Ember Read Online Free PDF Page B

Then nothing?”
    Liao took a black cigarette out of his pack and lit it. The wind made the end flare bright red as he took a drag.
    â€œHeng said no word at all from Ling,” he said. “Someone above him must have stepped in.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWho knows?” Liao said. “Make sure their name gets attached to it? Take credit?”
    â€œAre you serious?”
    He made a face. “I don’t know why. Who knows? They tell me to go, and I go.”
    I looked out over the rail.
    â€œThere’s innocent people in there,” I said.
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œThey’re there.”
    â€œYeah, well, you shouldn’t be messing around on the brain band. You pick up any node it’ll just belong to a scrapper. You’ll just warn them we’re here.”
    â€œI’ll be careful.”
    Liao wrinkled his forehead, and let a short laugh out through his nose.
    â€œYou’re pushing it, you know?”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œCommand says stay put and wait.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œYou ever been inside the rim?” he asked.
    I shook my head. “You?”
    â€œTwice. These places are dangerous on many levels, Shao. You could get killed in the rim before you ever even find the place. You could never find the place, and get lost in there and never get out. Once you get in, these guys are heavily armed psychos creeping around in abandoned factories that half the time are ready to collapse on your head if you’re not careful. It doesn’t pay to rush in.”
    â€œWe’ve been watching the site for two days.”
    â€œYou border zone guys probably just stormed in, huh?”
    â€œNot exactly,” I said, and sighed. There had been plenty of waiting there, too. “At least it’s warm here.”
    â€œI heard it snows up there.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œHow do they not freeze?”
    â€œThey have power in Lobnya, off and on. If they lose it and they can’t get sterno, they burn furniture.”
    â€œAre you serious?”
    I nodded.
    â€œWhat do they eat?”
    â€œThey’re on the fringe, so their feedlots got carved up by toughs from the splinter states to the north along with most of their fuel and heavy weapons. If they can get government rations they eat those, or if they can’t they scrounge for anything left behind by the refugees that got out before the border closed. Lots of them starve.”
    â€œDamn.”
    â€œIf they get desperate enough, they find one of our barricades to try and get food.”
    â€œSounds like a form of suicide,” Liao said.
    â€œYou get hungry enough, what are you going to do?”
    Liao gestured toward the closest graviton lens, one of the hulks that sat at regular intervals around the wall, pointing in toward the haan ship.
    â€œYou ever think we should just trigger the damn things?” he asked.
    â€œWhat, wipe out the haan?”
    â€œSeventy percent,” he said. “That’s a lot of food we send their way. With them gone, it could feed a lot of people. You think?”
    I looked to the huge five story orbs with trailing pipes and cables at the back of each. They always made me think of eyeballs with hanging nerves. Their lenses pointed in at the haan ship. If they were ever all activated, the focused graviton fields would pass right through the haan force field and collapse their ship into a dense blob of slag no bigger than an aircar. Though really, the failsafe remained in place mainly for the purpose of keeping the protesters comfortable. Neither Hwong, nor his superiors, had any intention of harming the haan and stopping that flow of technology.
    â€œI think without the haan and their tech, there’d be less food and it would be controlled by an elite few. Most people would just starve anyway.”
    He laughed. “You’re a cynic.”
    â€œHave you seen the updated thermals?” I asked him.
    Liao’s smile