Page 6 of Defiance
“It’s half past fourteenth turn now,” I confirmed, looking at the side of my index finger, where the time glowed as my boots sank into the sediment and I trudged forward with sloppy, vacuousglopsounds. “Weather’s eight degrees warmer than the high yesterday. Safe to say it’s a heat wave.”
I continued to rattle off the temps and stats for the afternoon just like I'd done in the morning while collecting sediment and water samples. I’d placed sensors half a kilometer up the river, half a kilometer down, and interspersed in between. Oxygen levels, pH, temperature, conductivity, sediment concentration. I confirmed water clarity and erosion by sight and noted little swimmers that darted around my knees as I waded deeper.
The waders scrunched in around my legs like I was sous vide, and I breathed a sigh of relief at the chilly press of water all around me. I wasn’t above taking an ice bath if it got any hotter.
“That hits the spot,” I groaned, splashing water over my neck and hairline.
Then I did what I always did. I stopped, turned towards the cliffs, and absorbed the stunning view.
Renata was situated high above the Saphed River, which had carved its serpentine footprint into the soft clay for centuries before the shilpakaari agreed to host us human refugees and plonked three shiny home towers into their remote backyard. The deep ravine through which it ran had probably once been a hill that extended our playfield, where I could hear kids screaming as they played football and frisbee.
Apparently, the cliffs that time and water had whittled away also made the perfect spot for a hangar that serviced glorified delivery hover-trucks.
The colony’s hangar hung arse-first over the edge of the highest cliff, where the red and purple jungle foliage had been cleared away by dozens of meters on all sides. As far as eyesores went, it was a nostalgic sort, with corrugated domed ceilings and big flat doors on sliders. The platform that overhung the river was blasted with black exhaust from hundreds of skilled landings.
And right underneath that platform was a beautiful waterfall.
Exhaust dissolution? Problematic. I'd developed an eye-twitch, but sat on my hands like a good human.
Then I found out that the beautiful waterfall was a cleverly disguised colony runoff and threw my hands up into the air with a righteous cry.
The entire reason I’d decided to do this little experiment—other than the obvious need for some project to validate my existence—was because my entire career had been dedicated to sustainable aquaculture. I couldn’t sit in my air-conditioned flateating bon-bons while a thousand-plus humans pissed into the local habitat.
Which is basically what Chief Engineer Hunar Fareshi told me to do. The runoff was pristine, and when the time came to service the system, he’d teach me how. But right then, he was still in the throes of making sure the colony was safe and stable.
When I came back a week later, he sighed with defeat and handed me test kits to poke around with. It was hard to tell with their striped pupils, but I think he rolled his eyes and grumbled,Are you all this stubborn?
The other shilpakaar with sapphire blue skin that worked next to him had smirked and winked at me.Let’s hope so.
“Come here, my beauties,” I grunted, pulling my boots out of the riverbed as I pushed through the water towards one of my bright green bobbers. I dunked my bare arms into the cool stream and heaved a large cage halfway out of the water.
“Threekayadrud,”I said out loud for my voice log. “Two are adolescents for sure. No stripes yet. One is mature. No scarring or fin damage. And their yellow bellies are bright.”
I hitched the cage up on my thigh, gently letting thekayadrydswim off.
“More algae growth,” I murmured, scraping my blunt nails against a slippery stone I couldn’t see yet. I pulled it out of the water to find a neat cluster of bright pink mussels attached to it, sunny-side up. “Well, you’re new, aren’t you?”
I stopped my voice log long enough to get a few snaps of the little things. They were about the size of my fingernails with marigold byssal threads that they shared like a velcro rug or a good slathering of rubber paste. Very different from mussels and barnacles on Earth.
I lost track of time as I recorded all three cages. I still saw something new every few days, which gave me a schoolgirlthrill. After two decades of working with fish farms, this was an adventure.
The only gratitude I’d extend to my abductors was a fire extinguisher to the balls, but I counted my new life on Yaspur as a blessing. I’d left behind a messy divorce, family estrangement, and a cold flat near the Clare Island ferry that might have still been packed up in cardboard boxes for all I knew.
I’d lived there for nearly two years and never unpacked.
I was ringing out a washcloth to cool the back of my neck when a comm buzzed on my thumb. Ezraji Zarabi’s profile image hovered over the back of my hand. I answered, squinting beneath the shade of my palm as the yoke-yellow sun roasted me alive.
“What’s the craic?” I asked, only slightly out of breath. My middle-aged ears were glad I didn’t have to strain to hear over the river. The toxinologist’s voice rang in my head instead, thanks to the connection between my bionics.
“Charlie?” Ezra sounded out of breath and scatterbrained.
“That’s meself.” I rolled my eyes, but it was with love.
From the outside, it might seem strange for an ichthyologist to be a jack of all trades, but on a colony moon occupied by a semi-aquatic alien species with tentacles on their heads, gills for noses, and skin that lights up like a horny cuttlefish? One might say my fishy degree had many applications, least of which was picking up shifts at the clinic while Dr. Ahlberg was on bedrest with her twin pregnancy.
I hadn’t known Ezra and Amelia for long, but they had quickly become some of my favorite people.
“I need you.”
