The fold spat him back out into real space, and his stomach caught up half a second after the rest of him did. Stars stopped streaking and sat still again like they were supposed to. Off the nose of the ship hung a planet gone green and brown all over, no gray, no dust, nothing chewed up the way half the rocks he'd flown past this month looked. Clouds dragged slow shadows across it, the kind that took their sweet time, like nobody down there was in any hurry either.
He'd skimmed the specs on the ride out. Coalition's biggest farm world, feeds half the map, that whole spiel. Words on a slate didn't do a damn thing next to actually looking at the place, a whole hemisphere of green just going and going until the curve of the planet ate it. Fields back home ran a good stretch too, the kind you'd catch out a train window and forget two stops later. Anywhere he looked, this one didn't quit. It didn't look like it planned to either.
The ramp cracked open before the engines even finished dying down, and the outside air hit him first, real dirt and some kind of green he didn't have a name for, nothing like the recycled stuff piped through the Hub. He stepped down onto grass instead of deck plating, soft ground giving instead of metal pushing back beneath his boots.
Rootharbor sat past a stand of trees like it had grown there instead of gotten built, and it took him a solid ten seconds to believe what he was looking at. Buildings curled up out of the dirt in soft, lumpy shapes, vines thick as his arm running straight through the walls, holding the place up instead of just dressing it.
Rooftops grew actual gardens instead of carrying shingles or tile or whatever passed for a roof back home. Nothing had a straight edge anywhere he looked, and a couple of vine bridges looped between the tallest trees above the rooflines, like nobody here had ever bothered deciding where the city stopped and the forest started.
The Hub at least tried to look built, spires and wings all dressed up to matter. This place just looked like it grew there overnight and kept going without asking anybody's permission.
Zaria's eyes went straight to the tree line instead, old habit winning out over the view. Hikaru barely caught it, too busy standing there gawking, jaw doing something dumb himself.
"Air actually tastes like something out here." He dragged in a lungful just to prove it to himself. "When's the last time I stood anywhere and didn't smell recycled everything."
Senna's brow lifted, gaze still tracking the treeline more than the skyline. "Isn't your homeworld covered in exactly this? Trees, dirt, all the green stuff you people apparently worship."
"In places, sure." He scratched the back of his neck. "Rarer than you'd think, though. Most of it's paved over or choked out by the time anybody my age gets a say in it. This is probably what it used to look like, before somebody decided concrete was an upgrade."
Lyra let out a low whistle. "Rough planet you crawled out of."
Zaria didn't turn from the tree line. "Focus."
They came up the path before he'd even stopped staring at the rooftops, a handful of Herbfolk drifting closer with no rush in it anywhere. Skin ran from pale amber to something close to black bark, and their hair didn't sit still the way hair was supposed to, moving slow like it was catching a breeze that wasn't blowing at all. Every step came with a dry little rustle, leaves rubbing together, like the ground itself had an opinion about where they walked.
Nobody crowded him, and nobody backed off either. They just opened up a loose half circle and watched, curious in a way that should've felt weird and somehow didn't.
One of them peeled off ahead of the rest at a pace caught somewhere between eager and careful, robes a green so deep it looked wet. This was Governor Thess of Rootharbor, deep grooves running through his bark like rings cut into old wood rather than actual scars, hair gone a dry amber gold that kept moving on its own even when the air around him sat completely still.
He walked like a man who'd been rehearsing this exact moment longer than the walk here could've taken. He stopped in front of Zaria, pressed his palms together, and dipped his head.
"You came." Whatever he'd rehearsed, that part slipped out unplanned, relief cracking straight through it. "I did not know if the Bureau would respond at all, and I certainly did not expect a response this quick. Thank you. I mean that sincerely."
"We came as soon as the call reached us." Zaria didn't offer a smile, but there wasn't any cold in it either. "Governor Thess, I take it."
"You may simply call me Thess. We do not follow formal customs here." His gaze held on her a beat longer than it needed to. "Zaria, of the Star Maidens. Your team's reputation reaches us even out here. News travels more slowly to a farm world, but it does arrive eventually."
Zaria kept moving down the line. "Senna. Lyra."
Thess pressed his palms together, first toward Senna, then Lyra. "It's an honor to meet you, Star Maiden Senna, Lyra." His gaze shifted to Hikaru next, and nothing in it sparked. "But I do not recognize this young lady."
"New." Zaria didn't dress it up any further than that. "Joined the team recently."
Thess's whole face opened up at that. "This is a new Star Maiden. It has been some time since we received news of an addition to your number." He inclined his head toward Hikaru, warmer than the greeting he'd given the others.
"But, I'm not..."
Zaria talked right over him. "Focus. Thess, go on, tell us why you called us here."
