Chapter Six
The day after Cherry returned from her visit to the threads, she decided to go and see Aubriot. Through some secret machinations she couldn’t even guess at, her lover had managed to wrangle a room all to himself in the overcrowded settlement. She didn’t approve but she couldn’t deny it certainly made their assignations a lot easier to carry out.
The passageway that led to Aubriot’s room was especially crowded. Parents were collecting their babies from daycare after their day’s work in the farming district, tending to the crops and constructing permanent housing. The colony had precious little farming or construction equipment left. Scythian spiders had passed over the place where the colonists had hidden the machines in preparation for the expected attack. The enemy’s search-
