“Sure,” I said, “let’s get some air. You can show me the sights.”

The dusk was already full of stars, thousands more than you see on New Earth — Caproche is a lot closer to galactic center. A few ribbons of purpling cloud streaked the sky, but all were scudding off rapidly toward the horizon. It would soon be a clear, cool evening, with plenty of starlight to see by.

“It might turn cold,” Jerith said, looking at the sky too. “I can get you a sweater if you like.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

Jerith led me around the base of a small hill and immediately the sounds of the camp were cut off, leaving only empty stillness — the stillness of starlit hills decorated with nothing but ruined bunkers and the scars of energy blasts. A desolate silence. “Don’t you ever worry about being out here?” I asked Jerith. “All alone on a planet like this?”

“What would I worry about?” He sounded surprised at my question. “Alien ghosts?”

“Not ghosts,” I answered, trying to sound like a woman who never gets the creeps. “But with so much junk left over from the war... what if you stumbled onto an old minefield? Or some robot weapon that’s still active?”

He shook his head. “By the time humans arrived on Caproche, every battle site had been picked through a dozen times. The Myriapods surveyed the planet only two hundred years after the war, and you know how thorough they are. Even with their best sensing equipment, they didn’t find a single functional weapon, nor a working vehicle, not even a battery pack that still held its charge. No bodies either... well, nothing they recognized as bodies. Other groups came after the Myriapods — the Cashlings, the Fasskisters, five or six others — but they didn’t find anything either. The races who fought here stripped the place clean when they pulled out. Nothing left but trash.” He smiled. “That’s why Caproche only has one loony archeologist instead of a horde of prospectors looking for alien tech.”