The Texas Renegade Returns

Setari Musical Chairs

Zee woke up. I'd fallen asleep – one of those post-too-much-enhancement power naps I'm getting used to taking – and when I opened my eyes she was lying on her side watching me.

"Just a few moments too slow," she said, voice dragging a little. "Nasty shock to the system. I'll be joining Alay in rehabilitation for a while."

"Alay's nearly better," I said, and squeezed her hand. "Dodge faster next time. Scared me half to death."

Zee smiled and mumbled something I didn't understand. She was pretty out of it. I watched her failing to stay awake, and for a while wished I was still living with the Lents, that I'd never seen any of the Setari after being rescued. They live such dangerous lives, and the chances of all of them surviving is so slim. That may be another reason the Setari as a group are so competitive and distant with each other outside of their squads: having too many friends would mean having too many people you care about constantly in danger.

That was after midday, while the two extra shuttles were still here. The greysuits wanted to record as much detail of the massive as they could before it vanished, which it did a couple of hours later. The vanishing thing really worries me, actually: it makes all this a little too like a computer game for me to be entirely certain that the nutter-in-a-straightjacket option isn't the right explanation for everything I do and see. Monsters that respawn infinitely, whose bodies despawn after they're killed. And me being some mysterious touchstone thing with bunches of incredibly hot people looking after me. It's all a little too wish-fulfilment.

I would really hate it if I was insane. Though if this is a psychotic episode, at least it came on suddenly and doesn't make me face up to the fragmentation of my own mind. It would be far worse to be insane only some of the time.

But if this was all my own private fantasy, I think I would make more people like me. The captain of Ninth Squad is called Desa Kaeline, and she has wonderful smoky eyelashes and unusually pale skin for a Taren. And was extremely correct and polite to me in a way that suggested that I gave her a headache but she didn't want to admit it. And there was another girl in her squad, Kahl Anya, who gave me this absolute viper-look. I've got to stop reviewing my own logs: it was only a quick glance and I wouldn't have caught it at all if I hadn't looked back over the reinforcements leaving just before sunset.

They took First Squad away with them, and left Ninth Squad behind. Today sucked.

Monday, April 7

Team Drama Queen

Ruuel made us all get up early to do enhancement testing and training, since Ninth Squad has never worked with me at all. Setari pecking order seems to be based on active duty seniority, so when the squads work together, the captain of the squad with the smaller number is treated as being in charge. Ninth Squad doesn't seem to resent this, though I noticed during this morning's session that Ruuel had Ninth do a lot more repetition of the multiple-squad enhancement rotation and the intricacies of carrying me around than he bothered with when Fourth Squad was testing. I don't know whether that's because he thinks they're slower on the uptake, or he just isn't sure another squad member would ask to go over things again if they needed to. It's pretty clear squads hate looking bad in front of other squads.

Ninth Squad is another generalist squad: a little more big-hitting than First, since the older Setari for the most part aren't quite as powerful as the younger. Desa Kaeline turned out to be easy enough to work with; maybe she simply did have a headache when she was introduced to me yesterday. The rest of the squad seemed to settle into two groups: Kahl Anya and her two best buddies, and two people who really don't like Kahl Anya. I began to see why Kaeline might be prone to headaches.

Not that they were squabbling or glaring at each other. I doubt they'd do that where Fourth could see. They just had this tendency to stand in two different groups, and Anya and her groupies would exchange little smirks, while the other two looked unhappy. I was glad my 'ride' in Ninth was one of the non-groupies – a bean-pole guy named Rebar Dolas. Other than an undertone of being in a bit of a mood, he seemed nice. He asked me where I prefer he put his hands, anyway, gave me a sympathetic smile, and kept an eye on my reaction when we changed directions abruptly.

I was pretty tired. Napping half the morning yesterday meant I'd stayed up very late, doing school work in my pod since I hadn't felt like chatting. Fortunately Fourth Squad was on babysitting duty, so I didn't have to walk half the day. Islen Duffen kept making aggrieved comments about all the damage to the buildings, but she wasn't blaming the Setari particularly.

