It was a bit of a delicate question as to who was going to explore the site. On the one hand, there was no reason to believe that there would be anything valuable here. On the other hand, there was no reason to believe that there was anything valuable at the last glowing hole in the ground and look how that turned out. And by extension… given the recent tension in the caravan….

The Collective did not appreciate Mazelton’s chirpy statement that “Armed Prospecting isn’t part of my contract.” Nor did Policlitus, or anyone else for that matter. Of course they were willing to “support” his investigation. From one hundred meters away, behind quickly dug earthworks, with rifles.

Well, the Collective had rifles. The other “contributors” had smoothbore muskets, slings, bows, crossbows, spear throwers, throwing stakes and two offers of blowgun support. One person smugly announced that they never poisoned their darts, as a health and safety measure. They were firmly uninvited from the conversation.

Mazelton, realizing that he was going to be voluntold no matter what, took the opportunity to gracefully agree to their “proposal,” as “You send the right person for a job. And some people are just born capable.”

So off he went with his crummy single shot heat weapon locked and loaded, to see if there was anything good in the pit. Somehow, all this very capable support missed the giant carnivorous murder beasts around the opening. They just bit through anything. One of the beasts flushed a rabbit from under a bush- caught it in two paces and bit it clean in half. No, not clean, there were chunks and torn bits everywhere. But it was in half in one bite. Big goddamn hare, probably weighed two stone.

Some animals were afraid of humans. Mazelton was confident these were not amongst those animals. Quite the reverse, actually.

Mazelton half closed his eyes and remembered the West Guardian. “All fighting is concentrating your strength and dispersing the enemy’s. From an argument with your Mother, to a five year, two million soldier worldwide war! The same principal always, always! Applies. Make ‘em spread out and you tighten up. Make ‘em confused, while you stay focused. Make them swing where you ain’t and hit them where they are.”

That always made sense to him, even if it was hard to do in practice. Now, these murder beasts were pack or quasi-pack animals, and clearly territorial of this area. Which he guessed meant that their den was around here, so they would be unlikely to move away for too long. Were they past the birthing season? Oh please let there not be young cubs and their mothers in that hole. Mother Moon, please!

So, distraction might work for a bit, but only for a bit. He had no idea how to poison them, or with what. He was pretty reluctant to kill them. Mazelton knew, intellectually, that an enormous distinction should be made between killing wild animals for food and killing domesticated animals for food. And equally, killing animals in self defense. But the taboo ran very deep. He didn’t want to hurt these animals if he could help it.

Mazelton very carefully, very slowly, eased his way back. He stuck as low as practicable, snaking between the lumps and pits in the earth that marked the forgotten village. Trees had grown up there, still pretty scattered, but coming to be a serious size. A hundred years or more. Some looked even older than that. And the scattered brush and long grass was quite good for small game. He could understand why a pack of predators set up shop here.

He brought the “support” team in with a waved hand, and brought them up to speed.

“Suggestions?”

The Collective soldiers shrugged, the Dusty representatives started muttering about throwing rocks to lead them away, and Madam Lettie mouthed “Space Based Weaponry.” And if he had that, he wouldn’t be here, would he.

“Alright, let's make this simple. I need someone to bleed on some rocks, then launch the rocks with a sling. One at a time, slowly leading them away, like a wounded animal running off. Who wants to volunteer?” Mazelton said.

Nothing.

“Alright, you and you.” Mazelton picked out one veteran and one Dusty. “Don’t glare at me, if I cut myself it defeats the purpose.” He glared right back.

The vets bickered with each other in their foreign language, then after a vigorous game of rock paper scissors, one started scooping up decent sized rocks and the other rolled up his sleeve. Mazelton turned towards the Dusty.

“You need to borrow a knife?”

“I have one.” She grumbled. She already had her pouch of sling stones out. “Where should I cut?”

“Looks like that fella is cutting the back of his arm, which works. We don’t need a ton of blood here, just enough to get their attention.”

“You aren’t going to… do anything with the blood, right?” The veterans stopped what they were doing and looked over at them. Mazelton dramatically rolled his eyes.

“Not only am I not going to touch the blood, I’m going to be standing as far away as I can manage from it. Your blood has zero interest to me.”

Now, if I was a member of the Bo clan, that might be different, Mazelton thought. Their patron spirits were thirsty, and notoriously unpleasant if they felt like they were being ignored.

The blood speckled stones were launched one at a time. The first ricocheted off a bit of foundation five feet from one of the big carnivores, making his head whip around. He pounced over to where the noise came from with blinding speed and started tearing around trying to find the source. Then the next stone landed in the brush three meters ahead, and the critter pounced over again. The other members of the pack clearly weren’t going to let their comrade monopolize injured prey, so they charged over to, slapping and snarling at each other. Each determined to get the biggest piece.

