Talina crouched on the thick roots; she could feel her quetzals going stiff. If they’d been real, they’d have turned yellow and black. Frozen in terror, the beasts would have immediately camouflaged themselves. Their natural response when it came to a predator. That they figuratively did so—went dormant and camouflaged in her mind—left Talina singularly focused as she stared through the gloom. The remains of the marines’ crushed armor were just visible in the lacery of roots between the trees.

“Okay,” Muldare said in a hoarse whisper. “There’s two helmets, smashed. I see a carapace, a couple of thigh pieces. That’s a shoulder with its servo over there. And there’s no telling what’s under those humps of roots. Why the fuck do I think it’s more armor?”

“That’s armor, all right,” Valdez said. “But where did the bodies go?”

“Eaten,” Dek muttered from where he crouched beside Talina. He pointed. “And there, off to the side, sticking out of the roots? That’s a scimitar blade. I’ve seen them up close. They’re made out of some kind of tough polymer, almost indestructible.”

“And there’s the broken shell from one of the land tanks,” Briah pointed. “Like it’s been eaten out.”

Talina nodded, her acute vision picking out patterns in the thick carpet of interwoven roots. A lot of lumps. And the smell of it. Yes, old human blood. But there was more, a medley of strange scents. She’d never seen such a collection of . . . Wait. She half rose, peered.

“I have to do something,” she said, heart beginning to pound. “I think that’s a skull over there. It’s kind of covered by roots, but I need to go take a look.”

“Are you crazy?” Dek asked. “Whatever killed those marines, left all these bits and pieces—”

“Dek,” she said, turning to meet his gaze, “I think I can figure this out. I’ll be all right.”

The quetzal molecules cowering in her blood didn’t think so.

“Trust me,” she said, crouching and hopping down root by root. To Briah, she said, “Keep an eye up above. You see movement, yell. But, whatever you do, don’t shoot.”

“Tal,” Briah told her, “there’s times you really worry me.”

“Yeah? You should see it from my side.” Then she was down, setting foot on the slowly writhing root mat. Keeping low, every sense singing with tension, she crept out, trying to keep her pressure even on the slowly stirring roots. At the first hump, she bent, using her knife to dig an armored knee joint and its servo free.