I sat with Glade and Mori at lunch and dinner. I'm liking Mori more and more. She has a wry sense of humour, which she mostly only indulges when Ruuel isn't around, and she and Glade both watch The Hidden War devotedly, just to pick apart the things that don't make sense. They say that some of the characters who show up later in the series are based on leaked details of the real Setari. I'm still only up to the second year of it: I like it, but I've found I can only stand watching it sporadically, and prefer Super Sight Six. The Hidden War is often quite a dark show, and just now I don't want to think about how First has had two close calls in a handful of weeks.

I'm glad I'm settling into Fourth, that I'm able to chat and laugh with some of them, because otherwise I'd feel pretty alone without First, dealing with Ninth. Of course, no-one's about to discuss Ninth Squad with me. By this stage I know to not even consider asking. I don't know what Anya has against me. I figure the best thing I can do is just not be interested in the opinions of people who've never even spoken to me.

Nor is anyone willing to discuss whether the Cruzatch could really have driven that massive to attack us. People are discussing it, but the idea makes everyone desperately uneasy, and they shut up when I'm nearby with my ever-present second level monitoring.

I keep thinking of Zee, falling out of the sky.

Tuesday, April 8

Chinese Mountains

Halfway between midnight and dawn I woke feeling fretful and uneasy. I thought maybe I'd had a nightmare, and lay for a while not able to sleep, then eventually got up to go to the bathroom. The pods have quite a lot of shielding on them, much like my room back on Tare, and it was only after I'd opened mine that I started to properly register what had woken me.

It was the "mmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn" noise, the one I associated with the Ddura attacking or hunting, but very far away. I could barely hear it, and spent the time it took to go to the bathroom and then to get a drink to decide whether or not it was just my imagination. I'd been told I had to immediately report if I heard the Ddura, but hearing a noise which might be the Ddura in the middle of the night meant my own interpretation of immediately. Especially when the person on night watch was the prima donna from Ninth Squad.

Still, I was assigned to Fourth Squad and all Anya would be able to do, beyond act like I was wasting her time, was report to the captains. So, with a squeamish mix of feelings, I sent Ruuel an override saying: "Can hear Ddura."

He didn't treat me to any sleep-fuelled incoherencies, responding within maybe ten seconds with: "At what distance?"

"Very far away," I said, watching as his pod cover lifted and he sat up. Facing away from me, fortunately, so I could enjoy the sight of him with his uniform converted to a tank top and knee-length arrangement. He scrubbed a hand over his close-cut hair, his uniform starting to return to standard configuration, and I looked away, feeling oddly uncomfortable. "Can only just hear," I added, out loud this time instead of over the interface. "It making noise it makes when it attack things."


"Outside," was all of his response, and I followed him to the aft lock.

The Setari on watch is posted with a greensuit just inside the lock; there's seats, and they don't have to stand, but usually seem to be. Anya and the greensuit were both standing, and the greensuit looked like she had a headache, heh.

"Any movement?" Ruuel asked, and they both said no, tensing because we wouldn't have been there if nothing was happening.

Ruuel opened the outer hatch and lifted us both on to the roof of the ship. He used straight Levitataion, which I much prefer to being hauled about clinging on to people, but the Setari can only lift me directly if they're not enhanced.

"Try to gauge a direction while I arrange clearance," he said, and then I guess sent an override in turn to the Diodel's captain.

It's really hard to work out the direction of a distant noise. Shadowed by Ruuel, I walked around the roof of the ship, trying to ignore the chilly wind, and eventually decided that I could hear it best on the aft end. By that time, a couple of greensuits were preparing the ship's transports for a night-time excursion, and Fourth and Ninth were all up and ready.

There's a lot of different types of smaller transports, and the name of the two the Diodel carried would roughly translate to 'skimmers'. They hold eight people and are more complex than the flat, hovering sleds we used crossing the lake at Pandora, with low seats wrapped around the edge and a flat area in the middle: flying rafts. No visible controls or console or anything like that. They can only go about forty feet up, but scudded along at a brisk pace.

