~ MACEL ~
The breeze that blew hard against his face was an alien breeze. It felt no different to the homely breezes of Belaboras, which swept over the high glades and moaned in the pine forests. But it was different. Macel knew it. No man before him had ever felt this breeze. Nobody before today had ever had their skin buffeted by this wind. This was a virgin world, yet to be touched by the ravages of human history.
Those unspoilt days were over now. Twelve of them had landed late yesterday, stepping outside to the setting of an unfamiliar sun. They were the Advanced Party, pioneers among pioneers, come ahead of their peers to see what lay in store. In time the rest would follow. Before long, this would be a bustling colony just like any other. For now it was pure. Macel basked in the purity.
Even the water was beautiful. It seemed somehow clearer than the water at home, reflecting crystalline sparkles of sunlight. Like it was begging to be drunk.
“Just have a sip,” came a tired voice from behind him. He turned to see Adela Rice watching him, one eyebrow raised and her mouth curled into a smirk. Unruly strands of dark hair had been blown across her face by the breeze. “You’ve been side-eyeing that water for half an hour. Put us out of our misery.”
Next to her, Sam Preston—stocky, with hair and eyes alike dark—chuckled. “If it kills you, we’ll know it’s not safe to drink.”
Macel shook his head. “I’m thirsty. I can’t help that.” He pointed to the helmet he held in his right hand, an unwieldy thing—heavy, painted grey to match the outercoats of their uniforms, with a visor that seemed to be permanently fogged by his breath. “Three hours is way too long to have these things on. I swear they suck all the moisture directly out of my throat.”
“I’d rather be thirsty than dying on a foreign rock a billion miles from home because the air wasn’t safe to breathe,” said Delie. She was short and slender, with a square jaw and shrewd, deep-set eyes. And she had a point, Macel had to admit—a point she’d already made three times. Though that was because Macel had already complained about the helmets three times.
“Course, as it turns out, the air is safe to breathe,” Sam chimed in, running a hand through a scraggly beard. “So in the end all that sweating was for nothing.”
Delie jabbed Sam in the ribs. “It wasn’t for nothing, it was a safety precaution. You do understand the need for safety precautions, don’t you, Sam?”
Safety precautions had mandated that they make planetfall in great thick vacuum suits, pressurised and hooked up to air canisters. They were designed for zero-gravity environments. The presence of a normal amount of gravity only made them nigh on impossible to walk in, and Essegena’s gravity was unexpectedly normal. They’d been able to get the suits off fairly quickly, once Lieutenant Bennett was satisfied that they weren’t going to pop without them. Not soon enough. The grey-green serge of the field uniform could be a little itchy, but it was easily an improvement over a vacuum suit.
Every step he took, Macel could see that crystal water out of the corner of his eye. It looked so good, so refreshing. And he was so thirsty. They could at least have been allowed a flask or something. Lieutenant Bennett must have been violating at least a few inviolable Unity statutes with her conduct. If Macel collapsed out of dehydration, there’d be a report. Bennett would get the book thrown at her. It would serve the grumpy witch right.
“This place really is beautiful,” said Sam, overtaking Macel in just a few long strides, and spinning around with outstretched arms. “Reminds me of a holiday I took somewhere on... I want to say Opteris. Icewind, maybe? There was this beautiful cottage, all prettied up and turned into a cafeteria. Lovely place, begonias on the sills outside.” He caught Macel’s eye then, and winked at him. “They served some wonderful drinks there. The best colas and cordials and... and waters.”
Macel shook his head. “I hate you.”
Sam blew a mocking kiss through raptures of laughter. And that was the breaking point. Macel abruptly stopped walking and crouched down beside the stream, cupping his hands and scooping up as much water as he could. In the moment, he didn’t care if he got sick. Maybe he’d end up shitting his way into premature death. At least his throat wouldn’t be so damned dry. He brought his hands to his lips, water surging to escape between his fingers all the while, and poured it all into his mouth. As much as he could hold onto.
Oh, it was ecstasy. He let the water linger in his mouth for a while, swilling it around with his tongue to hydrate every corner. It didn’t taste like it would kill him. In fact, it tasted much the same as the water on every other planet.
He was still thirsty, though. One sip was never going to be enough. He took his helmet and pushed it down beneath the water, then brought it up again full. The visor was watertight; the full complement made it to his lips, and he took another long swig.
At once, he spat it out. It was salty.
