Children of Scarabaeus (27 page)

He looked over at her. “You took me to hell and back once before. Can you do it again?”

Edie’s mind was blank. Then the last image in her brain came back to her—the map of the compound. She pieced together the rest of what she remembered, zooming out. The local area, the topology of the mountain, the little dot that marked the location of the BRAT. The valley, the coast, the ocean. And another little dot…

“The skyhook. It’s operational, right?”

He grinned. “They’ve done a couple of test runs. Where’s the ocean platform in relation to here?”

“I don’t know exactly, but this valley runs right to the coast, which runs north–south. The platform’s a hundred meters offshore. It’s out there somewhere.”

Three hours after arriving at the coast, they still searched in vain for the skyhook platform. Edie only had an approximate idea of where exactly along the coast it was—probably twenty klicks or so in one direction or the other. So they’d
pulled the skidder into the water and set out south, keeping parallel to the shoreline and a hundred meters out. Edie kept her eyes on the ocean, dark under a moonless night sky, searching for their sign of hope.

The night was silent, the ocean calm but for the steady hammering of rain disturbing the surface. It was starting to look like they’d gone the wrong way.

“How’s our fuel?” she said. A pointless question because she knew Finn was watching it.

“We have enough to turn around, get back to where we started, and go about the same distance in the other direction.” He scanned the horizon intently. “You want to turn around now?”

It was pure guesswork—the platform might be up ahead. But they’d never know if they chose this moment to reverse direction. They could miss it altogether and still be sitting here on the water when their e-shields died and Prisca’s retroviruses invaded their bodies.

She did not want to die on this disastrous world.

“Your decision,” she said.

“Then let’s keep going.”

A few minutes later, he looked over at her and said, “There’s something I didn’t tell you. The shootout in the hangar…there’s a rumor that some of the
Molly Mei
’s crew was killed. A man—must be the navpilot Ganesh—and a woman.”

“Valari?” That would explain why Finn had lost contact with her.

“I don’t know any details. I heard it was crew, and Valari wasn’t crew.”

Edie’s throat tightened. “Not Cat. She can survive anything.” She stared at the skidder’s headlight reflections dancing on the black water. The weight of another death was almost too much to bear. “There’s something you should know, too,” she said. “After what happened here, I suspect Colonel Theron will get his way. I’ll be transferred to Scara
baeus. And this time, you’re not coming with me. Natesa had petitioned for your freedom. Then you need to find your own way out of here.”

He didn’t say anything and the silence stretched out between them. Then, suddenly, he turned the skidder hard to port. Edie peered into the darkness and saw what he had seen—a faint unnatural glow on the water up ahead. The skyhook platform.

Finn moored the skidder alongside a narrow pier jutting out from the platform’s vast scaffolding. They left the skidder and climbed a long ladder off the pier, up into the structure. Edie felt much safer with that distance between her and the water. Finn seemed to know where he was going—he’d worked on the skyhook from the other end, so he must know his way around, more or less. As she followed him, her energy sapped away and her legs became heavy. She thought about the people who had died on that skiff, and about Winnie and Ramirez. Cat might be dead, too. And Prisca—this world would soon be nothing but a rock covered in a rotten skin.

They arrived at the control room, which had its own comm uplink. Finn went to the console and called the
Learo Dochais
. Voices washed around Edie as she waited at the door. Finn told them to activate the skyhook and someone on the other end seemed to be protesting.

Then came the harsh authoritative tone she recognized—Natesa, taking control.

Two minutes later, Finn and Edie were in the climber. Its small central cabin was the only area suitable for passengers. On either side of the cabin were matching bins, flanking it like wings, each built to carry tons of crops—crops that Prisca would never produce now.

As Edie sat on the floor in the corner of the cabin, she heard Finn talking to a meckie on the
Learo Dochais
, who told him how to disconnect the bins. No point taking those up the nanoribbon with them. Then Finn sealed the cabin
and adjusted the environmentals so they could switch off their e-shields. The climber gave a gentle lurch and began its ascent.

Finn slid down the wall of the cabin beside her. “Always wanted to ride one of these.”

