The guy who had spoken before – a moderately ambitious, irritable and uninhibited fellow called Ell-Oh, who Kay had had some dealings with in the past – rolled his eyes at Enn’s identification of her, and shot her an annoyed glare. “Enn Que? Really? That sounds suspiciously like an Eighfour name, Kay-Gee.”
	“Uh, maybe?” Kay offered with a shrug, smiling nervously at the people with the big guns. Put like that, the fact that she had thought up a name for Enn from Eighfour tradition probably made it blatantly obvious that it was not his real name, given that he obviously was not from Eighfour, and consequently that he was trying to hide his identity. At least it also made it clear that she was cooperating with him, or at the very least that he knew enough about Eighfour to know their naming standards. “He’s a friend, Ell-Oh. We need him as much as he needs us.”
	“I’ll be the judge of that,” the assault rifle slinging guy said, throwing a glance through the window into the cab with the driver. “What’s the verdict?”
	The driver glanced down at something out of sight from outside, lowering his pistol as he did so. “It’s hard to say for certain with the sunstorm, but it’s not pickin’ up anythin’ s’picious on any frequency in the scanner’s range. Doesn’t seem he’s transmittin’, at least.”
	Ell kept scowling at the stranger trying to approach their settlement, but visibly relaxed a little. The other assault rifle wielder and the machine gunner also seemed a bit less on edge, but all weapons remained aimed at Enn. He frowned. “Why do we need him?”
	“He needs to see Gramps,” she told him hurriedly, hoping to invoke an authority higher than Ell’s would defuse the situation faster. “Eighfour is in danger, and Enn Que has information and advice on how to deal with it.”
	“Does he, now?” Ell made a grimace that seemed the very image of reluctance, and Kay had a strong suspicion that he was just trying to think of an excuse to keep his gun aimed at Enn. “And you’re [I]sure[/I] he’s not being tracked? No signal at all?”
	“If he is, it’s weak enough that the scanner can’t pick it up through the sunstorm,” the driver assured him. He looked at Enn and finally put his pistol away entirely. “He’s clean.”
	It took another couple of seconds of Ell staring at Enn, trying his very hardest to think of a good reason to gun him down on the spot, before he lowered his gun, which prompted the other two to do the same. He looked at Kay with an expression that was a mix of annoyance and disgust, then back to Enn again.
	“I really fucking hope you’re right, Kay-Gee, ‘cause we’re pretty much screwed otherwise. A drone came by earlier, hours ago; a [I]really[/I] hi-tech drone. Came through the trees and then just blasted straight through the sound barrier out of here. Someone’s already found us.”