There was the sound of thunder coming down the stairs, and the door of the room burst open as Luna put her hands behind her head. She knew cops. In their gold-edged, fitted uniforms, they looked out of another time than the farm people that Luna and Asta had come to know.
“Get them!” said one of the magistrates, who must have been the leader.

Chapter Seven

A hand on her shoulder pulled her away, and Scar spat a few words. Somehow, Luna knew that he was trying to see if she spoke any of the language. She scowled and said nothing. She would be damned if she was going to let him break her. A ringing slap from the back of his hand made her cheek burn, but still she said nothing. He threw her aside with what must have been an exclamation of disgust and she hit the dusty floor of the barn hard.
In her own way, Luna began to learn the language herself then. What else could he have been shouting at her but “get up”?

Chapter Six

The farmer shouldered his rifle, and two of his friends stepped forward and dragged Luna out of the tent by her shoulders.
“Hey!” Asta shouted, scrambling towards her, but Luna held out a hand.
“Don’t provoke them!” she said. The farmer was now talking animatedly, gesticulating towards a field on the plain below them which was filled with livestock – giant boars, rumbling around the pasture and butting each other gently. “I think he thinks we poached our meat from his farm.”
“But-” Asta began, and then stopped herself. She tried to remember what little she had learned about uncontacted peoples in history.
The fact she kept coming back to was how badly it usually went for the civilised folks in those stories.

Chapter Five

The dry, hardy grass that seemed to clump up everywhere notwithstanding, there was no sign of life in the broad valley they found themselves in. They left their pods down in the dip and set off along the shortest axis, up the side of one of the hills that surrounded them. Luna looked back down at the escape pods, twinkling silver in the light. That was the last she’d see of the life she knew for a long while. She could feel it, even then.

Chapter Four

It took about another week to get up to orbit of the planet that the councillor had suggested in his hurried, dashed-off text message. In official records it was known as Moss k18h79n8764gd790, a snappy designation that encapsulated every relevant factor about the planet’s atmosphere, gravitic-magnetic signature and geo-resources in a code that was understood by absolutely nobody alive in the Empire today.

Chapter Three

The operator waited a fraction of a second until the woman was away from the building, suspended in time for the brief moment before gravity took hold, and then pressed the trigger of the Matter Scoop. Instantly, a shimmering, sky-blue sphere formed in the air, encompassing the woman in mid-air for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Then sphere and woman alike vanished as easily as if they had never been there in the first place.
She was running before the computer dinged its customary notification: Warning: Organic Material Detected in Scoop Sphere.

Chapter Two

The city was almost uniformly built out of the same grey granite stone that also dominated the landscape around it, which made one building hard to discern from the next. Alleyways and bridges, textures and shapes, all seemed to blur together to the woman. Faces, on the other hand, she was hyperfocused on. The particular cast of the eyes here, the shape of the mouth there. All full of a million little clues. Answers to the most important question on her mind.
Are they on to me yet?

Chapter One