After five months on Ymir, the pond-water musk of the leviathan turtle has become almost indistinguishable from my own. It escapes detection except for brief moments after showers or waking, cloying at my throat. Or like now, at the bottom of a deep breath, its spice rousing me. It’s become a restless habit of my graveyard shifts.

The Sensor Operations dome lulls me at this hour, seated alone behind the single island desk. The early morning drifts around the curved walls and through a hundred virtual domescreens. Rows of them rotate down, disappearing into the carpet, and others rise. Half-dimmed except for the central displays, they display telemetry aggregating from a starscape of probes and sensors implanted across Ymir’s shell and body: streams, heatmaps, route maps, patrol logs, maintenance progress, and myriad other charts, graphs, and visualizations.

I’m waiting on a unit of aerial probes I’d sent radiating out from Howdah City—at the center of Ymir’s shell—toward his edges. Their streams suddenly blur, distorting from unwanted acceleration. Our interfacing synthetic intelligence, Herringbone (self-named from the dome’s carpet it stretches beneath), brightens another feed to show me why. It’s the horizon smudged with first light. Meaning Ymir will stop for rest soon, ending my shift.

I close my eyes, finding Herringbone’s mental trigger to maintain relative speed for small object identification. While in Herringbone, my senses are transported fifty meters above the intermediate sectors. I flit between probes, decelerating in the light wind and rain. We regain night vision clarity. Passing distantly below, sparse structures and lights come into focus, built to support Howdah City by Aegir Industries, my employer.

For balance, everything spans out from the middle of Ymir’s shell. Thumbnail-sized staging pavilions. Dams within natural basins. Vast compounds around thermoelectric generators and energy storages. Farther out, research and extraction stations, most on lucrative leases to Aegir clients. A few pinprick bonfires from camps of Howdah tourist expeditions. Heading for the Emerald Canyons, perhaps, or Sharnel’s Spiral, both notable for their unique weathering and stain patterns. Centuries have carved Ymir’s surface into an unpredictable and cragged land. Like an entire province grew thousands of legs, detaching itself from the continent.

A probe spots movement below and pauses. Something around a damp ravine. But it’s only one flock of bocrows rustling seeds from the hardy grasses growing hair-like across Ymir’s carapace landscapes. After a look, we move on.

Leviathan turtles release pheromones to communicate with, compounds stable over long distances. Native birds are their principal vectors, unwittingly brushing them into their feathers and ferrying them up to hundreds of kilometers before landing on other leviathans. The closer the other leviathan, the more molecules wash off, and the clearer the messages. They seep down through cracks in the shell, eventually reaching receptor organs in the skin. They say, “Me here,” or, “No food,” and “Go away.” Simple, like their bodies—relative to their mind-boggling masses—but enough for such independent lives.

The probes spot increasingly more wildlife as they near their objectives. They’re investigating three new pheromones, picked up a week ago by biosensors along Ymir’s uninhabited edges; vector hotspots. Since then, their concentrations have risen daily.

Usually, pheromones wouldn’t warrant investigation. Ymir never confronts other leviathans, always yields to them food and routes. One of the reasons Aegir chose him to settle on. But latest survey imagery from those hotspot sectors shows inexplicable surges in invertebrate populations and their corresponding predator chains, correlating with the pheromone trend.

I asked Herringbone but it couldn’t find answers in the records. Not really surprising. The records only began with Aegir’s first surveys of this planet three decades ago, and don’t gain detail until Howdah’s establishment ten years ago.

To investigate, I’ve had to reallocate these probes from their routine assignments. There just aren’t enough to cover Ymir’s surface this low with any regularity, especially so far out from the center.

As each probe descends and reaches their destinations, insects blanket their fields of view like static. Bugs up to the size of my fist pelt their kinetic fields. Maryming, my day shift counterpart, would’ve appreciated this. But not for long, as the kinetics abrade so quickly I’m forced to turn back within minutes. They’re built only for the near-perpetual rain and occasional bird run-in.

Still, it’s enough time for Herringbone to identify a sufficient sample size to work with. Several hundred species of insects, birds and beasts, scroll down my screens. They always glide onto Ymir from higher elevations; flap, clamber and slither up his shell as it rests, and limbs are temporarily harmless beneath.

One parasite breed poses a particular threat. In sufficient numbers, their swarms are capable of burrowing through every meter of Ymir’s shell down to skin. Ideal conditions there for laying spawn. Soon after, the carapace swells into hillocks of infestation, finally rupturing, spilling, spreading. With so few probes, it’s not unusual for Health Services to miss infestations until their late stages in the outer and intermediate sectors.

In my second month here, I requested more remote instrumentation from Administration to reduce similar incidents. They took it to Aegir, and gave me the reply that Howdah City had “unfortunately overcommitted resources at this juncture.” It wasn’t worth the budget to them.

Howdah relies on imports for most of its needs. The majority goes to Aegir customers—tourist barges, businesspeople, R&D firms—who spend monumental sums through sightseeing and commerce. And I get that. But after Herringbone estimated that the annual cost of a visa could sustain some fifteen or twenty probes, I realized Ymir’s well-being wasn’t being prioritized in Aegir’s boardroom.

