***

Her fingers cracked under the pressure she exerted on the shell. Her knuckles locked as she dug her thumb through the slit of brittle stone.

They say it’s like a mussel. I don’t... even—she strained her wrists trying to force it open—know what a... mussel...is! It snapped open. Rylie sucked her thumb, soothing the raw pad.

She had calluses—a fair amount of them on her hands—but they didn’t always protect her from the nuggets. Rylie buried her head against her arm and wiped the sweat from her face and thrust her hands into the waves to clean them; the large nugget held firm between her knees.

The contents were goopy, slimy, and smelled of uncooked fish. Her nose wrinkled while she dug her hands in and hoped for the best.

The third one today...

Her fingers caught something and she tugged it out of the wet mess of the crevice. Please be something. She dipped it into the water and rubbed it clean, only to lift it to the sky and find the stone clouded.

“Gah damn it, oh what the?” Rylie muttered under her breath.

“Another one?” her da yelled out from the watership. The ship sat right outside the jetty she was in, perched on one of the thousands of rocks her father had placed before her birth. It hadn’t changed once, not once, in all the years since.

“Yah, Da, another one,” she called back. Her knees parted to let the open nugget fall from her lap and back into the water. She watched it dip into the crystalline waves and disturb the swimmers that nipped at her feet.

“Come on back up then, no sense in wasting our time here.”

He mumbled something more but she didn’t hear it.

She didn’t want to hear it. It would only add to her stress, and when both Montihans were on edge, it erupted in tirades and passive-aggressive musings. Rylie lifted herself off the sea algae-covered boulder, turned away from the inlet, and dove into the ocean. She clutched the stone as she swam to the watership.

Da stood at the top of the ladder and helped her back into the boat. She stepped past him and submerged her hands in a bucket of fresh water.

“Let’s see it then.”

Rylie handed him the stone as she grabbed a fresh towel and dried up.

“It’s worse than the others. How can that be? A year ago it was one in a thousand but now, now it’s three in a day?” Her question came out more anxious than she wanted it too.

He lifted the stone to let the sun shine through. His wrinkled, sun-bleached lips downturned as he inspected a rock that didn’t need inspecting.

What’re we going to do?

“This one isn’t so bad.”

“It’s just as bad at the others. It may even be worse.”

“No, no, this has some clarity, we can carve into it and pull out the clear parts,” he argued. Rylie bit down on her tongue as he wiped the stone clean and put it away in the lockbox.

Quinten Montihan had been a soldier once, back before she was born, and even forty years after the war had ended, he was still as stubborn as ever. A lover of freedom and a hater of aliens, he had settled on the Earthian controlled planet, Kepler, where he’d met her mother, a woman who shared the same views.

But amongst the eight other Kepler rock farmers who laid claim to the agri-lots in the Eastern hemisphere, her da was the only one who would sell to the aliens. He made a fortune because of it but made just as many enemies for it, too.

The Montihans were respected—money demanded respect—but were not liked. Rylie wrung out her hair with thoughts of the cerulean waters of her home planet in her head.

Da ducked down into their watership with a heavy spring in his step. The sounds of the ocean lapping against the plastic rim of her home-away-from-home filled her ears. She took hold of the spare moment of peace but he came stomping back up, shattering it, grey hair swept away from his face and with fresh wrinkles lining his mouth.

“We going out to check the other lots today?”

But as she asked her question, a black dot appeared in the sky overhead. A ship, appearing from space, aimed straight for their settlement.

Seeing a spaceship wasn’t unusual but it was infrequent, especially so close to home. She caught him watching it.

“Not today, Buggy, we’re expecting company.”

What? “We should check the lots butting up to Renfield's. We’re already halfway there. And what company are we expecting? Are the farmers getting together again so soon?” Her questions spilled out. Company made her nervous.

The ship vanished into the distance, leaving only an exhaust trail in its wake.

They weren’t the only ones with a bad crop this year. The other lots in their area all experienced the same misfortune. Some even had workers go missing, with their watership and its contents blipped from existence. Rylie turned away from her da and looked at the ocean.

“We can check ‘em when this business is settled. I didn’t want to tell you ‘cause I didn’t want you running off like you always do,” he grunted and knocked on the controls.

A clear shield lifted from the front half of the ship to cover the port deck, it rose up and sealed the ship with a squelch. Rylie saw her freedom vanish from behind the thick glass. Our glass. The glass the stones they harvested made. It was some of the strongest in the universe.

Their stones, as well as the stones the other farmers cultivated, were in high demand and expensive. When they were melted down and re-forged into glass, they could withstand the strain of space, warp travel, and the pressures of the deepest seas. It was bullet-proof, rocket-proof, everything proof, and everyone wanted it.

The ship lifted above the water and, with the whistle of an air boat, shot over the ocean and back toward their settlement.

