Michele Lee

Jordan just wants a little adventure, and to find the planet her best friend’s new lover came from. Instead she’s on a dismal ocean planet, in a near abandoned multi billion dollar resort. Fancy as it is, something is very wrong here. The oceans hold more secrets than even she can handle.

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***

Jordan Springs had An Opinion on the octopus tank in the lobby of the nauseatingly glitzy, mostly empty hotel she stood in. To begin with, it was a blue-ringed octopus, which were horrifically difficult to keep in captivity–and it was venomous. Very. Very. Venomous. Watching the man in the hotel polo dump a bag of goldfish into the tank drove her to near violence, so she spun on her heels and walked as fast as she could back out the front doors, her work belt clutched in a fisted hand.

She had been headed to the hotel gift shop, hoping for sunscreen since the travel authority on this planet had taken hers. But sunscreen wasn’t more valuable than a human life, which she would surely take if she had to watch anymore mistreatment of the poor animal.

Still, she couldn’t let it go. The creature wasn’t even native. It was Terrean, which meant they had imported the poor thing across the damn galaxy just because this stupid place catered to people who would only recognize something dangerous from their own planet as Cool and Dangerous.

She’d been here five hours and she already hated this place. This stupid floating tourist trap whose only saving grace was the utter lack of tourists. The boatbots lining the pier perked as she approached, but she ignored them all. The pier ended in steps. Jordan kept going, sliding right into the cool, comforting embrace of the water.

All of STK-3-29 was water. The only land on the planet was man made, like the floating hotel and a dozen or more buildings like it.

When she submerged the delicate vents on her back sparked to life. Last year she’d played surrogate for her brother and sister-in-law. They’d financially supported her for her pregnancy, plus some. She’d been saving for something special, which became the impulsive decision to have gills implanted. Few people went so far in body alteration. 

Well, lots of people went under the laser knife for improvements on what DNA gave them. But gills–and the swim bladder–were still considered outside the realm of normalcy for most people.

Jordan couldn’t care less about what normal people thought. The gills fluttered, tasting the water. Jordan loved the water.

The waters of Oceania were very similar to Earth’s. The same salinity, same ratio of water to salts to inorganic solids. Oceania’s twin suns kept the atmosphere warmer. The only other notable difference was a lower amount of argon and the higher amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen. The terrain scientists said that explained the explosion of life forms and shapes within the warm waters.

Jordan suspected it was because humans just hadn’t found a way to exploit and use up the life here. Yet.

The sphere of ocean beneath Titan2, the only hotel on the planet, exploded into color once Jordan’s eyes slid below the surface. It was a prime location, a massive expanse of coral reef, frosted with anemone, teeming with all manner of fish, sea cucumbers, eels, and more. Laws dictated scientists got first rights to study new planets–for twenty years. But the scientists were massively underfunded, so by the time the ban expired they knew little more than if a planet was safe for human presence.

Jordan wanted to know a lot more. Namely if a certain alien plant life form her best friend was falling madly in love with could have originated from these waters. The timeline was right for the seedling chunk that would grow into a man to have secretly been brought back and to have accidentally been dropped into the tanks of the mega complex they both worked for. And she only had vague information of the desiccated piece of tissue that had regenerated into Asse. Em was a brilliant, bad ass woman, but she wasn’t, in any way, a biologist, so telling a branch from a chunk of coral or a chitinous egg was way out of her wheelhouse. The idea that she might have documented her discovery in any way was laughable.

But Jordan adored a challenge.

In the distance stood a great underwater shelf, circling the coral valley. The man made island the resort sat on grew out of a massive pillar at the center of the valley.. For one moment the sheer vastness of the planet and its waters enveloped her. She’d been here, not even a day and spent as much of it as she could beneath the surface, and hadn’t even cleared a chunk of this valley.  She’d turned over rocks, taken samples of corals, let her gloved finger tips brush urchins and anemone, and just sat still, until the world here adjusted to her and resumed its normal life. She found no answers, but many, many more questions.

The resort, Titan2, on the planet–Oceania on Terrean paperwork, though it was still under the seven year mandatory waiting period before it could become official–was less than popular. Ten weeks after the resort actually opened the planet found itself under a massive roving hurricane that dominated the surface for nearly eight months. Despite rebuilding the island, with its domineering hotel and strip of shops and apartments for the workers, people weren’t ready to give Oceania a chance.

