Children of Scarabaeus (17 page)
“She was somewhat uncooperative at first. Rather abrasive, actually.”
“She’s not
that
bad,” Cornith said, addressing Finn. “Anyway, she wants the same thing we all want—to get you out of here.”
“Once we figured out where they were taking you, we used our resources to infiltrate Project Ardra,” Valari explained. “I volunteered for the assignment, of course, and chose Corinth as my second. And here we are, a couple of meckies with the appropriate security clearances. I work here on Deck G. As a utility teck, Corinth has wider access on the ship.” Her startling eyes went from cool professional
to soft concern in an instant. “We thought you died with your men five years ago.”
“The Crib put me on a labor gang as a lifer, tied my chip to a boundary marker to keep me in place,” Finn explained.
“Yes, we could tell from our remote scan there was something wrong with your chip. That’s why Corinth is here. He’s the best teck we have.”
“Edie’s a cypherteck,” Finn said. “She broke the boundary link—that’s not the problem.” He looked at Edie, signaling her to continue by tipping his chin.
Edie pushed back thoughts of Lukas for now, as well as questions about Cat. “Rovers kidnapped me and forced Finn along for the ride with a leash,” she said. “They linked his chip to mine to turn him into my bodyguard. If we’re separated by two thousand meters, his chip explodes.”
“Have you tried cutting that link?” Corinth asked.
“No. It’s a biocyph lock. Unbreakable.”
“I have some biocyph experience. I’ll give it a shot.”
“You have a wet-teck interface?”
He shook his head. “I use a dry–wet interface. I know that doesn’t impress you,” he added quickly, “but I’m pretty good.”
A dry–wet interface was like using a fork to eat soup. Sometimes it gave you a different perspective on a problem, but it couldn’t in and of itself come close to what a cypherteck’s wet-teck interface could do. Edie doubted it would work when she’d failed.
“I did make an attempt. The bomb is integrated into his chip,” she said. “Messing with it could kill him.”
“I understand.” Corinth looked at Finn. “It’s up to you, of course.”
Finn was still focused on Edie. He nodded slowly. “Can’t hurt to take a look.”
“I want to be there. To help. To make sure nothing goes wrong,” Edie said. To her ears, her voice sounded lame. Desperate. She wondered if it was obvious to the others how she felt about Finn, and how ridiculous and irrelevant those
feelings now seemed to her. She wasn’t Finn’s future—these people were.
Valari laid her hand on Finn’s arm. “Well, let’s not count on anything. We don’t leave a brother behind—we’re here to get you out.” And because of the leash, Edie, too. Edie wasn’t at all sure how Valari felt about that. “Now, we may be undercover but we signed a couple of those lovely Crib contracts. Walking out of here means going AWOL, and there are a bunch of milits on this ship ready to stop us doing that. But we have back-up out there.”
“How many of us are left?” Finn asked.
“Perhaps more than you might expect. We’ve kept a low profile and we haven’t been idle—there’s a great deal of work to do. Largely incognito, of course. It’s still the case that almost no one trusts the Saeth. I’m heavily involved in relocating refugees, which is actually more PR work than anything.”
“You took your time coming forward,” Finn said, without accusation. He just wanted to know why.
“Because of Edie,” Valari said. “We knew the Crib picked you up together. Then we found out she was a cypherteck for the Crib. We weren’t sure what the connection was between the two of you. To be honest, we didn’t realize at first—didn’t
expect
—that she was on your side.”
“I’m on his side,” Edie said firmly. “And I’m not here because I want to be.”
Valari nodded. “We know that now. We spent a few days gathering information.”
“So what’s the plan?” Finn asked.
“We have a ship, the
Molly Mei
, two jumps from here. We’re in contact via a scrambled link, waiting for the right moment.”
“I can’t leave without a supply of neuroxin,” Edie said, self-conscious of the fact that her presence in the equation, thanks to both the leash and her dependence on a rare chemical, would complicate Finn’s escape.
“My crew key gives me access to the infirmary,” Corinth
said. “We’ll take the drug at the last possible moment—otherwise it’ll be missed.”
And Edie would be the obvious suspect in the theft.
