Dakota lugged the device over to a clear spot between two rows of racks, and triggered it by depressing a button on one side. The shaped field that surrounded her a moment later sparked and crackled with light.

The effect was so startling that Dakota almost dropped the device; the field was far brighter – and therefore more powerful – than anything she had so far encountered. It had started out as a sphere about four metres across, centred on herself, but then it began to shrink, slowly at first but with increasing speed. She quickly deactivated it before it could shrink any further and crush her to death.

<Be careful,> Trader warned her, from where he hovered near the dome’s entrance. <These are much more powerful than the field-generators you’re used to.>

<What happened? > Lamoureaux asked.

Two aisles over, Dakota could just make out an expression of shock on Nancy’s face through her faceplate.

I think it’s safe to say they work just fine, she sent back.

Chapter Thirty

They had to abandon a number of the field-generators after they proved to be broken on closer inspection, their outer shells cracked and brittle. But at least fifty appeared to be undamaged.

After a couple of hours’ work, the last of these were secured on top of some of the spiders, and sent back over the hills to Trader’s yacht. Dakota took one last look around the interior of the dome, wondering what it must have been like in those last hours before the colony was obliterated, and if the creatures who had built it had realized what was coming. Then she stepped back outside to join Trader and Nancy, who were waiting for her amongst the ruins.

Dakota watched as the machinery-laden spiders followed one another up the slope of the nearest hill. Maybe it’s time to activate those drones I detected, see if they wake up.

Trader’s manipulators wriggled underneath his belly. <As you wish.>

The Meridian drones had either burned or dug their way deep beneath the surface long ago. As the three of them now started moving towards the foot of the nearest hill, Dakota sent out a command-level activation signal that she hoped would override whatever instructions the drones had been left with.

Less than a minute passed before she was rewarded with a faint tremor that rippled the dust beneath her feet. Dakota stopped and turned in time to see rock and gravel fountaining upwards from all around the cache-mouth, as drone after drone punched its way back out of its hiding place. They rose quickly, spinning and glittering in the harsh sunlight, with debris sliding off of their mirrored carapaces as they accelerated away from the surface.

<Shit!> Nancy exclaimed, her voice full of terror. <What the fuck is that?>

Dakota realized she had forgotten to warn Nancy what she was intending to do.