More for her, Jordan thought to herself.

The supposed appeal to Oceania was its water. So every room in Titan2 either boasted its own self-contained pool, lagoon, hot tub, or it had an entrance to the great seas of the planet directly. Of course the hotel kept track of their guests. Each patron had to consent to a temporary tracking tag upon arrival or they never exited the ship. Deposits foregone. And there was a bionet set up around the hotel, at both a half mile and mile perimeter. Having been to many prime tourist spots, Jordan was well aware of the casual stupidity of people on vacation. She didn’t blame the hotel for baby monitoring everyone within their sphere of responsibility.

She just didn’t think she should be included.

She’d grabbed a rebreather, again because the hotel required it–even though she owned her own of better quality, she’d been forced to use one of theirs because “they couldn’t guarantee the safety of equipment they didn’t provide”. But she didn’t need it.

She’d forgotten to eat, she realized as she swam down, finally touching bottom again. She’d gone up for sunscreen and food and her work belt, but the octopus had thrown her. Small clouds of sand rose up around her feet and tiny fish fled from her presence. This was too much for a single person to search alone.

A cephalopod was the first to brave an approach to her as she stood there plotting her next move. It looked like a swimming orchid, delicate and frothy, a rich purple and cream fringed arms, climbing between coral to get a look at her. She held out her fingers and it reached for her. Then it changed its mind, blushing to maroon and rushing away. Fine, she thought. She wasn’t looking to make new friends either.

Deciding to start at an edge this time, Jordan kicked off and swam away, her pack fluttering in the water behind her. She couldn’t do this alone, but luckily humans were good at compensating. The nearest edge of the ridge was just under a mile away. She was a quick enough swimmer that only a few minutes later she reached the rock and followed it up to the ledge. The wall was forty to fifty feet high and she was irritated to find a mesh bionet set with spikes into the rock along the top. The surface was only ten feet above the ridge, but the guard net rose out of it and followed the curve of the ridge into the distance. Why hadn’t she noticed that above the waterline? 

They disclosed the tracker, but why would they have the coral valley fenced in? Ah, she eyed the pole wavering above the waves. Near the top was the black box that housed one of the sensor points of the network that monitored the guests. Was that convenience then, or were they using the obvious sensor points to disguise the bionet below? This wasn’t the same thing. For good measure she pulled her camera from her pack and took a few pictures of the bionet, a close up of the net and the nearest post, and an expansive landscape view of how far it reached in the distance. She set a trailcam she’d brought right at the edge of the ridge, looking down into the coral valley. Another, just out of curiosity, as far as she could reach through the squares on the other side of the bionet. The net’s squares were about five by five, just large enough to let small and small-medium fish slip through. Bass and catfish, and anything larger, if they lived here, would have trouble getting in or out.

The sea bed beyond the ridge followed a gentle incline into the distance, hiding at gorges and peaks at the edge of visibility. There were more spots of coral as well, and long tendrils of sea grasses and smaller kelp growths. Watching the plants sway and spin, it looked like the undertow and waves were choppier out there as well. A good water-gas exchange rate made for stronger coral growth, she knew. But it appeared the factor keeping the land beyond the ridge from being as thickly full of reef lifeforms was how the silt and sand seemed finer and hung suspended longer in the water with the natural movement. It obscured more of the sunlight from above, another much needed factor for healthy ocean life growth.

Jordan turned back to the coral valley. The first rays of Bazza, Oceania’s smaller sun, lit the edges of the waves. Bila, the larger second sun, would follow in about two hours. Something about the whole set up of the resort, above and below the water, bothered her.

Well, to be honest, a lot of the things here bothered her. It started with the tanks in the lobby and just went from there. She’d been unconsciously amassing a list in the hours she’d been here. She’d assumed the coral valley was natural, and that Titan2 was just exploiting it. But what if she was wrong? What if this was all artificial and the bionet was an attempt to keep nonnative species contained?

Jordan snorted. Hundreds of years and humanity still hadn’t learned from those old science fiction dinosaur park media volumes.

