“Just a little more!” Walks-in-Shadow said. He was trying to be encouraging. He really was. I had to remind myself of that every time he said anything to avoid snapping at him. Maybe this was how Dad felt when I was bothering him and he was busy working.
My legs shook under me, and I just focused on putting one hoof in front of the other. If I focused on the rhythm and my breathing I could block out the rest, even my aching muscles and empty stomach. After I’d finished the bear off my body had demanded a big meal and a long nap and it was desperate enough for both that it didn’t care about the order. Instead I’d forced myself to drag something weighing more than I wanted to think about all the way back to the zebra village basically on my own. Walks-In-Shadow tried to help but the best thing he could do was just stay ahead of me and keep the path clear.
I took a few more steps and felt a lot of the weight come off me.
“I’ve got it,” Smoke-in-Water said softly. “Go sit down.”
I nodded to the older zebra and looked around. I was in front of the Companions hall, and I plodded my way over to a bench and half-fell onto it.
“Bringing it back was harder than fighting the bear!” I groaned.
“This is a good-sized Ghost Bear,” Smoke said. He’d set it down in a clear area and was walking around it in a circle. “Not the biggest I’ve seen, but very impressive for just the two of you on your own.”
“Walks-in-Shadow should get the credit,” I said. “I just did the grunt work.” I gave the kid a wink. “He was the brains of the operation.”
“No doubt,” Smoke agreed. He tossed me a pouch. “Here.”
I looked inside hoping to find a snack. I was sorely disappointed by the little wooden jar of green cream.
“What is this?” I asked. I licked the cream gently. “Ew.”
“It’s a poultice,” Smoke said. “You’ve got some nasty cuts. It’ll keep you from getting an infection or scarring up too badly.”
“Not sure if I’m really worried about either of those, these days,” I mumbled. Still, after he’d mentioned it I was dimly aware of a few scrapes where the bear’s claws had managed to draw blood. I gingerly applied the cream to my cuts and it was immediately soothing and cool, taking the irritation of the pain away instantly.
“Keep the jar,” Smoke said. “You’ll probably need it.”
“Thanks,” I said, putting it away. “I’m hoping Destiny gets my armor working soon enough that I don’t have to worry too much about that.”
“Does your armor make you super-strong, Sky Lady?” Walks-in-Shadow asked.
“It’s supposed to, but it’s either not as impressive as advertised or I’m not using it properly.” I shrugged. “What I really care about is that it can keep this under control.” I tapped my right foreleg. “I can’t go dragon-hunting if I can’t stand to be around it.”
“You did okay at the Iron Temple,” Walks said.
“I got lucky.” I sighed and rubbed my leg. “I had a bunch of Dartura root in me and I could still feel it starting to eat me up inside. It wasn’t even really focused on me until I started shooting it, and all I managed to do was scare it off.”
“A wise warrior prepares themselves before an important battle,” Smoke said. “Why don’t you help me prepare the bear, Walks-in-Shadow?”
“What are you going to do with it?” I asked.
“Every part of a bear has a use,” Smoke said. “The hide can be tanned, the organs used in potions, the fat can be made into soap or washed with, the meat is eaten--”
My stomach rumbled at the word ‘eaten’.
“Perhaps the Sky Lady would like a few choice cuts of bear meat as a reward for her help?” Smoke suggested. “I’ll have to butcher it either way. The Tincture requires the bear’s heart and liver.”
“Well, uh…” I hesitated. “I mean, is it even edible? It’s monster parts. I should be eating greens and grass and stuff, right?”
Smoke laughed and slapped my back. “I’ll get them cooked up with our little cub here. Why don’t you go check on your floating friend? I hear she’s been making things difficult for the Elders.”
“I’ll try and remind her the war ended a century and a half ago,” I got up, and my sore legs protested taking my weight. I took to the air before they could argue with me about the benefits of collapsing where I was standing. At least my wings weren’t sore yet.
“They’re dangerous, Chamomile,” Destiny grumbled. She was connected to the rest of the armor and I could see the spells working to repair it from here, glowing waves of red washing in and out over the cracked and broken tiles of crystal ceramic and titanium and filling in cracks little by little.
I raised an eyebrow. “First, they’re really not, and second, even if they were that doesn’t mean you can threaten foals with an anti-tank weapon.”
