Children of Scarabaeus Read online

  “Then why isn’t the captain questioning me?”

  “He thinks I have a friendlier face.” West grimaced. “What exactly have you been up to for the past thirteen months?”

  “I was frozen for most of it.”

  “But before that? We know you were in the company of rovers and that they took you to a planet in the Valen Sector. What were you doing there?”

  “They were doing what seeding rovers do. Stealing BRATs to sell to the Fringe.” BRATs—biocyph retroviral automated terraformer seeds—were the Crib’s terraforming machinery, used across the Reach prior to colonizing new worlds. “The rovers had information that the seeds on that planet never germinated—easy pickings. Have you turned the ship around?”

  “Yes, we’re heading back to the Lichfield for your friend. Then we rendezvous with the Learo Dochais in two weeks, and you’ll be placed in Administrator Natesa’s custody.”

  “Then I don’t think we have anything else to talk about, Sergeant.”

  West sighed. And gave up rather too quickly. Perhaps he didn’t have the authority to question her, after all. His next statement essentially confirmed it.

  “The Crib is sending an officer to the Learo Dochais to interview you further.”

  “Perhaps someone with a little more clout?” she mocked.

  West shrugged, and she suddenly felt sorry for him. His manner so far suggested he was a nice guy, and in her experience there weren’t too many of those in the Crib.

  “Someone you know, apparently. Colonel Theron.”

  West left her to contemplate the name. Theron—he’d been a commander all those years ago, in charge of the seeding team that went to Scarabaeus. He’d never even gone dirtside, as far as she knew. But at the time she’d held him responsible, as a representative of the Crib, for the plan to destroy that beautiful world. A world she knew they weren’t supposed to be standing on. There were rules, and the Crib had broken them. Planets were supposed to have no more than simple lifeforms to qualify for terraforming. Scarabaeus was the first attempt to terraform an advanced ecosystem.

  Eight years ago she hadn’t been able to stand by and let it happen. But her solution had only made things worse. The result was the mutated jungle where the Hoi Polloi crew had died a year ago.

  By the following day, Edie felt strong enough to get up and move about. She was ordered to stay put, which meant she was limited to the tiny med cubicle and the passageway outside it. Her limited exploration confirmed that the ship was only thirty or so meters long, the rear third of the cabin consisting of the medfac and crew bunks slotted into every conceivable spare space. The middle third, from the brief glimpse Edie had caught of it, was the mess and rec area, and the front third must be the bridge and teck stations.

  West told Edie she was to eat and sleep in the med cubicle, as there was nowhere else to put her. At her expression of dismay, he found her some entertainment caps—ridiculous toons that she watched in a daze between napping and anxiously awaiting news of Finn.

  The Peregrine docked with the Lichfield while Edie was asleep. The first she knew of it was when West told her, hours later, that they’d retrieved the capsule. They were keeping Finn frozen until they met up with the Learo Dochais. She had to believe him, because she wasn’t allowed to see for herself. She had to trust that Natesa knew she was serious.

  The two-week journey passed monotonously. Stuck in the med cubicle, Edie had plenty of time to consider her future. Escape was an unlikely option. Natesa simply would not allow that to happen a second time. Finn, a highly trained Saeth soldier, had been unable to escape a labor gang for four years, and his eventual escape had only been possible with outside help.

  Their only outside help was Cat—still in cryo, unless the Lichfield had already reached a dock where her skills were wanted. Eventually someone would wake her and she’d find Edie and Finn gone. Cat was a survivor. She’d be okay. But would she help? She’d have no way of knowing what had happened. Would she think Edie had abandoned her?

  Edie decided her first priority, once she was on the Learo Dochais and Finn was safe, would be to determine Cat’s whereabouts. If Cat could help—if they could escape—they could continue with Edie’s mission: to use the cryptoglyph in Finn’s head to save the Fringe worlds from Crib domination.