Thess's brow rose for half a second, like he'd nearly forgotten the reason himself, then he nodded and turned back toward the path. "I will show you the way properly. I have a great deal to explain before we reach the fields."
Hikaru fell into step at the back, muttering. "Focus. Yeah, that's real convenient timing."
She did that on purpose. He was sure of it. Zaria didn't miss beats like that by accident.
Thess led them to a pod grown from the same pale wood as the buildings, four root-like legs standing in for wheels, veins of blue light pulsing slow under the bark. Nothing about it explained how the thing actually moved.
They climbed in, and it lifted off the ground and glided out past the plaza on its own.
Rootharbor blurred past outside. Stalls held roots the size of his forearm and fruit shaped like lanterns. Between two buildings, kids chased something small and fast. Laundry strung between rooftop gardens caught the light every time the breeze moved.
The pod let them off outside a building that could've passed for a toolshed, if not for the antenna jutting off the roof, too serious-looking for something this small. Thess called it the liaison post.
Inside wasn't any bigger. One desk, buried under ledgers instead of a screen.
A single console blinked a slow amber light in the corner, like it hadn't been touched in years. Shelves ran floor to ceiling, crammed with logbooks nobody had actually read in a while.
An older Herbfolk sat behind the desk, glasses too big for her face. She barely glanced up when the five of them crowded through the door.
Thess asked for the actual log instead of trusting his own memory of it, and the clerk's hands were already moving before he finished the sentence, pulling out a stack of thin fibrous sheets instead of anything that lit up.
"Here." She set the first sheet flat on the desk, tapping one entry with a long finger. "Three weeks back. Filed under blight."
Thess leaned over it. "We believed it was blight, at first."
Zaria kept her arms crossed, but her eyes tracked every line like she was memorizing the page. "And after that."
"Tremor, the week following." The clerk flipped to the next sheet. "Wild grazers, twice more after that."
"So nobody called it an attack until when." Zaria's tone didn't soften for the question.
"We called it an attack once we had footage." Thess kept his hands clasped in front of him. "One of the pest monitors near the grain stores still had power when the rest failed. What it caught did not look like blight, tremor, or anything we log under grazers."
The clerk turned a small viewing panel toward them and tapped it once. The image that came up was grainy, half the frame washed out by glare, but even distorted, the shape moving through it didn't belong to anything native to this planet, too many joints in the wrong places, too much of it made of something that looked like plating instead of skin.
That's not an animal.
"Once we saw that, we classified it as an attack and contacted the Bureau." Thess's hands tightened around each other.
The clerk slid another sheet across the desk toward Hikaru, like she'd decided he needed something to do with his hands too. He looked down at it, rows of hazard codes cross-referenced against dates, numbers stacked against other numbers he had no framework for at all.
Sure. Yeah. Totally following this.
He nodded like he was taking it in and set the sheet down before anyone could notice he'd gotten exactly nothing out of it.
Thess reached past him for a second stack, thinner and older by the look of the paper. "Most of the flagged sites cluster near the old stone." He tapped a spot on a rough map pinned above the desk. "The founders placed it there many generations ago, and it draws little attention now. Children grow up walking past it every day. I do not know when anyone last stopped to examine it closely."
He was already turning toward a kettle balanced between two ledgers before the sentence finished, like the topic had used up whatever interest it ever had.
"Would you like tea before we continue?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I do not think it is appropriate to keep you standing while we discuss this."
Zaria didn't touch the cup once it was poured, gaze still down on the log. "The last three entries. Walk us through them exactly."
Thess set his own cup down, untouched as well, and drew a breath to start again.
The console in the corner cut through the room before Thess could get two more words out. One sharp chime snapped the clerk upright before her hands even found the controls. She read whatever had come through. Her hands went still against the console instead of moving to anything else.
"Governor." Her hands stayed flat on the console. "There's been another attack. It's in Halgrove... fifteen minutes ago."
Thess's cup stopped halfway to the table.
Zaria was already on her feet, her own cup left untouched on the desk. "Everyone, up. We move now."
Lyra was up before the sentence finished, the ease gone out of her completely. Senna set her cup down without a sound, calm in the specific way she got right before something serious started. Hikaru pushed back from the desk a half beat behind them, his own thoughts catching up slower than his body had.
We were just sitting here drinking tea.
Zaria was already at the door. "Thess, stay here and monitor the situation. We'll need updates the moment anything changes."
Thess's shoulders dropped a fraction, the color still gone from his face, and he didn't argue.
They filed out fast, back toward the pod, and Hikaru fell into step at the rear, jaw tight. Whatever had gone after Halgrove, it didn't sit right with him, and he couldn't have said exactly why.