“I don’t even like pony foals, much less zebra ones!” Destiny protested. “They might try to steal parts of the armor, or damage it more, or…”
“Or?”
“Or something! I don’t know!” She sounded frustrated and annoyed. “Maybe you don’t know what the zebras are like, but I do. My own mother…” her voice trailed off.
“I know.” I put a hoof on the armor’s shoulder, kneeling down next to her. It felt like putting my hoof on her shoulder, sort of. “I saw that memory too. It was awful. But these aren’t the same zebras.”
“Yes, they are,” Destiny whispered. “They came from the same POW camp as the ones that attacked my family! They’re not civilians or refugees that ended up in the middle of nowhere, Chamomile! They’re criminals and soldiers!”
“Their ancestors were,” I pointed out. “Anyone that actually fought in the war died a long time ago, unless someone’s hiding a thousand-year-old zebra around here and I don’t know about it.”
“...You might be able to think that, but to me, it’s only been a couple of weeks since I saw the bombs fall and kill millions of ponies.”
I didn’t have a good answer to that, so I tried something that would have worked on me. I pulled her into a hug. She went quiet, and I could sort of feel her calming down. It’s hard to explain since I was hugging a suit of barding and she was dead, but maybe it was a ghost thing where I could just feel it.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m trying. I’m just freaked out by all this.”
“I’m freaked out too,” I admitted. “I mean, I’m on the surface! I’ve got no idea how to get home, and there are probably monsters hiding around every corner!”
“The only monsters here are ones we make ourselves,” said a voice behind me. Wheel-of-Moon coughed politely and stepped closer, sitting down at a respectful distance from us. I let go of Destiny and nodded a greeting to the old zebra mare. “I see you’ve returned, Sky Lady.”
“I’m sorry if I was rude,” Destiny mumbled.
“And you can even make the dead apologize,” Wheel-of-Moon said. “Truly the stuff of legend. How was your hunt?”
“Technically it was Walks-in-Shadow’s hunt,” I said. “We got a bear, though.”
“From the look of those cuts, the bear nearly got you.”
I shrugged. “It could have been worse.”
“Mm. Next time, try not letting it maul you,” she said.
“I’ll try that, thanks,” I said. “Hey, you got anything for a fever?”
“Feeling sick?” Wheel asked. “I’ll get you some honey tea. It’s not magical healing, but all the body needs for a fever is rest.”
“Thanks,” I said. She nodded and went inside.
“We’ve got time for a nap, but not much more,” Destiny said. “The Exodus armor is just about ready. If you put it on now, I can finish the rest on the way.”
“On the way where?” I asked.
“While you were gone I was working with DRACO to recover some of the corrupt data files we pulled off that broken PipBuck. We haven’t salvaged much yet. Maybe if we can get connected to the Warmind we can do something more, but with what we had on hoof, I was able to get coordinates to one possible location of note.”
“Is it the dragon’s lair, with a big red X on it?” I asked, stepping around to look into DRACO’s monochrome screen.
“The PipBuck connected to a monitoring station and requested current map data.”
Destiny tweaked one of the knobs next to the screen, and it switched over from a camera view through the scope to a map.
“This is the old map data,” Destiny said. “It’s not super useful right now, but it gives us a base to work from. We know we’re about here--” she put a marker on the map. “And according to the PipBuck, it downloaded a map update around here.” A second marker appeared and blinked slowly. “It’s labeled as a monitoring station. If the sensors are still online, we can update our data for current conditions.”
“It’d be nice to have a map that notes important little things like a brand new canyon opening up,” I admitted.
“I’ll settle for what I can get. It should have the accumulated information from every PipBuck that’s been in range. If we’re lucky, maybe one of the raiders was wearing one and it’s got that big red X waiting for us.”
I nodded. “There’s a meal waiting for me back in the other camp. Let me get something in my stomach and maybe get a quick nap in, and then we’ll figure out how to get to this monitoring station.”
“Put this in your stomach first,” Wheel said, popping up out of nowhere. I almost jumped.
“Gah! You’re even quieter than the bear,” I said. She put a steaming stoneware cup in my hooves. “I need to put a bell on you or something.”
“I hope I’m quieter than a lumbering beast,” Wheel-of-Moon said.
I sipped at the honey tea. It had some kind of spice or mint in it, and I felt my rumbling stomach quiet a little.
