Harpies of Planet Sutherland

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  Fallen Stardust: A boy, an outcast and an alien must find salvation in a world of ruin. Samuel must find a medicine to cure the fever ravaging his village. Markus must find the motive that murdered those he loved. And an angel must find a future in a city crumbled into debris. But something lurks beneath the wasted world, and waking it may doom what little of humanity survives.

  The Sisters Will Dance: Blaine Woosely claws his way back to the living. He has cleaned his blood of his addiction, and an unexpected, family farm home rewards his efforts. Only, the country acres isolate Blaine when a sharp-toothed monster hunts to bring Blaine back to dark. The sad history of Blaine's blood brings magic to the country home's new master, but in the end, only Blaine himself can break his chains.

  Mr. Hancock’s Signature: The dead walk in Monteray. The corpse of a nearly forgotten farmer named Hancock arrives via train. Ian Washington remembers Mr. Hancock and vows to return the body home. Yet Mr. Hancock's body will not rest while Ian works to reopen a cemetery, and the corpse staring each morning upon the doorstep forces the town to choose between the isolation of their fear or the hope of their fellowship.

  Harpies of the Planet Sutherland

  Brian S. Wheeler

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2014 by Brian S. Wheeler

  Contents

  Chapter 1 – Raiders of the Water Fields

  Chapter 2 – The Law Hates Ignorance

  Chapter 3 – Bonus

  Chapter 4 – Magic Eyes

  Chapter 5 – Parade Day

  Chapter 6 – Drinking Buddies

  Chapter 7 – An Unexpected Letter

  Chapter 8 - Camouflaged Monsters

  Chapter 9 – A Name on a Toe Tag

  Chapter 10 – Tending to the Garden

  Help Spread the Story Across the Flatland

  About the Writer

  Other Stories at Flatland Fiction

  Chapter 1 - Raiders of the Water Fields

  "Come on, son. The aliens are long gone. I need your arms to help me carry the water."

  Gavin Beeman hesitated to follow his father Colt into the field brimming with the strange, alien water baskets. The basket scaffolds, built from a material most comparable the old Earth's bamboo, rose several stories into the dry air of the rocky planet of Sutherland. Those scaffolds supported and housed strangely shaped balloons knit from a substance many settlers believed had been the skin of the vanished race of aliens who had crafted the water baskets. Working upon a science none yet understood, the shape of those tan, weathered balloons shifted throughout the day and night to gather moisture from the atmosphere that felt so dry. The balloons clutched to the condensation they pulled, and tiny droplets of water followed the balloons' curves to drop into the large, stone basins set at the bottom of each weaved scaffold.

  Gavin thought the first pictures of the water basket fields the drones beamed back to their United Systems scouting starships must have sent the scientists and technicians at the vanguard of space colonization into joyful madness. All those baskets rising in their neat, orderly rows upon the rocky landscape of Sutherland stood as the first relics of an extraterrestrial civilization, the first found trace of a race that left behind no other clue to their kind before utterly vanishing to the slow, or quick, ravages of time. They were proof that humankind was not the only mind in the cosmos to build a civilization. They were proof that another species separately evolved in the stars with a social strata capable of large scale construction. Gavin thought those water baskets must have meant so many strange things to those archeological crews wearing the United Systems uniforms who so frequently came to Sutherland to study those water fields.

  But those water baskets meant something far simpler to settlers such as Gavin and his father Colt. To them, the water found gathered in those stone basins meant sustenance. To them, that water meant survival. There were no rivers or lakes found on Sutherland. It didn't rain. But each night as the planet cooled, the balloons swayed and danced to tickle water from an invisible source and gather such bounty into their scaffolds' waiting, stone basins.

  Colt recognized the fear that shadowed his son's face, and so Colt unholstered the laser pistol from his hip. "It'll be fine, Gavin. Don't let your mind stray into all those superstitions about the water fields. All that talk comes from idle, lazy folk who have no business calling themselves students of old Zeb. No alien is going to jump out from behind a balloon to harm us. We'll see no alien ghost materialize to hiss at us. Especially not when I have my laser gun to protect us. Come on now and follow me."

  "I'm not worried about aliens," Gavin responded. "What if there's a patrol?"

  "They'll be no patrol," Colt rolled his eyes and stomped towards the field of water baskets.

  Gavin set the long yoke upon his shoulders and hurried to catch up to his father. The pails on either end of his pole remained empty; but Gavin knew the return journey home would be an exhausting one with those poles brimming with water. Overhead, the twin moons named Griffin and Freedom rose into the turquoise atmosphere. Gavin, like the rest of the followers of Zeb who had traveled to colonize that rocky planet of Sutherland, adapted quickly to that strange sky. Long months, even years, drifting upon a starliner primed any settler to quickly accept the most exotic planet as home. Yet Gavin still did not feel accustomed to those water baskets brimming in the field. Their shape, their composition, their slow, shifting movement still unsettled him. To Gavin, those baskets remained too alien.