When he felt that they were decently far away, Mazelton moved for the hole. He kept low, inches above the ground, running on all fours on occasion. Anything to stay out of sight. He kept sweeping around with his senses, but the closer he got to the hole, the more it blinded him. He was surrounded by dense rubble piles. Concrete, some sort of aggregate. Something big fell over here, and left long streaks of rust behind. Big cement circles still standing by the hole- foundations for what fell? Four of them in a row, then nine smaller, densely packed rings laid out three by three. The hole was on their right from where he was crouched. He flicked a stone into the hole. No response. He flicked a light core in. Nothing. He scurried over, trying to ignore the heat building up in his skin.

The hole was built around another rubble slope. He didn’t see any movement at the bottom, and the phantom claws of the all too real creatures were already mauling his back. In he went.

Mazelton half walked and half slid down the slope, a light core sweeping around in front of him. Nothing, stagnant water, nothing, more puddles and mud, nothing… another concrete slab that once held something big and, judging by the rust, ferrous. Something moved on his left. He swung the core over, twisting his body around. His feet twisted under him and he collapsed, sliding down the slope, desperately swinging the light around trying to see whatever it was. He got to the bottom of the slope, weapon and light swinging like a pendulum. Nothing moved. Mazelton realized that he was bleeding.

He had jumped at nothing. Not wanting to pick up something nasty, he quickly ran a purification core over the gash in his leg and tied a bandage around it. It didn’t look too bad, but it was starting to hurt. And he knew perfectly well that as soon as he started moving, that wound was going to bleed like crazy. West Guardian had a great expletive for things like this.

“P’KlickGeR!”

Nobody knew what it meant, but damned if you didn’t feel better having said it. He did feel a little better now, even with the damp, excitingly heat rich stagnant water soaking through his pants and, by the transitive property, encroaching on his balls and prostate. He started cycling the heat really fast as he staggered up, trying not to put his weight on his left leg. The only thing he could kind of use as a cane was his weapon. Which was a bad idea on several levels, not least of which being that he didn’t trust his workmanship to hold up.

Father would have thrashed him for making such rubbish. Then thrashed him a second time for calling it a weapon, and reported him to the Armaments Hall’s Disciplinarian for a caning under the Clan rules for shaming the honorable name of the Ma Armarments Hall.

His leg was really starting to hurt now, and he could only see two things in this pit- water and rubble. Bigger than the other pit. If he had to guess, this was originally some sort of underground storage for bulk… something. Probably grain, given the geography, though that seemed dumb. Grain rotted, picked up fungus in the dark and damp. Maybe some sort of processed grain? But again, why bury it?

Mazelton looked around for more clues, and found nothing he could understand. There was a long row of charred wooden barrel staves collapsed against one wall. He shone the light around some more. There was an ungodly number of the burnt staves, though, when he turned them over, all the staves were burnt on only one side. Presumably the outside? But the curve of the wood suggested that they were burnt on the inside.

Perhaps they were filled with accelerants? And something triggered a fire in all the barrels? But the walls don’t look scorched…

Mazelton smiled a little through the pain. He always enjoyed puzzling apart the relics of old empires and civilizations. Maybe it was why the Dusties made so much sense to him- nothing was ever really lost- just going through some changes.

But other than the staves, there was nothing, or at least nothing of value that he could see. Mazelton kept limping around, poking his light into corners. Nothing, more nothing, considerably more nothing… Yeah, this wasn’t going to have some secret cache of seeds or whatnots, it was a damn barrel warehouse where they had some kind of big machine that did something. Who knows.

He found what looked like a little office. The walls had rotted away, and the furnishings were more deduced than present. Piles of collapsed wood, rusted metal, “bits and bobs” wasn’t a technical term, but that’s what it was. Some papers, their acid having rendered them illegible and time dissolving them further. A manager’s office? Or a supervisor of some kind? It wasn’t a complete loss. On the ground he found a rather pretty round cut glass decanter and four cut glass cups. That was a nice little prize!

He had no way to carry them out. This was meant to be a search, not a recovery. Damn it. He sighed. He poked around under where the desk had likely been. For some reason, that was a popular spot for “hidden” safes and caches. Not here. His leg throbbed, and he had long since bled through the bandage. Yeah, he was done here. Time to crawl up a long, long, rubble slope and evade a pack of apex predators with a hate boner for all other life. Who knows, maybe he could even get an appreciative pat on the back for his efforts! Well, let's not be greedy. More like an understanding nod. From some of them. Maybe just the Nimu crowd.

A loud CRACK snapped the air, then two more in quick succession. Something wizzed and made a smaller crack against the concrete at the top of the slope. Rifle fire. Were they shooting at the animals? Bastards! Wait…

Mazelton spun towards the ramp, shining his light over. Three of the big bastards had padded near silently down the slope and were spreading out around him. Rife fire kept cracking overhead. More of them at the top of the slope.