Wheel-of-Moon looked significantly towards the Companions camp. “Do you know why they keep their camp there, and not inside the village?”
“Philosophical differences on the appropriate role of violence in problem-solving?” I guessed.
Wheel-of-Moon smiled. “Among other things, yes. More importantly, it is because of the nature of their blessing. Or curse. I know they trust you enough to have shown you already.”
“They use combat drugs to turn into big half-bear monsters,” I said. “It’s pretty cool.”
“Yes, that is how it always seems at first,” Wheel agreed. “It’s why so many young zebra join them. From the outside, it seems exciting, a life with power and friends, the leaders of the hunt, the defenders of the tribe. They are very good at reminding us of how useful they are. But what about the end of a Companion’s life?”
“What, like… slipping up and getting eaten by a monster?” I asked.
“Those are the lucky ones. You should talk to them about the Long Walk. Ask Smoke-in-Water about it. Make sure Walks-in-Shadow can hear. Perhaps he already knows, but it is a truth the Companions don’t even speak of amongst each other.”
“I bet when they’re too old the drugs stop working,” Destiny said. “Or it kills them. Some kind of muscle or organ damage. Transformation effects like that must be hard on the body.”
“I don’t know. Smoke is pretty old.”
“Yeah, and you haven’t seen him transform, have you?” Destiny pointed out. She floated ahead of me, curious enough about digging up a zebra secret that she was coming along for the ride. I was pretty sure she just wanted to shame them with whatever she found.
“Or maybe it’s something not sinister,” I said. “Maybe there’s some really dangerous, suicidal mission that one of them has to go on every so often. Like… maybe all the heat down here is from a reactor, and they have to send someone in to fix it every few years! And they die of terrible radiation burns!”
“That would still be sinister.”
“No, it would be tragic and self-sacrificing.”
“And why wouldn’t they just use Rad-X or… whatever the zebra equivalent is? And why would it break over and over again?”
“You’re really wrecking this whole cool story I had in my head.”
“Sorry about bringing logic into things,” Destiny said.
“You have a wild imagination, Sky Lady,” Walks-in-Shadow said, from right next to me where he was standing and I hadn’t even seen him until I’d practically jumped out of my skin and my heart was doing its best to go at a thousand beats a second and also stop entirely, which had an effect much like when anything goes really fast and comes to an abrupt halt.
“Oh buck, kid, you scared me!” I gasped. "Why is everybody around here so sneaky?”
“Sorry,” he said. “I was just gonna go get you, but you’re already here! You’ve got real good timing.”
A soft breeze caught the smell from up ahead. It was the first time I’d ever smelled cooking meat, and I didn’t have anything to compare it to. Okay, that’s not entirely true, but I tried not to think too hard about flame turrets and having all the skin burned off my hoof. It might have mostly stopped hurting, but sometimes there was a phantom sensation of crawling, burning agony that was bad enough to make me break out into a sweat even if it only lasted a heartbeat, and the smell of the cooking bear was just enough to hit me with that.
“Sit down over there,” Walks-in-Shadow said, leading me over to a table he’d clearly set up for me. He’d cleaned it off and even found a candle somewhere to set the mood. Things were starting to get dark, or at least darker. The surface was sort of gloomy. If we were outside the canyon maybe we’d be able to see the setting sun, but down here it was just greys that slowly worked their way towards black.
Smoke trotted over with a wooden plate and put it in front of me. “This should put some meat on those bones of yours.”
The steak was almost the same size as the plate and had some kind of glaze on it. The meat was a purple-red so dark it was almost black, and cooking it hadn’t made it lighten up. I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure this wasn’t poison.
I looked at the slab of bear and then at Smoke-in-Water. “Is it supposed to look like that?”
“It is a warrior’s meal. A bear steak, cooked with honey to tenderize it.” He stabbed a knife into the meat. “Here. Don’t try to swallow it all at once.”
There was just something disquieting about eating part of an animal when you knew the animal personally. Sort of personally. I liked to think that wrestling it to death gave us a sort of connection. My stomach disagreed, and rumbled with a strong argument that if I didn’t eat something soon, it was gonna make me pass out purely out of revenge. I started slicing into the steak, cutting it into thin slices.
