Page 1 of Fall

One

A wolf chased Lennainto a tree. The irony would have been hilarious had she not been running forher life.

She’d lived most of her life on spacecraft, and the remainder had been spenton civilized planets where she could find good food, decent drink, andworthwhile entertainment. A couple of years ago, she’d gone on a lunar safari,but only because the guy she’d been sleeping with at the time had insisted. Otherwise,the only wild she liked in her life was flying under Coalition radar in hersmuggling missions.

She’d certainly never expected to startle a sabretooth wolf and be forcedto flee through the tangled undergrowth of an alien forest to get away from it.

She didn’t actually know what kind of animal was chasing her. But it wasshaped like a wolf—with slightly longer ears and with enormous, curled fangslike the sabretooth cats from Earth’s prehistory.

Whatever the animal was, she’d clumsily stumbled across its path a minuteago. Unlike the other large mammals she’d encountered in the forest, this onedidn’t let her slip away undisturbed.

With a menacing growl, the wolf had lunged at her, snapping. So Lenna haddone what any reasonable person would have done in such a situation.

She’d run away as fast as she could.

She was in decent shape from years of making quick escapes in herless-than-legal activities, but she didn’t have a chance of outrunning thewolf. After fewer than twenty steps, it closed in on her—so quickly she couldfeel it snarling and panting at the back of her legs.

In desperation, she grabbed a low branch with both of her hands and swungherself up into the tree like a gymnast.

That had been the plan, anyway.

She was neither as strong nor as coordinated as a gymnast, but she didmanage to get her upper body above the branch and haul her legs up, just as thewolf lunged for them. The effort felt like it would rip her biceps in two, andthe forward momentum almost forced her into a face-first fall over the otherside of the heavy branch.

She didn’t have time to orient herself. The wolf took another leap forher, catching a piece of her pants in its mouth and grazing her shin with oneof its fangs. Almost choking in panic, Lenna lurched sideways toward the treetrunk as she groped for more stability. She reached for a higher branch, scrabblingup in such a frantic climb that she scraped the skin of her hands and shreddedthe other leg of her pants.

She managed to pull herself higher up the tree, just out of range of thewolf’s jaws.

It was ridiculous. Lenna—twenty-nine-year-old pilot and smuggler—treed byan enraged sabretooth wolf.

Oh, how far she’d fallen.

After a planet dump, however, anything could happen.

Lenna had been wandering through this miserable forest for more than twodays, ever since a criminal enforcement unit had dropped her alone on thisplanet in an disposal pod—in what was quickly becoming the Coalition’s mostcommon form of criminal punishment. The death sentence was forbidden—mostly forPR reasons—so criminals were sentenced to a planet dump like her or a lifetimeon a prison planet.

Either one usually ended up being a death sentence anyway. The Coalitioncould just pretend they hadn’t actually pulled the trigger.

In some ways, she knew she was more fortunate than other victims ofplanet dumps. At least this planet was genuinely habitable to humans. Theclimate here was temperate, and the vegetation—even in this damned, endlessforest—wasn’t as foreign as she’d been expecting.

So far the only violent predator she’d encountered was the wolf who wasstill snarling at her feet.

But that didn’t mean her punishment was an easy one.

Only a few criminals had ever made it back from planet dumps. Being droppedon an unknown planet in an unknown solar system with no provisions, weapons, ortransportation—with only a disposal pod manufactured to be cheap,biodegradable, and impossible to hotwire for flight—didn’t allow for manysurvivors.

Lenna still didn’t know how long she could survive.

All she’d eaten since she’d gotten here were some root vegetables she’dscavenged. They were sort of like turnips, and they tasted like shit. She’dseen some docile animals that looked like small bears eating them so she’dfigured they wouldn’t kill her. She had some trouble forcing them down raw, butat least they might keep her alive.

Her pod had landed not far from a fresh-water stream, and she’d beenfollowing it south when she’d run into the wolf. She was hoping to discovernew plants as she traveled and maybe something tastier to eat.

At the moment, however, eating was the least of her worries. The wolf hadstopped lunging up at her, but it was still stalking around the base of thetree.

Feeling nervous and insecure, she pulled herself up to a higher branch,stabilizing herself with her back to the trunk and with both of her hands on nearbybranches.

She then noticed a snake coiled up a couple of branches away—it wasbrownish, with subtle diamond-shaped shadings running down its back.

Lenna jerked instinctively as she saw it. The snake was just sleeping,however, so she talked herself out of her concern.

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