His everyday comment had the instantaneous effect of making Edie relax. She leaned against him and they rode in silence. The cabin had one narrow strip window, high up on the side. Edie had no sense of how fast they traveled because the gravplating kept the gravity constant. The dark cloudy sky outside merged into black space and stars. The long haul to the ship had just begun.

CHAPTER 23

A rescue raft that returned to the site the next day found no survivors. The entire base camp was washed away, the surroundings drowned in rotten sludge as the biocyph continued to decompose any remaining organic matter. Farther afield, aerial drones transmitted data showing that, across the planet, the ecosystem was quickly degrading.

Edie sat on a bunk in the infirmary waiting for Dr Sternhagen to give her the all-clear. Finn had already been dismissed. Neither of them had been told much, so now Edie listened to the medics talking among themselves. She learned that Natesa had locked herself in her office for hours, answering no one, and then had explosive verbal altercations with Captains Lachesis and Fox. Natesa had a PR disaster on her hands and her career might not survive the next few days. Edie was not inclined to sympathize.

People talked about memorial services for the twelve people who died on the planet and whispered about the future of Ardra.

“Are they shutting down the project?” Aila asked Edie in hushed tones when she visited the classroom that morning. “Natesa flat out denies it, but everyone’s saying…”

“No one’s told me anything,” Edie said. That wasn’t quite
true. She’d been told that Natesa’s career depended on this planet. And that if the planet failed, the project wouldn’t get a second chance.

Edie watched the children go through the previous day’s error logs, the last Caleb had made. Aila said she was trying to keep things normal for them. But one way or another, everything was going to change. She wanted to get Galeon alone and find out what he had told the other children—or anyone else—about their little adventure in the access tubes. A suitable moment didn’t come up, and he gave no sign that he thought she was involved.

By late morning she told Aila she was going back to her quarters. As she stepped out of the lift on Deck D, a milit waited—a young man with the same powerful soldier’s build as Finn.

“Ms Sha’nim, Lieutenant Vlissides. I’ve been ordered to guard your quarters.”

Her heart pounded. Now what was going on? She walked down the corridor toward her door. “What do you mean? My quarters, or me?”

“You. I’ve been asked to guard you.”

“Am I in danger?”

“Uh, no, ma’am. There’s some concern about keeping track of your whereabouts,” he said vaguely.

“So Natesa sends an
officer
to guard me? Are all the enlisted men still hung over from the party the other night?”

“Administrator Natesa didn’t send me, ma’am. The order comes from Colonel Theron.”

Edie couldn’t keep track of the pecking order on this ship. “So you’re one of Theron’s men? How did you get on board?”

“I’m under Crib Central’s authority. They sent a few of us to escort the VIPs. Right now, Central is listening to Colonel Theron. So you could say I’m one of his men.”

She knew what was going on. Natesa had sent Edie dirtside to evade Theron’s previous orders. Now Theron wanted to keep track of her as Ardra fell apart, to make sure Natesa
didn’t send her off somewhere else on the ship that was coming to pick up the workers.

Edie snapped open her hatch. “Do you know if the VIPs have left? I haven’t seen them around.”

“The
Fortitude
left early this morning.”

“Okay, thanks.”

He assumed his post in the corridor and she shut the door on him. She didn’t feel like sleeping. She’d slept for hours in the skyhook climber, though she didn’t know about Finn. She didn’t want to go to the lab and no one told her to. She knew she should write a report on what happened down there, but there had been no official debriefing yet.

When she heard Vlissides talking curtly to someone in the corridor half an hour later, she moved closer to listen. She recognized Finn’s voice and snapped open the hatch.

“Let him in, Lieutenant. He’s a friend of mine.”

“My orders are to minimize your contact with the crew.”

“Finn and I just survived hell together on that planet. Give us a break.”

Vlissides cleared his throat. “I’ll have to ask you to keep it brief.”

Finn entered the room and Edie shut Vlissides out. Finn drew her into the bedroom, farther away from the hatch.

“Valari was killed in the shootout,” he said.

“Jezus…I’m sorry.” She was relieved about Cat, heart-broken for Finn. “What happened?”