That said, they probably wouldn’t like these growing animal hordes spilling into the outposts. Herringbone projects outpost operations halting within the fortnight, barring intervention, and I indulge in a momentary fantasy about letting it happen. But it ends in parasites, which I detest, and the synthetic dobbing me in.

Sensibly, I send the dataset to Wildlife Management, leaving a strong word about the parasites. They’ll relocate the fauna. Medical and Biology also get copies, and the latter samples of the mystery pheromones. Finally, I record an update for Maryming.

Preparing to leave, I detach from Herringbone, feeling its self-aware threads fall away and suspend, leaving one desk light blinking. For even sub-creative synthetics to be awake, the law requires a licensed interfacer-handler. So until Maryming arrives, Herringbone can only run routine patrols and unfiltered digest streams to other departments.

I bag the remains of my long-life Orbital dinner. Won’t be long now before I can leave Aegir for good. My contract pays a lot, and it’s thanks to Ymir’s unique exports that Aegir can afford a few interfacer-handlers like me for city system crews. However, I’ve become conscious of the fact that I don’t know how badly I’m affecting Ymir’s health.

Since interfacers can, for suitable use-cases, substitute thousands of non-interfacer workloads, we’re essential to keeping Howdah’s population under its hidden limit: a function of the weight and space humans can occupy without substantively impacting Ymir’s activities.

Aegir spokespeople quote Aegir studies that favorably compare Ymir’s health and activity levels to uninhabited leviathans. Except, outside of their studies, all figures that could show severity of impact, including Ymir’s pre-settlement records and my department’s data, is “proprietary information.” Publicized numbers are cherry-picked, and study metrics are obfuscated packages of weights and methods. Even I don’t have access to key pieces.

But you can make informed guesses. For instance, from the annually published maps, the settled area is approaching fifteen percent of shell surface. And popular opinion on population, formed from ship manifest leaks, is that a maximum of eight or ten thousand reside at any time.

I pull my safety harness from the door nook, checking the map display above. The loops auto-cinch on me to preferred tightness as I follow along my usual crawler route, City Central Campus to my accommodation a half-sector south.

Along it, today’s gradient bar shows slope grades ranging between 26 and 38 degrees NW. While the orientation has changed since I arrived last evening, the steepness is as severe as the past eight days. The forecast says there’s still another two days until Ymir descends this hill range onto blissfully gentle meadowlands. Definitely skipping the treadmill again today.

On the bright side, I’m thankful the terrain hasn’t been rougher than this. Any more unevenness, and Route Management would’ve redirected Ymir around the range. Pulsed voltages down the arrays of conduction poles staked through to his skin, outlining the edge to turn away from. And it doesn’t even always work. I’ve sometimes seen Ymir enduring until the end of the night, when regulations force them to stop.

Exiting the Sensor Operations dome, a covered ramp descends to the gravel. A low orange hologram projects from the ground: EXITING GRAVITY FIELD and a line to mark the border, mirrored on the gravel side with ENTERING.

At first glance, the world outside seems level. From the overcast dawn to motley dome clusters along the quiet street. Clues to the slope lie in the puddles and streamlets reflecting streetlights, the flow of rainwater rippling tell-tale to my right. A pair of graveyard crew members stoop around a curved wall, both leaning so far forward they almost crawl. On dry, empty days, I dangle a pendant past the handrail.

This gravity field encases the entire dome and some ways beneath the foundations. All buildings have one keeping them and contents level against tilt. In case of sudden field failure, most structures are also designed low and ovoid. The power could drop, or more likely a shortage for an instant to the immense amounts they consume, amounts far greater than even kinetic fields.

Artificial gravity makes up the largest proportion of energy expenditure in this city. I would say it’s the reason we depend on more than imported energy, but without it we’d probably find another shameless excuse for producing locally. It’s mostly thermoelectric generators, self-certified “low-trauma” tunnel networks threaded around Ymir’s hotter arteries and organs.

I unravel rope from my waist and clip its carabiner onto one of the rings descending from the eaves. Turning right, I slowly shuffle out, gripping the extended railing and rope. In an instant, the wet gravel falls away, pulling me to it. I instinctively contort and sway to keep balance.

After the ground stabilizes, the dome looms heavily above, about to tip onto me and roll down the slope.

I open my umbrella, heading for the crawler stop. Within Howdah, the carapace and flora have been planed down, domesticated into smooth roads and surfaces. Underneath it all lie two hundred meters more of Ymir: the rest of the shell, fluid cavities, fibrous tissue and limbs. Their fluidity renders all but the most dramatic landform features unnoticeable on the surface.

Arriving at a steep intersection, I recognize figures of the hodgepodge crew I hung around for a few months, all twenty-something, about my age. They’re going to the station headed for the business district, for breakfast, maybe even drinks.

To minimize my footprint, these days I don’t go anywhere besides work and home. Sometimes it’s dull, I can admit that. But I feel a lot less day-to-day guilt toward Ymir. Spend a lot less time worrying how my life impacts him.