Mazelton dropped his core and tried to bring his weapon to bear. The creatures weren’t having it. They charged in, one going high and two going low and from the sides. All he could think of was “Space!” so he stepped back and to the diagonal while thrusting the weapon forward like a cane. It was enough to mess up their line of attack, as the one on the right briefly blocked the other two. A half second later, three unharmed, but somehow even madder, animals swung towards him again.

Mazelton kept falling back towards a wall, desperate to not let them get behind him. He got the weapon in line with one of the creatures and desperately smashed the core dust with his energy. He was packing a ton of ambient heat at the moment, so an almost visible ray of heat slashed at one of the monsters. A sharp line slashed across its face, clipped part of its neck and cut into its shoulder. It wasn’t dead yet, but the screams said he had hurt it. But now he would have to reload, and the creatures weren’t about to give him that time.

Focusing on his shot meant that he ignored the two he wasn’t shooting. The bastard on his left darted in, swinging his long claws at the wound on his leg. Mazelton almost got out of the way of it. The claws didn't catch the wound, but they dragged the length of his thigh, crippling his movement. The one in the middle decided to go high again, sweeping his claws at his face. That one whiffed, Mazelton could still get his weapon up between them. He staggered back a half step, not willing to trust any weight on his left leg now, but desperately needing to shift position.

He couldn’t pump more heat through the weapon, so it became a club. He brought it down with as much weight as he could put behind it, half braining the one in the center. It wasn't out of the fight for good, but it was down for a moment. The one on the left moved to gut him, and Mazelton did the only thing he could think of- dumped all the heat in the core in his hand directly into the creature’s face. The critter still bit his arm, breaking it, but it was too late- Mazelton had got its brain.

Two incapacitated, one dead. Mazelton collapsed onto the ground. He tried to open the butt of the weapon, dump out the old sachet and reload. He realized that he couldn’t use the broken arm. No strength left to grip. He braced the weapon with his feet and legs, lips twisting with pain as the tears in the leg pulled.

He managed to open the chamber and scraped out the remnant paper and dust with his fingers. It was hot, far too hot. He couldn’t think about that right now. He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out another sachet, dumped it into the chamber with shaking hands, and got the chamber closed.

The creature he brained looked like it was starting to pull itself together. Mazelton rested the weapon on one foot, did his best to aim with one hand, and fired. It was a bad shot, hitting the meat of the shoulder. Mazelton dragged the line up and forward for the second of its existence, catching some of the neck. Blood sprayed out under high pressure, the little wound doing just enough damage. Mazelton started painfully clearing the chamber once more. It took a seeming age, but he finally put the last beast down.

He didn’t fall over. He just sat there, collapsed over his weapon and squeezed the bite marks on his arm. The rifle fire over the hole had stopped at some point.

“Mazelton. Are you alive down there?”

It took him a moment to realize he was being talked to, and that it was probably important for him to respond.

“Yes. Don’t come down, throw a rope. I’m hurt but alive.”

“I’ve got a heat sponge, would that be enough?”

“Not even close. Throw a rope.”

One eternity later, a rope thumped down at the bottom of the ramp. It took a second eternity to crawl his way over to it and tie it around his waist.

“I can’t walk. I will try to make it as easy as I can, but you will need to pull me up.”

”Alright, we can haul you up. Anything good down there?”

Mazelton had a whole new set of bad scrapes and bruises by the time they got him back to the camp. The veterans, looking extremely conflicted, put a bandage on the leg wound and on his arm. They would need stitching, assuming they weren’t infected. Actually, even if they were infected. Still, the bandages kept him together long enough to get back to the wagon, and after a long while, catching up with the rest of the caravan.

He kept playing a purification core over the leg and arm wounds. One of the Dusties splinted the arm for him. The bones weren’t really out of alignment, just fractured. Still hurt like hell, though, and he had no strength in his left hand. The leg was fairly shredded along the outside flank. Even if it healed well, he was going to be living with some impressive scars.

They left the cores behind. Wasteful.

They caught up with the caravan around lunchtime. Mazelton was still pretty woozy, the wounds were still bleeding. Policlitus got him on a table, had someone pour clean water over the wounds, dab them as dry as he could manage, then Toko stitched them up. Mazelton ran his purifiers over everything, praying that the infection hadn’t already set in. He was swimming in heat again. He ate until he was nearly sick. Drank enough water for four. Then collapsed in the back of his wagon.

Duane, bless him, drove carefully. Mazelton managed to get some sleep.

When he woke again, it was nighttime. Some decent soul, he assumed it was Duane, put a big bowl of peas and rice next to him. He wolfed it down as best he could, then checked over his body. It was a mess, and, horribly, it could have been worse.