  CHAPTER 4

  Edie sat on the edge of the bunk and waited impatiently. From snippets of crew conversation earlier, she knew they had docked inside the Learo Dochais’s hangar a couple of hours ago. She felt rested and strong—in body, anyway. Her mind was another matter—boredom and anxiety did not sit well together.

  When Sergeant West showed up, she eagerly hopped off the bunk, ready to see Finn again and suffer the unpleasant but inevitable task of facing Natesa.

  The ship’s central narrow corridor was abandoned, as were the bunks and rec area. The crew must have boarded the Learo Dochais to stretch their legs. Without explanation, West led Edie all the way forward until the corridor widened into a room with a large oval desk—some sort of briefing area overlooking the empty bridge. At the head of the table sat a man with an angular face and expressively arched brows that made him look eternally patronizing.

  She’d been expecting this moment. Still, she shivered now that she was face-to-face with him again. The failure of the Scarabaeus mission obviously hadn’t affected Theron’s career. He’d had plenty of missions since. One failure was hardly exceptional in an industry where a twenty percent success rate was considered good enough.

  “Good morning, Ms Sha’nim. I’m Colonel—”

  “—Theron. I remember.”

  “—of the Weapons Research Division.”

  “Where’s Finn?”

  “Please, take a seat.” He waved a hand toward a chair fitted into the bulkhead on the other side of the desk. Behind her, a semi-transparent screen moved across the corridor to enclose the area.

  Edie sat and fumed. She was tired of the delays, but she couldn’t avoid Crib bureaucracy. Best to get this over with quickly.

  Two med toms scuttled into new positions on the bulkheads on either side of the room. Attached to each, in addition to the normal physiological tracking devices, was a camera.

  “This interview is being recorded and biomonitored,” Theron said. “Edie Sha’nim, I’m here to inform you that you’re under arrest for piracy, treason, and murder.”

  Edie was in no mood for Crib grandstanding. “I haven’t killed anyone.”

  Theron raised an eyebrow. “So, the rest is true?”

  She hesitated. Was this the time to ask for a legal rep? Well, it really didn’t matter. No one was sending her to jail—she was too important to the Crib for that, surely.

  “From a certain perspective.” She indicated the box of neuroxin implants on the desk that someone must have retrieved from her cryo capsule. “You forgot grand larceny.”

  “Indeed. Are there any other charges you feel I’ve overlooked?” The colonel may have been attempting a joke, but his face was deadpan.

  “Who am I supposed to have murdered?”

  Theron glanced down at the notes on his palmet. “A serf by the name of Bryden Ademo.” That was Finn’s fellow convict, the one she’d been unable to save when Cat took them all for a joyride beyond the boundary of Talas Prime Station.

  “He wasn’t murdered. He escaped and his boundary chip killed him.”

  “If you engineered your so-called kidnapping, as some of my colleagues are inclined to believe, you are responsible for his death.”

  “That’s not what happened.”

  “The circumstantial evidence is damning. You asked for, and were granted, a three-month reassignment to Talas Prime, giving you certain…opportunities. Shortly before that time was up, you went AWOL. A few weeks later, you were found in the Valen Sector in the company of rovers. The rover ship was boarded by Crib milits, but you overpowered Crib Administrator Natesa and refused to surrender.”

  “Be sure to add felony assault and desertion to
that list.”

  “I’ll make a note. However, for the moment, my interest lies—”

  “Is Finn alive?”

  Theron looked mildly annoyed by the interruption. Edie didn’t know him well, but she guessed he was that military type who suffered mild annoyance whenever he had to deal with civilians.

  “He is indeed alive. He’s a former Saeth, isn’t he? That’s trouble I’d rather not have to deal with.” Before Edie could demand to see him, Theron continued. “I have every intention of handing him over to Natesa when you report to the Learo Dochais. You’ll have your way, Ms Sha’nim. Now my interest lies in the planet VAL-One-Four. I understand you call it Scarabaeus, and the name seems to have stuck around here.”