Each skimmer had two greensuits, and five Setari, with two of Ninth Squad left at the Diodel, including one unimpressed drama queen. I sat up front opposite the greensuit, feeling very silly, and we flew in the direction I'd indicated. I was picturing the reaction if I'd chosen the wrong direction, but as we got closer I could tell it was more to one side, and re-directed the greensuit, and kept making corrections the louder the Ddura became.

Nurioth sprawls over two rivers which drain into another fresh-water lake – the westernmost of a chain of huge lakes including Pandora's lake. After a while, as the Ddura grew louder, I stopped feeling so self-conscious about playing native guide, and enjoyed looking at the stars and the reflections in the lake and the spooky gloom of the city. After we left it behind us, I was expecting to arrive at another of the small settlements marked by the circle symbols on roofs, but there was just forest beside the lake, and small mountains which reminded me of those pictures you see on old Chinese pictures – conical pointed arrangements.

"Very near here," I said, looking back confusedly. "Think we passed." There was no sign of any settlement, just the gleam of an old road.

"Take us lower," Ruuel said to the greensuit, then touched my arm and added to Auron and Mori: "Try to locate another of the communication devices."

The moon was three-quarters full above us as we dropped to nearly ground-level among the steep mountainettes. All three of the path-finders turned slowly in the same direction, glanced at each other and nodded. We moved back the way we came, until we were in the middle of a triangle formed by three of the conical mountains, with the lake to our left and patches of whitestone paving poking through the dirt and plants beneath. There was something distinctly unnatural about the shadowy near-vertical slopes of the mountains around us, the moonlight picking out too-regular shapes among bright-edged shadows.

"We need more light," said Ormeral, the sole greysuit who'd been sent along.

Ruuel said: "Halla," and she obediently sent a huge Pillar of flame into the air above us, startling a flock of birds (or bats) into flight and revealing large stone doors surrounded by decorative carving, firmly sealed and very impressive. Before the flame died away I saw that all three mountainettes had the same sort of entrance.

"Set down by the lake," Ruuel said. We were well out of what he'd said was normal interface range, but I guess the skimmers would include communication links, since he got that talking-to-someone-else expression and, when we set down, said: "The Diodel will relocate, and we'll wait for daylight. What's the status of the Ddura?"

"Still hunting." It was loud, but not as loud as it was on the surface at Pandora, let alone at the communication platform.

Ruuel nodded. "We'll scout for gate locations external to the site while we wait."

He split us into two groups, putting me in the "sit in the skimmers and don't move" half, and then divided the rest into pairs who vanished off into the night. Pairs meant he didn't sense a major threat nearby, which I guess isn't that surprising since the Ddura had been hunting through the area for the last half hour. Ormeral began taking readings using a bulky machine he'd lugged along, looking tremendously excited. I watched the lake.

This is such a beautiful world. I pretended, just for a few minutes, that I was here on a family holiday. Mum and the aunts and the cousins, maybe even Dad. We'd fish, and only Nick would catch anything. Mum would go off on a long rambling walk, and bring back a huge bouquet of interesting leaves and flowers. Jules would be everywhere, complaining half the time of X-Box deprivation, and then would fall out of a tree, scrape every limb raw, and be all pleased with himself. Maybe I'd go canoeing – I've never tried that, but it looks like it might be fun. We'd have a campfire and cook the fish, with potatoes in the coals, and tell ghost stories. Everyone would argue just a little, and laugh a lot, and be comfortable and relaxed and no matter what planet it was I would belong because that's what being with your family does.

Thinking about all this of course made me feel intensely miserable. I was surprised when Auron patted my shoulder and when I looked at him he gave me this shy, sympathetic smile. I smiled back, appreciating the gesture, which was uncharacteristic for him: he's even more taciturn than Ruuel, though in a very different way. Ruuel had swapped him for Glade as my primary babysitter pretty early on, maybe just because he's so tall it makes it easier for him to tuck me under his arm. I'm more comfortable clinging to Auron, anyway. Glade, though he was always correct, was I think endlessly tempted to tease me about it.

