Friday’s Flash—The Del Marina Betrayal

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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.
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The Del Marina Betrayal

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.
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.



books2read.com/u/bap506
books2read.com/u/3J21B3

Location: Canberra ACT 2601, Australia

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