Dawn broke red.
Kaelen took it as an omen. Or maybe he was just seeing things that weren't there.
The ISV Venture Star hung in the sky like a second moon—massive, silent, terrifying. Even from the forest, he could see its shape, the skeletal framework of an interstellar vessel designed to carry thousands across the void. It had arrived in orbit during the night, and now it was descending, slow and inevitable, toward the clearing where the old human base stood.
"They're not waiting," Tarsem said. He stood beside Kaelen on the viewing platform, his face grim. "Thirty days, they said. They came in twenty-nine."
"Maybe they wanted to surprise us." Kaelen's voice was flat. "Maybe they thought we wouldn't be ready."
"Are we?"
Kaelen didn't answer. Were they ready? They had trained. They had planned. They had built alliances and stockpiled weapons and prayed to Eywa for guidance. But were they ready for 2,000 humans with modern weapons and a mandate to colonize?
He didn't know.
The first shuttles lifted from the Venture Star's belly, descending toward the planet's surface. Dozens of them. Hundreds. A swarm of metal insects carrying the seeds of a new world.
"Send word to the clans," Kaelen said. "Everyone to their positions. We wait. We watch. We don't engage unless engaged first."
"And if they engage first?"
Kaelen's hand found the knife at his belt. The blade was made of obsidian, sharp as glass, blessed by the elders. It had saved his life a dozen times.
"Then we show them why the forest doesn't forgive."