Song of Scarabaeus

by Sara Creasy

  Bethany, furious, finds her there, lying on the moss. She aches with the shame of her disobedience because she loves Bethany—how else to explain the choking grief when she dies? But Bethany is part of all this, part of what she now sees as the Crib’s betrayal.

  And so, rather than save one beetle from its treacherous entanglement only for it to be destroyed by the BRATs, she resolves to save everything. She doesn’t know how. She only knows that when the chance comes, she’ll take it.

  She’s capable of more than any of them can guess.

  The stars glowed and contracted into tight points of light as Edie’s eyes refocused. She’d returned to Scarabaeus in her dreams, time and again. Sometimes the dreams were achingly beautiful, and she felt safe and welcome on that alien world. Other times, the emotions dredged up by the mission overwhelmed her. The shame of inciting Bethany’s anger, the sense of betrayal over the Crib’s intent to destroy such a world, the terror and grief over Bethany’s death.

  And underneath it all, her own betrayal. The secret she held on to like the shell embedded in her skin that everyone else deemed worthless.

  She saw Finn’s reflection in the window and swiveled around. He sat on the edge of a couch a few meters behind her, head forward, relaxing with his hands dangling between his knees.

  “How long have you been there?” No answer. “You should be resting.”

  “Med tom says I’m fine.”

  “Then we should move back to our quarters so Haller can forget this ever happened.”

  “Did you get hurt down there?”

  She shook her head, frowning. Her injuries were insignificant compared to what he’d been through.

  Tapping his temple, he clarified his question. “Why’re you so churned up? I thought you were glad to be back on board.”

  “You know that’s not really true.”

  He looked down at his hands, accepting her rebuke. When he glanced at her again, waiting, Edie knew she should say something. She wanted badly to explain everything, to open her past and her thoughts to him, but where to start? He wanted a release from her emotions, not an explanation of them. And thirteen years spent under the close scrutiny of CCU trainers and case workers and doctors had instilled in her a powerful reluctance to open up to anyone.

  She thought about what Haller had said—his implication that Finn must have done something terrible to end up a lifer. Edie didn’t want to believe that. Nor did she think Finn would reveal anything if she asked him directly.

  “If we…after we find someone to cut the leash, what will you do?”

  He opened his hands, stated the obvious. “Evade recapture.”

  “But where will you go?”

  “It’s probably in my best interest not to tell anyone.”

  She tried not to be offended that he wouldn’t confide in her. “I know you fought in the Reach Conflicts. Which planet were you fighting for?”

  His jaw tightened and he stared beyond her, at the starscape, hesitating long enough for her to realize he was weighing his words carefully. “None in particular. From our side it was called the Liberty War, by the way.”

  “I know.” He’d avoided the question, and she let it drop. “The part I don’t understand is this: they send POWs home after the war. You’re still here. They said you were a lifer.”

  He gave her a dark look that made her regret bringing it up. “Whatever you think I’ve done, you don’t fear me. You never have.”

  “Haller wants me to fear you.”

  “He wants you to control me.”

  With the voice snag gone, the drub sitting in her quarters, and her promise not to use the jolt, Edie wasn’t doing a very good job of that. She was uncomfortable talking—or even thinking—about the reason she wasn’t afraid of him.

  “Do you have family?”

  “Truthfully, I don’t think about it.”

  “I just wondered if you were a decent, upstanding citizen, once upon a time.” That was what she really wanted to know—who he was, what he had once been.

  Finn gave a low growl and said with real annoyance, “Too many damn questions. And no, I was never that.”

  His restless aggravation was covering for something more profound, and she was itching to get to the bottom of it. But she kept her tone light.

  “You don’t like the way I handle you, Finn?”

  “You’re not handling me.”

  “Well then, I’m doing something wrong.”

  She was teasing him, and he had enough good humor remaining to let it slide. In turn, he moved the topic away from himself.

  “If it’s not Haller spinning stories that’s getting you riled up, what is it? Is there some danger I should know about?”

  He deserved an explanation. Edie sorted through her thoughts before speaking.

  “There’s no danger that I know of. But I haven’t told them everything.” Her hand moved unconsciously to her throat, where the neckband of her tee hid the beetle shell. She made a fist to stop the nervous gesture. “They know all they need to know. The rest is…my business.”

  When she stalled again, he raised an eyebrow expectantly.

  “Those dead BRATs—that was my doing, Finn. I saved Scarabaeus from terraforming seven years ago.”

  His eyes narrowed. “How?”

  “During our final ground check—they drop the BRAT seeds from the ship, and then go down to check a few at random. The last one was on an island. A beautiful place.” She swallowed, caught in a wave of churned-up emotions. “My trainer finished up and we were ready to leave. She told me to jack in, take a look at the BRAT

  priming. She was pissed off at me—I’d wandered off earlier, doused my e-shield—so she just left me alone with the BRAT. I wasn’t supposed to do anything, just look and learn. But an idea came to me. At first I didn’t even dare…” Edie drew a deep breath to steady her voice and control the bone-deep trembling in her body. “For the first time in my life I had power. Power to control the destiny of an entire world.”

