Children of Scarabaeus Read online

“I’d like to board the Learo Dochais and start my work with Natesa.” It galled her that Natesa was now her ally, at least against the military might of the Crib.

  “In due course.” Theron considered her gravely for a few more seconds. Then he hit a comm switch on the desk.

  The screen drew back and two people entered the area. Edie was relieved at first that one of them was Sergeant West. He held a small unit in his hand, which he placed on the desk out of her reach. The other milit was a young woman and from her hands dangled a pair of restraints.

  “Hey—” Edie made to get up. The woman wrestled her back into the seat with West’s help, and cuffed her wrists to the arms of the chair. “What the hell are you doing?” She was too shocked to be scared.

  Theron watched impassively. “Jogging your memory.”

  Ignoring Edie’s struggles, the woman clamped Edie’s head between her hands and West attached a line to her temple. The other end of the line was attached to the unit. It looked like a simple conduit with few controls and no holo. That meant the control board was somewhere else, remotely jacked into this one. Through the hardlink she explored the unit quickly and found nothing unusual, just a transmitter/receiver.

  A flutter in her skull told her someone had jacked into her splinter—the wet-teck interface grafted to her cerebral cortex—via the unit. Edie clamped down on the intrusion. It didn’t take long for the unseen person on the other end to skirt around her security protocols. This was a cypherteck, then, and a good one.

  “What do you want?” she demanded of Theron, who had come around the desk to perch on the corner, only a meter away. “There’s nothing in my wet-teck that can help you.”

  “I think perhaps there is.”

  Theron nodded to the female milit, who lit a large holoviz on the wall before moving behind Edie to join West.

  Edie stared at the screen and a chill slid through her veins. It was Finn, very much unfrozen. He paced a small cell in what must be the Learo Dochais’s brig. From what she could see, he looked healthy and unharmed. The feed was a high-angle vid only, no audio. Why would they transfer him to the bigger ship, but not her?

  “That man has a few interesting things in his head,” Theron said. “A Saeth comm chip that the Crib hijacked to create a boundary chip, hooked into a nasty little bomb. The leash that connects his chip to yours. And some kind of…discipline device.”

  Edie jerked her gaze away from Finn to glare at Theron. “No…”

  But Theron was looking at the screen. Edie turned to watch it again, forgetting for the moment about the other cypherteck’s connection. Before she could register what was happening, the cypherteck had found the trigger in her splinter and jolted Finn.

  CHAPTER 5

  Finn dropped to his knees, clutching his head, and toppled over.

  “No!” Instinctively, Edie tried to stand. The restraints held her and the seat did not budge. The line attached to her temple slapped against her cheek. She shook her head, trying to dislodge it, but it was no use.

  Edie clamped down on the connection and forced the cypherteck back. In a matter of seconds, he returned. As fast as she could put up barriers, he tore them down. Edie watched as Finn slowly started moving again. He staggered to his feet—one hand on the wall for support, the other clamped across his forehead.

  “We found your code buried deep in the start-up routines on Scarabaeus. Somehow that code has affected the planet’s evolution, and now we can’t control it. Tell me what you did.”

  Edie had forgotten Theron was even in the room. She ignored him and put her entire focus on protecting the trigger. But the cypherteck was skilled, in a haphazard sort of way. Brilliant, in fact. He sent seekers through her wet-teck to gnaw at the barriers, breaking them apart until—

  The trigger fired again. Edie couldn’t stop herself from watching. Finn hit the wall as if he’d been punched, then slid down and lay unmoving on the deck.

  “Damn you, Theron. Stop it!” Her hands balled into tight fists, her fingernails cutting into her palms, and lines of cold sweat trickled down her face.

  Theron came over to the chair, planted his hands on the arms and leaned over her. “You did something. What was it? We found a toxin all over the planet’s ecosystem, a substance my tecks tell me is a derivative of neuroxin. Neuroxin only comes from two places: Talas and your blood. Is that what you did, Edie? Did you poison the planet all those years ago?”