“The milits moved in to arrest the crew and things got ugly. That’s all I know.” He spanned his forehead with his hand for a moment. She’d never seen him look so unsure of himself. It couldn’t just be because of Valari. “Most of the work on the lower decks has stopped. It’s pretty much official that the project is done for. They might release the
Molly Mei
at some point. And if not, Central’s sending a transport vessel to pick up most of the workers. It’ll arrive in a week or so.”

“I heard about that. You need to be on board one of those ships.” She’d told him not to come to Scarabaeus—and was
determined to show him that she meant it even though it ripped her up inside.

A fleeting frown crossed his face and she realized the source of his uncertainty. He wanted to get off this ship as much as she wanted him to…which made this sound like goodbye.

“If
Molly Mei
isn’t released, if Cat and Corinth are arrested and transferred, they’ll be counting on me to get them out.”

No point arguing in the face of Finn’s sense of duty. “Maybe I can help you there. Theron doesn’t care about that crew. Maybe I can make a deal—I’ll go willingly to Scarabaeus if he clears all charges.” She jerked her head in the direction of the main hatch, and Vlissides. “He clearly has some support on this ship.”

“Thanks.”

She still couldn’t quite believe she was having this conversation—that he was agreeing to going separate ways.

“I’m sure Theron already knows what’s going on,” Edie said. “He’s probably already dispatched a ship to pick me up. The truth is…I think I want to go back to Scarabaeus. Caleb used its regulator code on Prisca, and it should have worked. It should’ve been enough to overcome the contamination and the accelerated evolution. There’s something
more
on Scarabaeus. Something else is in control.” This was nothing Finn was interested in. She just wanted him to understand why it interested her so much.

“What about the children? Do you still want them saved?” he asked.

“I don’t want you to risk yourself for them.”

“There will come a time when I can rally forces. I’ll keep it on the agenda.”

Edie felt an overwhelming sadness. Finn was leaving her life soon, perhaps forever. She was abandoning the children to an unknown future with the Crib. And she was going to work for Theron, which she’d sworn she’d never do.

“Keep me on the agenda, too,” she said.

He pulled her into his arms, fiercely. “Edie…Forget about that damn planet. I’ll get you out of here when I leave. Somehow. Come with me.” His voice was choked with emotion.

She shook her head into his shoulder.
No.
It wouldn’t work—not now. They were guarding her too closely, and he knew it. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him to stay. She knew he would, if she said the words. No one else knew the leash was cut—they’d let him stay to ensure her cooperation. That’s the way it had always been.

Which was why she had to put a stop to it. He didn’t deserve to be treated as a bargaining chip.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You can leave me behind. I know you’ll come back for me.” But she wasn’t sure, not anymore. Not now his departure was so real and so soon. A thousand doubts crept in and some part of her recognized it was mostly her own fear of being abandoned again. Her mother, Lukas, even Natesa, who had implicitly promised so much by taking Edie in as a bewildered love-starved child, and delivered nothing.

And with that recognition came an even stronger determination to not abandon the children.

Edie kissed him with the same intensity as he’d shown her a moment earlier. She gave a mental finger to Vlissides’s pointless request to
keep it brief
. Why the hell couldn’t she, for once, be with the person she wanted to be with, do what she wanted to do, feel something real like any normal person—pretend, just for a while, that the Crib didn’t control her life, and her future?

She was so eager to get her hands under his clothes that she didn’t identify a nearby sound as anything other than boots scraping the deck as Finn maneuvered her toward the bed. Then something fell with a clatter and she spun around to face Galeon sliding out of the access panel. His face was red.

“Is that what this was?” he yelled at Finn. “Was this the top secret mission? Some stupid love thing?”

“Galeon—” Edie slid from Finn’s arms and stepped for
ward to touch Galeon’s shoulder reassuringly. He shied away from her, interested only in Finn. “Calm down. You don’t understand.”

Galeon seemed to think he understood all too well. “I heard you both. After all my help, you’re going to run off…and this was all a stupid…stupid…” He sputtered on his rage, then gave up. He pulled something from his pocket and threw it at Finn. The little pouch opened in midair and tiny pegs flew out. They hit Finn in the chest before scattering on the deck. “I don’t want that!”