Song of Scarabaeus (34 page)

The pod disengaged and fell away.

Edie clutched at Finn's clothing. Her legs were finally regaining some feeling but were too weak to hold her up. She started to slide to the deck and he went with her, crouching in front of her.

“Edie, I've got you.” His hand cupped her face as she
leaned into the crook of his arm for support. She wanted to lie there against his rock-solid body forever.

“The milits left,” she whispered.

“I see that. Was that you?”

“Yes.”

“You're brilliant.”

She smiled, basking in his praise. Then she remembered where she was. They weren't free, not yet. “The
Laoch
—”

As the words left her lips, a deafening crack sounded and the
Hoi
tipped sharply, throwing Finn and Edie against the bulkhead.

“Someone get up here and help!” Cat yelled over the comm.

“I can manage,” Edie said, and somehow saying the words helped her believe them.

Finn pulled her up and supported her as they hurried through the common area and up the ramp. Cat unlocked the hatch and they joined her on the bridge. Finn led Edie to the nearest seat before stationing himself at a console. On the far side of the bridge, Gia sat at an off-line console, fiddling with pieces of the first aid kit she'd used to patch up Cat.

“They fired a plasma cannon,” Cat said from across the bridge, “but they're not up to full power. Must still be dealing with the EM effects. But they still have missiles—those will be shielded against any amount of EM damage.”

“Do we have any weapons?” Finn asked.

“Nothing that will do more than scratch that ship. We tend to just run when this sort of thing happens. We have one defense that might work. Get me a schematic of our relative positions and vectors.”

Finn punched up a holoviz displaying the positions of the two ships, the
Hoi
overlaid with a red band that indicated the danger zone when the
Laoch
would be within missile range. Edie watched the display, squinting against the bright lights that made her eyeballs ache.

“They'll have orders not to kill me,” Edie said. “They won't blow up the ship.”

“Maybe not, but they can disable us,” Cat said grimly.

The
Laoch
crossed the red band and fired immediately.

“Two guided charges.” Cat followed the progress of the missiles. “They're spitting in our eye. Probably aimed to knock out our nav guidance so we can't steer into the node.”

“Can you turn off the guidance so the missiles can't lock on?” Edie suggested.

“I could, but then it'll take a few minutes to come back online. That's plan B.”

Cat stabbed at her console. From the display, Edie saw that she'd released a beacon transmitting a narrow-band frequency that mimicked the nav guidance transmissions. The missiles went for the decoy, and all three signals winked off the display.

“We're fifty seconds from the node,” Finn said.

The
Laoch
launched another volley.

“Do we have more decoys?” Edie asked.

“No. I told you it'd only work once, remember?” Cat sounded calm but her forehead beaded with sweat. She reached over and tapped a switch.

An alarm pierced the tense atmosphere of the bridge.

“What did you do?”

“Turned off the nav guidance.”

“You can steer us in manually?” Finn sounded dubious.

“I can try.” Cat cut the alarm. “It's better than getting hit. If they take out our guidance, we'll end up stuck on the other side of that node.”

The display showed the charges flying past, missing their mark as their target vanished.

“Ten seconds to the node,” Finn said. “Eight, seven…”

Cat tapped the weapons display. “They've got the cannons back to full power. Here come the big boys.”

A barrage of plasma bolts was on the way—Edie knew what that meant. Coherent bulbous masses of atomic particles heated to insane temperatures, carrying vast destruction. With Natesa off the
Laoch
for now and unable to interfere
with Commander Whelan's procedures, he was apparently prepared to take undue risks with Edie's life in the attempt to capture her.

Cat clenched her hand inside the control dataglove and concentrated on flying the ship. The main viewscreen showed them drawing closer to the node's blazing ring. With no guidance assisting them, the unsteady pull of the node threatened to send them careening into the edge of the horizon. As the
Hoi
shuddered and slipped, Cat kept them centered.

The ring engulfed the
Hoi
just as a violent jolt rocked the ship. Cat swore and the console lit up.

The viewscreen erupted into the twisting ribbons of nodespace. They were safe.

Edie dragged herself up to look at Finn's console, where he'd pulled up the systems status. “Were we hit?”

“Looks like one bolt hit, aft. Missed the engines by a few meters,” Finn said. “Took out our rear end on decks two and three. The bulkheads beyond that are holding. Main corridors are secure.”

“Ha! The gym.” Cat threw a grin in Edie's direction. “No more CPT.”

“And both the bathrooms and the quarters opposite—ours and Gia's,” Edie added. There was nothing she would miss, but Gia might have accumulated some possessions. She'd been on the
Hoi
a long time.