His left leg was mauled, but it was “just” muscle damage. No tendons or ligaments torn, no apparent nerve damage, and only a modest chunk of the meat missing. Toko did a neat job with the stitching, bless him, so it should heal pretty well. Even with all the purification cores, Mazelton had the sinking feeling that it was infected. Puncture wounds were bastards for that, and those claws did punch their way in. He couldn't be sure, but he really, really didn’t want to gamble. His arm, on the other hand, was absolutely infected. The break wasn’t too bad as these things went. Toko only had to put in a couple of stitches, and covered the rest in bandages. Father Sun save me from the unclean things of the world- those creatures’ mouths must be full of rotting meat and sickness.

Was this some sort of divine punishment for eating farmed meat? Mazelton covered his eyes with his arm and rested his head on the floor of the wagon. He hurt. Everything ached, his arm throbbed in its splint, and every time he shifted his left leg, stabbing pain ran up and down his spine like lightning in a swimming pool. He could almost hear the cheers of the little sickness demons as they ate and fucked their way out of the wounds in his arm and leg. The little shits. He could vividly remember recuperating in South Port. Not doing that again. Not possible on the trail anyhow. Besides, he had a new option now. He spotted Duane nearby. He asked for a big mug of water, and Madam Lettie.

“They got you good, huh? Their skulls are not collection worthy, and you lost that fighting spirit?” Madam Lettie blew in with forced cheer.

“Funny you should say that, I did go for the head whenever possible.” Mazelton forced a smile of his own. “Three waist high bastard cousins of a… I don’t know what. I guess the Vets killed the others?”

“Yeah, they apparently found and ate the stones you used to distract them, sniffed the air a bit and went charging back to the hole. You know the rest.”

“Hah. Sounds about right.” Mazelton shook his head. “On a less pleasant subject, does this smell infected to you?” He held up his arm. Lettie looked it over, breathed in slightly, and nodded.

“How about the leg?”

She took a longer sniff, then nodded firmly again.

“I can’t cure it for you. We just don’t have the tech base to synthesize the medicine that would cure this.” She said.

“I know. Believe me, I know. But there is something you could help me with.” Mazeltin pointed to his throat.

“Could you be a secondary regulator on a hard clean? I reckon I have the control to pull it off, but I absolutely don’t want to try it without a spotter. You don’t get to be wrong twice on a hard cleanse.”

Lettie cocked her head to the side.

“I’m not familiar with that term. Or rather, I think you are using the words in a way I’m not familiar with.”

Mazelton gave her a skeletal smile.

“Basically I deliberately flood the area of the wounds with heat, killing off anything that isn’t me. Screw it up and you kill off the bone marrow and all kinds of other nastiness. You can also give yourself hyperthermia because your body temp shoots up. Now, I have very, very good control over my heat, and I am not concussed or anything, so I can give this a shot. Assuming, of course, I have someone that can keep an eye on my vitals and let me know when and where I am screwing up.”

Lettie looked at Mazelton like he had brain damage.

“Do you have brain damage? That’s like burning down a barn to kill the rats!”

“I’ve never killed a rat in my life!”

“Wait, really?”

“Why would I? They’ve never bothered me.”

Lettie forcibly steered herself back on track.

“This is very, very dangerous. Have you considered, and this is a wild idea I know, but have you considered just letting your body’s better than average immune system fight off the sickness? Because you do have an above average immune system.”

“I do?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Just the improved liver and kidney functions.”

“Oh, you have a really decent suite of heritable traits installed. Not, you know, collection worthy, but quite good. From what I can see, you have some small improvements to organ function, teeth that better resist plaque and erosion, a somewhat enhanced immune system and, most impressively, some really sophisticated gene stabilization. I know all polishers have that to some degree, but this is really good stuff.”

“Huh. Genuinely no idea.”

“Nobody mentioned anything about getting gene treatments?”

“Nah, but… it’s the Ma Clan. At some point some Clan Head probably decided that everyone needed upgrades and made it happen.”

“That… sounds plausible. Horribly.”

“Yes. How terrible. Said the woman who’s only debatably human.”

Lettie reared back like she was slapped.

“How dare you! We are entirely human! My genome matches yours to a fraction of one percent.”

“Right, but you could literally read my genetic makeup after being around me a handful of times. No tools, no samples, nothing.”

Lettie frowned.

“I took samples. Smelling is taking samples. Breathing is taking samples. You just get an intuitive sense of what you are looking at with experience.”

“I understand. Others don’t, but I really, really do.”

Lettie sighed.

“Us monsters together, huh?”

Mazelton just smiled.

“Fine. On your own mediocre head be it.”

“That really bothered you.”

“YES.”

“Fine, fine. Look, just… stick your fingers on a vein and keep an eye on me, would you?”

“What am I, Bo Clan? Do your thing.” She flicked her fingers at him as Mazelton closed his eyes and started to do his thing.