An Extract from This Month's Release: The Lost Orchard
The Lost Orchard
On April 8, 2016, Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge was to “Randomize Your Title and Write”. Participants had to roll on two lists to get two title words. My first roll was a ‘12’, which gave me the word ‘Lost’. My second roll was a ‘14’, which gave me the word ‘Orchard’. The story had to be under 2,000 words, but as this story was also for the March 25th entry of the 366 Days of Flash Fiction collection, mine had to be no longer than 1,000. It was due by midday, April 15, 2016, American Eastern Standard Time. I got the title on April 8, 2016, started writing on April 11, and finished writing on April 12. Here’s what came out:
Deep beneath the moon’s surface, the orchard grew… or so it was said. Like so many before me, I’d come to Brevelar’s Moon hoping to find it. Legends said Brevelar’s had been the seventh stop on the journey from Lunar One.
Legend said that the ship had not so much stopped at the moon as crashed into it. The survivors of the Kamshin disaster had ended their journey, starting their colony while the crash alarms still wailed.
Kamshin State had built a dome beneath the forcefield, had towers at which other ships could dock, had slowly excised a quarter of Brevelar’s surface for itself. I rode the elevator down Darremar’s Rest, fleeing the knowing looks of the customs personnel.
“Are you sure you don’t want to book your ticket out?” asked the captain of the Brightstar Dreamer. “We could pick you up in a month.”
It was a good offer. Not many ships stopped here. I shook my head, ignoring the laughter that followed me towards the elevator.
“She’s not going to need a ticket,” one of the customs officers told him. “Not if she’s going into The Dark, like I think she is.”
Moonstones and asteroid pups! Was it that obvious? I pretended not to have heard, and let the elevator doors close behind me. Why should I care what they thought?
“The Dark” was what Brevelar’s natives called the honeycombed caverns below the Kamshin’s wreck—and I wasn’t going there. I’d done my research. Everyone looking for The Lost Orchard went into The Dark… and everyone had been wrong, but I wasn’t going to tell them that.
You see, they all believed the crash survivors had left the Kamshin, settling in the caves below. If they had, there would have been some records. If they had, why was Kamshin State built as far away from the wreck as the skimmers had been able to ferry them?
No, there was good reason why those who went into The Dark never came out, good reason why the Kamshin’s survivors had fled the area, and built their city under a double-layered dome—and it wasn’t just the meteors that came their way. I didn’t know what, or why, and I wasn’t aiming on finding out, but I figured the Lost Orchard wasn’t in The Dark. I also had a sneaking suspicion it wasn’t all that was lost.
Knowing the Kamshin State customs folk were watching, and pretty sure they weren’t the only ones, I prepped like every other adventurer before me, loading the sled with everything one would need for a long sojourn in The Dark, loading it, also, with everything I’d need for where I was really headed—beneath the State of Kamshin itself. After all, those first settlers had needed to find somewhere to hide from The Dark.
They’d had the equipment to know if their refuge was connected to The Dark’s caverns; they’d had enough construction supplies to wall themselves off from it, if it was. How long they’d had to retrieve those supplies before the Kamshin’s engines blew, was another matter—and not one on public record.
It hadn’t been on any other record, either. At least, not where I could access it. I’d stopped trying, when the Kamshin State security team had proven more adept than I found comfortable. In spite of keeping the Kamshin’s wreck on public display, Kamshin State guarded the details of its fate more closely than their financial records. Those, at least, I’d been able to take a peek at, and what I’d found only made me want to find the Orchard, even more.
I took a room that allowed me to keep the sled inside. It wasn’t easy, but I had the funds. I paid the bill in full, in advance, and left while the concierge was on a toilet break. They lost me when I didn’t leave the city.
Kamshin State city was set halfway up a mountain range. Its power systems were solar and wind, driven by resources gathered in the foothills below. Its water came from aquifers deep beneath Brevelar’s surface. Everything was piped to the city through large conduits, which needed to be able to repaired and monitored—meaning maintenance tunnels ran beneath the city, and access hatches could be found throughout.
Another thing I’d discovered was that the oldest of the hatches had the best security protocols, and that the newest hatches were closely guarded. Only the mid-tier systems were in the range I could deal with on my own—and I hadn’t wanted to hire a team. I wanted to spend time in the Lost Orchard all by myself.
I wanted to take my degree in xeno-botanical genetics, and work it to the bone. I wanted at least three months, knew I’d be lucky to get three weeks, but I hoped.
I found the access panel once used to build the tunnel extensions. Breaking into it required just enough work to make me feel safe—and that should have been a warning in and of itself. At the time, I was too excited to notice, and even I know better than to take such things for granted.
I locked the panel behind me, reactivating the security systems, and adding a few touches of my own. No way did I want to be caught unawares when they found out where I’d really gone.
The tunnels ran straight to the city’s under-mountain heart. I wondered at that, pondering why the Kamshin settlers thought the protocols on the maintenance hatches enough to keep their secrets safe.
I was right. They had built beneath the city, settling far away from whatever had menaced them in The Dark, and planting the Kamshin’s precious cargo in caverns lit by sun lamps, powered from the slopes below.
I was not, of course, the first xeno-botanist to have trespassed this far, but I did get the three months I hoped for—that, and so much more. Trespassing in The Lost Orchard carries a life sentence…in the Orchard, itself. Not something I regret.
Cover art is by Jake at JCaleb Design, and links to 366 Days of Flash Fiction can be found on Books2 Read at: https://books2read.com/u/b6MrN0
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