Derin Edala

Patreon bonus vote -- March

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Patreon bonus chapter -- A Lake of Stars

Snowpea couldn’t keep her eyes off the shimmer.

It was well and truly dark. High above, the real stars shone in the cloudless sky, light from places too distant to be meaningful concentrating on this tiny, precious planet. Somewhat less high above, her cluster slept in their temporary sleeper nest; her mother and two of her parents snoring gently, her fairly new baby sister sleeping quietly as she was wont to do when she actu...

148: WAR

The next day, I wake up feeling… off. There’s some sort of strange pressure in my head. Not a headache, exactly, but something unusual. A weird… taste? No, rinsing my mouth out does nothing.  Shielding my eyes or turning the lights out does help. Some kind of strange migraine, maybe? I’ve never had migraines before. If this is a synnerve thing then –

Ah. Synnerves. I experiment with blocking the light from just m...

147: COLONISATION

We gather back in our living dome with Max. This isn’t a conversation to be had lurking in a security room underground.

“The plan,” Max says over a hot cup of coffee, “was to establish as many Vaults as possible in as many locations as possible. Both ends of the Vault have to be made in the same location. It’s some sort of atomic thing. And then you send one end sixty to ninety light years away, and boom, you can send...

146: VAULT

Going through the cargo door leadsto a small room ending in another cargo door. This room has two more guards in it, meaning that 1.5% of the entire population of Hylara are occupied just guarding the few halls and rooms we’d walked through. There’s no way that this is normal. Perhaps the increased guard is a response to us landing, or maybe Hive’s stunt.

The room is largely empty, except for the guards, some chairs, and ...

145: UNDERGROUND

The metal doors leading into the side of the dune are thick. Heavy. Free of sand, although the angle suggests that sand would fall past the guards and onto them easily with the slightest wind; probably swept clean regularly. Tinera narrows her eyes as we get close, thinking, probably, of the ridiculous weight of metal that must have been trucked across lightyears from Earth to make them.

Unless the metal was mined here. It woun...

144: COORDINATION

Celti seems to be doing calculations too, glancing between Max and Captain Klees and looking somewhat baffled. “If we asked for medical supplies?”

“Absolutely. Tell us what you need and we’ll get it sent down.”

“Weapons?”

“I don’t think the ship carries weapons, but there are plenty of instruments that can be easily weaponised. If you want those, sure. Do you think that’d be a positive addition t...

Ask Me Anything -- Hive Cattail

Does the colony have any naming conventions? (like generation names for example)

We just have the one name, which we choose when we reach adulthood. Some people change theirs later. You’re not allowed to name yourself the same name as anyone that’s still alive though. Some of us use our house name as a kind of “last name” for when we’re talking to the Earth people from the ship because that’s what t...

143: CULTURE

Max gets us robes. They show us how to tie the belts. They explain that different belts don’t have any official meaning, but fashions go in and out among different groups of friends, so your belt can incidentally declare who you hang out with or what you aspire to which, fine, that’s how fashion usually works. We ask about the children, and Max tells us that all the children live in the nursery. After some confused talk where we ...

Behind the Keyboard -- Note Waveskimmer

142: SEEDS

“What? You can’t go out there!” Max goes to rise from the table, and Tinera and the Friend let them, but don’t let go, don’t let them try to block our path as we head for the door. “You can’t!”

“We won’t put the colony in danger,” Captain Klees assures them. “That’s what the space suits are for.”

“Thing is,” Tinera says, “when you’re not willing to harm someone, you lose quite a bit of ...

141: ANSWERS

We all leap back, as if a bit more distance will protect Max from the viruses in the mostly enclosed tent.

“You said the viral treatment would take another week after our landing!” Captain Klees says, accusing. “You can’t be here like this!”

“It is a few days early,” Max allows, “but I’m sure I’ll be fine. It’s a long treatment, and it’s possible there was never any danger. Your pathologies all cam...

140: CURATION

The next day is an awkward day of inactivity. It’s frustrating, but there’s not all that much we can really do. We consider going for another look around the settlement, but it’s much more productive to wait until we can go out without the suits and properly see things and talk to people (and maybe, if necessary, have a chance to ‘accidentally’ split up and slip out of Max’s observation and see things beyond our carefully...

Bonus story -- Smooth As Glass

Heron Sandcomber was eleven when her pod first travelled to the Shore of Glass. Like any khemin child, she’d heard stories of it since she was a baby in her mother’s boatsling, but there was nothing like setting eyes on it herself. The sun rose behind the pod’s floating village as they all adjusted sails to pull ashore and the light glittered off thousands, millions of brilliant little nodules of glass worn smooth by the waves....

139: SURGERY

We discuss various possibilities of what, if anything at all, is strange about the colony, but it only goes in circles. The only thing we can all (except Tal) agree on pretty quickly is that we probably didn’t stumble onto a planet with abandoned alien tech. Other than that, we just don’t have enough information to draw any real conclusions.

“The very day they drop the quarantine, I’m going to insist on seeing the under...

138: QUESTIONS

We get back to our dome and desuit, and Captain Klees starts pacing back and forth, agitated. I also want to pace, but two people pacing seems weird, so I sit at the table all tense instead.

“We’ve been through a lot of weird bullshit,” Captain Klees says, “so I’m probably overreacting. I’m probably just being [unknown word]. So tell me, everyone. Something weird is going on here, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Tin...

