“I suppose that makes sense,” she said.
There was other talk after that. Small talk, empty talk, meaningless social repartée that he fielded automatically. His mind was no longer in the conversation. It was not on Harmony at all. He was remembering a trip he had taken two years prior, when he’d accepted an invitation from Tridac Enterprises to check out the damage that had been done to Shenshido Station. Scavs had literally torn the place apart, making it hard to even find a place to dock. If the station had belonged to him he’d probably have stripped it down for raw materials, but the man from Tridac (what was his name again, Khatry something? Gatry?) saw potential in it. Whatever. Corporate business was of little concern to Dresden.
It was while he was on the observation deck of the inner ring that he’d had a vision. He could see the coming Festival in his mind’s eye, could hear its music, could feel its myriad rhythms pulsing in his veins. And he could see a great wave of data gathering, as every man, woman, and child on the station sent outgoing messages at the same time—more data than Harmony’s network could possibly handle. Would it crash, and take all connectivity with it? Might the outernet itself fail, casting Harmony Station into digital darkness? In his vision he saw himself ordering a change in data protocols as the great wave bore down on him, opening the digital floodgates so it could thunder through.
He had understood, in that moment, what was required to keep Harmony functioning. And in the months that followed, as plans for the Harvest Festival took shape, that vision had remained clear in his mind. Others might question its wisdom—indeed they did!—but he had seen the truth, as clearly as he was now seeing this room that surrounded him. And they would see it, too. The day would come when the floodgates would open, and they would understand why this had been necessary. His name would be praised, his foresight would be celebrated, and Terran corporations seeking to establish themselves in the outworlds would choose Harmony Node for their headquarters.
He had seen a vision of that too, while on Shenshido.
Soon, he told himself, as he traded meaningless pleasantries with his rival. Soon they will all understand.
Those territorial instincts which we so casually disown—blaming our animal origins for their existence, citing civilization as the cure—were never truly eradicated. We may repress them, deny them, redirect them into more acceptable channels, but they remain part of our nature, always awaiting the catalyst that will free them.
SANJAR RANIYA
The Shadow Within
HARMONY NODE
SHENSHIDO STATION
THEY OFFERED Ru weapons. Most were hand-held items of wood or salvaged plasteel, plus a few pipes and axes from Bio’s maintenance stores. Some of the sharper items were tipped in black poison—which she was warned not to touch—and others were studded with scalpel blades, glass fragments, anything that was small and sharp and could be embedded in wood. There were a few projectile weapons that looked like guns but fired sleek bolts—poisoned, of course. They weren’t accurate at a distance and couldn’t pierce heavy armor, so they seemed of limited value to her, but she took one anyway, just to have something that could function at range. Now that Ivar had taken her gun, the only weapons she had left were meant for hand-to-hand combat, and her goal was never to get that close to someone who wanted to kill her.
There were no charge weapons available. No explosives. No sonics. Though the bios (as she had come to call Zevi’s people) had tried to construct them from salvaged materials, none had passed the testing stage—which seemed strange even by the standards of Shenshido, where strangeness was commonplace. Why would such diverse designs all fail their tests? They had nothing in common save mechanical complexity, and if they worked they would be infinitely more effective than the primitive weapons everyone was carrying. What natural or unnatural phenomenon would cause them all to fail like that?
Add it to the list of things that didn’t make sense.
They also offered her armor made from slices of salvaged building material—mostly plasteel—layered over a base of heavy cloth. Normally her safeskin coat would have been protection enough, but she wasn’t sure if the beating it had taken earlier would affect its functioning, so she accepted a breast plate and a gorget, extra protection for her vital organs and her neck. They wouldn’t protect her from charge weapons, but from what Zevi told her, it didn’t sound like the enemy had those. Maybe their complex weapons failed testing also.
She tested her shock rod several times, for both snap extension and charge, but there seemed to be nothing wrong with it. Apparently only high-tech items that were created on Shenshido suffered random failure. Maybe these people just sucked at making weapons. She removed a collapsible knife from her boot and tucked it into a sheath pocket in her coat, and of course she had her rings on. Good enough for hand-to-hand combat.
The journey back to the world upstairs was more complicated than she expected. Zevi’s people had sealed off the transport tube months before when the “crazies” upstairs found it, which meant the raiding party had to use passages intended for other purposes. From the narrow stairs of an observation tower in Biome Four to a maintenance scaffold, to a series of ladders and service hatches and a crawl space above the sky-dome, they moved upward level by level, silent and focused. Eighteen people, plus Ivar and Ru. Hardly an ideal army.
Hopefully there would be no need to fight, Zevi had told her. But on a station where so many things went wrong, Ru wasn’t betting on it.
Ivar stayed close by her side, as he’d promised to. She was his ticket out of this hell, and he made it clear he was not letting her out of his sight. There were worse things than having a strong, well-armed man by her side, but she wondered how long he would stay there if he figured out that her ship was moored to the station.
Finally they came to the security hatch that would give them access to the upper levels of the station. They stopped for a moment, and Zevi’s second-in-command, an older man named Vestus, handed out dust masks and eye protection to everyone. No explanation was offered. When Ru looked to Ivar for enlightenment, he just shrugged and muttered, “Air quality might get bad.”
Then the hatch was unsealed, and as they climbed through it single file, the lights of the second level came on, revealing a clean, well-illuminated corridor. Not stark white like the part of the station where Ru had been before, but with walls of a pale blue-gray, accented with stripes of darker blue along the upper and lower edges. Equally spotless, of course. The lab levels were always spotless. Whatever cleaning bots served this station required no human master to guide them.
There was an identification code over the hatch, and Ru entered it into her mapping program. The station map appeared in her mind’s eye, and a moment later a red dot appeared on it, marking her position. The tension that had been coiled inside her eased ever so slightly. Now that she knew where she was, she could find her way around the station without assistance. Which meant she could head back to Engineering whenever she wanted. She minimized the map and kept it in view. Its presence was empowering.