After I decided, it was even relieving to separate myself from the group. When I drank with them, often at empty bars and clubs after shifts, sometimes I felt out-of-place. We drank and laughed until we left behind the crud from our shifts. We grumbled and cursed, finding relief from everything, including our largest and easiest target, the one beneath our feet.

 . . . ugly, headless, dumb, blind . . . stinks like your mam’s breath . . . mistake of nature . . . impotent too I bet . . . poor fucking sod—only one of its kind we’re fucking . . .

I found it hard to join in at those times, even though it was just a game to them, words drunkenly meant. Something about it nagged at me—some unfairness or dishonor—until eventually I knew I’d developed feelings as alien to them as Ymir was.

Now as I walk by, they notice me. A few give perfectly jovial greetings and the rest ignore me. I return some polite inane comment, suddenly conscious of my umbrella as their eyes fall on it. A relic of history, it divides not just me and the rain, but everyone I pass on campus who weatherproofs with compact, power-guzzling kinetics.

Before coming here I’d only seen umbrellas in documentaries and classics. I spotted them among tourists. You can spy them once in a while on commute, through the crawler windows, another open canopy bobbing through city crowds. To me, at first they were just one Howdah curiosity among a hundred wonders. Only in my third month did I enquire at the city fabricator for one, after I had come to believe the city and I were parasites.

With so many of my employer’s devices around, that’s obviously something I shouldn’t be espousing while I’m here. Disparagement and the like could get me written up, or worse, fired. And in this microscopic, heavily-regulated industry, every future hirer would know about it.

My umbrella? That’s above board. Recreational. A passion for history.

And until I fulfil my remaining four contracted months (not renewing), that’s the way it is, and will be. They might be lonely months, but chances are new buddies here would understand me no better than the old drinking ones. I just don’t see how people like me could stand staying on Ymir.

True, the planetary monitoring position I last held was sedate—and that’s being kind—but at least I wasn’t beating myself up for eating out. Here, instead of enjoying a meal, I’m bothered by how much it costs Ymir. Every steak reminds me what’s scraped from shafts and mines to maintain sizes, to keep from healing inward. Anaesthetizing the walls before and dosing after to force clotting and scar tissue.

Aegir used to lease to this one terrible client, who managed to turn two sites gangrenous without reporting. Either sloppy, or sadists, or so wealthy they just didn’t care about the fines or ban. Eventually the nearest sensors picked it up, during my shift. I had arrived only two or three weeks earlier, and Maryming and Herringbone had warned me of such jobs, suggesting I leave them to her. But I was determined to make an impression, show I could be relied upon.

Through my probe I scuttled down the shaft. The walls were gray and black, seeping fluids and pus from uneven gouges down the sides. Clots were sporadically thick and jagged, improperly induced. At the shallow bottom, a mound of hacked-off, undisposed gristle. Herringbone reminded me what to do. I called Health Services and Administration, who shut it down. Then somehow, by the end of that shift, I’d managed to compile data on prospective replacement sites.

I hardly ever get queasy. But once I was at home the sight of the rotting thing wouldn’t leave me. Sedatives seemed a cop-out, so I got hammered to go to sleep. The next few mornings too. I asked myself if I was responsible.

In the following weeks, I began noticing more injustices to Ymir. Eventually, at the peak of my over-reactionary period, I even worried about going to the restroom. Compelled to look up where it all went and ready to be outraged, I half-expected to find it dumped into some evil miasmic hollow. Which, of course, it isn’t. It’s all piped behind Ymir, extending his basiliskian waste trail.

If there’s one thing Aegir can be counted on, it’s to not harm Ymir profitlessly. They’re carving him out, but only as fast as he regrows. Stealing heat without extinguishing the fire. Restraining themselves with regulations.

In other words, a cunning, city-sized parasite. With pretentious branding. They named Ymir’s kind for cities, and himself a mythical giant whose body the gods harvested.

The body I begin to hear now, waiting at the crawler station. I’m resting against encasing seat straps. Eyes closed. It’s always stillest at this time, when he sleeps and we’re not all quite awake yet.

He’s softer than the rain pattering the roof, beneath the background wash of the campus . . .

 . . . A faint crackling—the keratin-cartilage frame of shell . . . Distant, fleeting gurgles—fluid cavities close to skin . . . And there—almost beneath perception—a glacial pwhump, pwhump, pwhump—circulatory fluid. I can only hear that arteriole because it runs right below the shell underneath this station. Times like these, he seems so close, so alive.

Hardly anyone else, I think, would see him this way. Without a job and disposition like mine, how could they see through his strangenesses? Past how ancient, gargantuan, sluggish and monotonous “it” is? In my first weeks he seemed an autonomous, unreactive blob. To others, would he be much more than moving real estate, a holiday destination, share prices, saleable biomaterials, research subject . . . ?