  “I put Haller out of his misery!” Edie fired back, not caring if he understood what she was talking about. Haller, executive officer of the Hoi Polloi, had been captured by the jungle and she’d found him being slowly digested. She’d killed him with her neuroxin implant, but the jungle had sucked the implant dry and left her in neuroshock.

  Talking was a mistake. The cypherteck used the momentary lapse in her concentration to break through, and triggered the jolt again.

  Edie cried out in anguish as Finn, who had barely begun to rise after the last jolt, collapsed on the deck.

  “Get this fucking teck out of my head!” she screamed, her face inches from Theron’s. She kicked out sharply and her boot connected with Theron’s shin. His mouth hardened into a thin line. He grabbed her chin and twisted her face toward the screen. Her breath caught on a sob at the sight of Finn’s unmoving body. Edie willed him to stay down. Perhaps they’d stop if they thought they’d injured him. Perhaps they had injured him.

  “Tell me what you did, Edie, and this will end.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she yelled. “The deal was you wouldn’t harm him.”

  “I’ve made no deals with you. And he’s just a serf.”

  Edie kicked out again, repeatedly. This time Theron backed away until he was out of reach.

  Finn had pulled himself upright again. For a brief moment he looked directly at the camera in the upper corner of his cell, his face creased in pain and confusion. Blood trickled from his nostrils. Edie wept, ashamed of herself for doing so in front of Theron, even more ashamed that crying took her concentration away from what the cypherteck was doing.

  “Stop it!” She screamed it over and over until her throat was raw and all she could do was whisper. “Please…” She hated how pathetic she sounded. Pleading for mercy wouldn’t have any impact on Theron.

  The trigger fired again. Finn crashed against the bulkhead, his mouth open in an unheard scream of pain, and he crumpled into a heap.

  Theron’s relentlessly calm voice broke through Edie’s misery and helplessness. “We can keep doing this for as long as it takes. The doc informs me it will knock him out eventually, but there’s always tomorrow. Now, you meddled with Scarabaeus all those years ago. Tell me what you did to that planet. And tell me how I can control it.”

  Edie sank back in the chair as defeat rolled over her. She’d spent her life coming to the slow realization that the Crib was using her. She’d prepared herself, over the past two weeks, to return to that life. But that had nothing to do with Finn. He’d been illegally and unfairly incarcerated by the Crib, and now it was torturing him because of her.

  She closed her ears to Theron’s continued cajoling and increasingly demanding questions. Breathing hard, she stopped screaming and stopped struggling. Instead, she concentrated on the cypherteck. Blocking the next attack wouldn’t be enough. She had to stop him. Wipe him out.

  He scuttled around her barriers, nudged between the tiers that she’d riveted together, and ripped them apart. Edie had to jump all over the place to fix the gaps. Her brain felt raw, ready to split open as it pounded with every rapid heartbeat. The cypherteck searched for another way in. He’d find it soon enough. Edie had never battled a cypherteck in her head before, but she recognized this as one of the best—as good as she was, if less rigorously trained. She got the impression he ran more on instinct, which made him unpredictable. Where had Theron found such a naturally skilled teck?

  Where had Natesa found him? Perhaps the cypherteck was on the Learo Dochais, someone working with Natesa on Pro
ject Ardra.

  Edie sent a trace down the link to assess the box at her side. It had storage capacity she could use. As she formed a plan, her body shivered uncontrollably with the effort. She cut off that awareness. Only two things mattered: stopping the cypherteck from triggering the jolt, and cutting the connection altogether.

  There was only one way to do the latter. She needed to catch him off guard, and that meant letting him do it one more time. For a few seconds after each jolt, he’d eased back a little.

  Edie sorted through her splinter and gathered together the biggest, fattest chunks of random data she could find. She tagged them and lined them up—and then, with a concerted effort that tore out her soul, she dropped her guard and let the cypherteck have the trigger. He slammed a shrill cacophony into Edie’s splinter that seemed to set it vibrating at a high frequency. Disoriented, she could have done nothing to stop the next jolt even if she’d tried. The cypherteck triggered it.

  She didn’t watch the screen. She couldn’t bear to see Finn stumble and fall again.

