I called out, “Cut us loose, you cowardly fuck!” And although he surely didn’t understand English he stopped and turned back, glowering through his fear. He dropped the latch on the cart’s gate and cut us free with the knife he carried, two hasty slashes, first Allison, then me. The blade bit my wrist but I didn’t care. I was cravenly grateful.

Allison muttered a Voxish word that might have meant “Thanks.” I couldn’t translate the Farmer’s response, but the go-to-hell tone of it was unmistakeable.

Down on the plain the carnage continued. The stink of frying human flesh became nauseatingly dense. Digger Choi turned to follow his friends in their dash for the treeline, but stopped in his tracks when a shadow eclipsed the distant lights of Vox Core. It was one of the Voxish aircraft, directly overhead, flying slow and low. Suddenly there was light all around us, so bright the air itself seemed whitewashed. An amplified voice called out incomprehensible orders in Voxish. “Stay still,” Allison said, putting her hand on my arm. “Don’t move.”

*   *   *

It was our clothing that saved us—our greasy, bloodstained, road-worn yellow tunics.

The Network had been restored, and if Allison’s limbic implant had been intact it would have alerted the Voxish forces to our presence. But the Farmers had destroyed her node, and I had never worn one to begin with, so we should have been indistinguishable from anyone else on this killing ground.

Except for our clothes. Microscopic radio-frequency tags were embedded in the coarse weave, identifying us (or at least what we wore) as survivors of the Equatorian recovery mission. That was enough to buy us a reprieve. The aircraft bellied down to land. A door sprang open and soldiers in military gear vaulted out and formed a cordon around us, weapons aimed.

Digger Choi was caught inside the cordon. He seemed to understand that surrender was his only option. He dropped to his knees and put his hands over his head in a gesture that would have been familiar on any battlefield ten thousand (or twenty thousand) years ago. The Voxish soldiers kept their weapons trained as Allison stammered out an explanation or a demand.

After a quick consultation the soldiers gestured to their aircraft. “They’re taking us to Vox Core,” Allison said, and the relief in her voice was palpable. “They don’t know for sure that I’m telling the truth, but they know we’re not Farmers.”

They knew with equal certainty that Digger Choi was a Farmer, and one of the soldiers aimed a weapon at his head.

I said, “I’m not going anywhere until that man puts his gun down. Tell him so.”