Free The Rings of Haven by Ryk Brown Page B

will serve as an adequate guide in my absence, as this is not her first time on Haven.”
    “You don’t mind?” Nathan asked Jalea, not wanting to assume her assistance would be so forthcoming.
    “It would be my pleasure, Captain.” Jalea smiled, placing her hand on his forearm to lead him toward the street market.
    Vladimir watched as they strolled past him, a smirk on his face. He looked over at Jessica, who bore a suspicious look that somehow made Vladimir’s smirk magically disappear. Sensing the tension, Vladimir decided to follow Nathan and Jalea, along with Danik.
    “You two head back to the ship with Tobin,” Jessica ordered Enrique and Sergeant Weatherly. “I need you to handle security on board while I’m down here. Who knows how many of these workers you’re gonna have running around the flight deck. So keep your eyes open, and recruit anyone you need from the crew to help you. Do not let them beyond the flight deck, understood?”
    “No problem, Jess,” Enrique answered. “Come on, Sarge, let’s mount up,” he told him as he climbed into the vehicle.

- 3 -

    Nathan and Jalea strolled casually down the crowded promenade, with Jessica, Vladimir, and Danik close behind. The wide lane was paved with something similar to concrete, the exact composition of which seemed a bit rockier than what was widely used on Earth. There were vendor booths lining the streets, with small shops of varying types directly behind them. Some of the booths were independent of the shops, while others were merely extensions of the businesses behind them.
    The crowd was thick with all manner of people, some buyers and some sellers. There were women shopping for their families, with men standing by their sides. There were crews from various ships, all looking to buy needed goods and services. They all had the same, impoverished look about them, as if they had always been forced to make do with not enough.
    Nathan had grown up in a family of means. They had been one of both wealth and power for as many generations as they could trace. His father’s father had been a prominent politician, as had his father before him. Nathan knew that it had been a point of contention between himself and his father. Like all good sons had done since the time of the great bio-digital plague, Nathan’s father had expected him to follow in his footsteps and serve in elected office. But the changes that the Data Ark had sparked back on Earth had made the concept of the family line-of-succession obsolete in most circles. Structured education had once again replaced long apprenticeships in all the industrialized nations on Earth. Nathan, having grown up in such an environment, had therefore felt little compulsion to continue the family trade. In fact, he had grown to despise everything about it.
    Not wanting to draw attention to himself, Nathan fought to control his excitement at all of the new sights, sounds, and smells he was experiencing. The setting, although familiar in its design and intent, was at the same time completely foreign to him. Despite the fact that most people spoke Angla, there was still a dizzying array of languages being spoken. Haven was a community of migrants who came and went with the work. Jalea had told him that less than ten percent of the population was actually born and raised on the little moon. Those that were rarely lived out their lives here. Instead, most sought escape to more prosperous worlds with the prospect of brighter futures.
    Every direction his eyes wandered they caught glimpses of the cultural diversity that was Haven. Of even greater fascination was that these people had come from different worlds—from different star systems . His world had only begun to regain a sense of global community a century ago when the Data Ark had been discovered. So the idea that such a thing could exist on an interstellar scale was truly amazing. It actually gave him hope for the future of humanity. They had known that humans