  With the cypherteck off guard, she let the data chunks flow down the link and into the box, where she amplified them to the limit of the device.

  “Come on, Edie. Don’t let him suffer. I know you care deeply about him. I know you want this to be over.”

  “It is over…”

  Edie forced the data packet out along the remote connection in one nightmarish jolt, and fired it directly into the cypherteck’s brain.

  Instantly, the intruder was gone.

  The box lit up with a flashing red telltale to indicate the broken connection. Theron noticed immediately. His gaze swooped on Edie as she slumped back into the seat.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  His voice sounded distant and fuzzy. The female milit rushed over to Edie and lifted her head to check the link connection. She checked the unit as well.

  “I don’t know, sir. The connection overloaded. I think—”

  Theron’s commlink beeped, an insistent clear signal above the sound of rushing blood in Edie’s ears. Shaking uncontrollably, she lifted her head to meet Theron’s furious glare.

  “Get her out of here,” he barked.

  West looked confused. “Sir?”

  “I don’t care where! Take her to the brig on the Learo Dochais.” His comm beeped again. “Dammit.” But he didn’t answer it.

  West reset Edie’s restraints to cuff her hands in front of her, and pulled her out of the chair. She regretted her earlier conclusion that he was a nice guy. He was Crib. She must never let down her guard with the Crib. Stumbling on weak legs, she went docilely now only because she was emotionally exhausted, and because Finn was in the brig. She would get to see him at last.

  West took her down the exit ramp into the hangar of the Learo Dochais, catching the woman on duty in the control room off guard.

  “Is she sick?” the woman asked, rushing along the cat-walk and down the steps as West and Edie crossed the deck.

  Edie knew she must look a sight—exhausted, soaked in sweat. She was roiling in so many emotions, she couldn’t speak. The woman’s comment reminded her of the leash, and that Finn sensed her strong emotions as an irritating white noise through his chip. That could only have made his torture worse. If he was conscious again now, for his sake she had to clamp down on those feelings.

  “She’s not sick. Colonel Theron interrogated her.” From West’s tone, Edie realized he was angry with Theron but holding it back. Perhaps he hadn’t known what was in store for her when he was ordered to participate. In any case, her opinion of West rose marginally. “He’s sending her to the brig until Natesa’s ready to take over.”

  “Uh, I don’t think that’s necessary.” The woman checked her palmet. “She’s been assigned quarters on Deck D. Ship time is oh-five-hundred. Administrator Natesa will be available in three hours.”

  “Perhaps you should wake her immediately—”

  “No. I want to go to the brig,” Edie said. Her voice was scratchy, her throat raw from screaming. “Take me to Finn.”

  “Who?” The woman looked genuinely confused, which filled Edie with sick worry. Was Finn’s presence on the ship so trivial that it was unknown to the dockmaster?

  “Permission to visit the brig?” West said.

  To Edie’s relief, the woman nodded.

  West led Edie to the lift, where he undid her restraints. For a few seconds they stood in silence as Edie rubbed the red marks where she’d bruised the skin while struggling.

  Then West spoke, not looking at her. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Colonel Theron told us the man was a Saeth. I thought…I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know you would suffer.”

  Edie didn’t trust herself to answer. The Saeth were fair game to the milits. The milits had been fair game to the Saeth, in their time. She stood in silence as the lift ascended, and the doors opened.

  The lean lines of the Learo Dochais’s corridors brought back unwelcome memories. Edie had spent half her adult life on Crib ships like this. Spotless black gravplating, reflective blue bulkheads, and gleaming silver trim forming endless parallel lines. Security and maintenance toms skittered along the edges of the deck.

  The brig was little more than a small annex that led to a couple of even smaller cells. In the annex, a medic was in conversation with the guard on duty. The workstation showed a holoviz display of the interior of one cell, the same view Edie had watched from the Peregrine. Finn lay on his side on the deck, a med cuff on one wrist.

  “Why haven’t you taken him to the infirmary?” Edie demanded.

  The medic glanced from West to the guard, as if waiting for permission to speak. When neither said anything, he answered, “I’m not sure exactly what happened to him. His vitals are stable. We have a far more serious problem in the infirmary. I have to get back there.” He spoke to the guard as he left. “I’ll monitor the prisoner from my station.”