  Finn stared at her intently, and she guessed her emotions were turbulent enough to be flooding across the leash.

  “So I planted a kill-code lock. It’s one of the first things they teach you—how to lock down the biocyph, shut it off. I set a time-delay on it, wrapped it all up in a housekeeping tier to hide it. Real simple.”

  “Why did it affect all the BRATs?”

  “Because they talk to each other. They have to, to coordinate the terraforming. Just like the keystones these rovers make that send a message to all the other BRATs. The kill-code was transmitted across the planet after we left orbit. A year later, the scout probe reported the BRAT seeds were dead. I couldn’t believe I’d succeeded. And no one ever suspected. They’d already moved on to the next project.”

  “If you saved Scarabaeus, if it’s unharmed, why are you terrified of going back?”

  Edie sighed. “I saved Scarabaeus because I wanted it left in peace. We should leave it alone.”

  “It’s just a rock and some bugs.”

  “Right,” she muttered, turning back to the starscape. What had given her the ridiculous hope that he’d understand? Why should he care about Scarabaeus? Yet he was right. If only she could put aside her emotional connection to the planet, she’d see Scarabaeus for the soulless rock and biomass it really was. Any other view would be as absurd as that of the eco-rads.

  For a long moment Finn said nothing. Then, “You can shut down an entire terraforming operation, but you can’t dismantle this thing in my head?” He didn’t sound resentful, but his question stung her conscience.

  “I’m sorry.”

  His reflection in the viewing port gave a nod of acceptance as he stared at his hands. His fingers laced and unlaced.

  Edie looked at the stars. Cat was right—it was peaceful, and Cat had found her place in that emptiness. It would never be enough for Edie. She craved the freedom, but it left her in a spin. She needed to know where she was headed. Perhaps the fantasy of helping p
eople like Inga and her family was nothing more than a placeholder, a random lifeline because she had to be sure of something.

  The only thing she was sure of right now was Finn.

  He caught and held her gaze in the reflection. A massive physical presence, so strong and sure of himself in many ways, but powerless to take charge of his situation or to control his future. It gave him a vulnerability that made her heart constrict in her chest—a momentary pang of sympathy that she pushed aside without examination.

  “I get this feeling from you,” she murmured. “You move through the universe like you’re on another plane. It never touches you. I know you started out caring about something, and now it’s gone. Or they took it away. Nothing matters to you.”

  His answer came reluctantly. “Truth is, the universe bewilders me. I gave up a long time ago trying to make sense of it.”

  He looked away self-consciously, and after a while he stood up and waited for her to follow.

  CHAPTER 14

  Tilt, one of the most popular low-g sports in the Crib, was played in a controlled variable gravity zone. On board the Hoi, some time in the past, someone had hooked up leftover gravplating on all six walls of the gym and this served as the Tilt arena. As Edie soon discovered while watching a match in progress, the random system failures affecting other parts of the ship were even more apparent here, and the variable gravity was rather too variable. At unpredictable times the plates would give way and drop all four players from various heights, wherever they happened to be within the three-dimensional field. Seeing the guys trying to maintain their dignity was comical, to say the least.

  Cat had bowed out of the match after the first two rounds, to be replaced by Kristos. Haller, who had somehow ended up on the same team as Finn, seemed relieved about the switch, while Zeke still hadn’t stopped grumbling about his new partner. Cat was amazing in low-g, launching herself off the walls and accurately judging distances and angles as she maneuvered through the hoops of light projected into the arena. Her skills had unbalanced the teams to such an extent that even Kristos’s fumbling moves hadn’t made much of an impact on her team’s lead.

  “Your bodyguard moves well,” Cat mused.

  Realizing Cat had noticed her watching Finn, Edie flushed. There was a languid grace about him in regular gravity, at odds with his size, and this translated well to low-g where his movements looked natural even if his skill at the game wasn’t particularly noteworthy. In fact it looked like he’d never played before, although he clearly had experience with low-g.

  Having already completed their morning workouts, she and Cat had left the men to their sport and retreated to the kit room, which overlooked the gym. It had its own gravplating that kept them stable, but still Edie’s stomach lurched each time the plates beyond them unexpectedly switched direction.

  Edie’s gym shoes were off, and Cat was painting the tops of her feet with rosy-brown ink—a striking effect on her pale skin. The fine brush tickled. The normality of the activity was at odds with the way Edie felt. Two full days had passed since her escape attempt. Two days keeping out of Haller’s hair, dutifully attending the morning CPT sessions, and spending her shifts with Zeke and Kristos as they prepared the rigs. Always with Finn in the background. Now that he’d fully recovered from the poison, Zeke put him back to work and he did it without complaining. He wasn’t free, but at least he was receiving better treatment than a labor-gang serf. And Haller seemed satisfied that he’d learned his lesson and would not cause further trouble.

