Neither of us needed to speak his name. Harmon. Close enough to Allison to get her codes, desperate to keep his place close to her, and he always did massive recording blocks for his poetry shows.
“Soul of the Void, this is unfair,” I grumbled, lifting Molly from my lap and standing. She wriggled delightfully until I set her down. “I wish more than anything I could stay here with you, but there is no time to lose. If we can prove his guilt, we can keep him out of the way when the Prytheen attack. I do not want him free to sabotage our defenses.”
And with that, I rushed from the room, seeking Studio Two.
The shouting led me there. Allison wasn’t shouting, she spoke clear and direct. Harmon, though, Harmon bellowed wildly, impossible for my grasp of human language to follow. Both fell silent as we rounded the corner, turning to look at us.
“Excuse me,” I said as I walked toward the doorway. Harmon snorted and crossed his arms. A grin plucked at my lips and I didn’t slow down.
Harmon was big for a human. He was used to shoving people aside easily, but that had been before he met the Prytheen. Not even bothering to shove him aside, I walked through the door.
It’s a credit to his bravery that Harmon didn’t stand aside. It’s less flattering to his intelligence, though. Big as he was, he weighed less than I did and more of his weight was fat. My chest struck his, and he bounced back, tumbling to the floor and shouting at me.
I tuned him out, ignored Allison’s questions too, and searched the room. There wasn’t much in it, just a desk with an audio editor program floating above it, a swivel chair that sagged to one side, and a shelf of books. I ignored them all, focusing on the soundproofed walls.
There. A panel didn’t quite match up with its neighbors, and it came away freely when I pulled at its edge. The cavity behind it was like a miniature treasure trove, and the humans gasped as I tugged it out into view. Loops of cable, some tools, a datastore…
“He’s been trading them to the Prytheen,” Molly explained to Allison. Other humans were gathering now, angry murmurs breaking out, and I heard the nerves in Harmon’s voice as he tried to twist the truth and escape blame.
“Preposterous. I have done nothing of the sort,” he blustered. “I didn’t know that hiding place was there, but he had no trouble finding it. It’s probably his stash of stolen goods, which he trades to his own people.”
“Right,” Molly said, and I could imagine her eye roll without needing to look. “Karnac’s not been here long enough to be the ghost, and some of that stuff went missing months before he arrived. What, were you holding out for a better price for the datastore?”
“How dare you accuse me, young lady,” Harmon began, volume rising with each word. He got no further before I crossed the studio and grabbed him by the throat. He spluttered and choked and fell silent.
“Prytheen gems and jewelry,” I said, holding up a padded box in my free hand. “He’s been selling to your enemies, Allison.”
“Not… true…” Harmon choked out. Molly and Allison looked inside the jewelry case and gasped at what they saw. Allison turned to glare at him, and he slumped in my grip.
“Did it… for you,” he tried now. I shook my head and let go of him, wiping my hand clean on the padded wall. Harmon sucked a deep breath in before continuing, his voice a little rougher now. “Allison, you must believe me, I did it for you. Once Vindar is in charge, it will be much easier for us if we helped him. And he will win, with or without us.”
“Oh?” Allison’s sweet voice dripped venom. “And here I thought you were an honorable man, a brave soul — but no, you’re happy enough to sell us out for gems and for a chance to be, what, a court poet to the new Alpha? I suppose I can see that, but it’s a disappointment.”
“I have risked everything for you.”
“You didn’t have the guts to talk to me about this first. You knew I’d say no, so you didn’t ask. Don’t hide behind that feeble excuse.”
Molly cleared her throat and interjected. “This is all important, but it isn’t urgent. Right now, our biggest issue is that Vindar will be here sooner or later and we need to prepare. So what can you tell us, Harmon?”
The big human glared around at us, but he knew we’d caught him. He looked down, collapsing in on himself as he admitted defeat. “Fine. They have at least a dozen warriors, not counting Vindar himself. All well-armed. And they’ll be here with the storm. Look, let me go and I’ll speak on our behalf. They want a working vid broadcasting system, that’s all, they’d rather not hurt any of you — of us.”
“How did you fool me about the storms?” Allison demanded.
“Oh, that. Darling, you made it too easy for me to find your passwords, and I cobbled together a program that would alter the data you get from the other colony pods. Rather clever, I thought.”
Allison took one step forward and slapped him. The hard crack of her skin on his filled the studio and Harmon’s head rocked back, a red palm print rising on his cheek.
“We could have died,” she hissed, too angry to shout. “Two of us almost did. All so your alien friends would have a storm to attack under?”
“I…” Harmon swallowed and tried again. “I wanted to keep things off balance, and I had no way of knowing how strong the storm would be. Look, look, we can work something out here, I know the Alpha…”
His sniveling desperation made my fists itch. Worse was the fact that he’d committed this treason without caring about the people who’d be hurt. He could have killed Molly and didn’t care. Harmon was still talking, but I didn’t hear him over the sound of my pulse thumping in my ears.
“Enough,” I growled. My fist caught Harmon under the chin, lifting him off his feet. He was unconscious before he hit the ground. “His worthless words won’t help us. We must prepare to fight.”
13 Molly
We wouldn’t have long. Allison, ignoring the tampered data and working with what she saw for herself, estimated that the storm would hit in just a couple of hours, and Karnac thought the attack would come on the leading edge of that.
“They will watch the broadcast, so we can bring them in early,” he said. “As soon as there’s any change to the programming, any warning to the Joint Colony, they will attack at once. But if we change nothing, they’ll wait till the storm hits and try to take us out before we can raise the alarm.
“Why do they even care about us?” Zeng Ru asked. Handsome, rugged, muscular, he looked like the action hero to save us all. Unlike some of his fans, he knew the difference between an actor and the real thing well enough that the coming fight terrified him. “I mean they don’t need the station, they can just hit the colony, right?”
Alf chuckled and shook his head. “There is a reason that revolutions target the radio and tv stations. Think of all the Prytheen down there, some of whom might support a change in leadership. If they can broadcast from here, their numbers grow — and with them, their chances of winning.”
Zeng nodded unhappily, and we went to work. Dragging heavy equipment to every door and window, we left only a few useable. That meant that we only needed to defend those, but it also trapped us. Well, running away into the storm would kill us, anyway.