Da continued, “You need to be there, as you’re my right-hand gal.”

“I don’t see why. It’s not like I do much more than operate the ship and scout,” she grumbled. She was being petulant because if she had known they were expecting company, she would’ve fled. Rylie grabbed one of her flimsy work shirts and tugged it over her head.

“And the inventory, the orders, and all that nonsense with the math.” He waved his hand at her. “You need more experience with people.”

“I dislike people.”

“They’re not all bad.”

“You dislike people,” she added, annoyed.

He responded with a shrug.

Rylie ran her fingers through her damp hair. “Can you get Janet or Steven to go with you?” The water trickled from her ends, cloudy with salt, and dripped onto the floor. “They’re better at it than me anyway. I just—never say the right thing.”

“Now stop. Your sister is inappropriate and Steven has no loyalty to the farm. They’ll be there, yes, but this meeting is different and...private. Family business only and important to the future of our farm.”

She lifted her eyes to glare at his back. His spine was straight, his neck was thick, and he radiated tension from every sun-damaged pore of his body. Something was wrong. She didn’t want to ask, but worry and curiosity won out over her nerves.

“It has something to do with the missing workers, doesn’t it?”

The muscles in his shoulders visibly relaxed. Rylie pulled her hair back into a ponytail as the watership shifted into auto-pilot. He turned around.

The weight of the ocean’s waves were in his eyes.

“Did you scan the boat this morning?”

“Yes. Of course.”

He sighed. “We can’t be too careful, Buggy, not with the farms producing subpar stones. We don’t want another turf war or shark to come in and try and take us out.”

Rylie frowned and pulled her legs up onto the cushioned seat, wrapping her arms around her knees. She’d only been a teenager when the Rockswork farm fell into debt and Mrs. Charlene from Crestalview loaned them money. Rockswork had no idea that Charlene and her people would come calling for the pay prior to the next season of crops. When they couldn’t pay up, Charlene bought them out at gunpoint, standing over the bodies of several Rockswork employees.

Crestalview took over their agri-lots and their customers. She bought out another undeveloped agri-lot using the profits she had made from her takeover, bringing them down to their lowly eight. Everyone had been afraid of being her next target after that, and the government was called down to mediate.

Rylie didn’t know the whole story, but it had something to do with Crestalview being fined and losing several big-name clients.

The trouble ended as quickly as it had begun, except Montihan had bought guns for his employees and taught all his kids and his workers’ kids how to shoot. He implemented a new order for disagreements that couldn’t be settled in any other way.

A standoff, he called it; he said it worked like a charm back on Earth. No situation had escalated that badly, yet, and Rylie liked to think it was because everyone was just too damned afraid of being shot.

“Do you think Crestalview has something to do with the missing workers? I thought Charlene lost one of hers not long ago.”

“Don’t know, but we’re prepping for the worst.”

The bad crops. The disappearances. The rumors. It made her uncomfortable—nervous—and itchy. It was the kind of itch that was always there, under her skin, but could only be felt when she focused on it. And once it caught her focus, it didn’t let go. Only time and distraction could cure it.

They zipped over the water, hovering enough to sail above the waves. She wished he hadn’t put the shield up, she could’ve used the wind to dry her hair.

“Will she be there?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Mrs. Charlene.”

“I told you this isn’t a farmers’ meet. This is just us Montihans.”

“Who’re you expecting if not the other farmers?”

Rylie didn’t like surprises, especially when they came with people who weren’t kin or close friends. It made her feel awkward. Her ma blamed it on her lack of early socialization, but Rylie didn’t think socializing had anything to do with it.

“Could it have something to do with the developing colony in the south?” she had to ask. She would say anything to get him to open up enough to tell her what she was getting into.

“I have my thoughts, but I can’t find a connection.” He knocked his knuckles on the panel. “That colony has been around for seven years now and has only brought good into our lives.”

“What if the workers aren’t vanishing, but leaving?”

“They could be, but why blip off the radar in the middle of an agri-lot? With a tuggy boat nonetheless? It doesn’t make sense and those who have gone—”

“—have been here all their lives,” she finished for him. Like me.

“Men and women I’ve known for decades.” He wiped his thumb over his bottom lip in thought. “I don’t want my girls out and about,” his eyes scanned the ocean, “until I know it’s safe again.”

Rylie wanted to tell him that it had never been safe. That each day a life could end by a passing storm, an accident during the harvesting, or at the hands of a nomad or pirate, but she kept her mouth shut, knowing it would only make him stressed. He didn’t need another wrinkle added to the many already on his brow.

“It doesn’t matter if we have no reason to come out onto the water...” She thought of the cloudy stones she had collected today.

“Watch your tongue!”

She tightened her arms around her legs.

“You’ll see, Buggy, your mom’s preparing a nice dinner tonight,” ending the conversation.

She rested her chin on her knees and focused on the spindrift across the windows.