’s up to you, of course.”

  Finn was still focused on Edie. He nodded slowly. “Can’t hurt to take a look.”

  “I want to be there. To help. To make sure nothing goes wrong,” Edie said. To her ears, her voice sounded lame. Desperate. She wondered if it was obvious to the others how she felt about Finn, and how ridiculous and irrelevant those feelings now seemed to her. She wasn’t Finn’s future—these people were.

  Valari laid her hand on Finn’s arm. “Well, let’s not count on anything. We don’t leave a brother behind—we’re here to get you out.” And because of the leash, Edie, too. Edie wasn’t at all sure how Valari felt about that. “Now, we may be undercover but we signed a couple of those lovely Crib contracts. Walking out of here means going AWOL, and there are a bunch of milits on this ship ready to stop us doing that. But we have back-up out there.”

  “How many of us are left?” Finn asked.

  “Perhaps more than you might expect. We’ve kept a low profile and we haven’t been idle—there’s a great deal of work to do. Largely incognito, of course. It’s still the case that almost no one trusts the Saeth. I’m heavily involved in relocating refugees, which is actually more PR work than anything.”

  “You took your time coming forward,” Finn said, without accusation. He just wanted to know why.

  “Because of Edie,” Valari said. “We knew the Crib picked you up together. Then we found out she was a cypherteck for the Crib. We weren’t sure what the connection was between the two of you. To be honest, we didn’t realize at first—didn’t expect—that she was on your side.”

  “I’m on his side,” Edie said firmly. “And I’m not here because I want to be.”

  Valari nodded. “We know that now. We spent a few days gathering information.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Finn asked.

  “We have a ship, the Molly Mei, two jumps from here. We’re in contact via a scrambled link, waiting for the right moment.”

  “I can’t leave without a supply of neuroxin,” Edie said, self-conscious of the fact that her presence in the equation, thanks to both the leash and her dependence on a rare chemical, would complicate Finn’s escape.

  “My crew key gives me access to the infirmary,” Corinth said. “We’ll take the drug at the last possible moment—otherwise it’ll be missed.”

  And Edie would be the obvious suspect in the theft.

  “By the way, your friend Cat is on board the Molly Mei,” Valari said. “To put it bluntly, she insisted on coming along, although letting her join us on the Learo Dochais was out of the question.”

  Edie suddenly felt a whole lot more optimistic. Cat was out there, close by, and apparently itching to help.

  “Can I talk to her?”

  “I’ll arrange it.”

  Edie felt the need to defend her in front of Valari, who had obviously experienced a personality conflict with Cat. “She’ll be useful on the Fringe. She has contacts.”

  “So do we,” Valari said bluntly.

  “What Edie means,” Finn said, “is that we have valuable information we need to get to the Fringe. We need the Fringers to trust us. Cat can help.”

  “Well, now I’m curious.” Valari exchanged a look with Corinth. “Exactly what are you talking about?”

  “Meet us at the main lab on Deck B, oh-two-hundred tonight,” Finn said. “We’ll show you.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Edie sat with Finn at a tiny table in the mess. Valari and Corinth sat some distance away, eating with a bunch of meckies, not wanting anyone to connect them with Finn, at least not for now. Edie had waited until this moment to tell Finn, knowing that doing so in a public place would help her keep her cool. She needed him to take her seriously. If she fell apart, he might believe she was overreacting.

  “Lukas is dead.” Her voice shook, but only a little and it was mostly from anger. “I think Natesa had him killed—poisoned his meds or something.”

  Finn swallowed a mouthful of soup. “What? Why?”

  “To remind me that she controls my life.” The lump in her throat made talking difficult. “She must’ve tagged my external comms. Maybe even listened in. In any case, she knew I spoke with him. She does that. She takes away the things I care about.”

  “Maybe she just didn’t like what he told you. She didn’t want you to know the Crib’s secrets.”

  Edie stared at her untouched food, feeling herself drowning in a sudden wave of despair. She waited for it to pass. “Natesa will kill you, too. An accident with the leash or…something.”

  “Let her try.” Damn his belief in his own invincibility. They’d butted heads over this before. “Listen,” he said with less heat, “maybe Corinth knows a way to cut the leash. Maybe he knows someone on the Fringe who can, once we’re free.”

  “What if Natesa gets there first?”

  “If she values your cooperation, she has too much to lose by killing me now.”

  “She killed Lukas!”

  “You don’t know that for sure. I’ll bet she’s counting on plausible deniability.” He watched her for a moment. “Edie, we will beat them. We’ll get out of here and we’ll be fine.”

  She nodded, trying to look encouraged by his words. Trying to feel encouraged, instead of sick with worry.

  Edie spent the evening working through a sim of what she needed to do that night in the lab. She’d already arranged with Galeon to meet them there. A couple of whispered words in the classroom, a quick smile and a wink in return, and the next phase of Galeon’s �
�top secret mission” was under way.

  And her guilty conscience was back to haunt her. She was using the boy. The consequences for him if they were caught would be incomparably minor in comparison to the consequences for her and Finn, of course. Especially with Natesa looking for any excuse to be rid of Finn. What could the Crib do to a seven-year-old boy who’d been duped by treasonous adults?

  Still, Galeon might not see it that way.

  She found Finn sitting on the floor in his room, leaning against the couch and fiddling with something. On the table was an assortment of junk—tiny pieces of tubing and wiring and broken bits of plaz.

  “What’s all this?”

  As she went over to him, she saw he was twisting wire. On one corner of the table were four finished pieces. Edie recognized the size and shape. She picked one up.

  “Are these for Pegasaw?”

  “Yeah. Figured I’d make the kid a real set.”

  Edie examined the pegs. They were identically shaped, and set into the top of each was a nub of red plaz.

  “How many do you have to make?”

  “For a full set—ten red, ten black. And the board.”

  “Where did you get all this stuff?”

  “Around. It’s just junk.”

  Edie sat down beside him to watch, fascinated. He used his fingers to warm the wire before twisting it into a peg, set the red stone in the top and secured it with a final loop of wire. Then he carefully pressed the peg into shape to exactly match the others.

  “I hope he appreciates it,” Edie said. “Maybe he prefers the holoviz.”

  Finn smiled without looking up. “Then I’ll have to teach you how to play.”

  Edie couldn’t take her eyes off his strong and sure hands. The news about Lukas had gnawed at her all afternoon. It was good to focus on something else, something so mundane—a reminder of how life was supposed to be. Watching Finn, she wondered if he craved the same sense of normalcy to balance their strange and stressful lives. In any case, she understood this aspect of him—that he liked to keep busy, even on a meaningless project like this.