“So, Wheel-of-Moon said I should ask you about the Long Walk,” I said, figuring I might as well try to get the conversation out of the way while I was thinking about it. I started eating, using the knife to stab slices of the steak. I blinked at the taste. It was savory and sweet and salty and before I knew what I was doing I was tearing into it. I was sort of surprised at how easy it was to chew.
Smoke nodded in approval at my appetite and sat down across from me. “I should have expected that. She has reason to be wary. It is not truly some secret, but no one has had to take the Long Walk in years, and it is not something we like to discuss.”
“It’s some kind of suicide mission, isn’t it?” Destiny asked. She bobbed a little in a shrug. “Why dance around it?”
“Yes, and no,” Smoke said. “The Tincture is powerful, but every time it is taken, the wild spirit of the Ghost Bear fights for control of the warrior. For a time, the warrior can easily hold it back, but it is a battle repeated with every use.”
“It’s addictive,” I said. I didn’t need to ask, he might as well have been describing my relationship with Med-X. If it wasn’t for liberal use of Dartura tea I’d be an even bigger mess than I already was.
“Worse,” he said, surprising me. “Most medicine, the body adapts to it and you need more and more to get the same effect. The Tincture builds up in a warrior. Eventually, the day comes when they don’t need the medicine to change. Then it gets harder and harder to change back, until they can’t.”
“They’re stuck as big half-bear monsters?” I asked, looking down at the meat on my plate.
“The Bear spirit quickly overcomes their minds, and they become beasts themselves, with only rare moments when they remember being zebras at all. They leave the village, and go out into the waste to try and find a cure. That is the Long Walk. They go out to be lost and forgotten instead of being remembered as beasts.”
“How would they even find a cure if they’re just… wild animals?” Destiny asked.
“They wouldn’t,” Smoke said. “But it is easier to believe and have hope. They are not going off to die, they are searching for something to save us all.”
“Kinda grim,” I muttered.
“It is the way of things,” Smoke-in-Water said. “It isn’t a sure fate. The less of the Tincture a zebra takes, the longer before they lose control. I haven’t changed in years. But to hunt? To fight off raiders? To slay monsters? The Companions do what we must. It is the sacrifice we make, and the reason we are allowed to indulge ourselves. A short life should be celebrated and made full of smiles instead of sorrow.”
“Do you still want to join, knowing all that?” I looked over at Walks-in-Shadow, who was half-hidden by the table and listening silently to us.
“There’s no shame in being a scholar,” Smoke said. “Wheel-of-Moon is a good friend of mine, even if we disagree about other things.”
“I still want to do it,” Walks said, after a moment of consideration. He glanced at me, then at Smoke. “I know it’s dangerous, but I’m ready. I’m old enough to make the decision for myself.”
“So be it,” Smoke said. He trotted over to the cauldron with that light, almost prancing step zebras had and used a ladle to scoop some of the blood-red sludge brewing inside it into a wooden cup, giving it to Walks-in-Shadow with grave solemnity.
“Here I go,” Walks-in-Shadow said. He held the steaming wooden cup in his hooves and stared into it like he could see his future.
“You don’t have to--” I started. Walks-in-Shadow put the cup to his lips and drank it down before I even had a chance to finish. “--Never mind.”
Walks-in-Shadow coughed and held out the wooden mug for Smoke to take. “That tasted awful,” he said.
“It’s made of bear parts and weird plants,” I said. “There was absolutely no way it was ever going to taste good.”
“Is it doing anything?” Walks tried to get a look at himself, turning around in a circle while he stared at his own flank like a colt trying to spot a new cutie mark.
“The first change takes a few moments to begin, and it can be a difficult experience,” Smoke said. “You should sit down and try to remain calm.”
Walks nodded and sat down quickly, shivering. “Is it supposed to feel hot and cold at the same time?”
“You’re feeling your hair start to grow,” Smoke said. “It’s like goosebumps in the cold. Just focus, young one. Focus on staying in control.”
“I can feel--” Walks cried out. His muscles bulged and started swelling. I took a step towards him, and Smoke stopped me, grabbing my shoulder and shaking his head.
The zebra colt’s stripes faded. He grabbed his head and his muzzle twisted and grew three sizes that day. Also there were a lot of fangs involved, and right after that, the claws started. I looked at Smoke.
“Just give him a moment,” he said. “It’s confusing and disorienting the first time one changes, like being in a waking dream.”
