“So, Kalico, what are you going to do if you stumble onto a mess of broken bodies?”

If she could get them out of the roots, she’d order the marines to evacuate the worst off. God pray it wasn’t Talina or Dek; they hadn’t been armored. But, shit on a shoe, who knew? Who’d have thought anything on the planet could pound a marine’s armor the way Aberash’s had been crushed?

And what would she do if they were dead down there?

“Fucking nuke this forest for twenty kilometers in any direction,” she vowed.

Slipping past the vines and stepping under the first of the trees, it was to enter a world of movement. The first premonition that maybe this wasn’t her best idea ever began to fester in her gut. She could barely see in the dim light and reached into her belt pouch for the small flashlight she carried. She flicked it on, and the beam illuminated a forest floor alive with squirming roots. Overhead, the branches were slapping this way and that. The chime sounded crazy.

“Ma’am? You sure about this?” Smith asked.

Kalico ground her teeth, jerked a nod, and started across the agitated roots.

Whatever had gone down, it had sparked a wave of chaos that had every tree jiggling and upset. She moved fast, surprised that, disturbed as the roots were, and with the vines and branches flipping and waving, they seemed to ignore her. That rubbery feel underfoot, however, was even more disconcerting than usual.

She did her best to stay out of reach of the gyrating vines, so many of them new, undoubtedly deadly. Several whipped her way so quickly, she couldn’t dodge. But for whatever reason—probably too distracted by the shaking and jerking—they didn’t attack.

Kalico raised her cupped hands, calling, “Tal! Dek! You there?”

Yeah, right, as if that could be heard over the raucous warbling of the chime and the rasping and clattering of the leaves.

The only thing that encouraged her was that this portion of the forest, sitting on shallow soil atop bedrock, wasn’t covered with those giant trees like down below. The pitching of the roots, therefore, didn’t knock a person off his or her feet. Only left her careening for balance. More than once, however, she barely avoided getting a foot trapped. The marines had their own trouble, heavy as they were in their armor. Kalico could hear their cursing as they ripped their armored feet loose from the grasping roots.

“Supervisor?” Chin called. “This is getting worse. Do you really think going on is a wise move?”

No sooner had he said it than a crackling sounded. Too loud. Too close. Kalico danced sideways as the footing shifted under her feet. With a tearing from above, one of the taller trees—something with big triangular leaves—tilted, began to . . .