Page 67 of Jewel of the Sea

“Central does not want panic to spread through the populace. Our directive is to hold this facility at all costs and maintain a base of operations for any future underwater endeavors. We are not to send any communication to Watchpoint Echo, which is the base closest to Pontus Alpha.”

“Watchpoint Echo?” Aymee asked quietly, brows drawn. “Does he mean The Watch?”

“I will record another log as soon as there is more information relevant to the situation. Captain Wright, signing off.”

The holo flickered out, reverting to the collection of still images.

Aymee glanced at the skeletal remains on the floor. She crouched and extended a hand, carefully adjusting the worn, dingy material. A name had been embroidered on the coat, hidden beneath a crease —WRIGHT.

“Computer, what is Watchpoint Echo?” Aymee asked as she stood, wiping her fingers on her skirt.

“Watchpoint Echo is a military outpost established as a drop-point for supplies delivered from space and a shipping hub for seaborne materials on this side of the Halorian mainland. Civilian settlement was permitted three years after Watchpoint Echo’s establishment.”

A three-dimensional map appeared in the air. Though she’d never seen it from that angle, the land it depicted was familiar to Aymee. All the old buildings were there — the most prominent being the lighthouse on the cape. It was The Watch as it had looked hundreds of years ago.

“That’s your home,” Arkon said. He pointed to a spot to the west of the settlement. “This is the beach we met on for the exchanges, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“The technology your people once commanded is fascinating.”

“So much of it has broken down or stopped working over the years that we’ve learned to do without. I can’t say things wouldn’t be easier if we had access to some of it again, though.” Aymee tilted her head, staring at the map. “Computer, why did the deliveries to Watchpoint Echo stop?”

“Halora was declared too remote and unstable for continued support from the Interstellar Defense Coalition after war began in 2509 SGY. The final shipment was dropped in April of the same year.”

Aymee looked at Arkon. “They abandoned everyone.”

She shouldn’t have felt any emotional attachment to the event; it was a wrong done by people she’d never heard of to people she’d never known hundreds of years before her birth. Anger flashed through her, nonetheless. The people who were supposed to protect the colonists had turned their backs and left the settlers to their fates with little care for their chances of survival.

However, had reinforcements been dispatched, Arkon and the kraken would likely have been wiped out.

It was a sobering thought.

The people of Halora — human and kraken alike — had persevered through abandonment, and Aymee had met Arkon because of it.

“It is talking about...about things beyond this world?” Arkon asked.

“You mean space?”

“Space. That is the darkness between the stars, is it not? Where your people originally came from?”

“Yes. Humans originally came from a planet called Earth, though we visited many other planets and solar systems before we came to Halora. We had huge ships that flew through space, from world to world.”

He turned his attention back to the map, which slowly rotated to display the topography of The Watch from different angles. “Even with all I’ve learned, with all I know to be true, that seems so unlikely. So impossible.”

“Creating a being from two different species seems impossible, too,” she said gently.

Arkon smiled and spread his arms slightly, glancing down at himself. “Not so to me, when I have the proof right here all the time.”

Aymee’s eyes trailed from his broad shoulders down to his narrow waist and beyond, drinking in every detail of his form. Beneath these lights, his skin was more cerulean than blue-gray, the color of the sea on a sunny day.

“It is jarring when I recall that our people are so closely related, given the violence and hostility between them in the past,” he said, calling her gaze back to his.

“If only they’d seen what Macy and I do when we look at you. Physical differences aside, we really are the same.” Aymee sighed and faced the console. She swiped the map away. Captain James Wright filled the screen. “Looking at the past and a lot of the present, it’s hard to envision a peaceful future between our people.”

“It can be achieved. Even if it’s only one...or two...people at a time.”

She smiled at him and took his hand again before tapping the next image.

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