“Careful with that,” said Delie, arms folded. “You’ve been sweating into that helmet all day.” Sam was having a ball, judging from his laughter. He was crouched down, a hand over his eyes, trying without success to suppress snorts. “Grow up, Sam,” said Delie, all haughty, “it isn’t that funny.”
“Oh, it absolutely is,” said Sam, regaining some of his composure. “Macel Donea, going against best practice for the first time in his life, and he winds up drinking his own sweat. You could not make that up.”
Delie withered him with a glare and shook her head. Tanis had been the master of such looks—pure disgust embodied in a grimace and a stare. Macel had hoped to say goodbye to his sister before the Eia set off, but she was away on her initiations. One of the others at the Temple had promised to pass on a message.
They’d followed the stream from the point it burst from the ground, a couple of hundred metres from the high plateau where they’d set up camp. That had been Delie’s idea. If they got lost, they just had to follow it back. Once they were at the stream’s source, the craft that had brought them down from the Eia to the surface was impossible to miss, a mass of painted steel at the crest of a grassy hill.
The stream carved a relentless path downwards, taking them past at least five different kinds of tree that Macel had never seen before. There were squat trees with thick leafy canopies, trees at least a dozen metres tall with almost no leaves at all, trees with rose-pink trunks and pale leaves. It was an arborist’s paradise.
A mile or so along, the stream began to widen into something resembling a river. The passing of millennia had allowed it to carve a sort of canyon down into the ground, bordered by walls of white and grey rock. A canopy of overhanging vegetation roofed the water. In the shade it was comfortably cool. Somewhere unseen, a bird was singing. Macel allowed himself a smile. This place wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was almost like home.
And let the Good Mother keep these good times going. The silent prayer was the only one he ever said, a habit from childhood. There was nobody up in the clouds waiting on the prayers of the people on ground—not the Mother, not the seventeen Gods, not anybody.
He’d had to learn that the hard way. His home as a boy was Cadéist—the Village, so its residents called it. Honour and faith were the lynchpins of society. But they were only lies the elders told to keep the village in check. They had to be. If the Mother were real, she’d have taken his sister into her bosom. But Tanis had been left to fend for herself. Four years ago she rode to join the maidens at the Temple of the Bells, for safe haven and the promise of two square meals a day. She still wrote, sometimes.
Macel had followed his sister into exile, out of choice. If Tanis was no longer welcome in the Village, Macel wanted nothing to do with it either. He’d found employment in Pattinsdale, just over the Merrowain Heights, with a fishmonger from the harbour. For a day spent gutting fish he got board for the night. And when the smell of fish had soaked into his very being, he signed up for a journey to the far breadth of space.
To the world they called Essegena.
Beneath the leafy ceiling, the gorge was dark, and it seemed almost to get darker with every step. “I miss the sun,” Delie muttered.
“You survived for six months in space,” Macel replied. “A few minutes more won’t kill you.”
“Says the man who drank alien water out of his own helmet.”
“We should probably start back,” said Sam, saving Macel from the need to think up another retort. “It’s getting dark, and Bennett will kick off if we’re too late. Besides, I don’t want to miss dinner.”
They reached the camp just as the sun was disappearing from view. The whole thing had been erected hastily on the plateau around the ship, which Lieutenant Bennett had decreed was the best place to set up camp—the sheer jutting rock face it was pressed against would act as a barrier to wind, and that was one less wall that needed building.
The ship itself was the second wall. Three of them had stayed behind today, turning two walls into four with the magic of tarpaulin and canvas sheets taken from the ship’s hold. They were pinned in place by heavy stones and makeshift tent-pegs fashioned from spare carabiners. There was no roof. Man’s only holdfast on Essegena was open for the stars to peer inside.
Despite this, the camp was unexpectedly cosy. Somebody had got a small fire going in the middle. The smoke rose in high pillars into the sky. A dozen beds had been fabricated from blankets, each surrounded by the unpacked contents of one of the Unity’s survival trunks. Not much came in a trunk—a flask, a small metal pan that doubled as a bowl, some basic medical gear, an extra pair of thick socks. Laid out nicely, they made the place look homely. Just as long as it didn’t rain.
“You’re the first ones back,” said Liz Hamish, as they entered. “We were beginning to wonder if everybody got lost.” Hamish was the oldest among the Advanced Party, cheery and always smiling. She’d spent nearly a quarter of a century working as a chambermaid for one of the wealthy families on Belaboras, until she’d been sacked for trying to steal silver cutlery. Rather than finding employment with another family, she’d done the only logical thing and signed up to cross to the other edge of the galaxy with the Unity’s armed forces. It was clear to see that the skillset of her previous life hadn’t been forgotten.