She only had four more cams, and now she had lots of surface research to do. Maybe there was a place on the planet where she could pick up more cams. Or maybe she could get a resident scientist to talk to her. That was more likely than the cams, she thought, pegging another in place at her preferred angle. Scientists loved talking about what they knew, or were trying to know. She should know. She might be a glorified fish keeper now, but before…

She split her cams evenly between an overhead view, pointed down at the activity on the sea bed, and views from the sea floor aimed up at the higher hills of coral which served as home for so many creatures. There were too many interesting crevices and coral towers, like skyscrapers for fish and sea slugs, to choose from, so she did her best, taking as many pictures as she could along the way. She thought she caught sight of the little cephalopod a few times, following her as she swam. But it never let her get close enough to get any photos of it. Maybe she could try later.

At last she swam back up to the dock, and the stairs carved into the rock itself, again wondering if they were natural-natural or human made. This was going to take time, she reminded herself. You knew that going in. Until then, perhaps the surface had answers.

***

The monolith of Titan2, all eighteen stories, plus the pool house, the Solarium restaurant, the expansive first floor gym, the rooftop pool and bar, and docking garage, sat on a half-moon shaped island. The same company built the hotel and the island, and called it a modern marvel. They named it Half Moon Bay, even though it wasn’t a bay. The online boards where Jordan found out about the outworld resort called it Spider Island, both because of the twisted web of offshoot walkways and islands around the hotel, and because a mega corporation building an isolated compound on a remote planet was a total super villain thing to do. Opening it to the public just seemed like a more brilliant move to keep the cash flowing in.

Next to the main lobby sat a little museum celebrating the ‘historic achievement’ of building the resort. There were preserved concept sketches and the original hotel model preserved behind glass. There were diagrams and infographics of how they’d built the floating island, reclaiming rock from the sea bed nearby to expand and raise the natural ridge. They didn’t disclose how that had affected the environment here, but they did brag about the walkways and other sections of the vast spider being constructed from Native Terrain methods of building islands with woven reeds and living plant fibers to offset the effects of human occupation and ‘revitalize’ the construction area. It was easy to guess that they had significantly impacted the environment here, and would continue to, though Jordan noted there were no before pictures in all the museum. Not even artist renderings.

The only thing the museum offered, past humble bragging, was a vid on the discovery of and initial survey of Oceania. There were bold, sweeping recordings of aquatic habitats and mention of vast biodiversity. But, frustratingly, no real details, and the vids moved through the images too fast for her to try to put anything together.

The resort map offered no aid, but an online search fed her images of an old research outpost in the background of pictures. And names. Jordan immediately sat at the cozy little community area nearby and fired off rounds of emails.

“Hey, little lady,” a voice said as she hunched over her computer. Too close, and getting closer as a man in an old, battered cowboy hat leaned at her across the table.

Jordan jumped, and the man laughed and held up his hands in surrender. “Whoa there. I’m just leaving you my card. I do boat tours around here.”

“What counts as around here,” Jordan asked, perking up.

The man sat on the other side of the table and handed her a card. It was ocean blue, with dark stylized waves and a silhouette of a dolphin jumping over his name. “It depends. Mostly I do a two hour tour that loops around the hotel. That hits the coral reef, a kelp forest to the east, and gets into the pelagic zone.”

Jordan couldn’t help but be interested. “You have a history in marine sciences?”

The man–Jordan checked the card, Joshua–nodded. “I was a marine specialist with the United Naval Front. My wife is a biologist. She does snorkeling and diving tours.”

Jordan decided they were about to be her new best friends. “Masters in Aqua Culture and Biology. I wrote a thesis on the Ethics of Extraterrean Exploration.”

Joshua smiled warmly. “So you’re here on business?”

“No. Well, personal business. A lot of curiosity too. Is there still a research outpost here?”

“Sure is. It’s over at the tip of the western cluster.” Joshua pointed.

Jordan felt surprised it was so close. “Is it walkable?”

Joshua nodded. “Over with the maintenance buildings. They like to keep it out of sight of the tourists.”

“You get a lot of tourism? Enough to pay the bills?” It couldn’t be easy to pay rent here.

Joshua shrugged, his sun-darkened and wrinkled face scrunching more. “Wife’s got a few patents to her name and we both got a decent pension. Any work here is just bonus.” Then he grinned widely. “This is our retirement plan.”

