“One last reminder: Keep quiet about this whole thing,” Gaylen said, standing in the airlock door.

“Yes,” Herdis said. The woman had her rifle and her little medical bag. The rest of her necessities were now stored at the hotel.

“But I can still get into cars with strangers, right?” Ayna said, slightly annoyed at yet another reminder.

“Do as you like,” Gaylen said without missing a beat. “But don’t throw the ship’s name around either. The port authorities know it, of course, but why take chances? If we’re not back in twenty-five days you should maybe start looking into other flights off-planet. And if we’re not back in thirty-five you should probably take one.”

“You’re holding much of our money, so you’d damn well better come back,” Ayna added.

“Don’t go back into thieving until you’re reasonably sure we’re gone,” Gaylen replied with some humour. “Herdis, you better watch her.”

“I’ll spank her if I have to,” the medic replied with exaggerated seriousness.

“You two are no fun,” Ayna said.

“We’ll see you guys,” Jaquan said. “Hopefully a whole lot richer.”

Kiris nodded at them evenly, not smiling but looking happy in her own way.

Gaylen closed the airlock, and there was nothing for the trio to wait around for. They walked away from the port and soon heard the whine of the Addax taking off. Ayna gazed skywards to catch a glimpse of it before it vanished into the glare.

Dulel’s rented vehicle was outside of the hotel, as were his hired workers and boxes of university-owned equipment. There were fourteen men, mostly on the younger side, and by the time Ayna and the others arrived they were finishing with loading the boxes and provisions on board. It was a plain, wheeled vehicle with an open carrying platform. It was the kind of simple, rugged, easy to maintain mass-production that one tended to see in places like this. The only notable thing was an odd contraption on the front that clearly had been custom added.

“Ah, you’re here,” Dulel said from on top of the platform. “Do you have everything you need?”

“For being paid to stand around?” Ayna asked. “Why, yes we do.”

“Good. Hop on.”

One of the labourers got behind the controls while Ayna and the others joined the rest on the platform. Small seats could be unfolded and the group sat together in a row. The engine started up and they were off.

The labourers chatted between themselves, giving Ayna a few lingering looks. She tried conversing, but cycling through the languages she understood at least a little yielded only apologetic shrugs. Bers had more luck; evidently the local language was related to one of his.

She left the scarred, greying weirdo to chat with the boys with the tools, Dulel to stare contemplatively at nothing, and Herdis to gaze around like the tourist she was. Ayna did her own gazing as they exited the town. Another, smaller vehicle awaited them with several more workers, and waited until they were ahead to follow.

The growth was an interesting sight. Ayna had heard the word “mutoki” being used for it, although she didn’t know if it referred to the quasi-forest in general or the dominant plant in particular. The rough road soon took them up into the plains and she was able to observe it up close, on either side of the vehicle.

Even so it was hard to tell where an individual plant began and another ended. Perhaps they weren’t individual, like how there weren’t individual drops in an ocean. Maybe it was all one vast life form, stretching over large swaths of the planet. Not a single one of the greenish-brown tendrils was straight. They all curved and snaked, the ends overhanging the road looking like grasping fingers.

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Ayna could well understand how people would get lost here. She was also reminded of how one’s home was never impressive, because the labourers simply continued to chat among themselves without paying the growth any heed. Except that as they went deeper into it the driver activated the contraption on the front.

A set of blades sprang out, cutting through any bits of vegetation that had grown up through or across the road. It was a pretty neat display, but Ayna didn’t get to enjoy it for very long before the driver took them to the left and up a modest incline. The vehicle slowed down a lot, giving the blades time to cut through far more obstructions. Ayna couldn’t tell if their path had ever been an actual road, but it seemed pretty clear that someone else had cut through here not that long ago. Presumably it tied in with why Dulel even knew about this place.

After the incline came a bit of a flat area and soon enough a shallow valley within it. Their slow progress led to the centre of it, where the driver stopped. The growth was quite a bit smaller and more spaced out around here, and Ayna noticed a different tone to the earth.

The labourers hopped off and Dulel oversaw the unloading of his equipment. Bers helped, Herdis climbed on top of a boulder and took the surrounding landscape in with the scope of her rifle, and Ayna took in the more immediate area.

At a distance she would have mistaken the ruins for a small hill. They were considerably wider than they were tall, and the elements had had centuries, at least, to cover them with vegetation and dirt. And from what she’d gathered from Dulel this was simply an entrance area.

The historian began unpacking and the labourers got to work. They went at the front of the ruins with blades, skilfully cutting away growth.

“I see a large stone building in the distance,” Herdis said from her boulder.

Ayna turned to the west. The woman seemed to be looking beyond the valley, but with the sun up in the sky a Dwyyk’s eyes could only see so far.

“Do you know anything about it?” Herdis asked Dulel.

“Oh, those are other ruins,” Dulel said dismissively. “Pretty similar to this, but more elevated. It’s been exposed to people and the elements for ages. This...”

He tapped his foot on the dark dirt beneath their feet, and indicated the ruins closer at hand.

“This was hidden by silt long ago, before this part of the world dried up. This still has secrets to reveal.”

“Can I see?” Ayan asked as she joined Herdis on the boulder.

The woman pointed to the horizon before handing her the rifle.

“Finger off the trigger,” she reminded her before releasing it.

“I’m not actually a child, you know,” Ayna reminded her in turn, and kept her hand well away from the trigger.

There was indeed an elevated area not that far from the valley. And on top of it sat a heavily weathered stone building, or perhaps more of a courtyard, far larger than the visible part of Dulel’s little dig.

“Neat,” she said as she returned the weapon. “Do you want to play tourist? Once we’re done with all of this?”

“I heard something about them being dangerous,” Dulel said without looking away from a row of weird gadgets. “The locals don’t go there.”

“Makes sense,” Herdis said. “It’s not like they’ve been maintained.”

“A flyover should still be safe enough, though,” Ayna said. “Once the Addax comes back.”

“We can consider it.”

Herdis jumped down onto the ground.

“But unless someone needs me I’m going to do a sweep of the area and get a real feel for the terrain.”

She glanced at Bers. The man was helping clear away the growth with his double-handed keremak axe. It was massive overkill, but kind of funny to see.

“I’m going to walk the rim of the valley,” the woman added. “I can keep an eye on things with the scope. Ayna, you just stay in the vicinity. Be useful any way you can.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Ayna replied jokingly.

Herdis walked off, and Ayna stood around for a bit before strolling over to Dulen.

“So... what are you going to do once you’re down there? Aren’t the locals going to object if you just start walking off with stuff?”

“Oh, the university doesn’t let us just take things from inhabited worlds,” Dulel said. “Not anymore. This is about cataloguing. Recording and confirming that on a particular date someone did indeed stand within these walls and take them in. This is about measuring age, and bringing back the best data that modern science can produce. And then I’ll get to come back with a team and do it properly, and thoroughly, throughout the entire site.”

Ayna nodded, feeling better. Lifting the odd luxury item or a few meal’s worth of bills from someone’s pockets really wasn’t the big deal people made it out to be, but running off with cultural artefacts felt dirtier somehow.

The historian started setting up measurement tools and Ayna started wandering around. Once she’d taken in everything there was to see she did it again. And then again.

Being a hired guard was kind of boring.