Even with such wide access to Ymir’s records as I have, it took months of exposure for me to connect his unique patterns. To verify and be certain they were more than delusion. That he really was lingering twice the usual duration when crushing honeytrees than other varieties. Prefers flowing freshwater over saltwater, yet there’s an estuary on the south coast of the equatorial continent he never fails to visit every two years or so. Gives wide berths to seasonal mass rookeries and lekking sites, but follows the trail of herds that outpace him (nearly all can) as a youth runs at pigeons.

As for disposition—and the handler I replaced might also be this way—I’m the type of interfacer whose strengths lie in fluency, communication and fine control. An open mind with barely a physical disgust threshold. I never had the problem, unlike other handler trainees, with flinching from synthetics touching my mind. I’ve always seen and embraced what’s human in them. And now Ymir too.

My coworker’s the more common kind. Maryming handles synthetics as one program controls another. By-the-book and errorless—so long as the solution is printed within those pages.

She surprises me a week later when I arrive for my shift and she’s not left yet. Taking the desk seat next to her, I find out Administration’s forwarded Biology’s pheromone findings, and she wants to explain it to me in person.

Maryming’s been Sensors Chief on Ymir for four years. Like most of us, she can afford to hide her age in all ways except interactions, which give me the impression of someone no more than ten years older. She’s never been particularly difficult, just largely indifferent, but that could all be because of our mostly independent shifts.

There’s a rare excitement about her today as she goes through Biology’s report. She’s very interested in leviathan turtles. Knows more about them than even me. Unlike me, she’s settled into Howdah and lives a seemingly comfortable life, so I suspect her interest is mainly academic.

She might, of course, be comfortable staying on Ymir as she sees herself in balance with him, or even a net good (I’d need to feel I was to stay). It’s possible; she’s got senior responsibilities and three and a half years I don’t know about. But my own contributions—even a bocrow flock does as much. Trivial stuff, like general monitoring, and surveying path conditions with Route Management.

Even with Herringbone whipping up illustrative animations in the background, I have to ask Maryming to slow or repeat particularly obtuse sections to get through the report. From my understanding, Biology’s identified Ymir’s pheromone from being the highest in concentration and most similar to past compositions. Then they matched the remaining two from a strange, pending question posed by Route Management. They’d extrapolated several of Ymir’s likeliest paths toward two foreign leviathans a hundred kilometers north. Strange, because Ymir would usually avoid them.

That, along with the subreports’ other physiological and behavioral markers, finally led Biology to this conclusion: the pheromones are not territorial signals, nor warnings, but mating calls.

At the reveal, Maryming looks at me with a sort of triumphance. No one’s ever detected mating pheromones. Or observed procreation and reproduction, should they happen as the report speculates. Three decades has only uncovered the what-are-believed-to-be pertinent organs.

As the report puts it, the infrequency is popularly attributed to minimal reproductive pressures. An absence of natural predators, plus as-yet-indeterminable lifespans of centuries, or even millennia. Aegir believes clues to further human lifespan extensions lie in the reproductive cycle and offspring maturations.

In the subreports, I find my answers with the marker entitled “Tick Uptick”: Evidence suggests insects are attracted to the potential twofold increase of detritus and flora during leviathan turtle coupling . . .

Maryming says all departments got the report. The ones she spoke to today are in uproar, fired up by the new discoveries. She’s not hiding her enthusiasm either now that she’s made her big reveal. For me, it’s all a touch abstract, and excitement only really begins once Herringbone brings up a live feed of Ymir’s two prospective mates—a mid-altitude shot of leviathans 61 and 14. The sight of the largest known terrestrial creatures in the galaxy always does that for me. These two I’m meeting for the first time, and one of them will probably be the only partner Ymir takes in my lifetime.

61’s shell is an upside-down octagonal bowl, bulbous between corners. 140 is more like Ymir: shakily poured syrup over an ice cream scoop, all curves.

They’re fighting each other, entangled in the middle of an enormous brown twilit lake, scattered with islets. Yet they appear almost still most of the time, only shifting slightly like piers, waves sloshing around them. Two connected island mountains far from shore. Even in fights leviathans don’t move much except near the end. Matches of endurance, of hours, days. Usually over food, water, routes. According to Biology, this time over Ymir.

Underwater probes reveal thousands of sinuous short limbs curled upon the uneven lake bed. Rugged skin over a band of free-directional muscles, wrapped around an air tract, and bottomed with symmetrical lily pad feet. They’re capable of ferocious suction for movement, for grabbing food and pre-chewing large pieces, all relayed to the central underbelly mouth. Motion ripples now and again through the ranks, pushing their shell against the other, raking up clouds of sediment.

Maryming gets me to run through her preliminary probe schedule, testing flight and water pathings.

Long after she leaves, just before daybreak when leviathans naturally sleep, the females erupt into a back-and-forth scrum. Shells knock and grate, ferocious, chopping the lake. Probes dodge from bird flocks startling to air over the surrounding marshes, and later reconfigure around the winner, the octagon. Syrup mooches away to a river mouth that exits at the coast.