She pointed towards Tema Caerlin, hunched over the fire, a bow of salmon-pink tied into her dyed-blonde hair. Tema was on loan from the Eia’s hospital. She was no soldier, useless in a fight, but if someone had a scrape she’d be the one to patch them up. “Tema’s cooking up some rations, if you’re hungry.”
“Why would I not be?” Sam scoffed. He was over to Tema almost so fast that Macel didn’t see him moving. Delie wasn’t too far behind, but Macel found his appetite oddly lacking. Instead he found himself a spot outside the camp, resting his back against one of the rocks that held the tarpaulin in place and gazing up at the night. Above him, the stars were uncountable.
He was still looking at the stars, lost in thought, when Lieutenant Bennett got back. Night had fallen cold by then. Away from the fire, it was difficult not to shiver.
“Where are the others?” Bennett’s shrill voice cut through him more than the chill did. She was stood at the edge of the camp, not talking to anybody in particular. Shadowy flickers of fire danced in the ombre of her hair. She was angry. Her round cheeks swelled like a squirrel’s when she was angry. “I count nine.”
“The others aren’t back yet,” said Delie.
“Well...” Bennett’s eyes reflected the cogs that were turning behind them. “Has anyone tried radioing them? Find out where they are?”
Delie shook her head. “There’s no towers. Comms don’t work without towers.”
“I know how comms work,” Bennett snapped. “If they aren’t back by daybreak I’ll see to it that Captain Clifford has them blacklisted. It’s either incompetence or negligence, and frankly neither is acceptable.”
Bennett’s temper was a fearsome thing to behold, but it would have been worse without Sergeant Malleston. The Lieutenant’s right hand man was always on hand to calm her down, and tonight was no different. Before she’d had chance to launch into a rant, he was there with a plate of food fresh off the fire. “Eat, Lieutenant,” he said, and shepherded her away to a distant rock. He sat with her the whole night. By unspoken assent, everybody else gave her a wide berth.
The night went on with no evidence of the missing three. Macel sat, idly scratching at the scar that ran down the back of his hand. It had long stopped hurting, but from time to time it still itched horribly. The doctors said he was lucky to still have a hand. Apparently the wound had got infected. Still, no harm had been done, in the end. At least, not to Macel.
“I think they’re really selfish, you know,” Sam said, sitting himself down beside Macel. “Here we are. Brand new world. I was planning on getting some action tonight, but three people are a bit late coming home and it brings the mood right down.”
“Is that really going to stop you?” Macel asked.
Sam shrugged. “I don’t care that much,” he said, “but it’s a two-player game. Believe me, I know what happens. The girls’ll get all empathetic and they won’t want anything to do with me. And if I did persuade one of them to give me a go, she’d just end up sobbing all over me. And that does put me off. It’s a waste of all these pretty girls.”
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Macel nodded, less out of agreement and more to get Sam to stop talking. “You’ll have plenty of other opportunities. We’re here for the long haul, Sam. Years. The rest of your life, even.”
“Yes, but by tomorrow night the good ones will be taken. There’s no chance the likes of Delie Rice or Tema Caerlin stay single for long.”
Macel rolled his eyes. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “None of the women here will listen to you hitting on them because they’re all too busy being upset about our missing friends, but if you don’t hit on them tonight it’ll be too late because they’ll all be taken?”
“Correct.”
“Your logic makes no sense.”
Morning came quickly, and with it no sign of the three soldiers. Macel had chosen a bunk and found a comfortable position with ease, and he was in the middle of a pleasant dream when Sam shook him awake.
“Bennett’s not happy,” he whispered. “They’re still not back.”
Sam hadn’t misrepresented the situation. Lieutenant Bennett was, indeed, not happy. Tema had lit the fire in the middle of the camp, ready to prepare some breakfast. She was in the middle of divvying up rations when the fire hissed out. Lieutenant Bennett was stood over it, an empty flask upturned in her hand. Her grey eyes were narrowed. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Making breakfast,” said Tema, always chipper.
Bennett scowled and pulled the pink bow from Tema’s hair. She scrunched it between her thumb and forefinger. “Light that fire again without my order and this will be the first thing on it.” She let the bow fall; Tema grabbed it and darted far from Bennett.
