Luckily, the planet Lament has in mind isn’t far (at least not in hyperspeed terms), and soon we’re descending through a hazy atmosphere toward a dusty red landscape. I press my cheek against my small window while Vera takes us down, though there’s not much to see. An ocean of sand, random tufts of yellow grass, a distant ridge of caves sloping out of the earth like plates on a dinosaur’s back. Lament called this place Purvuva, but I’m surprised it even has a name. This is a no-man’s-planet—an uninhabited wasteland.
“There’s an extra holster for your ray gun under your seat,” Vera tells me as she types a code into the Sky Runner’s dashboard, scanning the air quality report before opening the cockpit. Wind whips through the cabin, battering us with sand. “And bring your headset,” she adds in a raised voice. “It’s breezy out there.”
I pull my headset around the back of my neck, grope for the holster, then scurry out after Vera and Jester. Lament has already parked his skimmer and is halfway to the caves. He throws us a look that I take to mean,Hurry up or I’m leaving you behind.
“You sure Lament wasn’t always like this?” I ask Vera.
“You know,” she replies with a frown, “I can’t say I am.”
As we walk, the breeze shifts direction, tossing more sand into our faces. I use my arm to shield my eyes, but it doesn’t really help, so by the time we approach the mouth of the largest cave, I’m blinking away tears and grit and a fresh wave of apprehension. Lament and I were barely able to tackle one rabid raptor between the two of us. And okay, yes, I was unarmedand surprised, but what if Lament is right and the mist somehow infected an entire colony of those things? Vera is a split-wing pilot, and Jester is an intelligence officer—they’re not trained for ground combat. Lament might have some weapons experience (he seemed to know his way around a ray gun), but I’m the only one here who’s truly qualified. How are we supposed to fight them all at once?
In the end, it isn’t an issue. The raptors are already dead.
The smell hits me first, a putrid mix of blood and excrement. I hear Jester’s feet grind to a halt beside me, Vera’s quick intake of breath. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the cavern’s darkness, and when they do, I gape.
The earth is piled with bodies. There must be hundreds of raptors here, some gutted, some beheaded, some so ravaged there’s hardly anything left. Bones jut from broken limbs, the sand glittering with cracked scales. There’s blood everywhere, pooling around the bloated carcasses and darkening the earth. I’ve got my ray gun in my hand, but there’s nothing to shoot. Nothing left alive.
“They’ve murdered each other,” I say raggedly, my words echoing off the coarse walls of the cavern.
Lament’s voice is tight. “So it seems.”
“Todeath.”
“Murder typically implies death, Hartman.”
“But … why?”
Lament walks over to the nearest raptor and crouches for closer inspection. The reptile’s teeth are sunk into one of its brethren like it died midway through the chomp. When Lament reaches out, Jester, Vera, and I make a collective sound of disapproval that does nothing to stop him from thumbing open the dead creature’s eyelid. My heart gives a hard lurch.
The raptor’s eye is glowing blue.
“It’s like you thought.” Vera’s words are squeaky. “The raptor colony, the blue eyes… I can’t—I can’t believe you wereright.”
“Your confidence in me is inspiring,” Lament says.
“I’m with Vera,” I offer. “This is… hard to believe.” My heart is thumping like I’ve just run a mile for time, like my body senses the wrongness of this scene even as my mind struggles to understand. “You really think the space mist did this? Infected this raptor colony and made them attack their own kind?”
Lament pushes to his feet. “Yes.”
“But whatisthe mist? And where is it coming from?”
“If I had those answers, we wouldn’t be here.”
We walk around the aboveground hollows, keeping within sight of each other while hunting for more clues to explain where the mist originated or where it went or why it infected these reptiles. The light grows weaker as I pick my way toward the back of the caves, so I pull a flashlight from one of my utility pockets and click it on. The beam is cruel, illuminating every bloody angle, every shattered tooth and gouged, glowing eyeball. I’m no naturalist, not like Master Ira, but even I feel the weight of so much death. The senselessness.
We search until we’ve seen it all, then search some more. I’m on my third pass around the perimeter when Vera, Jester, and I start exchanging looks. None of us is willing to tell Lament what we’re thinking: If there were any clues, we’d have found them by now.
At last, Vera breaks the silence. “Anything?”
Nothing, Jester replies.
“Nope,” I say aloud for her benefit, glancing at Lament. He doesn’t seem to be paying attention.
Vera spreads her hands in a mute plea,What do we do?
I clear my throat. “Lament?”
He’s standing near the cavern’s center, staring at a particularly messy pile of raptor bodies. His expression is closed, quiet. Lost in thought.