Herringbone informs me Aegir has christened 61 as “Gunnr.” Some warrior from their mythos. My hope that it signals a better fate for her than Ymir evaporates with Aegir’s press conference that evening. They announce a new holiday package covering a flexibly predicted procreation period; dates for media rights bidding; a baby-naming contest; new merchandise, and more . . .

In the days following the fight, Gunnr is troublingly lethargic, much more than she should be. She only makes it to the marsh shore after the third day. At minimum, leviathans travel the lengths of their bodies daily for new sustenance. Medical and Biology believe she’s overexerted herself fighting.

In this state, even the animals and parasites gathering to her pheromones are burdensome enough to concern us. Their rate of convergence is nearly double Ymir’s from the recent presence of two estrous females. So, beginning the second day, Maryming and I take overwatch duties for Medical and Wildlife contingents, who fly over every couple hours for diagnoses and animal management. Over the course of the trips, across her shell, we guide them to implant a full complement of first-look sensors.

Once Gunnr’s partially crawled onto shore like some beached whale, Administration organizes food deliveries whenever she sleeps—most of the time. They rim her sides that rest past the floodplain with banquets. Cargo loads of grasses, rich clays, shrimp, fish, whatever’s locally sourceable. Wetland trees are logged. Most solids leviathans crawl over they can consume, leaving a wake of churn scavengers take advantage of.

---

The third week after, Medical becomes highly positive about Gunnr’s chances of full recovery before Ymir reaches her. She dozes often, but we keep her circling the lake, where the terrain is mild, with food. Howdah brims with off-world visitors, adventurers, businesspeople, press. Herringbone has never recorded our skies so abuzz with aircraft. Day and night, thousands streak by to descend on vantage points around the lake, as close to Gunnr as allowed.

My team’s workload grows burdensome, but it’s nothing compared to Administration. They seem ragged, managing all the visitors, and taxed by constant tests of their safe perimeters around the leviathans. We hold regular meetings with a sleep-deprived Central Command officer about air traffic management, accommodating patrol schedules to avoid visitor accidents.

Absolute nightmare, she repeats, after one such meeting. Marketing and Finance keep hounding for narrower perimeters—as if their minds weren’t narrow enough.

Maryming and I nod with sympathy, but inside I’m baffled by her contrariness. When later Maryming tells me her defensive attitude to off-planet Aegir divisions is shared by most of Howdah’s Administration, I’m taken aback. I’d known non-essentials work remotely, but never even thought they’d be split over Ymir’s management, let alone with serious differences.

As Howdah gets busy, I encounter further surprising behaviors from the crew. Small revelations, as though passing by unexpectedly bared-open doors and catching glimpses of their lives, images I can’t help musing over.

Other departments constantly request Gunnr’s recordings from us, beyond what they require. I find them voted on atop the all-crew channel, edited for amusement. Central Campus is refreshed, livelier than ever from everyone pulling overtime, the latest media gossip, conversations about Gunnr’s health and optimal Ymir routes, bets placed in an interdepartmental pool, and raunchy jokes following the engorgement and opening of a shell segment on Ymir’s rim, Outer Sector 4.

On an extra shift one afternoon, I encounter a whole host of new faces—regular hour departments and day shifters—and find myself chatting with an agreeable microbiologist from the next street.

In the city, the “Giant Lovers” become the overriding theme of restaurants and establishments, and even for a few auspicious tourist weddings.

One evening, I spy a dozen closed umbrellas dripping against a cafe facade opposite campus gates, and a final door creaks open for me. An old, difficult one I’ve been revisiting for weeks. Behind it sits a group of young adults in a bar corner, perpetually stressed from graveyard hours and the foreignness of Howdah. There’s my assumption, an erroneous one, that everyone else in Howdah was like them, with little concern for Ymir.

But those umbrellas confirm it’s popular now to show care for Ymir. My recent musings, that it’s possible the crew holds more consideration for Ymir than I’d believed, are validated. I was just blind, maybe because of my high standards, to efforts and opinions more reserved than mine. Gunnr’s appearance opened the doors to see it, gave us all chances to make a real impact. Despite her recovery being exhausting work atop usual duties, it’s gratifying, and a much greater contribution than economizing my lifestyle.

---

Less than a kilometer remains through razed marshland for Ymir to reach Gunnr. Moving like a child’s drawing of one of the clouds that now obscure the moon.

Maryming and I harness securely into our chairs, finalize protocols to yank Herringbone’s core. Just in case the leviathans require Howdah’s space to mate, and we flee. On that outcome, and how gentle the mating will be, thousands await at Howdah’s north border. They’ll either approach, stay there, or escape Ymir for Orbital and the few terrestrial settlements. Aircraft have been prepared for us campus crew, anchored to the square and on adjacent streets outside.

Howdah is running minimal systems. Along the lake’s opposite shoreline, an army of tourists hovers, lights off and silent per rules, serving to remind them not to intrude. Gunnr can’t sense those, unlike their collective emissions, which she’s used to after weeks of proximity.

