Song of Scarabaeus

by Sara Creasy

  Cat pulled Edie to her feet and indicated the scoreboard, which showed that Haller and Finn were now ahead by a narrow margin. The arena had more green territory than blue. Kristos flailed around ineffectually while Zeke yelled instructions and cursed the kid’s mistakes.

  “You can jack in and control the grav,” Cat said. “See if you can’t tilt it a bit in Zeke’s favor.”

  “I don’t even know the rules of the game,” Edie pleaded, but Cat had already brought up the control screen and the holo rotated between them.

  “I’ll tell you what you need to do. Quickly—Finn just took another point.”

  “Wait—what if I want Finn to win?”

  Cat stood back, hands on hips. “Your choice, but would you rather Haller won or Finn lost?”

  She had a point.

  A kidnapped cypherteck and her unwilling bodyguard were the last couple on a pirate ship that would be invited to the captain’s supper. At least that’s what Edie thought. Cat, however, insisted that they were both expected to attend the rescheduled event—and that it wasn’t optional. What made Edie nervous was that for two days she’d expected a reprimand from the captain about her and Finn’s escape attempt, but Rackham had taken little interest.

  “He’s made himself scarce on this trip,” Cat told her. “Not that he’s usually the life of the party, but he barely knows it happened. It pissed him off at the time, but it was nothing more than an hour or two’s inconvenience. Haller played it down, Zeke even more so, because neither wants to get blamed. Unauthorized shore leave is the official verdict.”

  The upside of the event was that Haller would be on duty, on the bridge. It made the idea of supper more palatable.

  “You should put on a dress,” Finn said. They were in their quarters cleaning up.

  Edie wrinkled her nose. “I’ll put on a dress when you comb your hair.”

  He grinned and ran his hand over the thick dark fuzz on his scalp. It was growing back in, balanced by the evening shadow along his jaw. “Couple more weeks, then.”

  Her face warmed at the idea of wearing a dress for Finn. She had the strange feeling they’d just made a deal.

  By the time Edie and Finn arrived, the captain was already there, along with Cat, Kristos, and Zeke, and two engineers whom they had not yet met. The engies, Yasuo and Corky, were introduced but didn’t speak a word to Edie. The younger one, Yasuo, spared Finn a dubious look. Corky, the beefy, tattooed chief engie, seemed more interested in working his way through the captain’s expensive wine.

  The dining room was the best-dressed room on the ship. It was easy to forget you were aboard a shabby longrange mining vessel when surrounded by genuine wood, richly woven fabric, and handmade knickknacks from all corners of the Reach. And Rackham, it turned out, was not only a collector of exotic furnishings and artwork but also a connoisseur of fine food. Gia was used to serving up bland meals en masse for the crew, but was also capable of extraordinary culinary feats, according to Cat.

  Finn seemed to know his place—he went to sit in the galley off the mess, from which Gia was serving. Rackham didn’t miss a beat on the war story he was relaying as Edie slipped into a chair and kept one eye on Cat to follow her lead in the proper use of the cutlery as everyone tucked into soup. Edie was amused to see Kristos doing the same thing—watching Cat and trying to sit upright and tilt his plate properly, taking small spoonfuls and using his napkin.

  Rackham had some sort of antique weapon on the table, and began describing its features to Kristos, who apparently hadn’t seen it before.

  “It’s a recoil-operated semiautomatic, point-four-five cartridge. Only seven rounds in the magazine plus one in the chamber, but with a slug that size you don’t need more than one. Weighs a little over a kilo. My ancestors’

  standard issue firearm for a century. Timeless design.”

  Kristos looked like he wanted to touch it, but Rackham didn’t offer.

  “If you’re going to get the job done, you want a weapon with stopping power,” Rackham continued. “What does a spur do? Peppers ’em full of tiny holes, and even if you can stop ’em coming, they get patched up in no time. To get what you want, use maximum force. That’s the only way to play the game.”

  This was only the second time Edie had met Rackham, and his detached air chilled her blood. While Haller enjoyed his one-on-one power games, she had the feeling that Rackham could be far more ruthless on a grand scale. Perhaps that was something he’d learned in the war.

  “I have a few other law-enforcement items of interest,” Rackham told Kristos, nodding toward a cabinet displaying his collection. “Couple of holographic ident cards that predate the Crib. A nineteenth-century sheriff’s badge from Old Earth—hardly a scratch on it. Handcuffs almost as old as this gun. If you have a spare moment or two, I’ll show you.”

  Zeke smothered a snort by turning it into a cough. He didn’t seem to think Kristos would be getting much free time on this trip.

  “Sha’nim,” Rackham said suddenly, carefully laying aside his weapon. Edie hastily swallowed a mouthful of delicately spiced stew that Gia had just placed before her. “Lancer was telling me on the bridge this afternoon that you’re a native of Talas.” It was unlikely Rackham hadn’t already known that, even if he hadn’t been directly involved in her kidnapping, and the shift in topic was awkward. “That world warrants a couple of sentences in every history holoviz. I remember reading about the Talasi. That case over there—” He drew the attention of his dinner guests with a sweep of his hand. “Gia, open that case, will you, and fetch me what’s inside. You’ll recognize this, Sha’nim.”