Halla and Sonn are still pretty formal, but I think even they accept me as a temporary part of Fourth Squad; they're certainly not hostile. Mori and Glade are becoming friends, and Auron (Par) sort of comes as an added extra with Glade. And their acceptance and growing willingness to talk to me makes it a lot easier to be around Ruuel so much. I really don't enjoy the way I feel about him a lot of the time. Too vulnerable.

The arrival of the Diodel interrupted all my introspection, and now I'm back on the ship and everyone's sitting around waiting for it to be dawn. One of the main things all this exploration is for is to find information about the Pillars, and I guess Ruuel has decided there might be some here. This means the place is going to be searched really carefully, with especial emphasis on not accidentally standing on vital bits of evidence. Most of it will be inside the mountains, though, so I find it funny that they're waiting for dawn just so they can sift through the debris outside the doors.

I think I'll try and get a little more sleep now that I'm no longer so keyed up.

Seeing too much

Mori woke me around mid-morning. "We've finally reached the stage where we're going to open the doors," she said. "Or try to – they seem to be a complicated arrangement."

A hot shower and breakfast were first on my schedule. I was surprised to realise that all of Fourth Squad had gone back to sleep as well, but of course it made sense to not have the ship's entire Setari complement sitting around waiting for dawn, and then watching the greysuits take pictures and measurements and search the overgrown paved area for artefacts.


As I was finishing breakfast, a vibration ran through the ship and on cue Mori reappeared, hair damp. "That's the Litara. Initial scans have shown there's an extensive underground complex here. Between that, the presence of a communication platform, and the fact that the doors appear to be charged with aether, this is going to be a major site, perhaps even our second settlement. Let's go look before we're overwhelmed by reinforcements."

"Why expedition in Nurioth so relatively few people?" I asked. "Such a large city; barely chipped the edges."

"Well, our primary purpose there was to find something like this place," Mori said. "The archaeological survey and analysis of the city – all the cities – will take decades. What work was done in Nurioth will be useful, of course, but this whole expedition was focused toward finding active Lantaren technology, particularly more platform towns. Not only because we want to analyse such technology, but because we want to concentrate the archaeological analysis on these sites in the hopes that the builders left records of the Pillar construction."

We'd reached the port lock, where the rest of Fourth Squad was waiting on a sled. I really don't know why they get themselves ferried to shore instead of flying: some kind of protocol? Or just careful conservation of energy when on duty. I've come to realise how prone to exhaustion the Setari are.

"I don't care to guess how long it would have taken us to uncover this, though," Mori continued, as we started across. "It's not something aerial surveys would easily detect, and far out of our Sight range."

"Seems different style of decorative tradition, too," I said, staring ahead to what I could see of the carved face of one of the mountains. Everyone was quiet and tense as the sled left the lake and slid smoothly between the curving base of the steep-sided mountains.

It reminded me vaguely of – I've forgotten the name – that building which is carved into the face of a gorge. It's not only the size of the thing which makes an impression, it's the frame of natural rock, in this case not of sheer, baked yellow stone, but of grey and black rocks, worn into rounded piles and heavily decorated with lichen, ferns, shrubs and small trees sprawling down and sideways. A big contrast to the clean, curving lines of pointed arches, maybe twelve or fifteen metres up to the tip. Between a simple inner and outer border were carvings with a faint resemblance to Mayan decorations or even Celtic knot work. The doors were rectangular, not pointed, and the space above their lintel and the point of the arch was full of figurative carvings.

The three mountainettes were close, like a circle of people holding hands. The gap in the centre wasn't more than a couple of hundred metres across, a lop-sided circle which the greysuits had been busy sectioning with stakes exactly as you'd see at a dig on Earth, except they projected an electronic grid in the interface rather than using string. A few areas had been cleared, exposing circular paths and a tumble of whitestone in the centre which looked like something had fallen on it. They'd made a lot of progress in the last few hours, obviously intent on ensuring nothing was trampled underfoot when people tried to examine and access the doorways.

Kaeline from Ninth met us at a small tent which had been set up just outside this central area, and there was a lot of talk of readings and measurements and where we were allowed to walk. I stood staring at the triangle of carving above each of the doors. Each had a central figure of the head and shoulders of a person – the face was androgynous, idealised, and the arms outstretched, something trickling from cupped hands down on little people below. God-kings. The Egyptians had them and I'm willing to bet that's what the Lantarens who built this place considered themselves.