Walks had grown almost as large as Falls-the-Axe had when he’d changed, and he was still growing. His eyes glowed with magical light, and he was sporting fangs and claws that put a combat knife to shame. He looked down at Smoke and me and growled.
“Just keep control,” Smoke repeated, slowly and calmly. “You can--”
Walks roared and backhooved him, slapping the old Zebra away and into a table, hard enough to knock the logs over.
“He’s gone berserk!” Destiny yelled.
“Go check on Smoke!” I shouted, spreading my wings to make myself look bigger and getting in front of Walks. “Hey! Over here!”
The werebear turned to me and growled, baring its bear fangs at me.
“Kid, if you don’t calm down, I’m gonna do something you’re gonna regret,” I said.
He lowered his head and charged. I’d warned him. I jumped into the air and twisted so when I landed on his back, I was able to get my hooves around his ribs. Before he even knew what was happening, I’d pivoted in midair and thrown him using his own momentum, the werebear rolling head-over-hooves to a stop against the canyon wall.
“You’re not as heavy as the real bear,” I said, sweat dripping down my face. I wasn’t sure I had another one of those left in me. My whole body was already feeling feverish and hot and cold at the same time again.
“Chamomile--” Destiny warned.
“I know, I know. I have a plan. A real plan.”
“That’s not--” she started, but I didn’t have time to listen to her worrying about me. Walks-in-Shadow charged right for me again. I spread my wings like I was going to jump into the air, feinted, and he looked up at where he thought I was going. That made him totally miss when I ran in low and swept his legs, grabbing one of those big murder-claws and twisting it behind his back.
“There we go!” I yelled, holding him in place when he slammed into the dirt. He tried to throw me off and I planted a hoof on his spine. “No! You’re going to calm down and behave!”
He panted for breath, struggles getting weaker and weaker until I felt it. The muscles in his claw spasmed and started to shrink, and stripes crawled across his body like ripples in water. I held his hoof for a few more seconds to be sure, then let go and stepped away.
“Ay ya, Sky Lady!” he groaned. “What did you do to my leg?”
“It might be a little dislocated,” I said by way of an apology. “You were out of control.”
“It happens,” Smoke groaned, getting up. “Thank you for keeping him here. If he had gotten into the village…”
“Where is everybody else?” I asked. “Shouldn’t the other Companions have helped with this?”
“They’re all off scouting the ridges around the valley to make sure the raiders have only one way in. The Shovel of Rockhoof is a wonderful tool for opening passages, but it can be used to close them as well.” Smoke sighed. “I thought I could handle the boy myself. I was wrong. I owe you once again.”
My stomach rumbled.
“I could use another snack,” I said.
“So could I,” Walks-in-Shadow agreed. “And maybe some medicine.”
“You’re lucky she didn’t kill you,” Destiny said. “I would have.”
“Leave it to the ghost to be all gloom and doom,” I said, patting the helmet affectionately.
“I’ll train the boy,” Smoke said. “He’s a fast learner. In a few days he should be ready to hunt on his own and defend the village when the rest of us are away. I’ll see if I can get Falls-the-Axe to train him on the finer points.”
Walks-in-Shadow was sleeping off his transformation and a very large meal afterwards. He’d eaten even more than I had, and I’d felt like I was starving!
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, pulling an armored sleeve over my right forehoof. The whole suit of armor felt a little looser than usual. I pressed the resize button on the inside wrist and it shrank that half-size to fit.
“Are you sure you want to do this alone?” Smoke asked.
“She won’t be alone,” Destiny said. “I’ll be with her. And with the Exodus armor repaired, there’s no reason to think those raiders will be able to cause trouble for us.”
“Don’t jinx it,” I warned. I wiggled my body, getting used to the weight of the armor. “Feels pretty good.”
“I set the weight-reduction to a little higher than the armor’s mass,” Destiny said. “It’s supporting itself and about ten percent of your body weight.” She floated over my head and dropped down, letting me pull the helmet the rest of the way on and lock the seals in place.
“As you wish,” Smoke said. “I would not insult a warrior by insisting they needed to take another to watch their back, but I might suggest such a thing to a friend.”
“DRACO will be watching my back,” I assured him. “He’s almost out of ammo but he’s still full of useful things.”
