<It is not outside the bounds of conjecture. I sent another probe down, but lost contact with it a short while ago

The sense that something very bad was about to happen overwhelmed Dakota, and she turned to look the other way, to where she could just see the uppermost spines of Trader’s yacht poking up above the crest of a hill about a kilometre distant. She also spotted the train of spiders, still making their way back, in an undulating file, across the intervening hills and valleys.

She queried the recovered Meridian drones, hoping that they might be able to tell her what was going on. It took a few attempts to navigate her way to some kind of answer, and her eyes opened wide in horror when she got it.

We have to get out of here, she sent to the others. We have to get out right now.

She started running down the other side of the hill, desperate to get away from the cache, her legs moving with what felt like dreamlike slowness. She ordered the drones to reverse their trajectory and to return to the vicinity of the cache, but they had already lost precious seconds.

<Dakota?> asked Trader. <Please explain.>

There are hundreds of unmanned Emissary scouts inside the cache, Trader, and we just woke them up.

Trader started heading back towards his yacht without further hesitation. <Then we must bring the drones back here to defend us.>

I already called them back, but I don’t know if they can get here in time.

Dakota stumbled once, picked herself up and kept going. She could hear from Nancy’s panicky breathing that she had finally taken the hint and started running as well.

On reaching the crest of the final hill before they arrived at the yacht, Dakota paused to glance behind her. She saw Nancy approaching the foot of the same hill, but Trader had already overtaken them both. She turned back towards the yacht in time to see him slip through the open hatch, and for one terrible moment she wondered if he meant to abandon them.

By now the spiders had neatly stacked the field-generators beneath the open hatch, in which two of them stood waiting as their brethren began passing the generators up to them with their instantly extendible arms.

As she reached the yacht, she swiftly climbed up on top of one of the spiders and pulled herself through the hatch. The two spiders already inside scuttled back into the yacht’s interior to get out of her way. Once inside, she accidentally crashed into a pile of field-generators, and just managed to stop them toppling back out of the hatch. At that moment, she spotted Nancy making her way down the final slope, kicking up a huge cloud of dust that must surely have been visible for kilometres around.