The pod's door swung open without a sound, and I stepped down onto New Millet soil.
Wet soil, squelching softly beneath my boots. Grass, more reddish-black than green but not dry. Some sort of natural adaptation. Massive forest on the horizon. I couldn't make out the trees, or even if they were deciduous or conifers. Or both. Same kind of reddish hue. Darker than what I’d seen from orbit, though, almost black. Definitely an adaptation. The grass was churned up in places, leaving great craters, and the forest had a jagged look, like someone had taken a bite out of tops of the trees.
Blasts, or a low-power plasma beam. The sod not melting where it was churned up made a case for blasts. A few white-painted shards of polymer, none larger than my fist, lay strewn over the hillside.
Strange smell, like vinegar gone bad, all the sting of acid with none of the fruity-sweet overtones. Light wind.
Pleasantly warm, a rare redeeming quality.
I took a moment to let the sun caress my face. A mild sun, on the orange side, and distant enough not to scorch. Millet had enough of a magnetosphere that I didn't have to worry about becoming irradiated either.
Of course, the wards sewn into my coat would have stopped it anyhow, even if the leather of my stockman hat's wide brim hadn't shaded my face. Just as they were filtering out any poisons in the atmosphere.
Wards wouldn't stop you from choking in vacuum, and they could be overwhelmed, by bullets or chemicals, but they would keep you alive longer than you would have been otherwise, unless you did something truly stupid.
Like meddling in a mage war. I'd expected someone to meet me, a half-squad military detail if nothing else. I'd announced my arrival on all open channels, and the drop pod was still blaring its envoy code snippet.
Nothing. Not a soul.
I stood on a gently sloping hilltop, one of many, a city in the fifty-to-hundred-thousand inhabitants range sprouting up from the top of the next hill. Cant City, human habitation. A green sea lapped at its foundations, scummy waves striking against concrete moorings.
No people.
No animals either, but that didn't have to mean anything. Harvest worlds have strictly managed ecosystems, engineered by some company long before the first settlers arrive. Everything from bacteria to top predators slotted into a function.
Shame, really. I liked the worlds where nature has been given a chance to run amok. Makes them interesting.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Where were the people?
No sounds of gunfire, or artillery. No atmospheric craft on combat air patrol or attack missions, but with the Fed fleet above, maybe there wouldn't be. Depended on how the commanders interpreted their mandate.
Very broadly, looked like, if the fiser bug squad and the bombard was anything to go by.
The lieutenant had hinted at this being a bad war. Was everyone dead? There sure were enough craters to suggest it, the hillside riddled with pits. Stagnant black water filled the low-lying ones.
Cant City had shown heat signatures, though, and scattered transmissions. The 'pedia listed it as New Millet's capital, but that was two years and half a war ago.
Might as well head for it. If I didn't find people, at least I'd find traces of where they'd gone. Or what had happened to them. Or maybe some com systems, or administration that would have a record of Rasczak's Roughnecks and the Knife's kid.
I slung my back-pack over my shoulder. Food, water, some purifiers, change of clothes. Some ammunition, but not much. Ammunition is heavy, and my guns were mostly for show anyhow. I didn't intend to participate in combat operations.
My boots sank into the ground with every step, the wet soil sucking on them with a pleasant squelch. No flowers, but the grasses all had tiny globules at their tips, all bright red. Seed pods or spore chambers.
Which would make sense, on a world without bees or pollinating insects. Less risk of mutation, too.
Not as interesting, though. Spore-bearing plants usually don't have as much flavor as flowering ones, more basic textures than overtones. Good for frying and grilling, not much for seasoning.
Motion, in the distance.
The realization of how exposed I was struck me. A single man-sized target in a sea of reddish-black grass. I resisted the urge to crouch, or jump into a crater, and conjured up a thread of force from the planet around me, warm and supple in my mind, and up-tuned the vision ward in my stockman.
Pretty handy to have a built-in pair of binoculars.
Not that it worked. A vision ward is there to increase the light, not give you magic binoculars. I conjured up a second thread, creating a bend in the air, trying to get some magnification, and when that didn't work, I added another thread. The force threads were smooth, vibrant, almost like caresses. Mild and pleasant. Nothing at all like the cold of the void. Working magic on a planet was great. Also, addictive.
By the time I had a fourth thread dancing in my mind, trying to bend the air in front of my face into a lens, I felt the first twinges of a headache, a tense, gritty feel in the corners of my eyes, a tightening over the bridge of my nose.
Reluctantly, I let my threads diffuse, and dug around in my backpack for a com monocular, a short metal tube with a thick lens and sensor on one end, and a small readout on the other. It covered infrared, low-light, and ultra-violet. In a pinch, it could double as a poor-man's rifle scope. I'd packed the crudmunging thing at the bottom of my pack.
My assault rifle swung around on its sling, the barrel trying to knock my teeth out. I pushed it back over my shoulder. Stupid idea to bring three guns. Should have gone with function rather than looks.
The motion returned, a shifting of the reddish grass at the base of Cant City's hill. No, more than a shifting. A square of grass had moved.
Trench covering.
No wonder there weren't any people. They'd dug in, building defensive positions. Smart of them. Stupid of me not to think of it.
I raised my arm and waved in what I thought was a friendly manner.
A shot rang out.
