Song of Scarabaeus

by Sara Creasy

  Edie watched the serfs disappear through the outer hatch, following their progress on the vid feed. Zeke winched each man onto the matted canopy, and then himself. Finn repeated Zeke’s actions with the airlock, venting the dangerous air of Scarabaeus so as not to contaminate the skiff. The inner hatch opened and he stepped inside, along with Edie and Kristos.

  Finn opened the outer hatch to face a blustery morning. Edie’s e-shield muted the feel of the wind on her skin, but not its sheer force.

  “I’ll go first,” he said, raising his voice over the wind and engines instead of using the link. “Just grab the winch and I’ll catch you.” He didn’t offer Kristos any guidance. His job was protecting Edie. “You ready for this?”

  She nodded. “It’s our payday,” she said, too quiet for him to hear, but he read her lips and gave her a quick grin.

  Finn disappeared over the lip of the hatch. Her stomach flipped as she peered over the edge, but he landed safely on his feet, smooth and steady as a cat. The winch rebounded and she put her foot through the loop, wrapping her hands around the rope. Like Finn, she wasn’t going to trust Kristos with the controls. She worked the panel herself and descended slowly the four meters or so to the canopy. A gust of wind caught her, swinging her underneath the skiff and back again, and then she felt strong hands on her, guiding her down.

  Finn helped her off the winch, and she leaned against his sturdy body. He pulled her down into a crouch like Zeke and the others, because the wind and the uneven surface made everyone unstable on their feet. The vines looping up from the dense vegetation formed convenient handles, and Edie grabbed on to them. Zeke yelled instructions up to Kristos as he made his way down. The young teck dropped the last two meters, landing on his back, limbs flailing.

  Zeke clambered over to help him up. “Damn kid couldn’t find down in a gravity well.”

  “Everyone safe?” came Cat’s voice over the open line, and Zeke yelled back in the affirmative. “Back in a few hours to collect you guys, and whatever you dig out of there. Stay in touch.”

  The skiff ascended in a steep climb, turned, and flew away.

  Through the e-shield, the vines felt slimy between Edie’s fingers. Her injured shoulder protested as she clung on, finding footholds to work her way closer to Zeke, always aware of Finn nearby keeping a close eye on her.

  It took twenty minutes for the serfs to cut a hole into the vines. The water torches sheared through the clot of vegetation and the serfs used brute force to push it aside. Zeke went after them, followed by Finn and then Edie. Above Edie, Kristos was the last one in. He moved too fast, lost his footing, and kicked her in the head.

  “Watch it!” she said, and he stuttered an apology.

  She rubbed her skull, looking down to make sure she didn’t do the same thing to Finn. She could see the top of his head, his broad shoulders, and his arms reaching out to grab the vines. It was slow going. The serfs had to make the tunnel wide enough to accommodate their equipment, which took time but made it comfortably wide for the rest of the team.

  “This is fuckin’ crazy!” Zeke yelled from somewhere down below, but he sounded like he was enjoying himself.

  “Stay closer,” Finn called up. He sounded annoyed that the gap between him and Edie was increasing. Her shoulder ached fiercely now, refusing to take the weight of her body, so she had to look carefully for every foothold.

  “I won’t let you out of my sight,” she muttered, wishing more than ever that her first bodyguard were here. Lukas would have offered encouragement, made her feel okay about being here. Even when it wasn’t okay.

  “What did you say?” Finn was suddenly right behind her. He had either climbed up, or stopped to let her climb down. Their descent was so slow, with long periods of immobility, that she hadn’t noticed. Now his lips were at her ear, his body against hers.

  “Lukas used to say that. I won’t let you out of my sight. ”

  Finn said nothing, but when he moved again he adjusted his pace so it matched hers, and the gap between him and Zeke widened instead.

  It took ninety minutes to climb halfway down. Sunlight still penetrated but it was darker. Unidentified sounds came from all directions—soft chirps, rustling, buzzing. The vines were looser and softer here, and Edie had plenty of time to examine them during the stop–start descent. While she despaired over the loss of the native species on Scarabaeus, she couldn’t help but be fascinated by the new alien life before her eyes. The thickest vine species, white and almost translucent, had a purple, thready parasitic fungus growing along its branches, and the green leafy tendrils of another species twined up from below, using the main vine structure as scaffolding to climb upward to the light. Occasionally she caught a glimpse of a blue-winged thriplike insect darting through the gaps in the vines.

  “What’s that?” Kristos yelped. She looked up to see him flapping his hand around his head, swatting at a tiny thrip. It was attracted by the aura of the e-shield. It flitted toward the shield and disintegrated with an audible zap.

  “What setting is your shield on?” Edie called out.

  “Um…maximum.”

  “We’re not in combat!” Zeke yelled from several meters beneath them, having heard the exchange. “Crank it down or you’re gonna set this place on fire.”