Neither they nor the food distract her when Ymir arrives. My vision doesn’t leave the probes as he slows in front of her, lowering shell to waterlogged ground. He stills, cooperating as she begins to circle closely as though inspecting every angle. Her limbs and shell brushing over his. I’m capturing excellent angles of the ritual, otherwise helping Maryming select feeds and distill readings for Central Command’s channel. After Gunnr’s done, she lowers while Ymir does the same in return.

Then it takes almost an hour for her to clamber onto a small portion of his back. She ascends, limbs gluing to his shell and tugging, leaning her weight against him. Despite Gunnr’s larger size, Ymir remains steadfast. In the dome we feel nothing. Eventually a narrow rind of hers overlaps his, bending up like crust as she settles down.

The crew channels hush during the wait for confirmation, until Maryming announces, “Sector 12 point 58. Coverage 8 point 3 percent. All Stop confirmed.”

After a short celebration, relief arrives over the next few hours, and disappointment for the few who bet otherwise, as the leviathans hardly move from their initial position. It’s apparent they’re static maters. They sink into the peat until bottoming out, plateauing from ridges formed around them. A biome between marsh and lake. Maryming and I settle in for a long wait. Under supervision, crawlers begin arriving several sectors from Gunnr onto elevated terrain.

---

Without change, the sun rises. Only a casual flick of a limb now and again. Central’s authorized all non-research crew to rest and entertain themselves prudently, allowing synthetics to alert us. Maryming and I catch up on media and visit other crews’ channels. We’ll both be paid from the betting pool if the leviathans keep going past thirty hours, but no longer than thirty-five.

In the evening, a drone arrives with food and stimulants. We’re trying to stay awake, watching the interdepartmental Asteroid Agricola tournament. The bioengineers are out-farming the xenonutritionists with those same moves which knocked Maryming and I out. As we groan about them, I hardly notice what I’m eating.

The first bite hits me with unusual flavor. I glance at my tray, then subtly at Maryming’s, grimacing. They’re not the Orbital-recycled meal kits I usually order in cartons. The design is similar, but there’s no reusable self-heating lining. It’s been lidded, steaming, from the campus cafeteria. Cooked with Ymir’s energy.

Around me, fluids begin running down rotting shaft walls. I sit back, pretending to Maryming that I’m entering Herringbone. I’m waiting for the nausea that follows.

But as tired moments pass and it doesn’t arrive, I realize I don’t feel all that bad. Besides frustration from slipping up, I’m only uneasy from expectation, accustomed to guilt.

As I wait, I realize I haven’t been blaming myself for weeks. Instead, an overwhelming, warm satisfaction becomes apparent. It burgeoned as Gunnr grew healthy enough to meet, bloomed when she first touched Ymir. Their successful union in which I played my part, pulling overtime for weeks.

Perhaps I haven’t been a parasite for a while now. Surely, I’ve done enough. In fact, considering everything, they probably owe me. At least, while they’re enjoying themselves out there, why couldn’t I have a meal, stuck in here?

Now that I’ve had the thought, I know it’s right; I deserve it. Only, something else has been eating at me about my way of thinking. But it’s elusive, and right now, I’m tired. I’m done. I’ll figure it out later.

I decide I’m ready to try the tray again. Tentatively, I take a small bite, but nothing bad comes. Relieved and more confident, I take a bigger bite. It’s tastier than I remember, fresher than my usual dishes.

---

Later that night, there are mass parties among those across the lake, wild tributes to the leviathans. Central is letting them be as long as they don’t send up fireworks. Maryming takes out a futon to resume shifts.

None of the crew bet past fifty hours, so contributions are returned. Only the researchers and doctors have anything interesting to do. Medical performs tests every four hours, affirming procreation is ongoing. Herringbone intermittently displays statistics on its Xeno-Bingo wins against Maryming. She says it’s cheating, threatening to sleep it. Visitors, emptied of curiosity, begin ascending in droves toward Orbital, a welcome sight to us and our Central Command officer.

---

The dome jolts.

I roll in the futon, banging fully awake against the wall with a shudder. Someone cries out—Maryming, fallen off the desk she lay on. We look at each other, mirroring confusion, then up at the screens. “Herringbone?”

It plays back the murky late afternoon, two giants shoved into the mud. Shifting slightly, maybe more than they’ve been all this time. Suddenly the bottom shell bursts up, stretching and breaking the sucking muck, limbs reaching full height within a second. A speed I mightn’t have believed had I not just experienced it. Gunnr jostles, slightly lifted along, but the small arc atop Ymir remains stable and attached.

The video is replaced by a live feed. Both leviathans are actively moving now. “They’re done now? Then why’s she not let go?” I’m referring to Herringbone’s large procreation clock above, frozen at 63:22:9249.

Maryming frowns at it, then closes her eyes. “What’s happening, HB?”

Before Herringbone gets to respond, I see Ymir surge upwards again from sixteen different angles, even as I’m knocked off my feet by the dancing floor. We tumble.

“Harnesses,” Maryming groans out, picking herself up.

