“They won’t shoot you if they can tell you’re with me and that I’m bringing you of my own volition,” Kay assured her new friend, resisting the urge to add “I hope” to the end of her sentence to not have Enn worry more than necessary. “Pretty much everyone knows who I am in Eighfour; being ‘the girl with the gate’ makes everyone at the settlement pretty interested in me, though not always in a good way. They’ll probably spot my cart and put their guns away immediately! No need to worry. None at all.”
	[I]Stop talking,[/I] she admonished herself, trying not to worry about whether her smile was too stiff or her breathing too quick, even as she felt her heart pounding in her chest. [I]You’re making it worse.[/I]
	“Unrelatedly, my cart is pretty resistant to bullets. Just so you know.”
	[I]Did I seriously just say that? What is wrong with me...[/I]

	All it took for them to get in view of Eighfour was cresting what appeared to be a three meters tall elongated hill of sorts with somewhat steep but manageable slopes, except that Kay knew that the “hill” actually fully encircled the settlement, functioning somewhat like a rampart for defensive purposes. She did not know when, why or by whom it was made, but it was so old that the forest had long reclaimed the presumably human construct, making it difficult to identify it as anything but a part of the natural terrain. Only someone from Eighfour would know... or someone who knew where Eighfour was.
	From the rampart there was about another couple of kilometers to the walls of the settlement, but from the top of it one could see a great deal of it. Past the wall just see the two nearest flak-turrets, each with two clusters of four barrels pointed diagonally toward the sky. Some ways past those one could see much more livable structures than the wall, which were low, clean buildings, the smallest and most disposable of which were of wood, a few older, larger buildings were of bricks and mortar, whereas most of the larger buildings were of reinforced concrete. The roofs of nearly every single building had a cladding of dirt on which grew grass and brush, enough so that they could be mistaken for part of the terrain if viewed from above, even if someone did happen to get a look past the trees.
	Granted, most of those things could not technically be [I]seen[/I] yet, as much as Kay just happened to know. Maybe Enn’s helmet could zoom his vision or something, but otherwise it was probably much too far to tell details yet.
	Kay almost wished that there was a clear line of sight through the trees from here to the central part of the settlement, near which most of the largest and most important buildings were, like their power stations, their primary armory, the advanced research labs, the hydroponics labs and their medical center. It was the oldest, wealthiest, most upgraded and most impressive part of the settlement... so naturally, it was situated in range of certain vaporization if the duke was detonated.
	Intriguingly, it seemed as though a truck was leaving Eighfour just as she and Enn were arriving, and it took her several moments to fully realize that the vehicle was headed their way. Coming to receive them? They must have spotted Enn already... and, encouragingly, opted against shooting at him.
	“Seems you’ve got yourself a welcoming committee,” she remarked quizzically. “That’s a first, I think. But then again, there aren’t a lot of strangers in Eighfour.”