January by the numbers continues (now three days off, meeps~)!
From kelkyag‘s prompt “Underneath umbrellas, unicorns unite;” a ficlet, or maybe a start of a ficlet.

In the same setting as the Aardvark story (here) and maybe the Fall story (here), which may just be my overarching Space Colony setting.

🦄

The sun was far too bright. The sun was always too bright. On Feshgarrun IV, the land was rich, fertile, and wonderful – but only within [geographic thing] of the equator. The land belted that equator in a series of archipelagos and small continents; there was land near the poles as well, but it was covered in ice, and much much less-populously colonized.

So the land was good, the work was easy, and the leisure time was warm.
Far too warm.

The colonists on Feshgarrun IV – and they were still colonists; it was still a newly-discovered planet and the Company still owned everything from the mine equipment to the houses to the umbrella store – worked steadily, even if the work was easy. And in their leisure time, they would walk along the long beaches, covered with wide umbrellas that reflected the sun back up to the sky.

Colonists – especially the first-instance colonists, the ones that often moved on to colony after colony – were a strange lot. They had Aardvarks, they had Giants. They had Butterflies.

And they had Unicorns, those rare people who by genetics or gengineering were perfect for any particular colony.

On Feshgarrun IV, “perfect” was a matter of some debate. Even the Unicorns wore wide-brimmed hats and sunglasses; even the Unicorns preferred dusk and dawn to noon.

And the Unicorns came together on the beaches, tucked underneath umbrellas, plotting the future of a colony they were designed to work for, not to run.

🦄

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January by the numbers continues (now three days off, meeps~)!
From kelkyag‘s prompt “Careful consideration;” a ficlet.
🚀
There are some situations which require the sort of consideration that takes actual minutes, actual thought, actual knowledge of the options.

There are some situations where you have to weigh your choices, study the consequences, research the possibilities.

Sometimes, you really have to go into something with your eyes open and your homework done.

Like moving to another planet, for instance.

You need to know where you’re going, at a bare minimum, what you’re going to do when you get there, how you’re going to survive, how you’re going to make money.

I mean, that’s the absolute minimum. Like, can you breathe the air? Can you survive the gravity? Is there anything there to eat? Most of those planetary colony flights are one-way-only: you get there, you’re stuck. It’s not the sort of thing you do on a whim.

Unless, of course, you’re Jeropey Onefferie. RIght about now, Onefferie is sneaking on to a colony flight, picked — if you can believe this; I hardly can and I’m telling the story — by the roll of a die. He’s stowing away on a bet, the winnings of which he may never be able to collect.

It’s a colony flight, you say, of course he can survive where other humans can. Ah, but we are not on Earth; we’re on Besh Rithtaen, armpit of the universe, highway off-ramp of the galaxy, collection spot for at least three hundred sentient races, many of whom (including humans) live in sealed environments or environment suits.

And the colony ship he’s slipped on to is a Meshtarina ship. That doesn’t spell immediate demise — the Meshtarina live in the same range of environments as humans.

We know this, however, because the Meshtarina run human farms on planets outside the Federation regulations.

There are some situations which really do require careful consideration.
👽

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January by the numbers continues (now three days off, meeps~)!
From kelkyag‘s prompt “Ancient aardvarks are always achey;” a ficlet.
👷
They called them aardvarks, because they worked on the unknown continents, because they worked at night, and because they burrowed.

They called them aardvarks, and they were the ones who told the rest of them everything they needed to know about their new lands. Explorers, scientists, miners: the aardvarks were all of those, and more.

They worked at night because the suns of the new planets were dangerous, because the screens that would make the world safe for human habitation had not yet been installed. They burrowed, because all the secrets of the world lay under its soil — its mineral balances and its mineable wealth, its loam and its sand and its clay. And every place they went was a new and secret place, an unknown planet that might, at one point, be colonized by convicts and run-aways, drop-outs and adventurers, wild people and quiet people.

It was hard work, and it was rootless work, as deep in the ground as these aardvarks dug. Eventually, they would end up moving on to another planet, another continent, another dig. And another one, and another one. The aardvarks who did their job the best had the fewest roots, for they spent the least time in any given hole.

There was an honor amongst them, these deep-underground adventurers, that no other could touch, not the companies, not their families, not the colonists who came later. And there was a pride, the dig patches worn on one’s coveralls like passport stamps. Some digs were harsher than others, the way these things always were, and so there were a few patches one wore with a special kind of pride and sadness: Gedder-Fess, where only three had walked away. Kor’pek, where it was said that anywhere from two to twenty had lived (depending on the tale-teller), but half of them had gone absolutely stark raving mad. Loliarinaethellie, where the patch almost guaranteed you were missing fingers, toes, maybe an arm or a leg.

They worked until they’d left more pieces in the digs than they could stand to lose, or until they found a mustering-out point at some dig slated to run long, where they could Advise and Account, talk to the people and talk to the companies, and no longer handle the shovels and the picks and the fussy little brushes and slides. And they were always achy, always tired, and always willing to tell the tale of every dig they’d been at.

🚧🚧

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January by the numbers continues (now two days off~)!
From kelkyag‘s prompt “Giant giraffes gambol gingerly;” a ficlet.

🌱

The planet was smack between a planet that had been renowned for its local foods and one that had been amazingly good at providing raw materials, and, as such, it became a way-stop on the transgalactic trade route.

It if had not been right where it was, it was likely it would not have been touched; at least not until a new government came into power back “at home”; the current policy was that one settled on planets but one lived in some sort of concert with the local flora and fauna. Thus, the mining and farming those two bracketing planets did was of the careful, long-term sustainable sort, and the planets were tended with, as one might say, kid gloves.

But this way-planet, this one offered some unique problems. If one was allowed to harvest not more than 25% of the local flora or fauna, what did one do when there were only three plants of any given sort taking up an entire continent? They were, of course, very big plants, spanning miles and miles, but one could not take the root of the plant for experimentation without destroying it unless one was very, very careful.

The companies who did such things preferred working in places where one could simply cordon off one mile out of four and work from there, mining or planting or harvesting or hunting. This planet, thus, would have been left alone for quite some time – perhaps forever, or at least until a more permissive galactic government took over.

But it was at a perfect way-position, and thus one small corner was cordoned off – so very carefully, destroying as little as possible of the local ecosystem – for their space-station.

And from there you could take hover-tours, safaris in very well-armored vehicles. You could, on your long layovers, soar over the giant continent-spanning leaves, watching the giant giraffe-like creatures gambol through the leaves. There were only ten of them on the continent, and they would mouth gingerly at the hover-cars, testing them to see if they were food.

It was a good planet to stop on, and a lovely tour, everyone said.

So long as you avoided the jaguar-creature.

🌱

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