137: RADIO

Max shows us the central meeting area, which is exactly what it sounds like – a huge dome that’s apparently for meeting up and conducting business. A town hall, I suppose. Some benches are lined up along one edge with plastic crates piled on them; a middle-aged person with no feet perches on the edge of a table and consults a computer screen over one eye while a few other Hylarans talk to them. As I watch, they direct a toddler t...

136: DOME

One thing to be said about the Hylarans is that they work quickly. Even as we eat, we can hear people moving around outside the dome, doing something around the door. By the time we’re finished, there’s a hastily assembled decontamination chamber there.

Well, it’s a little canvas room with some big spray canisters of some kind of orange disinfectant. Not exactly high tech. But it’ll do the job. We finish before Max gets...

Ask Me Anything -- Sienna Kae Jin

Why did you want to come to Hylara?

Why did I want to contribute to humanity colonising planets outside our solar system? To making a life for our species, for life itself so far as we’re aware, that isn’t dependent on the health of a single fragile sun? Is that even a question?

When did you learn about the convict slavery/kill switch thing, and what did you think of it?

135: LUNCH

Captain Klees is the last of us to get checked over; whether by accident or design, I’m not sure. He stomps into the living dome we’ve been assigned, pulls his helmet off, and drops into a chair at the cast plastic table we’re all seated around.

“She give you the deep burn too?” I ask in Texan. (We speak Texan amongst ourselves, on the assumption that we’re probably being monitored and, while it would be rude to act...

134: DOCTOR

I go first. I want to see more of the colony.

“So,” I ask over radio as Max leads me from the vehicle bay towards a nearby dome while the Friend tries to impress upon Hive the importance of disinfecting the vehicle bed we’d been in, “what’s this Dr Kim like?”

“Oh, she’s great! A very… creative doctor.”

“Creative?” Is creativity a trait we want in a doctor?

“Yes! We have three doctors,...

133: COLONY

Before we can respond, Max dashes forward and shakes our hands one by one, their thin digits dwarfed by our bulky space suit gloves. They speak into their own right hand to talk to us – those rings must have microphones and radio transceivers in them.

“I’m so pleased to meet you all! I gotta say, I was pretty disappointed that Cattail here won radio rights; I cannot believe this is happening. The Courageous, appe...

132: DROP

There is the slightest shake as the arms release us, and then the complete cessation of gravity. Nothing moves us. No sounds come from outside our pod. We can’t see anything out there. It’s just this small drop pod, and us, and nothing else.

The illusion is broken by Sam’s voice on the radio. “Release complete. Pod 1, what’s your status?”

Captain Klees’ response is a strangled squeak. “All fine! Everything...

131: BOARD

It’s been a long time since I’ve worn a space suit, and nothing good ever happens when I put one on. So it’s with some trepidation that I fire up the electronics and start the suit systems check.

Around me, the rest of the suited but not yet helmeted ground team are running their own checks, while Denish and Asteria run yet another version of final checks on our descent pod. All cargo is rechecked and the clamps and ties ...

130: EVE

It’s not movie night.

It’s off-schedule, as Tal would be quick to point out if anyone were to call it movie night. Movie night was four days ago. But it’s our last night together, the last night before the drop, and everyone is hanging out together as much as possible. We kill the two chickens, and Captain Klees makes them into some kind of Texan stew, served by Tal and Asteria, who –

“Starless void,” Xanthe m...

129: PREPARE

“This had better be the colony or I’m eating my own liver,” Tinera says as everyone tries to crowd around the terminal in the Habitation Ring.

“Don’t do that,” the Friend says. “Transplants are risky.”

“You did Celi’s with no problems. One hundred per cent success rate. I feel perfectly safe.”

Lina nods. “That sounds like something patients would say.”

Tal speaks up from the keyboard....

128: CODE

Captain Kae Jin’s wheelchair is properly outfitted, and the astronauts hold the funeral for their dead the next day. I don’t want to go, and nobody asks me to. Nobody asks any of us replacement crew to. They gather in Pod Launch Ring 2 to send their dead among the stars, the same pod launch ring I first used to exit the ship way, way back when I’d just woken up. The rest of us stay in our ‘inhabited’ rings, and while it’s...

December Patreon bonus -- a story about Denish

Deepest apologies but this story is turning out far longer than expected. It's multiple chapters, apparently. This month: chapter 1.

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Denish #1

When you’re born into a vulture family, it helps to be good with engines. It can get fast-paced out there on salvage, and a knack for the mechanical can mean a difference between getting a haul back to port ...

Ask Me Anything -- Heli Graf

As Heli is currently unable to respond to questions, these answers have been pushed back int he timeline and are taking place during the murder investigation.

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Why did you join the Javelin program?

Why did I want to settle a new planet, further from Earth than any human has ever gone? Are you kidding? That’s a – well, not even a once in a l...

127: HERITAGE

Xanthe’s issue turns out to be some kind of hormone regulation thing. “A synnerve,” the Friend explains, “has grown into the amygdala and, while it’s inactive, has interrupted Xanthe’s adrenalin regulation.”

“Is it dangerous?” Captain Klees asks.

“It’s… difficult to say. It puts a lot of extra stress on the body and, if untreated, is likely to exacerbate the chances of post-chronostasis organ failu...