  He smiled smugly as Gia hurried to comply. She withdrew the contents of the display case with trembling hands and carried the object to Rackham as carefully as she might handle a soufflé. The captain took the egg-shaped item from her—his hand was large enough to palm it comfortably—and held it up for all to see.

  Edie stared in astonishment at the talphi cocoon. Secreted and molded by the female of the species to carry her eggs while on the wing, such cocoons had been a commonplace find during her childhood. What was unusual about this one was simply that Rackham had it in his possession.

  “Isn’t it magnificent?” Rackham turned the cocoon over in his hands. The iridescent surface wavered and bled like oil on water as it caught the light. “It was created by a native creature on Talas—a primitive flying mammal, I believe. I traded three cases of very good brandy for this beauty. Perhaps you can tell us more about it?” he prompted Edie, passing the cocoon to Cat on his left.

  Edie opened her mouth to answer his question politely, but felt an irrational surge of annoyance at the idea of Rackham, or anyone in the Crib, trading Talasi property and putting it on display.

  “Talphi cocoons fall under the indigenous trade act,” she said. “It’s illegal to transport them off Talas. The law was enacted two decades ago to prevent exploitation of the Talasi.” She decided not to mention that the law was also intended to protect the naïve—the cocoon contained enough neuroxin to kill everyone in the room but her.

  Cat scowled at her, but Rackham was unfazed by what could have been interpreted as an accusation.

  “And that’s why it was so damn expensive. Still, well worth it in my opinion. I paid a high price for all these treasures. This dreadful beast”—he indicated the sprawling artwork in the corner behind him—“was a gift from a Fringe-world captain. I don’t think she liked me. And in that chest over there is an antique Lourches songbird. A beautiful museum piece, although that particular one has never been played in my presence. I’ve no musical talent to speak of, and I can’t persuade Lancer here to take it up.”

  “Because I have mercy on your eardrums, sir,” Cat said tolerantly.

  Rackham gave Edie an appraising look. He kept his eyes on her while addressing the room, like a king holding court. “What did you think of your brief trip to Talas, Lancer? The original natives were xenophobic, low-teck refugees from another failed colony
world who somehow managed to tame that toxic planet and have thrived for centuries.”

  “Thrived is hardly the word,” Cat said. “We never went dirtside, but on Talas Prime the news-caps were full of the troubles down on the planet. There’s friction over trade agreements and whether or not to try and detoxify the ecosystem. Terrorism in the city is rife, despite the Crib’s occupation. The economy’s a mess. The city dwellers have used bio-bombs on the forests and the natives live in secluded camps. That was supposed to be a temporary measure but it’s been—what, almost twenty years?”

  Edie nodded, rolling a water glass between her palms, desperately uncomfortable under their scrutiny.

  “Talas’s ecosystem is toxic?” Kristos said. “How do the natives survive?”

  The question was addressed to Edie, but she didn’t respond. Rackham, however, seemed eager to share his knowledge. Edie should’ve guessed from his eclectic collection that he was more knowledgeable about colonial anthropology than the average Crib citizen.

  “Their ancestors integrated biocyph strands into their genome. It was as illegal then as it is now. The Crib cut them off, but they were isolationists and didn’t care. And eventually”—he looked directly at Edie—“your people were forgotten.”

  Not my people. She disliked being identified as one of them, and bit back the reflexive response. Why should she identify with people who had rejected her?

  Rackham and Cat began debating the pros and cons of bio-bombs as a means of pest control, and the engineers excused themselves to prepare for the next jump—Corky quite obviously inebriated. Through the serving hatch, Edie watched Gia wait on Finn with a mixture of flirtatious smiles and motherly concern—quite different from the deference she reserved for the captain and crew. Finn responded with a friendly appreciation that startled her. After what Cat had told her about the Saeth, the normality of his behavior struck Edie as being entirely unassassinlike.

  Rackham was distracted by a quiet but insistent beeping on his personal commlink. He squinted at the message, his brows crawling low over deep-set eyes, and then directed the transmission onto the holoviz so everyone could see. It was Haller, looking worried, awaiting instructions.

  “Haller tells me a CIP vessel has been tailing us for the past few hours,” Rackham announced, as though he were commenting on the weather.

  In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Edie felt the heat of unvoiced accusations. Was the Crib coming after her? Of course she expected Natesa to send someone to find her, but surely the rovers had covered their tracks.

  Zeke finally spoke up. “CIP has hundreds of smaller ships patrolling just outside Crib Central. Might be a routine patrol, coincidentally on the same course.”

  “That’s becoming less and less likely,” Haller said. “They followed us through the last two jumps.”

  “Damn, we’re only three jumps from Scarabaeus. Have they made contact?” Cat asked.

  Haller shook his head. “They may think we’ll take off if they voice any suspicions.” In contrast to Rackham’s calmness, the XO’s voice held an edge of alarm. “At this distance we can still outrun them, disappear into the nearest jump node, and claim Article Seven if they complain. They can’t delay a commercial vessel without due cause.”