  Many settlers marveled at how such simple, elegant constructions so proficiently drew moisture from the sky. The baskets operated on no power source. None of the scores of archeological teams could guess how long the baskets had stood upon that rocky landscape, and the best United Systems engineers shook their heads as they tried to understand how such structures so well resisted decay. Many of the settlers believed the water baskets to be magical. Many thought they were miraculous. But Gavin thought them alien and strange. Though he knew better, he still feared a lost race of ghosts haunted them.

  "Don't just stand there gaping, son!" Colt's sharp tone regathered Gavin's focus. "Hurry now so we don't need to spend any more time in this field than we must."

  Gavin felt the yoke across his shoulders tax his legs as he hurried to keep pace with his father. "Why do you want to go so far into all the water baskets? Why not stop here at the edge of the field? All the basins fill the same."

  "Because the United Systems' patrols only inspect the water baskets on the edges of the fields," Colt replied. "They're paid with United Systems' taxes, and they're all lazy and idle. They won't take the time to walk deeper into the field where we're going. They'll never have a clue we were here if we take from the basins deeper in the field."

  United Systems law prohibited any settler from directly gathering water from the baskets' stone basins. The followers of Zeb Griffin who populated Sutherland resented the United Systems' inf
luence and bureaucracy. They resented that the reach of United Systems authority extended so far as to the regulation of water. The United Systems allotted each homestead a finite amount of water each month, and the settlers didn't understand the formula the bureaucrats employed in calculating every homestead's water supply. Those settlers had floated very far into the stars to escape such regulation, and they chafed at the knowledge that the United Systems dared to govern even their thirst.

  However frivolous or vile a settler of Zeb Griffin might think the water allotment policy to be, every settler seriously regarded the punishment for water theft. Settlers caught illegally drawing from the water basins to increase their allotted supply of water were promptly taken off planet and loaded onto the first available starliner. Return to the starliner meant additional months, additional years, waiting in cramped, low-gravity apartments for the announcement of a new settlement. Too much time in the starliner's low gravity turned passengers weak, and weak passengers found finding employment upon a colony construction crew increasingly more difficult, for the taming of any wild planet demanded the strong. A return to the starliner in consequence of crime all too often doomed the guilty to a lifetime floating between the stars, breathing a starliner's artificial, stinking air, never finding that dream of home that first tempted a soul to take his or her first step into the stars.

  "You sure we need the extra water so badly to risk being thrown off this rock?"

  Colt grunted as he moved deeper into the water baskets. "A homestead can never get hold of too much water. No government has the right to deny me water. Besides, the United Systems has it all wrong. The water is here to sustain us. We're not here to sustain the water. I didn't load you and the rest of the family onto that starliner so we could pinch water. This basin should do."

  Colt ducked beneath the lower beams of a water basket's scaffold and dipped his hand into a basin. Drops pattered into the basin as the water followed the balloon's contours and fell into the pool. Gavin lowered himself next to his father and submerged each of his yoke's pails into the water. No monitors tripped any alarms as water rushed into the containers. No United Systems' sentries appeared with humming and ready rifles. No alien ghosts materialized out of the thin air. But Gavin still thought time came to a standstill in the brief moment it took the waters to rush into his pails.

  Gavin grunted as he felt the filled pails exert their weight upon the yoke across his shoulders, and Gavin feared he might stumble and lose some of those waters in the trek still ahead of him before returning home. Gavin took a breath and was attempting to rise when his feet tripped upon one another, sending him toppling towards a water basket's scaffold. Gavin reached for balance, and his flailing hand knocked Colt's gun out of the father's hand. The gun impacted the ground and discharged a blurry column of light that flashed over Gavin's shoulder and brought stars into his eyes

  Gavin's head ached, but his vision quickly returned to see his father's face pale white. Gavin's heart sank as he realized he had dropped both of the pails, that their waters were lost on the rocky ground, to hopefully eventually be again recycled into the water baskets' stone basins. Yet Gavin knew as he looked upon his father's expression that the worry that turned the older man's face so white did not come from two dropped pails of water.

  Gavin turned and saw that the errant blast from his father's weapon had seared through one of the water baskets, shattering a hole in its framework and deflating the inner balloon. The water basket had survived and done its duty upon that field for longer than Gavin could imagine; and yet in a wink, the searing beam from his father's weapon had broken it.

  Colt's eyes danced back and forth to scan the field. "No time now to refill the containers and stumble that water all the way home. That beam from my gun is sure to attract attention. Grab the empty pails and hurry out of here. Split up on the way back home in case any of the guards attempt to track us. Make sure you don't lead anyone back to our homestead."

  Gavin ignored his tired legs and hurried out of the field. He paused often to peer behind him, but he saw no evidence of pursuit. Gavin took a long and winding route back home, praying that none of his neighbors had peered out of their windows to see him scurrying past their homes with a pair of empty pails. Gavin and his father had risked a punishing return to the starliners in their attempt to steal more water, and Gavin didn't want to consider the punishment the United Systems might judge appropriate for anyone who destroyed a water basket.

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