“Try to check in with the warriors who went to the Iron Temple,” Smoke said. “It might be closer to where you’re going, and they would no doubt be willing to help the Sky Lady if she needed it.”
“I will,” I promised. “Otherwise Walks-in-Shadow will worry too much, right?”
“That he will,” Smoke agreed, with a small smile. “With any luck, you won’t have to save him the next time he does something to try and impress you.”
I could feel it in the air. It was a sensation like that constant press of static electricity all around Thunderbolt Shores. It was a heavy weight in my chest, and a throbbing in my arm that was out-of-sync with my heartbeat. A snowstorm was coming down around us, just heavy enough that we couldn’t even see the ground from a few hundred feet up.
“Now that we’ve actually got sensors, I can tell you the dragon must be transmitting over a really huge area,” Destiny said. “I’m not sure how. It seems like too much for a single source, even if it had a huge power supply.”
“Can you do anything to block it?” I asked, trying to keep the strain out of my voice.
“I’ll increase power to the near-field transmitter,” Destiny said. I felt the pressure ease off a little, but it didn’t go away. My right shoulder felt like it was in a vice. It was still an improvement.
“Are we getting close?” I asked.
“Yeah, you can start descending,” Destiny said. “Good idea keeping up here! The storm is giving us enough cover that there’s no way any raiders are going to see us coming.”
“That’s not the only reason. The signal is stronger near the ground.”
“It is?” Destiny asked.
“Yeah, I can feel it every time we hit a downdraft.” I adjusted my flight path and started easing down. I wanted to keep it safe and simple - with no visuals on the ground there was no telling what I was dropping into, and if something happened with the SIVA signal I wanted to be able to abort and get back to altitude.
“Is it going to be a problem? If you need to turn back, we can try something else,” Destiny said. She was being unusually nice. It was probably because we were actually doing what she wanted instead of what I wanted.
I figured I should encourage it. We were stuck together, so we had to be a team. “I can take it. Actually, this might still be the best option. Flying in means we won’t spend as long in the danger zone.”
“Good point,” Destiny agreed.
I saw something through the swirling snow. We were getting close to the ground. I spread my wings and pulled back, flapping slowly and dropping down to a hover. High-speed landings were cool, but not if you were worried the floor was lava.
“It’s a forest,” Destiny said, with obvious surprise.
“There was a forest down in the valley, too,” I pointed out, as I settled in to land in a clearing between tall trees.
“Yes, but it was warm and wet down there, with volcanic soil! That was good land for growing plants. This is the tundra! You can’t plant a tree in the permafrost! Especially not a tree like that.” She outlined a tree to my left. “That’s a coconut palm! There’s no way it can survive out here!”
“Let’s take a closer look,” I said. I had to focus on my steps, like when I was dragging that big bear back to camp. I could ignore the aches and pains if I had something else to occupy my brain.
I hadn’t even gotten all the way to the tree before something went wrong. I felt a long scrape against my armored leg, like somepony dragging a knife against it.
“Woah, what was that?” I asked, looking around. I couldn’t see any hidden knives.
“There. That plant.” Destiny pointed out a bush I’d stepped past without thinking. “Look at the edges of the leaves!”
I leaned in carefully to look. The light glinted off the leaves in a suspiciously metallic way.
“They’re made of metal?”
“It’s like when your feathers grew back in,” Destiny said. “We’ll have to be careful.”
A breeze chose that moment to sweep around us, the leaves of the underbrush tinkling like wind chimes in every direction.
“Very careful,” Destiny amended. “You were right about waiting for the armor to be repaired. I take back everything I said about you wasting time. This forest would tear an unarmored pony to ribbons!”
“Look at the tree,” I said, finally getting up to it. “There’s something under the bark.” I pulled off a layer, revealing blinking lights and circuits running through the tree’s inner layers.
“Technically a palm tree doesn’t have bark, but-- this must be how they’re staying alive. They’re… cyborg trees, I guess? Weird. Only SIVA could do this.”
“That’s not the only problem,” I said. I looked up. Among the palm fronds were a bunch of hexagonal plates. “I think those are antennas.”
“The forest itself is boosting the signal,” Destiny groaned. “That’s why it’s stronger near the ground! Each one must only have limited range, but there’s no telling how many trees are hiding signal repeaters.”
“Let’s make this a quick trip,” I said. “Which way to the monitoring station?”