Things started getting crowded then, as the reinforcements from the Litara began arriving. I was surprised to see Tsur Selkie among them, though he seemed to be playing observer rather than person in charge. As soon as he showed up all the Setari forgot how to talk and focused on standing very straight, while Islen Duffen called a halt to her team's work and we all gathered near the tent to discuss what would happen next.

The person in charge was a woman called Tsen Helada (so many Ts titles), a whip-thin, narrow-eyed lady with streaks of grey in frizzy black hair, and an air of barely suppressed energy. She reeled off lists of detail, about how the greensuits would examine the nearby area and decide the site of the settlement while Islen Duffen would continue to coordinate the archaeological side, and a man called Islen Tezart would manage investigation into what amounted to 'psychic technology'. We were to consider the site dangerous, not only because of Ionoth and aether, but because we had no idea what the potential dangers of active Lantaren technology might be. And we were to above all else be thorough, to miss nothing.

Islen Tezart had a very different attitude toward Sight talents compared to Islen Duffen. He wanted the Place Sight talents to assist in the investigation of the doors, which didn't seem to have any moving parts. He was hoping they might be able to see a way to unlock it without damaging it, or discover if it was something which could be commanded using Ena manipulation, like the communication platforms.

More dullness after this, with everyone standing around talking and waiting while different machines took readings. Ninth Squad was off being guard-like, and Tsur Selkie was with Fourth, watching silently. I kept staring up at the image of the person above the door and thinking of that Shelley poem, Ozymandias.

"Is there something familiar about the carving?" Tsur Selkie asked me while they were performing the last of the machine scans. "Does this have a correlation to structures on your world?"

I shook my head. "Doesn't really match anything. If wasn't for communication device inside, would think this was tomb though."

"Tomb?"

I'd had to use the English word. Tarens cremate their dead and toss the ashes into the ocean. Necessary given their space issues, and better than the soylent green option. They have a word for grave, but not for a building for dead bodies, which I guess means that the Muinans didn't use tombs either. "Cross between monument to the dead and a grave," I said. "There was Earth people called Egyptians, built huge pyramids and sealed bodies of their god-kings inside."

"God-kings." Tsur Selkie glanced up at the carving, at the sightless face gazing at us from the past. Not even Tsur Selkie could win a staring competition with a statue, though, so he looked away.

They finished the last of the machine-based tests then, and moved on to trying Place Sight. Place Sight hasn't really been very helpful in the explorations so far, because the events the Tarens are interested in happened so long ago that the 'impressions' have faded. But Place Sight is a really broad and adaptable Sight, and there was a chance they'd be able to understand the mechanism of the doors.

Ruuel, Halla and Tsur Selkie enhanced. I'm not sure if Tsur Selkie has Place Sight, but Sight Sight is no doubt just as useful here. They told Halla to go first, and remembering what had happened with the platforms the first time someone touched them, I was a bit nervous, but there was no reaction and no Ddura or anything else turning up. Halla closed her eyes, pressing her hand flat against the smooth stone and, I think, holding her breath.

"It only has the appearance of doors," she said, after a long pause. "As the scans suggested, the stone has been fashioned as a solid panel. The aether–" She paused. "It appears to be maintaining the structure. If we damaged it, it is very likely it would reform."


Dropping her hand, she stepped away, being all super-professional. But when Ruuel nodded she relaxed a little, relieved and pleased. It's so interesting how the squads react to their captains. These are people that they've grown up with, known almost all their lives, and probably competed with for the captaincy. But Fourth Squad, even Glade, who really doesn't seem the type, act like Ruuel's approval is tremendously important to them. Third Squad's the same with Taarel. It's a combination of respect and trust, I guess. I found out today that Fourth also treat Ruuel much as First Squad does Maze.

