Excerpt from The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Who are you? What are you doing on this land?"

The person's mouth worked as if they hadn't spoken for a while. "G-good evening, ERT Ranger Destry Thomas. Don't think I've ever seen Environmental Rescue on a private planet."

Destry ignored his comment and ran her hands through the waist-high grass, connecting to the sensors that dusted each blade. Whatever was happening inside the person's encrypted stream, it was getting thicker. Data poured down furiously and shot back up again.

She stopped a couple of meters away from the fire. "What's your name, stranger?" One hand was free, and the other settled lightly on her holstered gun, slung low over her right hip.

"Name's Charter. I'm not looking for trouble, Ranger. I'm here to experience the Pleistocene. It's the purest environment for mankind."

She groaned to herself. Charter was the default male name for Homo sapiens remotes. No wonder he was regurgitating that fat data stream. Somebody was controlling him from offworld, probably thousands of lightyears away, using this proxy body to get their jollies in the ecosystem she'd sworn to protect. He wasn't the first, though usually their controllers gave them unique names and upgrades. Out there, in the volume of galactic space claimed by the League, some people believed you weren't really human unless you'd experienced a Pleistocene environment on an Earthlike world. Hence the lure of her planet, Sask-E, whose fragrant forests some distant asswipe was currently smudging with uncontrolled carbon waste.

"Alright, Charter. I'm not sure who you are or how you got here, but this is unoccupied land. It's not your habitat."

"Verdance is going to start selling it pretty soon. No harm done." Charter was starting to sound whiny, hinting at the personality of whoever controlled him.

"You need to biodegrade everything in this camp and get off this land right now."

"This ecosystem is my birthright." Charter planted his feet firmly next to the fire. He still held the spit with the hare's skinned, burned body in one hand. "It's the origin of all mankind, and everything we do now is shaped by it."

A cool arctic wind threaded through the forest, and fir tree branches gestured wildly overhead. But Destry felt sweaty, inside and out; she ran an arm across her forehead, smearing the dust on her face into a thin, gritty mud. Walking closer, she gave up the pretense of talking to Charter as if he were alive. Now she looked into the wide purple eyes of the expensive biotech toy and addressed the distant person controlling him. "Listen. You haven't identified yourself, and I don't know where you are coming from. But you put this remote here, and you damaged the forest. You're trespassing. You killed animals, which is a crime. You need to pack up your remote right now and get off Sask-E before I report you to Verdance."

She hoped the threat was enough. Charter's controller could be sued for what he'd done. The only thing preventing her from reporting him right now was the fact that she liked talking to Verdance security about as much as they liked dealing with unripe real estate. Sask-E was supposed to terraform itself for another thousand years before anyone had to worry about its existence. Hopefully she could deal with this problem on her own.

Charter yanked some flesh off the hare and put it between his teeth, chewing awkwardly. "You know that man evolved to eat meat, don't you?"

It would have been hilarious to hear a completely fabricated Homo sapiens remote taunting her like that, if it hadn't been so nauseating to watch. "I'll ask you again to move along. This planet is still under construction, and hunting could destabilize the local food web."

Charter shrugged. "Don't be dramatic. Why don't you and that mount leave me to enjoy my dinner?" He made the question sound like a command, as if he was used to ordering a lot of mute servants around. Destry frowned. How had he found this star system, anyway? Planets under development weren't listed on public maps, and there was no way he stumbled on it by chance. His controller must have access to Verdance's real estate databases, which would make him some kind of insider. Or rich guy with a taste for Earthlike worlds who paid a tick to burrow quietly into Verdance's data systems. She fiddled with her holster, then walked her fingers back. There was a chance she could get in trouble for shooting this thing, even if he wasn't supposed to be here. If her boss was displeased, she might be grounded and forced to handle regulatory compliance garbage for years.

Excerpted from The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz. Copyright © 2023 by Annalee Newitz. Excerpted by permission of Tor Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.