By M. McLellan

The word ‘coloniser’ had so much baggage that the crew spent half their journey arguing about connotations. There had to be a better word. It was 2884 and no one wanted to be colonial. ‘Pioneer’ smelled the same, faintly aromatic of blood and shit. ‘Nomad’ implied they were just passing through. ‘Traveller’ was too nonspecific.

‘We aren't tourists, Magda,’ said Captain Darius, who should have had absolute command on Balshazzar. But Magda was the head life support tech and he did not care to introduce his theoretical authority to the spike of conflict.

To preserve the peace, he decided not to mention the whining he had heard in the O2 garden. The autoscans were fine. The percentages were green and the tomatoes were delicious. If he wanted to query Magda, he needed the justifications a person normally took to court.

Yet the sound rang in his ears. Maybe it was a nervous reaction? Darius went to see the crew psychologist and had a long conversation about the unique stresses of interplanetary exploration. (Could ‘explorers’ work?)

Soon afterwards, the second assistant gardener noticed two bites on the soft skin under her wrist. 

‘Zero chance,’ said the enviro-control officer. ‘There are chem and temp gates between every cell of this ship. Even if a pest got on board, it wouldn't survive for long. Maybe you should see the doc about new allergies? The green beans are getting a bit weird in low-G.’

The green beans were not producing pea-pods, but fanning dozens of pale tendrils towards the grow-lights. Their stalks spiralled into patterns the cultivation team would never unknot. If you didn’t know what they were supposed to be, you would never guess.

Eve shrugged and went back to checking the soil humidity. She kept listening for a high-pitched drone, but heard nothing over the huffing of vent pipes. The bites pebbled and stung. She tried not to scratch. 

She was on the wake-swing for another two months, then dormant for a year. When she was reactivated, itching with euthermia, Balshazzar had almost reached her destination. Imros II began as a bluish dot on the wayseeker. Every day it got bigger and bluer until aquamarine filled half the screen. 

When he locked in orbit, Darius crashed comms so he could weep. He had not realised how much he missed having a sky.

Meanwhile, Magda conceded ‘squatter’ was an unkind description, but she'd rather base jump from the exosphere than call herself a ‘settler’. She got to work calibrating the vapour mix for the portable gas processors, readying for planetfall. 

Eve was selected for the first weigh-capsule Balshazzar sent down. They said they needed a botanist, but she wondered if they also liked her name. The end of the 29th century was coming up fast, but superstition was sticky. 

The descent was terrifying. They fell for long minutes. There were no viewports in the capsule, so every ding and click and whir filled her head with worse-case scenarios. Eve shut her eyes, wrestling with the idea of coming all this way just to end up a pile of superheated slag on an extra-terrestrial beach. 

Then the kites unfurled, and inertia rippled through her abdomen. She gritted her teeth and concentrated on not vomiting. When they hit the dirt at last, she was smiling. 

The landing was hard, but their pods kept them mostly safe. Only Darius was injured, scoring his forehead against his faceplate. Blood was trickling down his right cheek as he made the speech, walked down the ramp, and reverently set one foot on pale Imrosian rock.  

The captain did not notice the tiny winged thing zipping ahead of him. It had six sticklike legs, a narrow abdomen, and two shimmering compound eyes. But it wasn’t alien at all. Eve saw it, but she decided then and there she was holding her peace. She wasn't taking the blame for this sin. 

The first space-faring mosquito buzzed towards the horizon, tasting the wind of a new world. 

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