Finn got up. “I'll check out the damage. Gia.” He held out his hand for the cook, and she went to him. “Come with me. Yasuo needs your help in the infirmary.”

“You need to do something with Corky, too,” Cat reminded him as they headed out.

Cat moved to the captain's chair and plotted their course. “To shake the
Laoch
, we'll take that unmapped exit where we sent the skiff—about half an hour away. Then we'll jump right back in and head for Barossa Station. I have friends there…Zeke's friends, really. I'll send a message. I already did the numbers—they can get to Talas and back in about
six days, just in time for our arrival. We should ditch the
Hoi
, though, or Stichting Corp will track us down.”

Ditch the
Hoi
and do what? Edie wondered if Cat intended to stick with her. She was too tired to make plans, but perhaps if she put the idea into Cat's mind now, the navpilot would start to think about staying with them for the long haul—despite what this ship, and its missions, had cost her.

“I'm sorry about Zeke,” Edie said. “I know he meant a lot to you. I liked him.”

Cat nodded sadly. “I was going to come back for him. One day. I don't know if he'd have come with me, but I was going to ask him.”

Edie's console flashed unnervingly. “I think that worm has left behind a few shadows. You need to isolate each system and reboot them in turn.”

“Will do.” Cat swiveled in the captain's chair, slapping the arm rests with satisfaction. “Well, I didn't get to shoot the bastard myself, but I'm sitting in his chair. That's good enough for me. Edie, we made it out.”

“Almost. We're almost out.”

Edie rested for a few minutes in the captain's dining room, waiting for the dizziness to pass and surveying Rackham's broken treasures. Wondering if anything could be salvaged and whether it would be enough to pay for fuel, repairs, jump tariffs, Cat's mercenary friends and, eventually, a ride to the Fringe.

In her muddy, torn, and bloody clothes she felt like a stain on this exquisite landscape of artifacts. Much as she hated to admit she had anything in common with Rackham, she understood his attachment to these things of beauty.

She climbed down one deck to the infirmary. The talphi cocoon was gone and she didn't know how long she could survive without neuroxin, but she might be able to synthesize some amino acids to alleviate the symptoms for a while.

Gia had made Yasuo comfortable and he was asleep. She was cleaning up the dirty sheets and used med supplies.

“You don't have to do that,” Edie said.

“It's my job!”

“Gia, you need to think about what you want to do next.”

“How about I make us all some supper? It's past four in the morning, you know.”

Twenty-two hours since they'd dropped into orbit around Scarabaeus. It seemed like much longer.

“I meant in the long term. Do you have family? Where do you want to go?”

“Oh, we'll see.” She gave a quick smile as she finished what she was doing. Edie wondered if her vagueness meant she had no family, or couldn't remember. Or if she thought of the
Hoi
as her home and had never considered leaving. Perhaps more than anyone else left on this ship, her life was going to change the most.

“I'm afraid a plasma bolt wiped out your quarters. Mine, too.”

“Yes, the baffle dropped.” Gia pointed down the corridor, where a section of bulkhead had closed off the last few meters of the corridor, beyond which lay the remains of the rooms damaged by the blast. “So, we'll start afresh, won't we?”

“Yes, we will.”

“Supper in an hour, then.” She left, talking to herself. “I'll make my piquaz stew again. Finn liked that.”

 

“Edie. Wake up.”

A hard, wet wall pressed into Edie's spine. She shifted to ease the pressure. A rush of sound filled her ears. Water. It was raining.

Raining inside. Was that even possible?

Something shook her shoulder. Something pushed the hair out of her eyes. She opened them to see an endless stretch of white plaz. Water hit her eyeballs and she blinked and lowered her gaze to look into hazel brown eyes. Reality consolidated around her. She was in the shower next to the infirmary. Cleaning up while waiting for the sequencer to finish. From the engine noise, they were in realspace.

She must have become giddy again and zoned out. She was huddled on a low, built-in ledge-seat in the shower, leaning against the wall as the water beat down.

“Finn. You're all wet.”

He was fully clothed and streaked with dirt from Scara
baeus. The water swirling around them was getting muddy.

“I couldn't raise you on the comm. Are you okay?”

“You're making a mess. Take off your clothes.”

His eyes crinkled. “Can you get up?”

“In a while. Stay here with me.”

He looked at her for an eternity. “Okay.”

“But you have to clean up.”