Once Halla had stepped back, Ruuel moved forward, making his gloves go away. It made me think of what he looked like this morning – such a long time ago now – and I had to work to not be too distracted by the memory of bare shoulders and neck. I really don't ever see most of the Setari in anything but all-covering uniforms, so it seems like a lot more than I guess it really was: nothing compared to Lohn walking in on me. Like Halla, Ruuel closed his eyes, then carefully touched the tips of his fingers to the stone and I was looking at the length of his lashes and wondering if he plucked his eyebrows when I realised that he was slowly going white.

I looked from his face to his squad's, and found them all with variations of the same worried expression. Tsur Selkie was more evaluating, but he was also watching Ruuel's face with a hint of tension, as if he was ready to step forward and catch someone about to faint. Which Ruuel didn't do, just opening his eyes again. But there were beads of sweat on his forehead, and he looked like he'd taken a fist to the stomach and refused to admit it.

"They were trying to escape," he said, voice steady in a way which took effort. "It sealed, and they could not open it."

He stepped away, recovering enough to shut down into a professional mask, and Tsur Selkie moved forward without comment, doing little more than to confirm Halla's evaluation of the door with an addendum that he suspected the 'seal' extended at least to the corridor beyond and possibly through the entire complex.

First Squad is quietly protective of Maze. And Fourth Squad's the same about Ruuel. They spent the rest of the day pretending they weren't keeping a watchful eye on him. And Ruuel spent the day looking distracted, still caught up in whatever he'd seen or felt about the last moments of the people sealed inside. Not so bad that Selkie took him off duty, but a visible difference to his usual observant and distant air.

The whole thing made me think a lot of Zan, too. Does anyone in her squad respect her? Want to protect her? That prompted me to write a long email to her talking about the things we'd been doing on the mission. The satellite isn't positioned to directly connect us to Pandora, but she'll have it already if she's still there, or will with the next ship if she's back on Tare. I hope she's okay.

The rest of the day was filled with even longer doses of dull. The Setari tried to open the seal using Ena manipulation, without any effect, and even had me try. Glade whispered to me afterwards that it was very tactless of me to look so glad I failed. And now they're bringing some equipment in to try and set up a field to interrupt the flow of aether, or drain it off. They really don't want to smash their way in, or do anything by force.

Still, the horde of archaeologists are cleaning up the central area very nicely.

Thursday, April 10

Kolarens and crypts

I do wonder where the Tarens get all these tents. Their own planet is totally unsuited to tents as a form of accommodation: too incredibly windy. I suppose they might use tents inside the few caves they haven't filled with whitestone. Whatever they usually use them for, they certainly have a lot of them. By sunset yesterday, the greensuits had constructed a little canvas city around the outer slope of the northern mountain. Currently the mountains are being referred to (in Taren) as North, South and East, even though I think they've been given more official names. North is the mountain on the Nurioth side, and East is the one furthest from the lake. The south mountain has the equipment and 'finds' tents at its base, though the main finds so far have been the fragmentary remains of two skeletons which turned up under the tumble of whitestone in the centre of the circular paths.

Because of the wait for the Litara to return with the equipment to try on the seals, the central circle's been getting a lot of attention and is looking increasingly bare – great patches of raw earth and freshly cleaned pathway. It's not a bulls-eye pattern, but a more complex set of part-circles and radial lines, and I think it would make a nice garden. The greysuits are talking about trying to reconstruct the central structure.

I spent the morning doing school work, since Fourth Squad had left right after breakfast to map out all the nearby gates. They found some buildings, too, off under the trees a ways down south, which the greysuits are hoping are related to this site. Ninth Squad is stuck with the more boring guard duty, broken into pairs assigned to different shifts, since the Ddura seems to have taken care of any active threats in the area. With so many people here, I decided to stay out of the way and found myself a natural seat on a big stony shelf overlooking the mess tent. It was an unusually warm day compared to recent temperatures, nice and sunny.

Having grown a little more used to how long it takes the greysuits to do anything, my only reaction to the Litara arriving with the new equipment was to access the latest news feeds: little parcels of the latest public infocasts collected each time one of the ships returns to Tare. There's a ton in them about Muina, of course, but very little of depth, and I was more interested in whether the Ionoth incursions back on Tare had gone back to normal levels. The Setari have re-established most of their rotations, and the only story I could find was about long-term upward trends.

