Page 1 of Flower of Seshana (Tales from the Darvel Exploratory Systems #1)

Chapter

One

THIRTEEN YEARS BEFORE THE LIBERATION OF SESHANA

A lexandra Harrow cursed beneath her breath as she grappled with the rope looped through the descender at her waist, bringing her descent in the cave to a halt, sweat making her clothing beneath her thermos regulatory suit stick to her skin uncomfortably. She could not believe that she was relying on archaic rappelling techniques, all because she was unable to acquire the single signature necessary to check out the hover descender from the equipment supply.

Perhaps this had been a bad idea as so many said it was—going alone to an uncharted cave system on M285. However, she had not been left much choice since Nathaniel Hudson, the head director of Colony Merwa, had refused to respond to any of the dozens of requests she made for an appointment to discuss further exploration of Seshana’s natural flora. She knew why, too. Despite her onboarding by Darvel, it had been no secret that the company was not interested in much beyond the minerals. Her presence was more of a precaution, in case they encountered any dangerous fungi within the caverns that could be life-threatening to the mining crew. She hadn’t been out in the field since she arrived.

“Ridiculous,” she panted into her helmet as she reached up with one hand to adjust the light on it. “Should just rebrand themselves Darvel Strip Mining Corporation and drop the exploratory part.”

And Corp held onto their assets with an iron fist. Although Mewa was second only to the nearby Colony Alpha and had its own team of supervisors and technicians, she knew the head director reported directly to a Darvel representative on a daily basis. Hudson may have had the necessary rank to run the colony, but functionally he was nothing more than Darvel’s little pet. Corp called the shots on every aspect of colony life and sent daily instructions regarding the colony’s output and resources. She would love to tell Hudson exactly what he could do with this job, but confrontation was not her strong suit. She was a botanist, which seemed to complement her naturally independent and introverted nature—but her tendency to shyness did not help her career goals any.

“I knew I should have accepted the position at Raza,” she muttered, then sighed.

Like most of M285’s mining colonies, she was under no illusions that Raza was a shithole, but she suspected it was a slightly better shithole than Mewa. The colony was in a terrible position close to a mountain that, while it seemed to benefit from valuable mineral deposits, was also in prime hunting grounds for the predators that abundantly populated the desert. There had been rumors circulating among the miners about seeing aliens, but the truth was they still did not know what gases potentially filled the caverns or what sort of fauna could during sporous or blooming cycles be hallucinogenic. Although Darvel had encountered many alien races over the last several decades since leaving United Earth’s solar system with its first expedition crew, to find a species on M285, a planet so brutally inhospitable, could not only be a revelation but potentially save the colonists when considering the bigger picture.

“Hell, I would blow an alien for decent equipment right about now.” She blushed at her own words as she instinctively went to wipe away the sweat beading her brow, and immediately cursed when the side of her hand hit the helmet with a loud thud. “Oww! Son of a biscuit!”

Sucking in her bottom lip, she shook her hand vigorously as she adjusted her position to rappel even lower into the trench. Most of the known cave systems branched out into upper caverns at a fairly low depth, which had the highest potential of hosting herbaceous lifeforms. Or that was her theory based on reports she had obtained from the miners. Unfortunately, she never had a chance to test this hypothesis as any signs of plant life were often cleared out during the initial excavation. Were they perhaps destroying evidence of alien agriculture? The potential was thrilling, especially since the attempts at agriculture were mixed at best—and seldom favorable. More than that, however, she was curious about wild plants that could benefit the colonies medicinally. The transport ships between Earth and M285 were notoriously slow and had only become even slower with delays in meeting the Corp’s ever-increasing fulfillment quotas.

Although the colony officials worked hard to keep the facts from the miners, the truth was that they were going to soon hit a critical point within mere years.

People would starve.

She shook her head grimly, and with meticulous precision she dropped another twenty feet and stopped to plunge an anchor point into the rock. Her comm went off, warning of the approaching sandstorm, but she ignored it. She wasn’t resurfacing any time soon. Once she was certain that she was secure, she shifted her weight, moving to the right. There had to be a tunnel entrance into an upper chamber somewhere. She stretched further, grappling along the rocks as she squinted at what appeared to be a darker section within the area illuminated by her helmet’s lamp. That had to be an entrance.

Her fingers slid along the wall as she inched over, her lips tightening with strain as her muscles trembled beneath her TRS. She nearly lost her grip altogether when a loud snap echoed from above, followed by a blasting shriek that made her duck her head against the stone wall and cringe. It was only by some miracle that she remembered to hang on rather than slap her hands defensively over the approximate position of her ears beneath her helmet.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she whimpered as the frantic snaps of something striking against the air grew louder as it drew closer. Her entire body vibrated uncomfortably with the piercing sound filling the shaft, and she choked on a fearful sob as it plummeted directly for her and knocked her off the side of the shaft’s wall when the frightful bulk of a very large lifeform collided with her, taking her down with it.

Alexandra’s mouth opened in a scream as the stone wall in front of her fell away, and her entire world focused on the yawning pit that stretched out beneath her. Every now and then, the tumbling light from her helmet bounced off the stone walls and jagged obstacles pushing out into the shaft that she somehow only just avoided. A scream rose in her throat at the glimpses of the massive coils rapidly winding around her.

She had never heard of serpents on this planet, but with its size, she had no doubt that once it got ahold of her that it wouldn’t take long for the creature to snuff out her life. For now, its massive bulk thrashed against her, its tail winding along her body, the tip brushing far too intimately in certain places as it worked to secure its hold on her. She slammed her elbows and fists against the tail to no avail. It tightened into a suffocating embrace until she felt lightheaded. Head swimming, her head fell back just as two enormous wings suddenly snapped open, wrenching her violently upward and into darkness as unconsciousness descended.