“Lieutenant, be reasonable,” said Sergeant Malleston. “The soldiers need to eat.” He moved towards her. Malleston was tall and thin, his hair cropped so short he was bald, and when he spoke it was with a firmness that quelled any burgeoning seeds of dissent.
“Are you the commanding officer, Sergeant Malleston? Or am I the commanding officer? Because when I went to bed last night, I was in charge. Is there a memo I’ve missed?”
“No,” said Sergeant Malleston.
“In that case, we’ll do as I decide. And there’s no time to waste on food.” Bennett straightened her cap, her fingers conveniently emphasising the red commander’s pin affixed to it. “There could be three soldiers dying out there. Three lives that I am responsible for. Every second counts.”
Wilding shook his head. “Can’t we eat on the go?”
“The decision was no breakfast,” said Bennett. “That shouldn’t need repeating. Form into your groups—same as yesterday. The mission is the same. But you’ll need these.” She produced a crate of metal aerosols. Pathfinding sprays. They left a brightly coloured trail of unusually sticky foam in their wake, and faded after twenty-four hours. More often than not, they were misused. Macel had taken a coating of foam as forfeit when he lost a drinking game, early into his Unity days. He reported to the parade ground the next morning with the most brilliant turquoise skin. Even the officers had laughed at his shame.
Delie took a couple of canisters from Lieutenant Bennett and lead the way. Macel glanced at Sam, who had been shuffling in the direction of the food store since Bennett had extinguished the fire. He shrugged, and swiped a couple of dry crackers. “I can’t live off nothing,” he said, spraying crumbs everywhere.
“Hurry up or I go on my own,” Delie called.
“We both know there is absolutely no chance you go off alone,” said Sam, but he trotted after Delie all the same. Macel picked his cap up from his pillow, where it was resting, and donned it as he followed.
It was late in the afternoon when, hungry, they returned. Sam had apparently digested the crackers within ten minutes, and had subsequently complained for an hour about Lieutenant Bennett. “I’ve a mind to complain to Captain Clifford,” he said, as they entered the camp. Macel glanced around, but saw no trace of Bennett or the two unfortunate souls who had gone with her.
“Why not escalate it all the way?” said Delie. “The General’s got way more clout than Captain Clifford.”
“And he probably gives about as much of a shit,” said Wilding, walking over to them.
Wilding had been with Lieutenant Bennett all day. Sam must have known it. He stopped talking, no doubt out of fear that Bennett had heard him. If she did, she made no show of it. She was sat outside the canvas walls, staring out east at the sloping ground, towards the behemoth of a hill adjacent.
“You’d best not disturb the Lieutenant,” said Sergeant Malleston, when he noticed them. “She’s unbearable at the moment.”
“Not even if we’ve found Bartley’s group?” Sam asked.
Sergeant Malleston smiled slightly. “You went in the wrong direction. Bartley’s group went east.” He pointed towards the hill Lieutenant Bennett found so fascinating. The sun was just beginning to dip behind it. Its last light was disseminated through the thick, silhouetted trees that grew all over the hill. Rays spread like reaching fingers, grasping at the air, then faded to nothing.
“Why is she staring like that?” Delie had found food from somewhere. She was munching as she spoke.
“She found their helmets,” said Malleston. “Well, Bartley’s and Warner’s. Just abandoned on the ground. Wilding and Caerlin had to drag her back, apparently. She wouldn’t even have a drink of water until she found them—there was a worry she might pass out.”
“That’s what she gets for stealing our breakfast,” said Sam.
Delie rolled her eyes. “She didn’t steal your breakfast, Sam. She just didn’t let you eat it. It’s all still there in the containers.”
“What about Cailie?” As Macel understood, there were three of them missing, and they’d all been together.
Malleston looked uncomfortable. “There’s not been a trace of Cailie—not a helmet or a footprint or anything. We only know she actually went with the others because I watched them setting off myself. The thing is, there’s only us here, and this is a big planet. If they’ve got themselves lost, we might never find them. The window’s shrinking. Another day or two and they’re probably lost forever.”
His words landed heavy. They all stood silent for a while, before Sergeant Malleston drifted away.
“Where did you find that food, Delie?” said Sam, eventually breaking the silence.
Delie had stopped halfway through chewing, food filling her cheeks and giving her the look of a squirrel. “Liz Hamish is cooking up,” she said. “Over by the fire. Don’t you use your eyes?”