When I was first given access, I used to close my eyes when using the interface. Now I'm more able to watch and see the world around me at the same time, but I by no means pay attention to my surroundings. And thus I was very confused by sudden movement right next to me and the soft sound of an impact. Suspending the news feed, I saw a couple of people standing over me, wearing a dark green and black uniform. My brain sluggishly caught up to what my eyes had recorded, and I realised one of them had tried to kick me and another had stepped in the way, catching her foot.

"Don't start this, Katzyen," said the catcher, a guy who sounded more resigned than annoyed. "It's not what we're here for." I found it very hard to understand what he was saying, but didn't immediately realise they were talking in a different dialect.

"If they'd had their way we wouldn't be here at all." The second speaker was a small woman with sparking-hot green eyes, whose temper seemed set to nuclear smoulder. "Wouldn't you say it's only in the spirit of our alliance to test their level of combat training?" She shot a disparaging glance at me. "If you're an example of the standard we're constantly tested against, there's nothing to Taren Setari except their reputation. Can you prove yourself the better?"

That was my introduction to Kolar's Setari. Kolarens started out with the same language as Tarens, but it's become quite a distinct dialect. They pronounced the words oddly enough that my translation suggestions weren't being very helpful. Anyway, my response was to stare at her blankly, finally figure out that she wanted me to spar with her, and say: "Would be short fight."

This made her look even more annoyed, and some other Kolarens who'd been approaching stopped where they were. I guess they thought I was saying I could take Katzyen with one hand tied behind my back.


Before I'd done more than realise I was about to get a fist in the face, rescue showed up in the form of Tsur Selkie, who did one of those suddenly-just-there-in-the-way appearances that people with Speed talent are so good at. One of Ninth Squad – a guy called Thomasal – zipped up a moment later. It's not as if my seat wasn't in the full sight of half the camp, after all, and Thomasal was camp guard of the moment. I'd been expecting him to show up, but not Selkie.

The Kolarens had the same reaction to Selkie as the Taren Setari. They went all upright and parade-ground. He didn't act like he'd interrupted a scene, just glanced over them, then said: "This is Caszandra Devlin. Your briefing material will include the requirements regarding interaction with her. Remember two points. First: Devlin's system cannot handle contact with multiple talent users. The seizures such contact causes would be fatal without medical intervention. Second: as part of this detachment your priority, above all else, is to keep her alive." He looked at me, adding: "You have a security alert for a reason," then signalled for Thomasal to follow him and left.

The Kolarens had gone interesting colours. They're a great deal more tanned than Tarens, and tend more to brown and blonde hair than black, though they still appear to have a combination of Asian and Caucasian ancestry. They all looked to be around twenty. The guy who'd stopped Katzyen from hitting me reminded me immensely of the movie version of Lawrence of Arabia, except younger and without the flowing robes and headgear. I turned on my interface name display to see that he was called Arad Nalaz.

"I couldn't fight my way out of wet paper bag," I told Katzyen, feeling sorry for her now she'd stopped being aggressive and had gone dull red. "Would be very short fight because I lose straight away. Maybe we start this conversation over again?"

One of the Kolarens, golden-brown and medium-tall, began to laugh. "We've certainly managed a strong first impression." He came closer, and did a quick hand to chest bow. "I'm Raiten Shaf and I think it's very unfortunate of you to be dressed as a Taren Setari if you're not."

"Assigned to Setari," I explained. "Sometimes go into Ena with them so need uniform's protection." The Kolaren Setari weren't wearing nanosuits, though, and have to carry actual weapons for close combat instead of growing them.

"You're the, ah, displaced person from the world called Earth?" asked a very burnished woman named Laram Diav.

"Yes. Is Kolaren Setari here to baby-sit archaeologist horde too?"

"That's – well, probably not an inaccurate description." Shaf grinned. "So you have seizures if people touch you? That's quite an allergy."

"Only if too many people touch me at once," I said, then my face went hot. "Pretend that didn't sound strange. You think Taren Setari not want you here?"

