Susan travelled to Mill Creek Camp, where she saw her Uncle Lars for the first time in many years. He was the husband of her father’s sister, so was no blood relation. For this, Susan was relieved, as he was a violent drunk, who had a habit of putting his hands where they shouldn’t be. He had been exiled from Liberty after the Revolution, when his bloodthirsty nature saw him almost kill someone in a brawl. During his exile with Marie Montero, his girlfriend, and later wife, they founded Riverport, on the continent of Great Dakota.
When the rest of the Thompson family joined them, the settlement became a major logging town, and became Coyote’s main industry. But Lars was the black sheep of his family, and his drunken behaviour almost saw the town in ruin, during a short spell as Mayor. In a last attempt to give him the opportunity to straighten himself out, he was given the job of running the logging operations in The Black Mountains. This job suited him, but it was not long before the operation had suffered several setbacks, as a result of a ‘pest’ problem.
Susan, a natural biologist at The Colonial University, travelled to Mill Creek Camp, to study the situation. There had been several sightings of small creatures near almost every settlement on Coyote… her father, Carlos Montero, had the first known contact with the ‘Sandcrawlers’ and while many saw them as ‘pests’ much like her ignorant uncle, many had identified their unique behaviour, and wished to study them.
Susan was here on an expedition to analyse Lars Thompson’s ‘pest’ problem… but Susan knew so much more about what had became known as the Chireep. They were examples of intelligent life on coyote…
And she was about to witness that in a way no one else on Coyote ever had before…