  “So tell me,” Cat said with a sly look, “is he housebroken?”

  “He’s clean and basically polite, if that’s what you mean.” Edie stopped herself from elaborating on Finn’s other attributes, like the intriguing confidence she’d glimpsed on Neuchasley, and the way he made her feel safe.

  Cat gave her an exasperated look. Enunciating carefully, she said, “What I mean is, are you grinding him?”

  “That would be a bad idea.”

  “Speak for yourself!”

  Edie didn’t want to put a dampener on the girl talk now that she and Cat were getting along, but she had to explain. Even if it meant revealing more than she’d intended. “Back on Talas, when I was in the training program, my trainer and her bodyguard were lovers. I don’t just mean they shared a bed. They were very close. When she was killed by a rad, he blamed himself.”

  “Was it his fault?”

  Yes. Lukas and Edie had each claimed a share of the guilt. He and Bethany had had a fight that day, a petty personal squabble. He’d left her alone for a while so they could both sulk. The stowaway eco-rad had come looking for her and found Edie first. And so Bethany had walked in, defenseless, when Lukas should never have left her side in the first place.

  “Their relationship complicated things. They should’ve kept it professional.”

  They gazed at Finn again. He glided past, twisting through a hoop of light just before it winked out. The point registered, and a green holo cube, his team’s color, stabilized in the area. Haller and Finn’s combined abilities made them the better team in theory and they should have overtaken on the scoreboard a while ago, but they would rather lose the match than work together. Only Kristos’s ineptitude and Zeke’s frustration was losing the blue team the territory Cat had won earlier.

  The gravity shifted again and all four players floated upward in the opposite direction from a new set of linked hoops materializing below them. Zeke began the charge to secure them.

  “Well, you can send him my way any time,” Cat said with a grin, and then waved away that notion with a flick of her hand. “Listen, if you’d worked around lags for as long as I have, you’d think twice about loosening the reins. Forget those psych evaluations that say he’s a sweetie. He’ll turn on you if he sees the opportunity.”

  Haller had tried scaring her the same way, but Cat had no reason to exaggerate and her words sent a shiver through Edie. She didn’t want to believe that could ever be true.

  “Zeke said he was a Saeth. Do you know what that is?”

  The paintbrush in Cat’s hand froze over Edie’s big toe. Then she laughed mirthlessly.

  “A Saeth, is he? Now I know why Zeke wouldn’t tell me much about him before our mission to Talas Prime.”

  “I don’t get it. Finn won’t talk about it. Zeke told me to ask you. What’s a Saeth?”

  “The Saeth were rogue independence fighters. Top of the Crib’s most-wanted list. Assassins, basically. They were from the Fringe, but all the Fringe governments denied any knowledge of them.”

  “So who did they work for?”

  “Who knows? Themselves, apparently. Their own private army with their own agenda. Their activities helped prolong the war and disrupted the new independence treaties. You know, I sympathize with the Fringers and I can understand the Crib, but the Saeth turn my gut.”

  Cat stared at Finn with a new glint in her eye. Edie did her best to add some perspective.

  “Hey, the war’s over. He’s a lifer with a bomb in his head. Is that enough to settle your stomach?”

  Cat grinned, lifting Edie’s foot to examine her handiwork. “I guess so.” She glanced up, chewing her lip. “In case you’re wondering—in case anything happens to him—I didn’t know about the leash. We used him to grab you, but I was told he’d be freed afterward, and that’s what I promised him.”

  Edie nodded, watching Cat screw the lid on the ink, unsure of what to believe. She was sure, however, that Cat’s motivation for explaining herself had more to do with wanting to form a connection with Edie than any real concern about Finn.

  “Is this finished?”

  “Yes. It’s already dry.”

  Edie admired the artfully painted scrolls and dots all over the tops of her feet. It had been a long time since she’d done anything to make herself pretty. She looked up to see Cat examining her throat.

  “What’s this?” Cat reached out to pull the neck of Edie’s tee down.

  Instinctively, E
die put up her hand to cover the beetle shell.

  “What is it? A jewel?” Cat moved Edie’s hand and peered closer. “It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s just a shell.” Turquoise and black.

  “Where did you get it? Was it expensive?”

  “It’s not worth anything. Having it implanted cost a small fortune—at least, it was a lot when I was a teenager.”

  “So it doesn’t come out?”

  Edie shook her head, hoping Cat wouldn’t ask more questions.

  “Hey, you wanna have fun with the boys?” Cat grinned at her confusion. “Come on. I couldn’t stand it if Haller won.”