She survived. That was the first surprise.
The second was the planet.
The scanner did not lie: atmosphere viable, biosphere active, signals of artificial origin—multiple, persistent. Someone lived here. Had lived here long and with confidence, while the cartographers of the Elarian Corps, three generations running, marked this point uninhabited and flew on.
She had no time to be angry at cartographers.
Martians knew how to wait. She had seen the Astra Veris burn—slowly, with that indifferent thoroughness that belongs only to things set to burn. Soren’s voice on the channel: Eject, Lyra-7. He was always calm. It was his best quality and, perhaps, the last thing she would ever know of him.
She got to her feet. Her ribs objected. She did not argue.
________________________________________
Forty minutes on the shuttle—mesh, debris, the semblance of a meteor trail. Not perfect, but she had never chased perfect when sufficient would do. One boot. Blood above the brow, dried. Pain in the right side—a background matter, tolerable, not her first problem.
At the edge of the trees she stopped and looked up.
Constellations from the atlas. In the atlas they were dead diagrams—alive, they proved colder and larger, and not in the least interested in her problems. She found, by eye, where the orbit should have been. Where it had burned. Nothing showed—so it always was, the important things happening too far away.
Soren. Eira. Milo.
Later. First—work.
A house at the clearing’s edge, one window lit. The door unlocked—an unlocked door is either trust or a trap; in either case it is better to know in advance. No threats within. One heat source—alive, mobile.
She went in.
________________________________________
Warmth. A bitter unfamiliar scent—a stimulant, natural in origin—and things, things, things. The inhabitants of this planet plainly collected them with an enthusiasm better spent elsewhere. A device for heating food. Devices with screens. A communicator on the table—personal, active.
She raised the scanner.
Movement behind her.
She turned before she thought—scanner up, weight shifted. And stopped.
A local inhabitant. One. Watching.
Three seconds.
Then she lowered the scanner, slowly, and raised empty hands—palms forward. The bioluminescence along her collarbones flickered through the fabric, lilac and ill-timed, and there was nothing she could do about it.
"I am not a threat," she said.
The accent was imprecise, the language still assembling itself as she went. But the tone—level, neutral—the kind one uses with someone who can hear, but has not yet decided whether to.
"I need a place. Not for long."
She did not add: the transmitter is broken, the Martians know the general sector, and apart from you I have no one here.
Some things are better said in stages.
"You are safe," she said instead.
And waited.