Shaf gave Katzyen an exasperated glance. "No. But we have spent what felt a short eternity being told that technical details of our contribution needed to be finalised."

"Excuse after excuse, delaying any of us from coming to Muina," Katzyen said. "We wouldn't even know that a settlement had been established, if they'd had their way."

"No-one on Tare would either, probably. But Setari don't make that decision." I shrugged. "Give you unofficial welcome, anyway. Is beautiful place."

That produced the classic exiled-Muinan expression, and the Kolaren Setari ended up spending the rest of the morning up on my rock shelf having a discussion about Earth and Muina and how I'd ended up at Pandora and then Tare. They seemed like nice people. Less formal than Taren Setari; or more like the older squads. It was impossible to miss the deep resentment they hold toward Tarens. Tare basically showed up fifty years ago and started messing with their world. Kolar was in something like the Gaslight era while Tarens had had the interface for decades, and advanced nanotech for something like seventy years. Other than the Kolaren Setari program and the whitestone building material, Tare hasn't yet allowed Kolar anything like the full extent of their technology – only their Setari program had been allowed use of the interface. It sounds like their approach has been a little on the paternalist side, with a strong eye to profit. Almost guaranteed to cause offence.

I'd love to know what Tsur Selkie's reasons were for leaving me to be the Kolaren Setari's introduction to this site. It didn't last too long: the arrival of the Litara had been Fourth Squad's signal to head back and Ruuel sent me one of his characteristically word-stingy messages: "Testing before lunch." He must have sent one to Shaf as well (he's the Kolaren squad's captain) since he reacted at the same time. Hopefully he got a little more explanation, but he did look kind of quizzical when he said: "Time to move, it seems."

We went down to meet Fourth Squad, who were waiting near the finds tent, watching the construction of some really complicated machine around the door of South Mountain. As usual, Ruuel brought everyone into mission channel as soon as we were in sight of each other, and began briefing and leading us all further south, to an area which was mainly low bushes.

"Contact with Devlin enhances and sometimes warps talents. This session is to verify the effect of Devlin on your available talent sets, then to practice movement and multiple squad enhancement rotations in combat simulation. We don't have adequate test shielding here, so push elementals to far range. Sonn."

"Unenhanced," Sonn said, and shot a lightning bolt outward and upwards. She touched the tips of her fingers to my arm. "Enhanced."

I guess no-one had mentioned the enhancement effects to the Kolarens. A few of them looked briefly incredulous as the ball of lightning arced and spat in the air, drifting slowly away.

"The distortion has been consistent, and observed effects on each talent are listed in the briefing material." Ruuel gave Shaf one of his captain-nods and Fourth Squad stepped back, obviously handing over to him.

Fourth Squad was an interesting choice to end up first to work with a bunch of Kolarens with chips on their shoulders. There's plenty of squads which might have soothed some of that resentment; certainly First Squad could put anyone at their ease. And some who wouldn't want to: it was a damn good thing that it wasn't Fifth Squad, who would have guaranteed that interplanetary relations developed an Ice Age. But Ruuel – Ruuel is always so focused on getting the job done, as quickly and painlessly as possible, and obviously doesn't see any point measuring himself or his squad against other people, or trying to prove anything at all. He behaved exactly as if the Kolarens were any squad who hadn't worked with me before, with every expectation that they would just get on with it.

Shaf's obviously good at adapting to the unexpected, and had Nalaz start out with Wind, buying himself some time to review the briefing material they won't let me see. They tested without anything odd happening, and then there was a precise, exacting session of enhancement, whizzing about with Telekinesis, and fake combat, and I was very amused to see Katzyen trying not to look pleased because she'd earned one of Ruuel's brief, approving nods. He has that effect on people.

He was back to being his usual focused self today, but there were dark shadows under his eyes. I don't think he slept much last night. He's asleep two pods away from me right now, and I hope he has a better night.

The training session was winding down when I started hearing the Ddura. It says something for my chances of hiding my feelings for Ruuel that he always seems to know when I'm debating telling him something. He said, "Hold," to the squads, then looked at me. "The Ddura?"