He straightened and stripped off, tossing his clothes over the shower stall. He washed quickly while she sat and scrubbed the remaining soap out of her hair. Then she watched him, admiring the view. The soap cleaned the dirt from his skin and it sluiced down the drain, and the water dissolved the remaining strips of medigel on his wounds. It couldn't wash away the scars and bruises.

She began daring herself to step under the jets with him and then reminded herself she'd probably keel over if she tried to stand up. Instead she thought about what an idiot she'd been to reject him in the skiff, and whether her fear about repeating Lukas and Bethany's relationship had all been a sorry excuse.

Then she tried to stop thinking about anything at all, in case his splinter picked up on it.

The comm on her belt buzzed. Finn shut off the water and leaned around the shower screen to answer it. It was Cat.

“Edie! What did you do?”

“What?” She held out her hand and Finn handed the commclip to her, along with a towel. He wrapped another towel around his waist.

“I rebooted the system like you said,” Cat said, “and then the navcharts spat out a new file. It's a complete ident package for me—it just popped up from the ashes of the worm.”

So that's what Achaiah had been doing during those first few minutes he'd had access to the
Hoi
, riding the worm but not taking over the ship. Being captured by the Crib had demolished his deal with Cat, but he'd still given her what she'd bargained for.

“I guess Achaiah has the germ of a conscience after all.”

“I can't believe he did the right thing by me,” Cat mused.

Edie glanced up at Finn, leaning against the edge of the shower screen. Cat's good fortune couldn't balance out what the infojack had done to him, but Cat's new ident along with the ones she and Finn had been given when they joined the crew would greatly improve all their chances of surviving.

Edie tucked the towel around herself. “Cat, can you lend me some clothes? We have no bathrooms or laundry facs anymore.”

Cat laughed. “I'll send Gia to fetch some.”

“Something of Zeke's for Finn, too.”

A small hesitation before she responded, “Sure.”

Edie closed the link and handed it back to Finn. He sat beside her on the ledge, elbows on his knees, shoulder not quite touching hers. His proximity made her breath catch and her limbs tremble. No, that was neuroshock, surely. To avoid thinking about it, she talked about their survival.

“I'm putting together a spike that might help—acetylcholine, glutamate, glycine, aspartate.”

“If you can say all that without stumbling, you can't be doing so badly.”

Edie grinned. Nevertheless, his levity couldn't wipe away her fear. “It can never replace the neurotransmitters fast enough, but it might help. If we don't get there in time—”

“We will.”

She wanted it to be true based solely on the force of his conviction. But the cryptoglyph was too important to trust to wishful thinking.

“I know you wanted to keep the cryptoglyph, but that was before…before I started dying.” The words were hard to say, especially when it would be so easy to simply believe his assurances. “In case we don't make it, I'm going to ask Cat to take it to the Fringe. I think she'd do that for me. I want to download it from your splinter.”

Finn seemed lost in thought for a moment, and she won
dered if he was going to argue about it. She didn't have the strength to stand up to him. But then he nodded.

“I agree. What do you need?”

“Just some stock biocyph. A module from a med sequencer unit will do. And a hardlink.”

She started to get up, stumbling against his knee as her legs gave way. Finn eased her back to the seat.

“I'll fetch it.”

He brought back the entire unit and set it on the ledge. Edie removed a module from its slot, ran a hardlink to her wet-teck interface, and checked the stock—fresh, amorphous biocyph that was yet to be used for anything.

“Okay, it's ready. Sit there.”

He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her. She was reminded of their first meeting in the freight car on Talas Prime. Then he'd been unable to talk. Now he seemed unwilling, lost in thought. He stared at the beetle shell between her collarbones.

“Ready?”

He nodded, and she touched her fingers to his temple.

The music of Scarabaeus flowed through her wet-teck.

That shouldn't happen. The algorithm was pure code, like raw sheet music lacking an orchestra to play the song. In the fifteen hours or so since she'd put it into Finn's splinter, something had changed.

Her heart raced as she realized the implications.

“The cryptoglyph has imprinted on your splinter.”

He looked like he didn't like the sound of that. “What does that mean?”

“I don't know, exactly. The code should just be sitting there on the matrix. On Scarabaeus it evolved to overcome my kill-code lock. I think…it's done the same thing to your splinter. Evolved. Merged with the biocyph to create a functional decrypter. I can't extract it anymore.”

“Are you saying I'm stuck with this?”

“The splinter can't be removed—we've been through that before. But I can still use it the way I planned. It just
means…you'd have to be there, on every planet, every time I needed to use it.”

He would never agree to that.

