Chapter 16

Chapter 16

U seless. Worthless. Stupid…

Primula woke with a start. And a headache. She probably shouldn’t have drunk so much wine last night. Yes, Trafford was right, and she was stupid. She should never have boarded the space elevator in the first place.

She spent the whole day counting fish and patrolling the cargo bay corridors, but she didn’t see the monster owl, or Daedalus, either. Not that she wanted to. She’d spilled her deepest secrets, told him all about Trafford and her nightmares, and she wasn’t sure she could look him in the eye now.

He probably agreed with Trafford about how stupid she was.

Yeah, well, Daedalus was a manwhore. She didn’t need his good opinion, or his help. When the ship landed on Delta, she was going to set up this fish farm all by herself. She was going to be the first, no matter what Trafford or Daedalus or anyone else said.

Maybe then they’d shut up.

So each day followed the same pattern – nightmare, counting, patrol, back to bed – until Delta loomed too large to ignore. They’d arrived.

Finally, she buckled herself into her crash couch for landing. She kept the video feeds from the cargo bay on her wall screen, but she’d allowed herself a small panel of the forward viewscreens, which showed a blue jewel of a planet with what looked like islands made of pale honeycomb dotting the ocean. The biggest island – growing bigger by the minute – was their destination. Her fish’s final destination.

She closed her eyes, and told herself she could do this. Not once, but over and over, until she drowned out any other voices and even the slight vibration of the ship that was the only sign of a rough re-entry.

The gentle bump as they landed was all the notice she needed to unbuckle her harness and head for the airlock.

The doors were already open when she got there, though Daedalus hadn’t finished dropping the ramp. The pilot wasn’t anywhere in sight, but he could probably control those things from the cockpit, or the bridge, or whatever you called the place where the pilot flew the ship.

The ramp hit the dirt with a dull clunk, and Primula got her first view of Delta City.

Her breath caught in her throat. The geodesic dome rose up so high into the sky, it looked as big as Metropolis City, back in the Colony. The glass panels shone red with reflected light from Altan, the red dwarf star that hung like a sullen blood orange in the sky here, unlike the faint light that reached the Colony on New Hope.

The moment she stepped between the struts, though, the differences began. Metropolis City was a fully enclosed domed city in the centre of the Colony, protected from the near vacuum outside. Delta City was open to the elements, letting the air circulate freely between the city and the ocean surrounding it. There were photovoltaic panels on top, which absorbed Altan’s radiant energy and concentrated it into visible spectrum light beneath the dome, so stepping inside was like entering another world, from red dawn to bright, sunny day. The buildings beneath the dome weren’t as tall as Metropolis City, either, going up only three or four storeys. Those storeys were already green with vertical gardens, stretching up the walls in their quest to colonise the rooftops, too, no doubt.

Everything was so clean, and empty. Not a single person in sight.

“Where is everyone?” she asked.

“At work. Delta is only home to essential workers on the terraforming project here, and they’re extending this island chain to the north. You probably saw it as we flew over.” Daedalus manoeuvred a tank on a hover dolly down the ramp.

She might have, but she hadn’t looked closely enough to realise people were making actual islands. She hadn’t even known people could do that.

“How do you make islands?” she asked.

He winked. “Well, I can’t, but when you have a team of aspidoceleons and a convenient asteroid belt you can borrow from, it’s amazing what can be accomplished.”

“Aspidoceleons?” That wasn’t a species she’d heard of before.

“World turtles. Well, more like island turtles that like to float around in the sea until they grow plants on their backs and get mistaken for islands. One of them was a pilot during the war. Now she’s in charge of a terraforming team here, but she’s calling it retirement.” Daedalus grinned as he continued past her into the city. “Where do you want this?”

Stars, she’d been so busy gawping, she’d forgotten she was supposed to be working. Primula pulled out her tablet. “Um, it looks like the system is integrated into the whole city, so maybe in the main square? I’ll need to test the water quality before I release the fish, but that was always going to be my first insertion point. I’ve allocated eight tanks to the fountains and water features in the main square, and the rest…here, how about I just send you the map so you’ll know everything I know? Easier that way.” Much easier than ordering the man around, because surely he’d get fed up with it eventually, and her job would be so much harder if he wouldn’t cooperate.

Daedalus flashed two thumbs up over his head and kept going.

The main square could have been lifted out of Metropolis City, but once it had landed on Delta, it had taken on a life of its own. Lotuses, in fact, which spread across the pool Primula had thought was a fountain, and along the canals radiating out from it and down the city streets.

Her mouth watered at the thought of lotus root chips, which she hadn’t eaten since before she met Trafford. Crisp and crunchy, way better than potato chips. She’d had a friend at school who brought them for recess and they’d shared them, until her dad had moved for his job and she’d never seen the girl again. She couldn’t even remember the girl’s name now, it was that long ago. What she’d give for a bowl of lotus chips right now…

“If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, I know some really good recipes for fish fillets. If you have a few to spare. I could cook them up for dinner, if you like.”

Primula’s eyes flew open. “These fish are for the aquaponics system, not dinner! I was thinking about lotus chips, I’ll have you know!”

This time it was Daedalus’s eyes that went wide. “Lotus chips? I’ve never heard of those. The food synthesiser might have, though. I’m game to try them if you are.”

Yes, but then she’d have to endure a meal with him, all the while squirming inside that he knew her deepest, darkest secrets. But she’d learned long ago not to antagonise the men in her life. “Maybe after I’ve released the first eight fish tanks.”

“Sure. I’ll deliver them right here, and then you can find me on the beach, working on my tan. Comm me when you want more fish.”

Primula peered up at the ruby sun. Was any ultraviolet light actually reaching the surface here? She’d be safe under the dome, but maybe she should have thought to bring sunblock. It had been far too long since she’d been to the beach. Not since she was a kid…

But she couldn’t take a holiday until her job was done. She still needed to earn her place in the Colony, and her fish were calling.