The mine was behind schedule, and Commander Urig wanted a body to fix that. The scout stood at the mouth of the shaft and watched the last cart roll out half empty. Its blue veins pulsed weak light across the sand. Behind the scout, purple workers hissed at each other and dragged their tails through the dust. The scout's own tail curled tight against a leg. Missing quota meant standing in front of the commander, and the scout had seen what happened to the last one who did. Urig came down the ridge before the scout could plan a way to avoid it. The commander was twice the scout's size, scaled in deep violet, one antenna twitching above narrow yellow eyes. Workers stepped aside without being told. The scout dropped low on all fours, the way a smaller centipede shows a bigger one it means no harm. "The cart is light again," Urig said. The commander's clawed hand rested on the rim of the empty mining cart and tapped once. "We need diggers. Not ore. Diggers." "I understand, Commander." "Do you." Urig leaned down. The antenna brushed the scout's forehead. "Go out. Find soft ones. Warm ones. Mark them and bring the cage wagon back full. If you return empty, you go in the cage yourself." The scout looked past Urig's shoulder. The prison wagon sat hitched at the edge of camp, dark wood banded in iron, its blue runes glowing cold along the bars. Empty. Waiting. "Yes, Commander." The scout took a tracking bead from the belt pouch and a humming panel from the rack. The panel warmed against the scout's palm. Then the scout ran, low and fast, out past the sandbags and into open desert. The heat of the day pressed down. The scout's antenna combed the air for warm bodies and found nothing but rock and wind for a long time. The scout climbed a ridge of red stone and crouched. Below, the desert opened wide and empty. No smoke. No tracks. Four legs of running and nothing to bring back. The scout thought of the cage, and of Urig's hand on the cart, and pressed lower into the rock. Then a gunshot cracked across the flats. The scout's head snapped toward the sound. Far to the south, past a run of broken dunes, a slanted cave mouth sat cut into a wall of warm rock. A thin curl of dust rose in front of it. Something had moved there. Something that used a gun. Humans. The scout tasted the air. One shot meant panic, or hunting, or a fight already lost. Any of those meant soft, warm bodies that could be marked and driven back to the wagon. The scout came off the ridge in a fast, silent slide and started south, bead ready in one claw.

The scout slid down the last dune on its belly and stopped behind a broken wall at the edge of the town. The gunshot had come from inside. The scout tasted the air. Two warm bodies. Close. The scout crawled between two shells of houses and pressed flat against a leaning post. Two humans stood in the open street. The male was thick through the shoulders, dark hair cut short, a black goatee, a patched military shirt open at the collar. He held a rough gun made from pipe and wire. The female was smaller, blonde hair pulled back, a white tank top gone gray with dust, the same kind of homemade gun braced against her hip. Both of them turned in slow circles, checking every doorway. "Emmy!" the male shouted. His voice cracked off the walls. "Emmy, answer me!" "She ran this way," the female said. "Mendez, she ran this way, I saw her." "Then where is she, Riley?" The scout held still. A third human, small, missing. Good. Three warm bodies for the wagon instead of two. The scout's tail twitched against the sand. Mendez swore and jogged to a sun-faded jeep parked crooked in the street. Dusty tires. Cracked panels. Riley climbed in beside him. The engine caught on the second try and the jeep lurched forward, kicking up a wall of dust. The scout broke cover and ran. Four legs on open ground. The scout kept low, using the ruin walls, cutting the corners the jeep had to swing wide around. The vehicle was fast on the straight stretches. The scout lost ground, then gained it back where the road bent between two collapsed houses. The scout's lungs burned. The bead sat ready between two claws. The jeep slowed to grind through a rut. The scout scrambled onto the top of a low wall, braced its tail, and threw. The bead struck the windshield in the upper corner and stuck. A small dark dot against the dust. Neither human turned. The jeep pushed through the rut and picked up speed again, and the bead rode with it, blinking its slow signal to any Vael antenna within range. The scout dropped off the wall and pressed into the shadow of a doorway. It pulled the humming panel from its belt and held it up. The panel warmed. The scout keyed the pattern Urig had taught it. Marked. Two soft ones, one small one loose, moving east in a wheeled machine. Send hunters. The panel gave back one flat tone. Received. The scout crouched in the doorway and watched the dust trail thin over the rooftops. Its tail settled. The cage wagon would not be empty. The scout would not stand in front of Urig with empty claws. Not today. The scout waited for the soldiers to come.

The soldiers came fast. Six Vael warriors climbed out of a smoking hole in the road, then more from a second pit farther down. Their long bodies uncoiled onto the cracked asphalt. Blue light pulsed along the barrels of their guns. The scout dropped from the doorway and fell in behind them, tail low, claws tight on its own short blade. The jeep's dust trail hung above the rooftops to the east. The warriors ran on all fours, faster than the scout, and the scout struggled to keep pace. The broken road curved between shells of buildings and split around deep pits. Laser fire cracked out ahead. Blue bolts hissed past the jeep's tailgate and burned black holes in the hood. The jeep swerved hard. Riley leaned out the passenger side and fired back. Her makeshift gun barked twice. A warrior in front of the scout dropped, sand pouring from a hole in its chest. Mendez cut the wheel again and the jeep slammed into a heap of rubble at a dead end. Steam hissed from under the hood. Mendez and Riley bailed out on opposite sides. They put their backs to the wreck and fired into the closing ring. The scout crouched behind a low wall and watched them work. Mendez shot a warrior through the throat. Riley put two rounds into another's belly and it folded around itself. Four Vael down. Then five. But the warriors kept coming. One caught Riley's gun barrel with its tail and yanked it aside. Another slammed into Mendez and drove him against the jeep's fender. The scout heard the man grunt as the air went out of him. Riley swung her empty gun like a club and cracked it across a warrior's snout, then a claw closed on her wrist and she went down on her knees. "Get off her," Mendez shouted. "Get off—" A warrior struck him behind the ear. He sagged. Two more pinned his arms. The scout stepped out from behind the wall. The warriors saw the scout and stepped back, giving the kill to the one who had marked them. That was the rule. The scout looked at the two humans on their knees in the dust. The male bled from his scalp. The female stared up with hate in her eyes. Neither one spoke. The scout thought of Urig and of the cage wagon that would not hold the scout tonight. The prison cart rolled up behind the warriors, pulled by two of them on a heavy yoke. Dark wood banded in iron. Blue runes glowed along its curved sides. The scout swung the barred door open. The warriors dragged Mendez and Riley across the sand and shoved them inside. The scout latched the door and pressed a claw to the lock plate. The runes flared once and held. Two soft ones. Delivered. The scout climbed onto the yoke and the cart turned toward the sinkhole road.