  Edie’s fingers fluttered to the beetle shell at her throat, the remains of a creature she’d found on the planet before human technology destroyed it. The beetle had inspired her name for the planet and the rovers had adopted it. The Crib must have confiscated the Hoi Polloi’s archives before the ship made it to the junkyard—otherwise they wouldn’t know her private name.

  “What about it?” Edie tried to sound innocent. But she knew what had happened, and her stomach sank. She knew that when Natesa had caught up with the rovers near Scarabaeus, a probe had been sent. Even if Natesa hadn’t been interested, reports of the planet’s strange development had found its way to Theron. Edie knew the direction his military mind would have taken: bioweapons.

  Edie’s hopes that Scarabaeus would be left in peace evaporated.

  “You’ll recall that I was in charge of the seeding operation eight years ago,” Theron said. “I’m now in charge of the exploration of the planet and I have a team stationed there. When I heard you’d been found, I immediately traveled here to meet you. Over the past few months, we have observed some very strange activity on Scarabaeus. The rate of evolution is two orders of magnitude faster than it should be. In theory this should lead to widespread ecosystem collapse, but that’s not happening. In addition, our attempts to control the biocyph have been met with violent defensive reactions.”

  “What does this have to do with me?”

  “I need your help in understanding exactly what’s happening.”

  He’d asked no questions, but waited for Edie’s input nonetheless. She quickly ran through her options. His cyphertecks probably already knew far more about the planet’s current state than she did. She’d spent only a few hours there—a year ago.

  She attacked. “You illegally tried to terraform an advanced ecosystem. Are you so surprised by the results?”

  Theron gave a thin smile and sat back in his chair. “Ah, but it’s not that simple. The BRATs dropped on Scarabaeus by the initial team failed to germinate. We sent an unmanned probe one year later to confirm this. Yet clearly they did germinate at some point after that. And now we have this bizarre ecosystem, highly mutated, evolving at an alarming rate under the control of distorted biocyph that seems to have forgotten it’s supposed to be making a Terran-like world.”

  “I was only a trainee on your team,” Edie reminded him. “You’re asking the wrong person.”

  “And the right person would be…? Your team’s cypherteck was killed by a stowaway eco-rad on the trip home.”

  Bethany had been her friend as well as her trainer. “Whatever happened, it wasn’t her fault. It was probably some faulty biocyph.”

  “Well, let’s not play the blame game. You’re the Crib’s top cypherteck, Edie. You tell me why the terraforming got out of hand over the past few years and turned the planet into a nightmare jungle.”

  “How would I know?”

  “You were there. We know your rover team set foot on the west side of the large southern continent. According to the statement of a certain”—he checked his notes—“Mitchin Yasuo, the rover we have in custody, you barely escaped.” He straightened sharply, making Edie involuntarily shrink back in her seat. “How did you escape? Yasuo claims a flash bomb wiped out your shields. You would have been infected by retroviruses. You should be dead.”

  “Most of us are dead. Captain Rackham planted that bomb and he killed his own crew. He was bribed into making those runs by Stichting Corp—the company that funded the rovers.”

  “We investigated Stichting and found no connection—”

  “Of course not.” It wouldn’t be the first time a Crib investigation had failed to find a Crib-based megacorp guilty. “Eco-rads threatened to expose Rackham’s faked war record unless he sabotaged the missions. You know how rads feel about biocyph teck, whether it’s rovers or the Crib using it. Rackham betrayed the Hoi Polloi to them and had their previous cypherteck killed. So Stichting kidnapped me to replace her. This time, Rackham tried to wipe out the entire team once we were dirtside. The bomb killed almost everyone else and damaged our shields. I managed to reconfigure a BRAT seed to ignore me and Finn, so we could pass through the jungle without it changing us.”

  “I see. What about the physical attacks? My men have had no end of trouble just getting close enough to the BRATs to jack in. They’re almost completely inaccessible. We’ve been unable to establish a dirtside base. We can only find out so much using remote monitoring.”

  Edie and Finn had been attacked, too, but Edie felt compelled to defend the planet’s innocence. “If Scarabaeus attacked them, it’s because they attacked it first.”