  That was an exaggeration, but maximum shield strength was overkill. And while their other equipment was of dubious origin and quality, Zeke hadn’t skimped on the shields. They were first-rate. They kept the temperature and air mix stable within the barrier, filtered out organics, and deflected or absorbed minor physical impact.

  “What if, you know, the BRAT knows we’re here,” Kristos said, quietly this time so no one else could hear.

  “It’s not going to notice a few hacked vines,” Edie threw back.

  “But there’s all those airborne viruses, or whatever, that sample our DNA and change it—”

  “They can’t get through the shields, even on minimum. Just don’t turn it off or you’ll be mutating within the minute.”

  She couldn’t resist teasing him, but it was true. On her previous visit, Edie had turned off her e-shield for a few minutes, trusting that the alienness would not harm her. But now the environment was drenched in cyphviruses released by the BRATs. They sampled everything in the ecosystem, transmitting the data to the biocyph in the BRAT, which analyzed it and wrote custom-designed retrovirus code. This was transmitted back to the cyphviruses, triggering them to recode their embryonic DNA-analogs and integrate the new DNA into the host organism’s genome. Thus the organism was transformed, at the genetic level, to become more like the target ideal that the biocyph was working toward.

  The target ideal was supposed to be a Terran-like ecosystem. It was not supposed to look anything like this.

  It seemed like a long time later that Zeke called out, “We’re setting up the shield now.”

  He and the serfs must have reached ground level. The sphere of protection from the shield would isolate the BRAT, enabling the team to work without it communicating to the other BRATs or to the satellite that it was being interfered with. Edie stopped her descent to perch on a sturdy vine, and pulled a diagnostic rod from her belt. It registered the shield coming online, its edge ten meters below her and about the same distance to her left. The holo displayed a sphere overlaid with a grid—a diagrammatic representation of the shield’s structure.

  “I’m getting a broken grid,” she reported, using the comm to avoid shouting.

  “Looks fine to me.” Zeke sounded out of breath, like he’d been exerting himself down there.

  She reinitialized the rod and examined the holo again, switching through different views. “Interference or something. Are you sure about the integrity?”

  Finn climbed up to wedge himself behind her so he could take a look for himself. Their e-shields melded and she felt the warmth and pressure of his body along her spine. She shook her head for his benefit. It didn’t look like a break in the shield—not quite. But somethi
ng was wrong.

  “Zeke, can you power it down and reboot?” she said.

  Above them, Kristos made an impatient sound to get them moving again. Finn swung to one side to let him pass, but when Edie started to follow he held her back.

  “Let’s wait here till we sort this out.” His hand gripped her belt, holding her there.

  “It’s just a sensor glitch, Finn.”

  “You on your way down?” Zeke bellowed.

  “On our way.” Edie glared over her shoulder at Finn. “Let’s move.”

  “First you clear this glitch.”

  She tapped her comm again. “Zeke, power down will you? I need to check something.”

  “What would I want to do that for?”

  “Just do it.”

  She heard his muttered curses, but he complied. The holo flickered out and it took several minutes to reappear as Zeke rebooted, bringing the shield online again. This time the anomaly was obvious.

  “There’s another shield down there,” she reported.

  “There’s five other shields, teckie. Five men. Supposed to be seven, so get your ass in gear. Jezus, it’s a frickin’

  swamp down here.” The comm crackled as Zeke moved about. “Come on in,” he sang to himself, “the jungle’s fine.”

  Edie magnified the distorted area on the grid. The interference came from the overlap with another shield. Not an e-shield, but a weak sphere similar to the one they were using on the BRAT. Much smaller.

  She tensed against Finn’s chest. “I think someone got here first.”

  The jungle exploded beneath them.

  One deafening crack that sent shock waves reverberating in all directions. Edie slipped downward, instinctively grabbing on to the vines to slow her descent, oblivious to the screaming pain in her shoulder and the sharper pain in her eardrums as they threatened to burst. She was deaf and blind and numb, senses caving in swiftly. She didn’t fight it.

  CHAPTER 24

  Consciousness returned in increments, one sense at a time. Pressure against her neck, almost cutting off her windpipe but not quite. The e-shield protected her. She jerked her head clear and was aware of pressure in other places where her limbs were tangled in the vines. Her brain felt hazy and soft, like it was sparking in slowmotion. Time stood still. She heard…silence, then the falling of heavy vegetation and the distant scrambling of unseen creatures. She must have blacked out for only a few seconds.

  And other noises—none of them human. Clicks and whistles and moaning. The e-shield permitted a faint tinge of harmless ozone to reach her nostrils.

  These thoughts got her brain working again. Zeke. He’d been on the ground. They all had, except—where was Finn? He’d been right here with her, and now he was gone.

