Prophets

roaring, not quite as loud as the aircraft engines in the distance.

Kugara, running blind, tripped on a dead branch. Nickolai stepped forward and caught her before she fell face-first into the dirt.

“Damn Mosasa,” she shouted into his chest. “You’re supposed to check those things periodically!”

The air choked with acrid smoke as the light died, finally sputtering out. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

She pushed away from him. “I’m fine.” She turned around and stepped over to the smoldering crater where the flare gun had landed. She stared at the remains of the gun. The barrel was still recognizable, but the mouth was black, fading to a series of rainbows back toward where the handgrip and the trigger used to be. Those parts had been synthetic, and were melted where they hadn’t burned away completely.

The smell of it made his nose itch. His eyes watered, but while he expected his eyes to itch, he realized he didn’t feel anything at all. Like my arm . . .

“Well, that’s a lost cause,” she said. She looked up at the wisps of smoke trailing up through the trees. “And if they see that, they’re better spotters than I’ve seen. Back to Plan A.”

Kugara picked up the pack she dropped, looked at her compass, and resumed the walk to the outpost. He followed. If luck and the terrain was with them, they’d reach it within the hour.

Forty-five minutes after leaving the smoldering remnants of the flare gun, they found the first sign of civilization. About five hundred meters from their destination, they faced a ten-meter-high fence. The fence was shiny new and dotted with signs saying, “Restricted/Warning/No Admittance.”

Kugara looked at the signs and said, “I guess they speak English here. Dr. Pak will be disappointed.”

Nickolai looked up at the top of the fence. Small black spheres topped fence posts, sign of either a stun field or surveillance devices. Probably both.

Kugara stepped back from the fence and looked around. “Left or right?”

“Most of the buildings were clustered on the eastern end.” He pointed.

“Right it is, then.”

After walking a minute or so, Nickolai said, “This is recent.”

“I noticed. Those trees are still bleeding whatever they use for sap where they cut the overhangs.”

“What are they protecting?”

“You know, I don’t really give a shit. We obey the signage and get the guards to call in the cavalry.”

Nickolai looked through the fence as they walked, but the woods were still too dense for him to see much of anything on the other side. “Then what?”

“What?”

“What do we do then?”

She spun around. “You know what I want? I want you to shut up.” She turned and marched off along the fence. Nickolai followed without asking any more questions.

Not vocally, anyway.

The fact was they were stranded nearly a hundred light-years away from Bakunin. The Eclipse was most likely destroyed, along with their nominal employer. Nickolai doubted that a far-flung colony like this would be willing to expend the time and resources to return them—if the Fallen here were even willing to deal with a nonhuman like him. . . .

Dying would have been simpler.

There was a gate only a few hundred meters farther along the fence. It opened to a rough road that was little more than a muddy track. There were signs of a couple of heavy tracked vehicles traveling this way not too long ago. The weight of them had left trenches six to ten centimeters deep in the earth. He saw some sign of foot traffic around the gate, but none that went more than ten meters away from the fence. All of the tracks were the club- shaped boots of the Fallen.

A guard shack sat about five meters inside the fence, to their right. The gate itself was designed to slide aside for the large traffic on the road. Inside the sliding gate was a smaller human-sized doorway, hanging open.