  “Let me in to see him,” Edie said.

  The guard was not happy with the request, but West gave him a look and he snapped the hatch. Edie pushed past the guard and went inside.

  “He’s sedated,” the guard said.

  Edie knelt to touch Finn’s hand. Someone had wiped some of the blood from his face, and the med cuff displayed promising vital signs. Edie kept herself calm, forced down a new wave of tears and anger, not wanting to fire up the leash.

  “Finn…”

  He stirred and turned his head toward her voice. She leaned over to press her forehead against his, willing him to forgive her.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  As she pulled back, his eyes opened. Where they should be white, they were blood red. Edie gasped and gripped his hand. He looked at her, recognition slowly dawning.

  The guard stepped forward. “Uh, that’s temporary, the doc says. Burst capillaries, nothing serious.”

  Edie could think of half a dozen angry things to say to the others in the room. She kept them to herself. Natesa was the one who had to answer for this.

  “I won’t let them hurt you again,” Edie told Finn.

  He closed his eyes without speaking.

  The cell walls closed around Edie as she felt the Crib tightening its grip on her life. Natesa had promised not to harm him, but here he lay, tortured and near unconscious in the brig. That woman had a lot to answer for.

  A commotion outside the cell drew her attention. What now?

  Liv Natesa burst into the cell. Her hair was pulled back hurriedly into a ponytail, and her face was scrubbed clean of makeup. Her face was taut with anger, but in her eyes was a stricken expression that Edie had never seen before.

  “What did you do?” Natesa cried.

  Edie’s composure dissolved. “You promised he wouldn’t be hurt!”

  As she rose, West jumped forward and took a firm grip on her arm to hold her back. “Don’t make me regret taking off the restraints,” he muttered.

  “What’s going on here? What did you do to he
r?” Beneath Natesa’s anger, Edie saw fear and shock rising to the surface. She wasn’t used to such a blatant display from Natesa, whose poise was legendary.

  West started to explain. “Colonel Theron questioned her on the Peregrine—”

  “I’m not talking about her.” Natesa glared at Edie. “I was just informed that you put my…one of my cyphertecks into a coma.”

  Edie found it hard to care. Especially when Natesa didn’t care about what she and Finn had just been through. “I had to stop them. They tortured Finn. We had a deal—”

  “I assure you, I did not authorize any torture.” Natesa’s voice was flat, cold. Her sudden calmness seemed to take great effort. She glowered at West. “Your crew is to return to the Peregrine. I want your ship out of my hangar—immediately.”

  West shifted his feet stiffly. “I’ll relay your message to Colonel Theron,” he countered with a touch of insolence. Natesa wasn’t a milit, or the captain of the Learo Dochais. She didn’t have the authority to throw around such orders.

  Natesa’s lips settled into a hard line. “Just stay out of my way. You”—she jabbed a finger at the guard—“Have someone escort Ms Sha’nim to the infirmary for a physical, and then to my office by oh-eight-hundred.”

  “Wait!” Edie cried as Natesa turned to leave. “Finn’s the one who needs to be in the infirmary.”

  Natesa cast a glance at the motionless man on the deck as though he were an irritating complication. As she brushed past the guard on her way out, she said, “Fine, take him. Keep him under guard.”

  CHAPTER 6

  One bay in the infirmary was the subject of a good deal of activity. Edie couldn’t see the bunk or its occupant, but medics wandered in and out giving each other terse orders and reports. It must be the cypherteck behind those screens. She wanted to ask how the woman was, but pride held her tongue. She refused to feel guilty—she’d only done what she had to, to protect Finn. Still, she’d intended only to stop the cypherteck, not put her in a coma.

  After a long wait, Finn was brought up to the infirmary on a stretcher and sequestered in another bay, also out of Edie’s sight. Soon after that, a middle-aged doctor finally arrived to do her physical. Dr Sternhagen had just come on duty and knew nothing about the condition of the other patients. Edie complied with the questions and examinations to get the ordeal over with as quickly as possible.