Jordan laughed. They were definitely her kind of people. “I’ll take your tour. When should I be ready?”

“I leave in forty six minutes. I just came in for a drink.”

“Why don’t I get you that drink?” Her stomach rumbled. “I came up for food myself.”

Joshua grinned. “You are a clever girl, aren’t you?”

Jordan grinned back.

***

“Despite being underwater the coral and kelp, like that on Earth, still use photosynthesis. Luckily for them Oceania’s twin suns, Bazza and Bila, offer plenty of sunlight, up to twenty hours a day in the summer season. That’s one reason why, if you’ve been to any of Earth’s reefs, you’ll notice Oceania’s are much larger and healthier,” Joshua told the dozen people on his boat.

Not to mention Oceania was largely untouched by human development as well, Jordan added silently.

“Plus Oceania hasn’t seen the damage of human development,” Joshua added. “We can easily speculate that Earth’s own oceans looked more like these before our First Industrial Revolution in the early Twentieth Century.”

At least the other tourist didn’t look bored. Two younger boys, probably around ten, sat at the edge of the boat, dangling their feet through the guard rails. They weren’t paying attention to Joshua, but they were staring, fascinated, down into the water, so Jordan couldn’t complain. Kids were the cutest when they were curious about things. 

The rest of the tourists watched the ocean life beneath the boat via cameras lining the boat’s hull and tablet vid screens that Joshua and his wife had passed out. A few had done the tour before, Jordan could tell, because they pointed out creatures by name and Joshua congratulated or corrected them gently. 

Jordan shared her vid screen with Joshua’s wife, Zara. Jordan’s like of the pair had been instantly validated when she met Zara, a woman gracefully aging into her late fifties without the crutches of modern anti-aging care. Her skin was tanned and softly wrinkled, which accentuated the creases around her lips and eyes when she smiled. Which she did a lot. She had East Asian or Polynesian blood, evidenced by her features, but Jordan didn’t ask which because while she also came at least partially from that stock, she didn’t know where specifically, so she felt she had no right to inquire.

“The kelp forests here are deeper than the ones along the California coast,” Zara told her. “It was probably a seagrass meadow at some point, but the kelp overgrew it and goes all the way to the ridge where the resort was built. The resort pulls the seagrass from the ridge top in an attempt to keep their coral reef pristine.”

“Did they make the reef, or is it natural?” Jordan asked, watching a dark, fringed sea slug fluttering from one towering kelp ‘tree’ to another.

“That is a fine question.” Zara gave her a look. “The coral was there in early video surveillance. Some of last season’s scientists lodged a complaint against the resort for moving wildlife from the reefs to the west of here. But they withdrew the complaint a few months ago and the names on it haven’t been back on world since the storms.”

“There’s a pretty well-established culture of scientists versus developers here,” Zara continued.

There always were, Jordan thought.

“I can send you some information so you can decide for yourself,” she offered.

“Sure, but what’s your take on it?”

“Initially the scientists were pretty zealous about making investors and developers stick to the exact letter of laws and their promises. The investors drafted a cease and desist and implied harassment at one point. But they also caught the contractors violating biostasis.”

“How?”

Zara held up a finger. “Fishing for food to save money,” then a second, “trying to tame cephalopods.”

Jordan tried not to laugh. “Taming cephalopods?”

“That was the legal charge. They were feeding their scraps to them. The damn things were swimming up to boats and climbing inside, like squiggly dogs. Someone posted vids of them performing tricks for scraps.

She was going to have to find those. “We have cephalopods at Prism Falls. They absolutely have to work for their food. Bored octopi are worse than bored dogs.”

“Hey, what’s that?” one of the kids asked, pointing.

Jordan couldn’t help  looking up. About half a mile away a large ship sat, looming black and rusty steel over the water. The top twisted, following them as Joshua started their boat moving again. That dark, deep hole stared them down and everyone on the boat felt the pressure.

“That’s just another ship, honey,” one of the parents said.

It was a military ship. No name or identifying marks scarred its surface, but Jordan recognized the threat. Jordan watched the ship fade into the distance as they sped away. That turret still followed them.

“What is that?” she hissed to Zara.

“Have you heard of Spider Island?” Zara answered quietly. Jordan nodded. “That would be the minions.”