A corner of his mouth twitched slightly: the shadow of a smile.
“Not that I’m ever going to admit to you,” he told her. “So when do we wake up Sleeping Beauty?”
The hunger for competition is an intrinsic part of human nature. We can no more be rid of it than we can rid ourselves of the desire to eat, to procreate, or to leave our mark upon posterity . . . for in the eyes of Nature, competition is linked to all those things.
Give this instinct proper outlet, and it can nourish the spirit.
Attempt to deny it, and it can destroy worlds.
KOJO SACHI
The Darkness Within
HARMONY NODE
INSHIP: ARTEMIS
IVAR LOOKED better than he had a day ago, though Micah had to admit that was not a very high bar. Still, the man had gone from almost dead to probably going to live long enough to talk to us, and that was a definite upgrade.
He and Ru were armed now, with charge pistols from the hidden armory, small enough weapons to be hidden in their pockets. Just in case, Ru said. Micah had never carried a real weapon before, and the weight of the gun was a sobering reminder of just how real the stakes were here. But what the hell. In the last couple of days he’d watched his ship explode, been stranded in deep space without life support, been trapped in a decrepit space station run by crazy people, and wrestled with delusions so real he still had nightmares about them. The thought of facing physical danger wasn’t as alien to him as it had once been. There was even a small part of him—a very small part—that found the concept exciting. When in this strange journey had he ceased to be a mere game designer—orchestrator of wasted time, purveyor of faux fear—and become the kind of person who found the thought of real danger enticing? The change was both exhilarating and unnerving.
The medpod had cleaned Ivar up, stripping away crusted blood and dirt and sweat to reveal a body crisscrossed with scars. The puckered flesh of badly healed burns distorted some of his tattoos, and gnarled white scars sliced across other tattoos like bolts of lightning. There were medical treatments that could have diminished those scars, Micah knew, but Ivar clearly hadn’t sought them out. Had he lacked the opportunity, or the desire? Status among the scavs was rumored to be fiercely competitive and constantly shifting; might Ivar have believed that it would enhance his social standing to bear the marks of so many violent confrontations? The idea was intriguing, and he logged it in the back of his mind for future reference.
“There are powerful factions that dominate the black market,” he had told Ru. “If he’s connected to one of them, his actions will reflect back on it. There would be consequences for him breaking his word to us, or refusing to acknowledge a valid debt.”
“And if not?”
He shook his head. “Then there’s no guarantee of anything.”
“I didn’t realize you were an expert on scavs.”
“I did research for a project once. Mostly gathering legends and rumors for inspiration, but that particular detail was mentioned by several sources, so there’s probably some truth behind it. Don’t know if the factions are family-based, though it seems likely. Families, tribes, clans . . . it’s how humans organize themselves.”
“Any other detail you think had truth behind it?”
“Yeah. Status. Big deal. Bring back a good haul, pull off an impressive heist, and you’ll sit high and proud in the scavenger pecking order. That matters to them. Or so say the rumors.” He paused. “Of course, all that’s only relevant if he really is a scav. If you guessed wrong about that—”
“Then we’re shooting blind.”
Now . . . there the man was, lying before them, and the images inked on his body would probably tell them everything they needed to know about him, if Micah knew how to read them.
“You ready?” Ru asked.
“As much as I’ll ever be.”
She had brought a thin robe from the supply closet, and she laid it across Ivar’s loins as a token modesty. Then she reached over to the medpod’s control panel and initiated shutdown. The pod buzzed softly for a moment, then the various leads attached to Ivar began to withdraw from his flesh. The mattress that had been cradling his body returned to its base position, flat beneath him. A catheter slithered out from under his loin cover, serpent-like, and was sucked back into its storage slot. Last to go was the injection gun pressed against his neck; there was the sound of a final spurt as a stimulant was shot into his veins to counteract his sedation, and then it, too, withdrew to its storage position.
When all the leads were out of the way, Ru pulled several restraining straps across Ivar’s body and clipped them into place. In his last waking moments he’d been fighting for his life, she explained to Micah, and there was a real danger that when he came to he would think himself still in that battle, and strike out at whoever was nearest to him. Strapping him down for those first few minutes would keep him from hurting anyone, including himself.
The last strap locked into place just in time. Ivar’s eyes twitched, and he began to gasp for breath. Suddenly his whole body tensed, muscles all contracting at once. It looked painful. His eyes shot open, and a chaos of emotions roiled in their depths: pain, fury, fear. He began to struggle against his restraints—blindly, wildly, like a trapped animal—and Micah wondered if maybe the blow to his skull had damaged his brain beyond repair. But finally the struggles subsided, and his body relaxed. He drew in a deep breath, then another one, then started coughing. Ru unsnapped the restraint straps and he turned over on his side, fighting to clear his lungs. After the fit passed he looked up at her, then at Micah, then at his surroundings. “This place is too damned clean to be Hell,” he muttered hoarsely, “and I’m sure I’m not cleared for the other place. Where am I?”
“Still alive,” Ru told him. “On my ship. It was touch and go for a while.”
He was running his hands over his body, as if not quite believing it was whole. What must it be like, Micah wondered, to believe one was dying, but then wake up later, still among the living? As Ivar tried to sit up Ru offered a hand to assist, but he waved her off. Gritting his teeth, he slowly managed to pull himself upright. He hates to look weak, Micah noted. “Please tell me we’re off Shenshido.”
“Far away from it,” Ru assured him. “With no one and nothing following us.”
“Thank the fucking gods.” He looked at Micah. “Who’s this? Your pilot?”
“Among other duties. Anthony Bester, meet Ivar . . . I’m sorry, is there a last name?”
“Ivar’s fine.” Did the evasion mean he had no family, or had one and wished to keep it secret? His expression offered no clue. “I thought for sure they’d killed me.” He looked up at Ru. “You saved my life.”