“By the way, your friend Cat is on board the
Molly Mei
,” Valari said. “To put it bluntly, she insisted on coming along, although letting her join us on the
Learo Dochais
was out of the question.”
Edie suddenly felt a whole lot more optimistic. Cat was out there, close by, and apparently itching to help.
“Can I talk to her?”
“I’ll arrange it.”
Edie felt the need to defend her in front of Valari, who had obviously experienced a personality conflict with Cat. “She’ll be useful on the Fringe. She has contacts.”
“So do we,” Valari said bluntly.
“What Edie means,” Finn said, “is that we have valuable information we need to get to the Fringe. We need the Fringers to trust us. Cat can help.”
“Well, now I’m curious.” Valari exchanged a look with Corinth. “Exactly what are you talking about?”
“Meet us at the main lab on Deck B, oh-two-hundred tonight,” Finn said. “We’ll show you.”
Edie sat with Finn at a tiny table in the mess. Valari and Corinth sat some distance away, eating with a bunch of meckies, not wanting anyone to connect them with Finn, at least not for now. Edie had waited until this moment to tell Finn, knowing that doing so in a public place would help her keep her cool. She needed him to take her seriously. If she fell apart, he might believe she was overreacting.
“Lukas is dead.” Her voice shook, but only a little and it was mostly from anger. “I think Natesa had him killed—poisoned his meds or something.”
Finn swallowed a mouthful of soup. “What? Why?”
“To remind me that she controls my life.” The lump in her throat made talking difficult. “She must’ve tagged my external comms. Maybe even listened in. In any case, she knew I spoke with him. She does that. She takes away the things I care about.”
“Maybe she just didn’t like what he told you. She didn’t want you to know the Crib’s secrets.”
Edie stared at her untouched food, feeling herself drowning in a sudden wave of despair. She waited for it to pass. “Natesa will kill you, too. An accident with the leash or…something.”
“Let her try.” Damn his belief in his own invincibility. They’d butted heads over this before. “Listen,” he said with less heat, “maybe Corinth knows a way to cut the leash. Maybe he knows someone on the Fringe who can, once we’re free.”
“What if Natesa gets there first?”
“If she values your cooperation, she has too much to lose by killing me now.”
“She killed Lukas!”
“You don’t know that for sure. I’ll bet she’s counting on plausible deniability.” He watched her for a moment. “Edie, we
will
beat them. We’ll get out of here and we’ll be fine.”
She nodded, trying to look encouraged by his words. Trying to
feel
encouraged, instead of sick with worry.
Edie spent the evening working through a sim of what she needed to do that night in the lab. She’d already arranged with Galeon to meet them there. A couple of whispered words in the classroom, a quick smile and a wink in return, and the next phase of Galeon’s “top secret mission” was under way.
And her guilty conscience was back to haunt her. She was using the boy. The consequences for him if they were caught would be incomparably minor in comparison to the consequences for her and Finn, of course. Especially with Natesa looking for any excuse to be rid of Finn. What could the Crib do to a seven-year-old boy who’d been duped by treasonous adults?
Still, Galeon might not see it that way.
She found Finn sitting on the floor in his room, leaning against the couch and fiddling with something. On the table was an assortment of junk—tiny pieces of tubing and wiring and broken bits of plaz.
“What’s all this?”
As she went over to him, she saw he was twisting wire. On one corner of the table were four finished pieces. Edie recognized the size and shape. She picked one up.
“Are these for Pegasaw?”
“Yeah. Figured I’d make the kid a real set.”
Edie examined the pegs. They were identically shaped, and set into the top of each was a nub of red plaz.
“How many do you have to make?”
“For a full set—ten red, ten black. And the board.”
“Where did you get all this stuff?”
“Around. It’s just junk.”
Edie sat down beside him to watch, fascinated. He used his fingers to warm the wire before twisting it into a peg, set the red stone in the top and secured it with a final loop of wire. Then he carefully pressed the peg into shape to exactly match the others.
“I hope he appreciates it,” Edie said. “Maybe he prefers the holoviz.”
Finn smiled without looking up. “Then I’ll have to teach you how to play.”