We’ve barely secured into the padded embrace of our chairs when the world flings us about, expelling air from my lungs. I’m left reeling. Herringbone’s reconnected Central. It’s chaos. They think Ymir’s trying to throw Gunnr off. Woozily, Maryming shuts her eyes and gets to work. “Sending coverage increases . . . beginning Sector 12 point 62 . . . ”

I watch the leviathans crawling out of their artificial valley like some spider’s thorax and abdomen. Gunnr’s not just hanging on, but climbing further onto Ymir’s shell for some reason. Herringbone begins rotating in close-up views we’ve not relayed to Central. Gunnr’s limbs lifting and descending liquidly on carapace, pads finding purchase and suction. Some grasping chunks of . . . something. I look closer. Pieces of flaky, jagged—

“His shell?” I yelp, hitting Maryming’s arm. She startles, cursing—and after a moment begins scrolling feeds. All show the same thing. Pads breaking off lumps or extracting them from shell like teeth, then flinging them to the side. “Seen this before?” I ask, stunned. Not even Herringbone, who flashes red.

We relay the feeds to the all-crew channel. In the ensuing pandemonium, opinions range from a lover’s spat to post-coital aggression. The ethologists mention opportunistic sexual cannibalism after prolonged copulation. Our synthetics connect; they predict that at Gunnr’s current rate of assault, she’ll reach Howdah within five hours, while Ymir’s carapace thickness should hold out two more past that.

Central broadcasts an evacuation of the general population across outposts and city. Separately, we crew are preparing for a mass operation to separate the leviathans. All field members from Wildlife Management Rangers to the Fire Brigade are mustering at Howdah.

Field leaders enter our channel to set up digest streams, discussing what data their teams need, how much they can handle. Each time Central finalizes another part of the plan, they requeue for adjustments.

Everything pauses whenever Ymir gives a thrash, failing again to throw his partner off. Intervals between attempts grow longer. It’s jarring and tiring, but at least we expect it now, and Herringbone’s able to identify early muscle contractions. It warns us moments beforehand so we can brace.

A hundred mission aircraft stage at airpads just outside Howdah. Not an hour past opening aggressions, I’m still modifying setups for their harried passengers when they take off, dangling expedition-model crawlers or equipment crates. They slice through the sunset-blooded rain toward that blocky, mountainous shadow on the horizon, shuffling ever larger.

Given the urgent circumstances, I don’t fault Central’s planning. No alternative solutions matching our timeframe come to my mind. The last stages have the potential to go overboard, but some use of force seems unavoidable. I believe no one wishes it on Gunnr or the reproductive process, especially after weeks spent caring for her. I keep reminding myself it’s well-intentioned, it’s for Ymir.

Our aircraft slow as they enter Gunnr’s shadow. From the gloom, beacons flash, ringed around a plain by the first response unit. The crafts hover in groups, waiting for Ymir’s bucks. As each one stabilizes, another wave lands, disembarking and unloading. Emptied, craft take off to make room on the plain, angling over Gunnr.

They pair up by proximity and are assigned coordinates, marked by my probes emitting bright columns of light into the blackening clouds, bouncing in sync with Gunnr to maintain relative positions.

Each pair aligns parallel to Gunnr’s inclined shell. As they pass their objectives, over her deepest fissures, they eject their final payloads. Damaged sensor husks, whose innards have been torn out and restuffed with nearly all the leviathan warning pheromones from Biology’s vaults, both captured and synthesized, and goods Administration just seized from biotech and perfume manufacturer warehouses on Orbital.

I follow them down as they pierce river surfaces, diving deep into the dark, tumbling off walls until lodged into fissure beds. On command, they open and begin gushing messages soon to trickle down into Gunnr’s skin. I’m barely aware of my dome’s interior lights brightening as screens fill with night, surfacing briefly from Herringbone only whenever Ymir tosses me up.

After opening the last sensor, I join Maryming and Central who are navigating ground forces from the plain through unfamiliar territory. The forward position lies in Outer Sector 24, at the bottom of a long, several hundred meter slope.

The ground trembles, growing in intensity. Debris tumbles into the gully behind us and onto the rapid-deployment bridge. From the slope top and vast distances to either side emerges Gunnr’s rim, then forelimbs, a writhing wall rising slowly.

Within minutes, hundreds of tranquillizers for native animals prick from the thinner soffit covering her auxiliary gills. We hope the pheromone-tranquillizer combination gets her to turn back or weaken enough for Ymir to unseat her.

We retreat, and after forty-five minutes, Ymir’s crawled into the lake and Gunnr covers a quarter of him. The activity of her anterior ventral muscles drops to eighty-two percent, levels out, and grimly rises again. Biology’s doubts about the pheromone cocktail grow louder; the delivery method could have garbled the messages, or its varied sources confused her. The antagonistic content might even enrage her further, rather than frighten.

Central finally gives the ground crew go-ahead for the next stage. The aircraft have already dropped them off atop Gunnr’s advancing edge, anchored like some caravan sprawl of mechanical alpinists. The landscape is cragged and sopping with rain, but it’s well-lit by their vehicles and our roving perimeter of probes. Although strobing lights and holograms of large native predators frighten off most beasts we run into, the hungriest and most perceptive break through, disrupting work as the crew deal with them.