  Theron pushed a palmet toward Edie. Above it hovered a holo of a xenocritter, something Edie had never seen before—yet it looked familiar. Flat-bodied with crablike pincers and short thick legs. The scale showed it to be almost a meter long.

  “This creature comes from the region where your team landed,” Theron said. “Any idea how something like this could evolve?”

  “This is from Scarabaeus? There’s nothing there bigger than a rat.”

  “There was nothing. Now there’s this. They tell me its lifecycle is five weeks. It evolved before our eyes in only a few generations into a creature that spews toxic mucus. It can crush a man’s leg with those jaws. And it has a taste for human flesh.”

  Edie shuddered. Was this really descended from the small slater creature she’d encountered? Small, but deadly even then—dozens of them had stripped the dead bodies of her crewmates in minutes. The massive increase in size seemed impossible in only twelve months. But Scarabaeus was like no other planet. Its BRAT seeds weren’t working toward a Terran ideal. They’d lost that programming years ago. They were doing something else entirely.

  “I don’t know what to tell you. Without examining the ecosystem’s specs…” Edie felt sick. She didn’t want to become involved in Scarabaeus again. She’d left that world to rot. But seeing this mysterious creature…Edie felt herself being dragged irresistibly back in.

  Theron observed her reaction in silence before he spoke again. “As part of your debriefing, you’ll write a report for the Weapons Research Division on how you reprogrammed the biocyph so you could pass through, as you put it.”

  “A report. You guys always want reports. I work for Natesa now. She’ll have enough reports for me to write, thank you.”

  “Ultimately we all work for the Crib. You will do whatever the Crib requires of you.”

  He made it sound like a threat, and Edie had no response. She was just another good Crib citizen now. Still, he really didn’t have the authority to make her do anything for him. She knew that much about the Crib’s hierarchy.

  “Here’s the thing, Edie.” Theron leaned forward for emphasis. “Something is guiding the evolution of increasingly bizarre and aggressive lifeforms on that planet. And we’ve found your signature in the code.”

  Edie stopped breathing for a moment, uncomfortably aware of the toms recording her every move, every heartbeat and breath. If Theron found out about her kill-code, which had caused the ecosystem to mutate in the first place, he’d want to duplicate its effects on other worlds. A nightmare vision flashed through her mind—dozens of advanced alien ecosystems under Crib control, mutating according to Theron’s w
him, manufacturing bioweapons to satisfy his military ambition.

  “Mine and Bethany’s signatures, yes,” she said carefully. “I was her trainee—she let me handle some of the routine stuff.”

  From Theron’s unwavering glare, she knew he saw she was hiding something. “Can you replicate it?”

  “Replicate what?”

  His expression turned hard. “Don’t play games. Your loyalty and integrity are not exactly rock solid, and while you still have defenders at Crai Institute, I personally suspect sabotage. I know you did this. Somehow you did this, and it’s created a unique situation we’ve never seen before in over a thousand years of terraforming. VAL-One-Four was an advanced ecosystem, analogous to the Paleozoic—”

  “Late Paleozoic.” Edie felt her frustration rising as fast as his. “We shouldn’t even have been there!”

  “In all other cases, attempting to terraform planets at that advanced level of development has resulted in total ecosystem collapse. Why was this planet different? It’s because you interfered.”

  Edie hadn’t even known they’d made other attempts to terraform advanced worlds yet—that was Project Ardra’s objective. But that project was new. As unwelcome as the revelation was, it did not surprise her. She shook her head.

  “Let me tell you something, young lady. I have enough information at my disposal to know for certain that you’re lying. Holding back. Rest assured, I will find a way to extract the information I need.”

  “Extract information?” Edie almost laughed in his face. “Are you going to torture me? The Crib doesn’t torture its citizens.”

  “No. No, it does not.”

  Despite that assurance, his tone filled her with dread. In the silence that followed, Edie struggled to get her thoughts together. Theron’s cryptic intensity was too much. Finally, she managed to speak.