Edie couldn’t take her eyes off his strong and sure hands. The news about Lukas had gnawed at her all afternoon. It was good to focus on something else, something so mundane—a reminder of how life was supposed to be. Watching Finn, she wondered if he craved the same sense of normalcy to balance their strange and stressful lives. In any case, she understood this aspect of him—that he liked to keep busy, even on a meaningless project like this.
“We need to be at the labs in a few minutes.”
“Okay.” He started clearing up the bits.
“I’m glad you’re making him a gift. Maybe it makes up for what we’re making him do.”
A frown flickered across Finn’s face. “You make it sound like we’re corrupting him. He doesn’t understand what he’s doing.”
“One day he might. If he grows up to be a loyal citizen, what will he think of the fact that he committed treachery?”
“If your life with the Crib is any indication, he’s got all kinds of disillusionment in store for him—even without our help.”
Still, she hated the idea of Galeon becoming disillusioned with Finn, in particular.
“Is there any chance…” She wasn’t sure if she dared ask the question, but he looked at her expectantly. She had to ask. “Any chance your friends would agree to rescuing the children as well?”
Finn’s mouth compressed ever so slightly. It made Edie think he’d bitten back what he was going to say. Instead, he asked, “What makes you so sure they need rescuing?”
“Because I’d have wanted to be rescued at age ten if I’d known what my life would become.”
“The kids are fine, Edie.”
“Pris isn’t fine—she’s in a coma!” Her voice rose, louder than she’d intended. “Galeon’s life is reduced to crawling around the ship at night for fun—”
“Wait—who?”
For a moment, Edie had forgotten she’d never told Finn about Pris. “She’s the cypherteck they used to torture you.”
That got his attention. “They used a
kid
?”
“That’s what they do, Finn. They’ll use them any way they want to. They can justify anything when they claim the future of humanity is at stake.”
Finn jammed the pegs he’d made into a tiny pouch that he slipped in his pocket. “Can we ask Valari and Corinth to put themselves at risk abducting these kids on the grounds that you don’t like how they’re being raised?” She wondered if he was playing devil’s advocate. “Anyway, how do you propose to grab a kid in a coma without anyone noticing?”
“I haven’t thought it through completely, I admit,” Edie said. “Let’s talk about this another time.” She’d planted the idea in his head. Maybe he needed time to mull it over. “So what about these Saeth—do you trust them? With our secret, I mean.”
“Yes, absolutely.”
She wanted to ask about Valari—wanted to ask
something
about Valari. What the woman had meant to him, what she meant to him now. How exactly to put that into words? She
had no right to delve into his past and his feelings when their own relationship was barely half formed. In any case, he was not a man who talked freely about such things.
They headed for the lower decks. A crew member in casual clothes joined them in the lift, nodding a greeting. He got out on Deck C, to Edie’s relief. Finn stared at the lift door as it closed, his eyes unfocused. The lift ascended.
“You seem distracted,” she said.
He snapped his attention to her, hesitated a few seconds, then said, “No, it’s nothing. Not compared to what you’re going through right now.”
“What is it, Finn?”
“I guess I never expected to see her again.” His lips quirked in a quick grin. “I must be in shock.”
So, he was thinking about Valari. Edie’s stomach sank but she rallied a brave face. “In shock? I thought you loved her.”
He gave her a strange look. “I never said that.”
“Did you love her?” May as well find out.
“I was nineteen years old and infatuated. She made me feel…Well, it doesn’t matter. I was a stupid kid and it took me a long time to realize that I was just one of many similarly stupid kids.”
“Do you feel manipulated?”
“Not exactly. I agreed with her ideals regardless of our relationship. Through her I found the Saeth. Something to fight for that went beyond the politics of individual worlds.”
His low tone and refusal to meet her eyes told Edie he didn’t want to talk about it further. Fair enough. Despite Edie’s burning curiosity, any personal history between Valari and Finn wasn’t her business.
But this wasn’t just personal. She sensed the lure of his wartime comrades pulling him away from her. What if the leash was the only thing holding him at her side?
By the time Valari and Corinth showed up at the lab, Galeon had long since returned to his dorm, following two more rounds of Pegasaw with Finn. Edie explained the boy’s in
volvement, assuring them he could be trusted thanks to his friendship—more like hero worship—with Finn.