Along Gunnr’s foremost edge, crawlers are drilling down hundreds of narrow, evenly-spaced holes. Each dug to equal depth: five meters above skin, as long as the ground above is not too high. Plenty thick for her later protection, even if we don’t refill them for decades.

After one is dug, a steering pole—hastily recycled from Ymir—inserts clinically through the remaining carapace, piercing her tissue, building a fence of conductive stakes. Cables are strung between pole heads and aircraft charging stations; powerful batteries for supplying other field vehicles.

With the field leads syncing up, the crew begin applying low electrical stimuli to Gunnr. A thirty-second continuous charge; release; wait several minutes as Medical checks physiological indicators and synthetics calculate new activity averages; which haven’t dropped, so slightly raise the current, and repeat.

Ymir’s desperate thrashing rattles the field crew against anchored crawlers and aircraft holds. Helmet readings show ozone levels rising. Through the first dozen or so pulses, Maryming and I steadily focus on running wildlife off from around the field crew. Their unbothered coordination in these new, adverse conditions reassures us.

But with each failed stage, as we watch stimulation escalate into zaps, then shocks, so does our restlessness. On the comm channels, departments with little to do debate how much it’ll take to stop Gunnr’s violent momentum, how strong her motivation to win perhaps the biggest meal of her life. There’s always some who loudly believe we’re just about at Gunnr’s threshold, and others who can’t see the top of the staircase.

It makes me reconsider Route Management’s usual pulses into Ymir and half-hour cooldowns. They seem now like gentle, respectful suggestions.

As Gunnr grasps onto over thirty percent of Ymir’s shell, a constant stutter, or trembling, picks up in our dome through every surface, gnawing at our bones. Ymir’s hit some kind of mental or physical limit, yet all I can do is keep playing my part. Immediately, Central abandons Medical’s safety checks and orders the amp stages jacked up. Agitated, I shoot a peek at Maryming’s composed features, her shallow breathing, and wonder if her stomach is a pit like mine.

When Gunnr breaks it’s as sudden as a first flash of lightning. Her frontal edge spasms like a loosed spring. Her limbs lose strength and suction on Ymir’s shell, crumpling onto him. Ymir, noticing, lurches weakly from the water.

Gunnr begins to slide off, limbs dragging underneath. The field crew scramble into the air alongside my probes, leaving crawlers and equipment behind. Gunnr’s strength begins to return, but whenever one of her pads manages to regrip, after moments they pop off again like windshield ornaments.

She completely falls off, foremost edge flopping two hundred meters into the lake. Spray from the landing explodes around me on the domescreens. It displaces enough water to momentarily expose lake bed. A violent quake hits our seats, our feeds. Maryming and I cry out.

When it’s over, Gunnr lies still, stunned for the while. Field crews are already redescending to ensure she stays apart from Ymir as he, true-to-nature again, crawls away to shore. Maryming and I yell with the thrill and release of tension, grinning at each other. Herringbone flashes multicolored.

In the background, the comms celebrate, but we mute them after a few moments. We can’t fully congratulate ourselves yet. Later, the domes will thrum with music as we join the gathering laughing and bursting onto the streets. Not terrible, for a golden boy, Mary whispers. It feels like the electricity for Gunnr has jumped into me.

But for now, Ymir’s still quivering, his shell’s in tatters, and who knows what else. Medical and their synthetic are examining, but it’s slow going even with Herringbone assisting. I’m trying to reach sensors in areas Gunnr vacated, but except for those embedded deepest, most are silent.

Sweeping over the mangled surface, even by night the damage is obvious. Terrain hardly matches our maps. Hundreds of new craters and gullies, flattened outposts, buried dams and generator networks; Sharnel’s Spiral scattered to the lake. But while we’re unsure how severe Ymir’s injuries are, a potentially good sign arrives. The dome’s trembling slowly fades to nothing, not long after he totally emerges from the lake. He looks to be headed south, backtracking to the safety of the meadowlands.

Morning brings a prognosis that, though early, sounds promising. Most wounds are healable in a few months to a year, just by sealing exposed skin and stimulating carapace regrowth. Only a few longer-term that Medical will need to consult on.

Administration declares a “No Rebuild” policy until Ymir’s fully recovered. Aegir doesn’t object, despite downplaying the situation. I think they’re more interested in the Gunnr project. Maryming hears of new population limits due to resource shortages, soon-to-be-announced, and asks if I’m staying.

I can’t answer her yet. I’m not sure anymore. On one hand, I’ve come to know more of Ymir’s crew, and seen them truly caring for him, each in their own way. But I keep questioning, would Ymir still be here without us? Or would he be fine had we not nursed Gunnr to health?

If I stay, I’ve figured that I shouldn’t be strictly counting every single debt and contribution. Restricting myself so tightly. If I’m not living, how can I help the leviathans live? For starters, I should ease my standards. And going out again, eating out too. It’s not like I can’t take the umbrella along.