Macel was early to bed, after a good meal. A second full day’s walking had sapped him of his energy. Everyone else seemed content to stay up well into the night, eating and drinking and chatting, and all power to them, but he had neither the strength nor the willpower to join them. He slept fitfully through the night. He must have been woken at least half a dozen times. The first time, in fairness, was just because Eric Scobie shouted something a little too loudly right next to him. Eric had apologised, and Macel had gone back to sleep. By the time he woke up again, everybody had retired. It was dark and silent beneath the stars.
It was warm, too, a stark contrast to the night before. No matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to get comfortable. It reminded him of summer nights when it was just too hot, and he tossed and turned until his bedding was inside out and he was floating in a pool of his own sweat. Those were the worst nights. At least then, the hard part was getting to sleep in the first place. Once sleep came, it was usually a smooth ride to the dawn.
Tonight was more like the night before his week in the glades. His mind had been overworked with worries. Would he get on with Flossie Mayborn? Would she get on with him? How would he even manage to fend for himself in the wild? None of his worries had mattered in the end. Flossie Mayborn was a wisp of a thing, fey and feckless, frightened by her own shadow. He knew before they’d even reached the glades that he never wanted to marry her.
Baseless as his fear had been then, it had still kept him up most of the night. He’d spent the entire hike bleary-eyed and tired, and the day had been far from enjoyable. And that was when he was in control of the pace.
He wasn’t in charge here. Lieutenant Bennett would expect everyone up at the crack of dawn, and if she got a whiff of tiredness from anybody she’d find some strenuous and unnecessary exercise to force the squad to repeat until she got bored of watching them. If that proved too taxing, well, there’d be plenty more busywork.
So each time he awoke, he just lay still, his eyes closed, trying to clear his mind of any thoughts at all. Most times he got back to sleep fairly quickly—only to wake up again half an hour or so later.
The last time he woke felt different to the others. The air had a weight to it, like the sky was being smothered by an invisible blanket. He opened his eyes and looked around. Someone was moving in the darkness, a shadowy figure stealing across the camp. He squinted and strained, but he couldn’t make out who it was. There were two moons in the sky, and neither reflected enough light to penetrate the camp. It was too dark. His mind was filling in the blanks of the person’s shape, but his brain seemed to be misfiring. The figure had the wrong proportions. It was just a touch too slender, its arms a shade too long. It looked slightly less than human.
Macel felt the chill in his blood. Whoever this was, they’d been inside the camp, wandering unnoticed. For how long? And where had they come from? The figure was slipping out of the camp, moving undetected past the bed nearest to the entrance.
By the time Macel made it out of the camp himself, the figure was gone. All he could see was the night’s darkness, and the fading moons. The air was lighter at least. He leaned against the ship and took a deep breath. It was just a bad dream. That was all.
He lingered for a second, to look out at the horizon. And he heard a rustling sound.
At once he was solidly focused. There was something nearby—a wild animal, perhaps. They hadn’t been here long enough yet. They didn’t know what the wildlife here was like. There had to be something, on a world with such a friendly atmosphere and so many plants. Knowing his luck, the endemic species was some eight-foot-tall carnivore with an excess of aggression. Probably a spider. He’d be the first to discover it. He wondered if he could gloat to the others from inside an alien animal’s stomach.
He noticed the source of the rustling fairly easily. There was one of the squat leafy trees a couple of metres outside the camp, and its leaves were moving. Something was inside. He watched intently as the canopy parted...
“Tema?” He almost had to laugh. Tema Caerlin was as far as one could get from a threat.
She looked at him, her jaw hanging slightly open. “Are you following me?”
“I thought you might have been an intruder.”
Tema shook her head, and jabbed a thumb at the tree behind her. “Nature called.”
Macel frowned. “There are toilets on the ship. Proper ones.”
“I don’t like to use them.”
That was strange to Macel. Private toilets were always nicest, but the communal ones on the ship were well-cleaned. And anyway, there were no private toilets, not anywhere on Essegena. It was communal toilets or a tree.
Tema pointed suddenly at the wooded hill to the east, where Lieutenant Bennett had been staring. “There’s something up there. Can you see it?”
He could see it. A singular light was moving through the trees. It was far smaller than the sun; it looked more like somebody with a torch, wandering lost in the dark. Bartley’s group.
The scream came suddenly. It didn’t sound like a scream, not at first. Macel assumed it was a bird’s cry. Birds made strange noises, he knew, and the first blush of morning is famously a time for birds. But he met Tema’s eye and knew that she was on the same page. Birdsong doesn’t sound like the terrified cries of their missing friends.