He returned to his thoughts while she explored the decrypter. It fascinated her, despite what it meant to Finn—that he was now the most important part of her plan to help the Fringe worlds.

Then she realized what it
really
meant to Finn.

“It can decrypt biocyph locks…”

“What?”

“The leash is fused to your splinter with a biocyph lock. And now, the splinter can break biocyph locks.”

He drew a breath, hesitated, as if he didn't dare voice his hope. “It can cut the leash?”

“Yes. If I tell it to.”

“Wait a minute. Look what happened on Scarabaeus. I don't want anything like that happening in my brain.”

Edie dropped her hand away from his head. “That won't happen. It doesn't have the machinery of a BRAT. It just breaks biocyph locks. That's all.”

Finn nodded his head slowly, but then his eyes narrowed. “You said my splinter
was
the decrypter?”

“Yes. Lock and key in the same strand of biocyph. When the lock is broken, the biocyph will be destroyed.”

“So you'd lose the cryptoglyph.”

And she'd lose him.

“You'll be
free
!” Edie insisted. “You won't die if you go out of range. You won't get this interference from my brain waves. No one will be able to jolt you.”

Finn looked uneasy. It wasn't the reaction she'd expected.

“It's what we wanted, Finn.”

“What about your grand revolution?”

“Our plan was to cut the leash. That's why we cooperated with the rovers, isn't it? Achaiah told me even he didn't know how to cut it. We may never get another chance.”

Her words sounded hollow. This was not what
she
wanted, not anymore, and it was hard to admit that to herself. Keep
ing the leash intact meant she won on two counts—she had a tool to help the Fringers, and she had Finn by her side. She wanted him near, even enslaved. Her own selfish desires appalled her. She felt compelled to act, to overcome them.

She moved her hand to reconnect the softlink. “It'll only take a second—”

He grabbed her wrist. For a few moments she pushed futilely as she tried to touch his temple, a struggle she couldn't win.

“What about those people?” he insisted.

The Fringers. Little Olga and her pitiful family.

“Finn, you deserve freedom.”

“So do they.”

“You said it wasn't our fight. You were right—I can't start a revolution. I can't do it alone.” Her throat tightened as she tried to talk him into making the decision that was best for him, regardless of the cost to her. She swayed forward, pressed her forehead to his, tears flowing freely. “You wanted freedom. I want you to be free.”

His thumb grazed her cheekbone where Haller had struck her, days ago, in this very room. Blinking to clear her vision, she looked into the eyes of a man she still barely understood, but did not want to lose.

“Tell me what to do,” she whispered.

“You freed me from slavery. You freed my voice. You've made me remember why I strapped on a spur in the first place.” He slowly shook his head against hers. “I was never fighting for politics and governments, those bastards who betrayed us. I was fighting for that poor kid on the
Drakkar
. I want my freedom, but not at the expense of hers.”

She had no response that could measure up to his sacrifice.

He tilted his face and kissed her. To comfort her, perhaps, but his lips lingered too long for that. Pushing his hand into her tangled wet hair, he stood, holding the kiss, drawing her close. Her body responded with a deep rush of desire.

Finn pulled back with a groan, his fist tightening in her
hair and making her gasp. He released her quickly, turned his face away, but not before she saw the fleeting pain in his eyes. With the leash flaring in his head whenever her emotions were aroused, intimacy would never be possible.

“I'm sorry—” she began.

“Don't be. I made my choice.” He recovered quickly, and then that playful look she'd glimpsed once before came to his eyes. “Weren't you going to do something about that?”

She wiped her wet cheeks and smiled, savoring the dissipating rush and the surge of hope that replaced it.

“I will.”

First she had to survive the disintegration of her neural metabolism.

 

Hugging her knees, Edie sat on the couch on deck one and traced the fading ink on the tops of her bare feet. She wanted to scrub it all off and have Cat start again, this time painting the patterns from Scarabaeus. The latticed vines, the glossy slater threads, the dappled mosaics of refracted light…

Finn touched her shoulder with such gentle concern it brought a lump to her throat. “Lie down.”

Edie obeyed, struggling to keep her eyes open as Finn gave her another spike of the amino acid cocktail that they hoped would slow the progress of her neuroshock symptoms.

Finn turned to the viewport to stare at the stars. They were camping out on deck one. On a nearby couch, Gia fussed with Yasuo's bedding as he slurped down stew and watched toons on the holoviz with the sound turned low. Corky slumped in the corner, contrite, too embarrassed to join the group. Cat was on the bridge enjoying her new favorite seat—the captain's chair—and familiarizing herself with her new identity.