Page 42 of Music of the Ocean

Indigo’s question wasn’t an accusation but genuine confusion. The query hung in the charged space between them, more intimate than any touch.

The city vibrated with the gathering pressure of imminent violence. The holodisplay cast alternating washes of icy blue and firefly-violet across Saxby’s skin.

“Yeah?” Saxby rubbed his hands over his face, then touched his gills. “Yeah, yeah, I guess I am. This is not procedure and that worries me. Especially since you told me the Federation has already had a failed colony here.”

“What are you saying?”

“We were on our way to the Eisenhower Space Station for some R and R when were diverted to this planet. Why were we suddenly sent here to get samples? Samples the Federation already had from all those years ago.”

On the wall display, they saw another shuttle dump a cluster of smaller objects, each one splitting off and burning a jagged descent through the water. The alarms thudded through the chamber.

“They found the city before I could disarm the probe,” Indigo grumbled. “I need to make note of the use of rotating frequency shields so I will be prepared.”

“You ever had this much equipment in the water hunting you before?” Saxby asked.

“No. Not like this.”

“Well, now you’ll be ready next time. Shit, I hope there isn’t a next time. And double shit, everything that’s fully functional will be heading toward us now.”

“The city’s defense system will handle it.”

The microdrones the city released converged, enveloping the descending projectiles. Each time, the water flickered with a pulse of blue and the objects vanished.

The projection zoomed in on one of the microdrones. It swarmed over the Federation hardware, stripping it down to the core, leaving nothing but a faint cloud of inert particles.

“They didn’t need more fucking samples. In fact, the Federation should’ve classified this planet as a Class Y, meaning it’s unfriendly to humanoid life. But we got sent here when they knew firsthand what this planet could do.”

“Saxby—”

“And wouldn’t you know it? A directive had recently been issued saying it wasn’t necessary to use protective gloves while taking samples. So, I didn’t. The bastards set the Landing Team up. They wanted us to be claimed, and I was.”

Chapter Fifteen – Saxby

SAXBY WATCHED from the chamber as the city erased the Federation’s offensive piece by piece.

The screen sensors captured the descent of the probes and their countermeasures, and every new pulse of blue on the projection meant another piece of the assault had simply ceased to exist.

One moment, a wedge of metallic objects streamed downward in formation. In the next, they were gone, thanks to the planet’s autonomous defenses.

The city’s display showed the tactical situation in colors that mimicked the ocean itself. Angry clouds of crimson bloomed and curled, but they always receded in the face of those cold, impersonal tendrils of blue. There was no debris. The ocean didn’t leave a trace.

He paced the narrow space, hands balled at his sides, his gaze fixed on the shifting lines of the holomap. Someone had set them up. The realization was a physical presence in his chest, cold and growing colder.

There was no other answer. Not even a week ago, he’d been another officer in a fleet jumpsuit, a Lieutenant Junior Grade. He’d racked up zero commendations and a few disciplinary marks. He was, by any measure, nothing special.

Well, he was special to one person. Actually, an entire planet, according to Indigo.

He reviewed the timeline, dissecting it in minute increments. First was the detour to the planet for a fast mission. The Landing Team had been briefed at 0600, launched in a rush at 0645 and made planetfall by 0700.

The mission was supposed to be a routine sample collection. Get in, grab a few beakers’ worth of seawater, scoop up some soil and shit, and get out. The protocol of skipping gloves came down not long before that damned mission.

If someone had set him up, it was because they needed something to happen. And it had. But had they cared about who touched the water? Or had they wanted him specifically?

But why him? He wasn’t genetically special. Hell, his medical file was as boring and unspectacular as his service record. No rare alleles, no mutations, no flagged markers. He wasn’t at the top of his class or the bottom.

So, maybe they hadn’t wanted him in particular, and it’d just been his bad luck that he was the one who touched the water. It could have been any one of them.

But at the very least, whoever had set this up needed a point of contact. Someone disposable, a canary in the coal mine. Had the Federation’s higher-ups picked at random, or worse, drawn lots from a list of people they could afford to lose?