Friday’s Flash—The Del Marina Betrayal
Last week we had a very short piece of
military science fiction. This week, it's a piece of science fiction much closer to the oceans of our home world, and it forms the February 8th entry in 365
Days of Flash Fiction.
In the laboratories of Santos del Marina we
saw many things: sea cows that gave milk humans could drink, leafy dragons that
breathed a storm of sharp, poisonous shards, puffer fish able to propel spiral
shell-boats, and sea jellies the colour of rainbows, which tasted like
strawberries and peaches. We didn’t see what Santos was doing to the whales,
and we really shoulda seen through his quiet smile and calm façade.
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The Del Marina Betrayal
Twenty-eight days
after he’d started, the first whale dared approach us for help—the only one who
didn’t think we already knew of Santos’s mischief and condoned it. At first we
recoiled, and then we struck. We visited the del Marina laboratory unannounced
and went through it from top to bottom, missing not a single room.
At first, Santos
protested his innocence, and then he tried to flee. The killer whales waiting
outside did not have our sense of mercy.
He was torn apart
for the accompanying great whites to feed on. Usually solitary, the sharks had
gathered, angry. We found out why when we hit the lowest layer. It took months
of careful rehabilitation and reintegration, but we cleaned out the labs,
earning a deeper friendship with the whales, and the first tentative steps of
an alliance with the cold-water sharks.
So tentative and
fragile was that relationship, we assigned our best man to the site—Carmina del
Marina. It was a decision we were later to be proud of.
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You can find the first two flash
fiction collections at the links below, until the covers are updated. The third collection will be released
later this year.
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| books2read.com/u/bap506 |
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| books2read.com/u/3J21B3 |
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