“Was that Eilidh?” Tema said. Eilidh Cailie was one of those people who seemed to be able to ingratiate herself with everybody instantly. She’d been the glue that held the group together in those first hours before they got to know one another.
Tema started towards the hill, but Macel pulled her back. “No. We can’t just take it upon ourselves to go after her.”
“We need to go,” said Tema. “You heard the scream, same as I did. Who screams like that if they’re not in danger?”
Macel shook his head. “Cailie had the same training as us. What makes you think we won’t just be putting ourselves in the same danger? And when Lieutenant Bennett finds two more people gone by the morning... she’ll have to send the others out to find us, and it’ll all be a mess.”
“So you think we should just leave her to die? And what about Bartley and Warner, do they get to die as well?”
“I think we should tell Lieutenant Bennett what we heard. And not rush blindly after them.”
“It’s not rushing blindly. It’s saving our friends.” Tema Caerlin was definitely a stubborn mule. By the look in her eyes, she’d have gone off on her own if he wouldn’t come with her.
“Fine,” he sighed. “But if Bennett gets pissy you can take the blame.”
“She’s not my boss,” said Tema, with a wicked grin on her face. “She can get as pissy as she likes with me.”
Macel let Tema lead the way. She seemed to have a better idea of where she was going, striding at double-time directly towards the hill. Nearer to, the slope from the plateau grew steeper. Wild flowers grew more frequently here, and a waterway ran from north to south. The easterwood loomed ominously, its coat of trees all combined as one shadow. The hairs on the back of his neck began to stand on end.
At the base of the hill, Tema suddenly veered left. He followed her into the emerging ghyll, the narrow gap between the eastern hill and the hill that served as the camp’s northern boundary. In time, an obstacle emerged: a sudden cliff-face, two metres or so of sheer rock. Tema stopped dead.
“I can’t climb this,” she said. “I don’t have enough strength in my arms.”
He took the hint and hoisted her up. She thanked him and reached out a hand to pull him, but a solid jump gave him good grip on the top, and he clambered over on his own.
The ghyll broadened just ahead, into a lush valley bordered with green trees and distant fells on the far side. “That’s where we found the helmets,” said Tema, pointing at the trunk of a nearby tree. Bennett must have taken them with her. There was nothing left to suggest that human hands had passed here.
“Where now?”
“This way, I think,” said Tema, and she cut to the right, to where the valley subsided into an even lower patch of ground, this one densely forested.
She said very little on their journey, and when she did speak it was normally in single-syllable phrases. Most of the time she just walked, huddled in a black coat she’d found from somewhere—something that was definitely not conforming to Unity regulations. It was too tight on her, emphasising the rounded outline of her breasts. Macel kept catching himself looking at them. They were smaller than he preferred, but he wasn’t especially fussy—
“Will you stop staring?” Tema was glaring. He looked down at his feet, a scolded child.
“How is it you know where we’re going?” If he changed the subject, perhaps she’d forget that she caught him eyeing her up. Then he could allow himself to be slightly less embarrassed.
She shrugged. “Guesswork. We’re going in the right general direction, I think.”
“You think?”
Tema didn’t answer him. She was looking a little way ahead, where a dead tree had fallen onto a rock. Judging by the growth of moss on the tree, this wasn’t recent. But the helmet resting on the fallen trunk was a new addition. It was a Unity helmet, one of those issued to the Advanced Party. “I think this is the right place,” Tema said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “They must have come this way.”
“But where are they now?”
Macel crouched down, his arse almost brushing the grass as he walked over to the tree trunk. He picked up the helmet and looked at it. It was in pretty good nick. There were no scratches on the visor, no chips in the paintwork. It had been removed voluntarily, that was certain. A nametag had been fastened to the spongy interior. “E. Cailie,” he read aloud. “This is definitely Eilidh’s.”
Something caught his eye. A hand, poking out from behind the rock. Red smears covered it. Peering behind the rock, he could see that the hand was attached to a person. The man was lying on his front, naked apart from a few scraps of cloth. There were several deep cuts in his back, each spilling blood. “Tema,” Macel called. “Get over here. Now.”
“What is it?”
He knelt beside the man. Despite the wounds, he was breathing. His hair was short and brown, but matted with blood from a cut to his scalp. He had a scrappy beard, the clear result of at least a few weeks without the option to shave. And he was a stranger.
Tema looked at Macel, her brow darkened. “I thought we were supposed to be the only people here,” she said. And she was right. This was a brand new colony. Terra nova. “Where did he come from?”