Children of Scarabaeus Read Online Free

in.”
    Edie’s mind was still fixated on the word depressurization . That meant…the cold vacuum of space. She shuddered and bit down on a dozen questions about safety and risks. She trusted that Finn knew what he was doing. She had to.
    “We have to be inside the ship before it hits nodespace.” He attached the tether to her belt and handed the end to Cat. “If something goes wrong, we can’t return to the tug because it’ll be on its way back to the station by then. Let’s keep an open comm line. No sudden moves.”
    “How long will the breathers last?” Edie asked.
    “The shields will die first—we’ve got maybe ten minutes. You ready?”
    She wasn’t, but she nodded.
    Cat depressurized the tug and Edie felt the buzz of her e-shield as it ramped up power to compensate. As Finn cycled the hatch, Cat leaned forward, her lips close to Edie’s ear.
    “Time to find out if your Saeth knows what he’s doing.”
    Finn slung the duffel bag over his shoulders like a backpack and climbed out of the hatch onto the stern of the Lichfield . He held out his hand to help Edie down. The weightlessness made her stomach flip. Behind her, Cat sealed the hatch.
    The long hull of the Lichfield rose up in front of Edie. From the corner of one eye she picked up the intermittent flashes from the node, signaling the departure of other ships.She didn’t dare turn to look. She watched Finn, and matched his movements by grabbing on to struts and pulling herself along. Holding on wasn’t a problem in zero-g. It was simply the terror of hanging in empty space that set in. Her heart raced, demanding more oxygen. Finn gave her a familiar look that told her to calm down. The breather provided a steady trickle of air into her lungs, but it didn’t feel like enough. Fighting back the feeling of suffocation, Edie concentrated on taking shallow, slow breaths.
    Hand over hand, the three of them climbed along the hull of the Lichfield . Finn seemed to know where he was going. Maybe he’d done this a hundred times before as a Saeth rebel. She told herself that and felt a little more confident. She turned her head in time to see the tug detach and head back to the station. Filling her view was the jump node, normally an invisible portal to nodespace. It was constantly active now as ships streamed out of the system.
    She was getting cold. The e-shield kept her body heat in, but it wasn’t completely efficient. A tinny beeping sound took her by surprise. She glanced down to see the warning light on her e-shield flashing. A fainter echo trailed the beep—someone else’s alarm reached her ears through the open comm line. She craned her neck and saw the light on Finn’s shield generator also flashing.
    Instinctively she moved her hand to her belt to double-check the readout. Inertia spun her entire body and she fell away from the cargo ship. Too panicked to even scream, Edie clawed for a handhold and instead felt something solid across her back. Finn had reached out to grab her shoulder, his shield melding with hers. He stopped her spin and she hit the hull. He pinned her against the vessel until she found the handholds again.
    “I said keep still .”
    “My shield…” she managed.
    “I know. You’ll make it.”
    Finn moved only one more step and stopped. He pulled a device no bigger than his finger from the duffel bag andattached it to the access panel directly above him. Where did he get all this stuff? Edie had been unaware of his activities while she was sick. During that time he and Cat must have been preparing for all this.
    He pulled back slightly as a puff of smoke shot out of the access panel’s handle. The panel blew open and the air inside evaporated into space.
    Finn reached down and hauled Edie up. As she clambered inside, he detached the tether. She lurched against the walls of a narrow airlock as the gravplating pulled on her. Scrambling inside as fast as she could, she heard Cat climb up behind her.
    Edie turned and