Aureli Botanni's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The excavation crew arrived three days ahead of schedule. Aureli stood beside the foundation pit, watching workers dig trenches for the marketplace's water recycling system. The work was loud and steady. By midday, they would be ready to lay pipes. The drill hit something solid at three meters down. The foreman signaled a halt. Workers cleared dirt by hand, revealing purple crystal formations that curved upward like broken teeth. Wildflowers had already begun sprouting from the exposed edges, bright yellow petals pushing through stone. At the center, half-buried in crystallized resin, sat a fossilized fruit the size of a child's head. Inside the translucent yellow shell, a bee hung suspended. Its wings were striped in colors no living species carried. Aureli's antennae went rigid. They knew exactly what this was. Genetic material from a pollinator extinct for four hundred years. The workers were already talking. Word would spread before sunset. Every faction in contested space needed what was locked inside that fossil. The Syndicate would weaponize the genetics. The Compact would hoard it for their agriculture worlds. The Fringe colonies would sell it to the highest bidder. Aureli knelt beside the pit and ran one hand along the purple crystal edge. They could rebury it. Pretend the drill never broke through. But the marketplace needed credibility, and this discovery would bring every trader in twelve systems to their door. The cost would be protection they didn't have. Aureli ordered the workers to build a greenhouse over the site before nightfall. They used prefabricated panels meant for the main structure, locking them together in a small building that covered the excavation entirely. Aureli planted fast-growing vines along the entrance and rooted them with water from their own supply. By morning, the door would be hidden beneath green leaves. It wouldn't stop a determined search, but it would buy time. Aureli placed their own seeds in the soil around the fossil, committing to the only path forward. The marketplace would open with the greatest treasure in contested space buried at its heart, and Aureli would need to find protection before anyone realized what lay beneath their feet.