The well pad had been built atop a low promontory formed by up-thrust bedrock. First the vegetation had been scorched, then peeled away. The topsoil and dirt had been scraped off and piled down below as a makeshift dam to hold back the curious trees and brush. Stuff Kalico had never seen. The dominant variety was a spiral tree. For every one-hundred-and-twenty degrees that it twisted, a branch sprouted from each edge of the triangular cross section. The branch ended in huge three-sided blue-green leaves that would have covered a king-sized bed. Anything that touched them would die from contact with the little hairs that coated the leaf’s surface. Each of those little hairs secreted a microscopic drop of dew-like poison.

And of course, there was the wildlife. Kalico had recognized the scimitar monster, a variation similar to the ones she’d seen in the sea. Then there was something new that they’d offhandedly called a “land tank” for its flat hull-down shape and the spike that extended like a cannon barrel from its front. Despite the name, explosive rounds from the rifles would take the things out. A southern variation of mobbers—just as vicious as their northern kin—lived here, as did a smaller species of treetop terror that Kalico had barely spotted before it vanished into the high canopy surrounding the drill site. Local takes on sidewinders, slugs, skewers, and pin cushions were present. But a lot of the creatures she’d barely glimpsed were going to need a slew of new and equally descriptive names. Like the flying bat creature with all the claws and the proboscis-shaped snout.

Kalico took a moment to scan the forest; it looked so different here, lumpier, with tall bluish spikes of trees that extended above the high canopy. They kept getting glimpses of giant flying creatures, four-winged things that rode the air currents and seemed to find sustenance in the treetops. From her high vantage point, and looking to the west, Kalico could see the sea, shining silver in the afternoon light. To the north, the curve of beach six kilometers distant was hidden by the rumpled forest.

Resting her hand on her pistol’s grip, she turned and strode across the folded layers of gray-and-black gneiss, studded as it was with endless sparkles of muscovite. Veins of exposed metals, silver, copper, and gold shimmered in the sunlight where they interspersed with white swirls of quartz. She nodded to Abu Sassi, the marine who stood guard at the corner of the ramp, and climbed up into the shuttle.

Here the deafening chatter and banging from the drill was almost bearable.