Page 38 of Music of the Ocean

“This is a starship, Indigo. It’s not a battleship, true, but it does have weapons like phasers and photon torpedoes.” Saxby took a deep breath. “We have to respond to them.”

“Why?”

“To tell them I’m alive, that I’m unharmed. Tell them the planet is not hostile, just misunderstood, and then explain what happens if someone touches the water. Let me talk to them. It’s the only way they’ll back off.”

“They will attempt a rescue,” Indigo countered. “They will send more probes, then possibly drones, then personnel.”

“I can possibly get them to stand down, but you have to let me.”

“As I said, do you think this is the first time I have dealt with your Federation? It is not.”

“Come again?”

“Seventy years ago a colony was started on one of the bigger land masses,” Indigo said. “In order to have stopped it, I would have had to expose how technically advanced this planet was. So, I did nothing. That was a mistake.”

“Wait, seventy years ago?”

“Yes.” Indigo narrowed his eyes. The bioluminescent lines on his arms pulsed with a slow, deliberate rhythm. “Colonists established their settlement on the southernmost landmass. Then, adults started to disappear. Each time someone touched the ocean. Each time, the ocean claimed them.”

Saxby stood motionless, listening.

Indigo lifted a hand and splayed his fingers, as if counting off his points. “One by one, the colony’s population diminished. The Federation sent its army and researchers. Those who had been claimed and had returned to the water were not found, of course.”

“Of course.”

“It did not take the army long to figure out what was happening. Humans are not stupid. But their reaction to that finding was to make the water off-limits, and those who tried to return? The army sent them back to their base.”

“Wait. To a base? That would have been light-years away,” Saxby said.

“Correct. Not their ship in orbit. Finding the base would have taken time. Time they did not have. So, they died a horrible death when denied the ability to return. I am sure their bodies were studied.”

Saxby rubbed his forehead. “Yeah, they studied them. They needed answers, but gods.”

“The gods had very little to do with it. Your people then tried to study the water to find the how behind what was happening, but the water does not give up its secrets.”

“So, the samples my Landing Team took?” Saxby asked.

“Will not show how DNA is mutated. It will not ever.”

“Shit.”

“Then, the army tried to poison the water to stop it claiming people. When that failed, they bombed the coastline.” Indigo’s tentacles fanned out. “The ocean healed itself.”

“But that’s… That’s against the Prime Directive.”

“Do you not believe me?” Indigo pointed at the wall, and the display changed to a schematic of the original colony site. There was a ring of white domes near the beach. “Watch.”

Saxby watched the display. The schematic shifted, showing a time-lapse of the coastline and what happened with the army.

“The planet finally had enough and called up a storm and the—”

“Wait.” Saxby waved his hand to stop Indigo. “The planet or you?”

“I often act in the planet’s best interest, but this time that was the planet’s doing, not mine. I have mentioned this before.”

“Right, right. The planet is basically sentient. That’s what Abe said.”

“There is no basically about it. It is. Anyway, the landmass shrank as waves battered the colony, the domes collapsing and sliding into the sea. Those on the land were either destroyed by falling debris, slammed into the ground by high winds, impaled, or buried.”