  “We can’t run,” Rackham said. “It’ll look like we have something to hide and they’ll hound us for the next century—you know what they’re like.”

  Now even his eyes slid toward Edie. For the first time, she wondered if Rackham opposed her presence on the ship. Maybe he’d rather Stichting Corp send the Hoi on safe survey missions instead of seeding ventures that required a valuable cypherteck to complicate his rover lifestyle. While the Hoi was a legally registered vessel that ordinarily should pass a Crib Interstellar Patrol inspection, there was no explaining away the presence on board of a cypherteck who had recently disappeared from her post under suspicious circumstances.

  “Let’s play it cool for now.” Rackham neatly folded his napkin and with a flourish of his finger called Gia for more wine. “We’re well out of Central’s control, so they’re going to need a damn good reason to board us for inspection. We’re a few hours from the next jump, at which point we’ll diverge from our scheduled flight plan anyway. So they’ll lose us in the node unless they get a hell of a lot closer in order to track us.”

  “I’ll let you know if they close in.” Haller signed off.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Rackham said, taking a sip of wine, but the fingers of his other hand drummed on the tabletop. He thumped his glass on the table. “Dammit, this merlot should be served at seventeen degrees. This tastes like twenty-two, at least. Seventeen, Gia! Seventeen degrees is the correct temperature.”

  Gia rushed to his side in a fluster. “It’s the secondary refrigeration unit, sir, that powers the wine cabinet. Been failing all day.”

  Cat rolled her eyes at Edie over the rim of her glass as the captain expressed at length his disappointment. Edie was only too grateful that his attention had moved on from her heritage to the precise temperature of his wretched wine.

  CHAPTER 15

  Haller swiveled his console around to face Edie. “I’ve given you limited access. Figure out what’s going on with these systems failures, and then jack out. Don’t meddle. Don’t try and fix anything.”

  He’d woken her at three in the morning after a crowd of toms rattling the captain’s air vents had driven Rackham to demand an immediate solution to the random failures affecting the ship’s systems. Flickering striplights, screwed-up air mixes in the mid-deck quarters, the gravplating fluctuations during the Tilt game—

  these minor annoyances had kept the engineers on their toes. With a possible CIP confrontation coming up, Rackham wanted the source of the errors located before something more serious went wrong.

  Edie’s brain was still a little foggy as she slid into a seat, stifling a yawn. She pressed her fingertips against the dataport, trying not to appear too eager. An overwarm wine cabinet and a handful of misbehaving toms on a decrepit pirate ship didn’t interest her, but Haller’s failure to track down the problem was an opportunity for her to snoop around the Hoi’s higher-level systems.

  “Remember, I said don’t fix anything.” Haller watched the holoviz as Edie filed through the systems routines.

  “Wouldn’t dream of messing with your precious ship,” she muttered.

  Finn had come along to the briefing room, and Edie was glad. The two men detested each other, and that would never change, but the more opportunity Haller had to see that Finn was behaving himself, the less likely he’d be to carry out his threats against him. Finn was backed up against the bulkhead, arms folded over his chest as he watched her work.

  The error log was now several thousand entries long. She ran it through a filter to detect any patterns. Nothing came up—the failures appeared to be truly random. She kept the holo running an uninformative loop that masked her datastream, just to see if Haller could tell the difference. She needed time to think and explore.

  Slipping through the virtual door that Haller had opened for her, she accessed the Hoi Polloi’s mid-level secure systems. Her splinter sorted through jumbled tiers, reorganizing them into music she could understand. Like much of the technology on the ship, the system had been patched up over the years with amateurish hacks. It remained surprisingly functional, and that meant the high-level systems were depressingly secure. Ideally, she needed to create a worm—a hidden, self-directed algorithm that over time could break through. But she was no infojack, and such sophisticated coding was beyond her expertise. In any case, there was nothing she could do from this console.

  As she filed through the tiers, searching for ideas, Haller’s on-edge voice broke her concentration.

  “Well? What’s going on? Did you find anything?”

  She flashed up the error report, pulled back from the datastream, and returned her attention to Haller.

  “As you can see, there are blips in here. Doesn’t eve
n qualify as a virus. They’re not replicating or doing any permanent damage.”

  “And they won’t mess with major systems? I don’t want any surprises.”

  “It’s not affecting any systems that require security access.”

  “So how do we fix it?”

  “You told me not to fix it. Sir.”

  Haller scowled. “If that’s all it is, fix the damn thing, teckie. Where did these blips come from anyway?”

  Edie chased the blips as they played over the surface of the tiers, dipping into the melody of the programming at random—one disharmonious note here, another there. Simple mischief, like a flurry of playful sprites tickling the nose of the ship’s systems. Distracting, but never quite enough to bring on a sneeze.

  Distracting.

  A shiver swept down her spine and her hands went cold. From the corner of her eye, she saw Finn shift position as her rush of anxiety sent a spike of awareness to his brain.