  She opened her eyes and blinked away the flashes in her vision. There was no longer a tunnel below her. Even as she watched, the vines moved, slithered all around her like a nest of serpents, entwining and matting together again until she was cocooned within their grasp. She stared in disbelief. Everything about the vines told her they were plants, but this behavior was more like that of an animal.

  “Well, I’m alive, so I know you’re not dead.”

  Finn. Somewhere down below, but close. The blast must have knocked him a few meters lower.

  She managed to drag in a deep breath. Her first breath. Now she knew she was alive.

  It took Finn ten minutes to hack through to reach her, using brute force and a blade from his tool belt to rip the vines aside. She didn’t think Zeke had assigned him a shiv—he must have lifted it before they left the skiff.

  She worked her limbs loose, and the feeling gradually returned to her hands and fingertips.

  “Why am I shaking?” She wasn’t cold or afraid. She felt nothing.

  “Shock.” Finn pulled himself up in front of her in the small hollow they’d made amid the vines. “Listen, we’re gonna have to go down to the ground. No way we can climb back up.”

  With great effort, she tilted her head and saw that he was right. The vines had closed in overhead, healing the wound the alien intruders had made. It would take forever to cut through that, and Finn’s shiv wasn’t going to be enough. And her shoulder would never handle the climb, even if the path was cleared.

  He checked the spur on his arm. She watched his deft fingers, then his face. Her mind finally caught up to what her eyes were seeing, and then she tracked back over the moments before the explosion.

  “Edie, you have to calm down.” Finn wrapped his hands around her skull. Her misfiring brain was affecting him. She focused on his dark, calm eyes, feeling the pressure of his fingers against her skin. “Only a few more meters. The vines thin out directly below us. You can drop straight through. Follow me.”

  She nodded and he released her.

  “What happened?” she managed, her voice a whisper.

  “Pulsed EM discharge combined with explosives and a shitload of shrapnel. A flash bomb.”

  “Hidden in that low-strength shield?”

  He nodded. “So low we missed it on the sweep from seventy meters up, but it was enough to mask the signature from the bomb. Probably dropped from the air. They can drill through rock, so this place would’ve been no problem.”

  “That shield…it had the same frequency as our shield for the BRAT. That’s why it was barely detectable. They knew which BRAT we were heading for, they knew the shield frequency.”

  “Those details were only finalized in the last twelve hours.”

  She didn’t like where that line of reasoning was going. “Did someone on the Hoi betray our location to ecorads?”

  “Or launch a guided flash bomb to the surface when we entered the system. Someone who’s not too fussy about who died.”

  “Died? Are they all…?”

  “Well, they were right on top of it.”

  Edie closed her eyes against his indifference.

  “That shield they set up around the BRAT saved us,” he said. “The blast was more or less contained within the perimeter. They were inside, we were outside. Hand me that.”

  He took the diagnostic rod from her and widened the scan range. As he checked for other shields in the vicinity, she was struck by his calm professionalism. A soldier in a battle zone, immune—at least for now—to the death surrounding him.

  “I’m not finding any more.” He handed the rod back. “This thing is bleeding out.”

  “What?” The power cell was less than half full—that couldn’t be right. She’d fully charged it before they left.

  “The EMP’s caused the charge to leak. We’ll lose everything soon—comms, diagnostics, e-shields.”

  Edie’s mind suddenly felt sharp as a blade. “We can’t lose the shields. We can’t survive without them.” She checked hers. The plan had been to recharge at the skiff every twenty hours or so. “I still have fifteen hours. What about you?”

  “About the same.” He tried the comm. “This is almost dry, too. I’m getting a weak signal but unless Cat boosts the power at her end—and fast—we can’t contact the skiff.”

  He began climbing down. She followed his footholds, and after a few meters the vines thinned out. She dropped beside him onto an uneven bed of roots and broken vines. Briars and a dozen species of reeds and grasses sprung up from the marshy earth. Large stumpy growths protruded from the ground, forming anchors for the stalks of the vines. A spiny plant clutched the edge of one stump, its creamy, enameled petals glistening silvery pale in the dim light. Interspersed with the vegetation were boulders, some twice Edie’s height, that had been part of the original landscape. And strewn over everything was a pale gossamer thread woven by some unknown creature.

  After the strange behavior she’d observed in the vines, she looked at everything twice, half expecting these plants to start moving. But for now, the vista remained serene.

  Too serene—in shock, perhaps.

  The only movement came from above, where the vines still churned through meters of canopy. She and
Finn would never get out that way.

  Finn set up a couple of lamps. The thicket surrounded them, but a natural clearing had formed over this shallow swamp where the vines had grown up and over, twisting together to form a living cave. The air was dank and still.

  Edie’s knees almost gave way as she pushed through the thicket. The ground was marshy in places, rocky in others. Every step was a struggle.

  “We’ll have to get out of here at ground level.” He gave the jungle a grim look. “Let’s grab what we can from the others and get started.”