Strange Harvest

Part II: Harvest

I choked down another mouthful of chalky nutrient paste from the straw in my helmet, carefully licking the plastic tube clean to avoid a mess. It left a bitter residue behind, and the taste lingered even after I washed it down with a few gulps of water.

The paste was enough to keep us going in the suits, but it kept me on the edge of hunger all the time. If not for the awful flavor, I might have already gone through my stores. It was all any of us had eaten the past three days, since we couldn't take our suits off in the jungle.

The planet Surface was nearly a perfect mirror-Earth, but there were still all kinds of nasty things in the air—and even with the suits and oxygen scrubbers, we still stood a pretty good chance of catching any variety of alien diseases. Breathing this air straight into our lungs would be a slow suicide.

A rifle butt smacked me in the back of the helmet hard enough to send me stumbling. "Move it, rookie! What you standing there for? You slow or something?"

Chavos again. I made no reply—just increased my pace to close the gap between me and Sarabi. The only thing I could do to keep Chavos off my ass was pull my weight.

"Two miles to the hive," Mueller said on the common channel. "Stay sharp and keep your eyes open. Lots of wildlife around here come to eat lotus fruit from the canopy. You see something, say something. We've got a lot of delicate gear here and I want this to go smoothly."

"For once," Goldwater remarked.

The harvest team shared a subdued laugh—even Mueller—and their icons lit up with green confirmations on my display lenses.

"Alright, listen up," Mueller continued. "We're now inside the biggest natural lotus grove on the entire planet. Our harvesting site is at its heart, underneath the greatest concentration of lotus. When we get there, we'll set up at ground level over the hive. I'll be going in to extract the honey, since I've conditioned the queen. The fabricant will come down to help me move the kegs after I check the honey, and everybody else stays up top. Just sit tight and don't spook them. I want to avoid killing anything we don't have to. This is a completely unique natural event on Surface and we will not be the ones to disrupt it."

Chavos snorted. "I'm not losing any sleep over a few bugs, Mueller."

"You'll lose more than sleep if they swarm us," Goldwater said dryly. "We've all seen what their venom can do—and those stingers will pierce your armor if they hit you right. Show some respect to this place—just ask Warren."

Silence on the channel. That shut him up.

"Thank you, Goldwater. Now cut the banter." Clearly annoyed, Mueller finished his explanation quickly. "We've got plenty of time to beat the storm if we stick to our schedule. All you sorry grubs need to do is stay calm and help the fabricant load the kegs back onto the Packhound."

With Warren dead, we were six in total: there was old man Mueller, the medic Goldwater, head of security Chavos, Sarabi, myself, and a BioLock fabricant rental. Sarabi, Warren, and I had been hired on as contractors, but Goldwater and Chavos were full partners at Mueller's harvesting company, Royal Lotus.

The fabricant was still in stasis on the Packhound, boxed away with the rest of our gear. Since BioLock's fees increased based on active usage and risk, Mueller wanted to wait until we were on-site to wake it. The sturdy Packhound trundled along at the center of our group between Sarabi and Goldwater, the four-legged transport bot living up to its name with its signature dog-like trot.

We moved with purpose after entering the grove. The lotus vines around here grew along winding paths up the trunks of steeloak trees and climbed to reach the canopy, where they bloomed in the sunlight. Once ripe, the fruit fell to the jungle floor. The psychoactive chemicals in the fruit could be used for everything from pharmaceuticals to wine, but that wasn't what we were after. We wanted honey.

A species of giant honey wasp in the grove had taken to eating lotus fruit to make its nectar, which they then processed into honey at their hive. Mueller got really excited when he told us about this part during our briefing—these wasps were normally omnivorous, eating insects and small animals to round out their diet. But this hive fed exclusively on the lotus fruit, using the nutrients to make their honey in a hive underground, inside a steeloak tree's root system.

Scientists could make synthetic stuff that was chemically similar, but this organic straight-from-nature lotus honey would fetch a much higher price. And since these wasps fed purely on the lotus fruit in the wild, it was far more potent than other brands of organic lotus honey. Back in Overlook City, I'd had more than my share of lotus wine, but I'd never tried the honey before. Getting home after a few days bottled up inside a suit would be reason enough to celebrate.

Coming all the way out on foot to harvest was a risky venture, but a dropship big enough for seven or eight people and equipment wouldn't fit through the jungle canopy without damaging the ecosystem, as Mueller said. He, of course, refused, so we had to get dropped at a clearing two days from the harvest site and trek through the wild instead. Then, we'd load up the honey and do it all again in reverse.

"Hey, Mueller," Chavos said slowly, "Did you notice Warren's still showing up at the campsite?"

A pause as Mueller checked for himself. "Huh. What the hell?"

I brought up my own map on my lenses to see. Sure enough, Warren's icon remained at our campsite several miles back. We were about halfway between her and the hive. The drone displayed right next to her, but it was offline.

"Drone crashed, maybe?" I suggested.

"Shouldn't have. Damn thing's rated for nearly a ton, and in worse conditions than this." Mueller sounded worried. "Better not be those new power cells. I'm gonna go back. Chavos, Sarabi, Jackson, stay with Goldwater and keep moving."

"Wait, Mueller, you have to get to the grove," Goldwater interjected. "If we don't start on that honey by sundown, we won't make a full harvest before the storm hits."

Mueller growled with frustration. "You're right. Chavos, you and Jackson head back and we'll keep moving. Find out what happened. I'll call in another drone and have it circle nearby in case the other one's faulty. We'll move ahead with the harvest as planned."

***

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