Technos

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At night the streets of Clovis were twisting threads of shadowed mystery faced by high walls and shuttered windows, looping and curving as they followed the dictates of some ancient plan. The city itself was a place of brooding silence broken only by the sough of the wind from the plains beyond, the discordant chiming of prayer bells suspended from the peaked and gabled roofs. Pale lanterns hung like ghostly stars, their ineffectual light augmented by the haze from the landing field and the great floodlights of the workings to the north where men and machines tore into the planetary crust for the wealth buried deep; all was reflected from the lowering clouds in a dim and artificial moonlight.

Dumarest paused as he reached an intersection, eyes watchful as he studied the streets curving to either side. They appeared deserted but that meant little; men could be lurking in the black mouths of doorways, the shadowed alleys, ready to leap out and kill any who passed. He would not be the first to be found robbed and murdered in the light of the rising sun.

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