Kyungsoo stretches and rubs . Even though she had been told what a neostasis pod would feel like, it still hadn’t prepared her for the raw burning sensation of being unplugged. She can still feel the ghost of the tube in her oesophagus that had kept her alive during the long twenty two years of traveling. And there’s the nausea in the pit of her stomach that she’d been warned about, too.

She scrambles for her glasses, which should be...around here….somewhere. Aha! She had declined corrective retina surgery and doesn’t like the way iLenses feel against her eyelids, so she’s stuck wearing old school spectacles. The room comes into view when she puts them on, and a little bit of her queasiness abates.

If her calculations are correct, then it should be the year 2245 now, since it was 2223 when she left. How long has it been since we landed? She wonders. Not too long; the floor in her chamber still has neostasis mist curling around the edges. I wonder if the others are up yet, she muses, scratching her belly. She needs a shower. And food; her stomach has been empty of real food for over two decades now. Her stomach growls loudly, clearly audible in the small clinical room. Food is definitely her priority right now.

Her legs feel wobbly underneath her when she gets up and she has to hold the wall in order to not fall over. , how do people manage this regularly? It’s a good thing she hasn’t eaten anything or she would be throwing it up. Maybe she should have that shower first instead.

Carrying a set of uniform to change into afterwards, Kyungsoo manages to track down the washroom, despite the swaying motion. She strips out of her medical gown and switches on the shower with her ID chip, aware that she only gets fifteen minutes of warm water. It’s a shame that they only provided this ship with one perfume of soap, because it’s not her favourite scent. It does the job, however, cleaning her greasy black hair until it squeaks between her fingers. She has the longest hair of everyone on this excursion, long enough for it to reach past her waist, and she prides herself on taking care of it.

After that, she heads back out towards the control room; where she was told she should go to for briefing. Jongdae is already there, drawing aimless patterns on the the circular table in the centre of the room where she’s sat. She looks up when Kyungsoo enters, a smile gracing her boyish face.

“About time,” she snarks. Kyungsoo gives her the middle finger, knowing perfectly well the woman’s competitive nature. She probably raced here, just so she could rub it in people’s faces that she was first.

Joonmyeon, the captain, and Baekhyun are still nowhere to be seen. Kyungsoo guesses all they can do is wait for them to arrive and pulls out a seat to join Jongdae at the table.

“How do people do this on a regular basis.” Kyungsoo complains, her stomach feeling like it’s trying to gnaw its way out of her, but unsure whether she would actually be able to keep any food down.

“I have no idea.” Jongdae agrees, rubbing her eyes. “Have you eaten yet?”

“No.”

“Me neither.” Jongdae nods. “Maybe after briefing we can get something small to eat.”

“Maybe.” Kyungsoo hums, wishing there were a window in the hull of this ship, rather than just screens and monitors. The floor of the ship rocks, like they’re on a boat on earth, which means they’re floating on the top of the all-ocean planet, imaginatively nicknamed ‘water world’.

She wants to see the surface of this planet desperately; before leaving on the voyage, she had trained for years in preparation for this, both physically and mentally. It was intense, but definitely worth it. She could go to the viewing deck, she supposes, but if the captain shows up in her absence she might get in trouble. Then again, Joonmyeon was always a bit of a pushover, unless it’s a life or death situation.

She can wait, she decides. Briefing, food, then viewing deck.

Joonmyeon is the next to appear, looking just as dishevelled as everyone else. Her brown hair is up in a messy ponytail and she’s holding an iHolo. Distracted, she greets Jongdae and Kyungsoo, seating herself nearby and scrolling through her no doubt extensive to-do list. Baekhyun, the final member of their small but talented crew follows shortly after, clearly having stumbled here straight after waking up. She looks terrible, worse even than Kyungsoo feels, which is not good.

“Here,” Kyungsoo pulls out a seat for her, eyebrows knit together in a line, “are you gonna be ok?”

“Yeah.” She replies, sounding like something has been stuck in for twenty years. Kyungsoo isn’t convinced, but she’s probably right. All of them just need a little while to recover.

“Alright.” Joonmyeon begins, placing her iHolo down in front of her, “there’s a few routine checks we need to do to get things up and running to support life, and those are our priorities for now. Baekhyun, please go and check the main engines- take a drone with you, I don’t want you collapsing on us. Kyungsoo, go make sure the allotment is all in order, please. And Jongdae, help me sort out the controls in here, we need to get all the scanners up and running before we can get down to business. And of course we need to report back home.” She sighs, shaking her head, “actually, I should probably do that first. Unless anyone has any pressing matters, go ahead.” Joonmyeon orders, already making her way across the room to the wall of endless holo screens, swiping some away and drawing up the ones she needs. There’s so many. Kyungsoo is not a tech person, so she’s glad she doesn’t have to deal with any of that.

Kyungsoo salutes and wobbles off towards the gardens, via the kitchen. There isn’t much choice, but she makes herself up some Astro Pasta and eats it straight out of the sachet. It tastes about as good as she remembers, which is not that great. She still feels queasy, but it’s manageable now.

She passes through a decontamination chamber- it’s more important that she uses it on the way out, so that they don’t accidentally bring spores into the atmosphere here, but using it on the way in won’t hurt. They have no idea how aggressive earth plants might be, compared to anything here.

The garden is a compact room, designed to utilise every bit of space available. There are shelves of green plants, leaves spilling over the edges of their pots, all on a rotational pulley. These were all automatically planted a few months ago, to give them time to grow so they would be ready when everyone woke up. All that’s needed is a little pruning on some of them. Otherwise, they look fine to Kyungsoo.

As a botanist, the thing Kyungsoo is most looking forward to is discovering unknown local flora types and studying them in detail. She was picked for this mission because she’s the best in her field: hydro-botany, more specifically marine botany. Plants living in saline water are her speciality, but common garden varieties of tomatoes and potatoes are fine too.

Gliese 1214b has got to be teeming with new life, it has to be. She hums a tune to herself as she works. Is it still a popular song back on earth, or has it been forgotten by now? She wonders. It’s strange to be so disconnected to what feels like, to her, just yesterday.

Taking her time, Kyungsoo makes her way through the aisles, rotating the shelves to get to the other plants. Each of the sprouts in a pot will bear several fruit at least, thanks to GM innovations. Some are already growing small green beginnings of fruit, bulbous and hard, but most of them are still at the germination stage. It shouldn’t take too long before they can start eating from these, maybe a few weeks at most. In the meantime they have over a month’s worth of Astro Pasta and other hydratable foods. Granted, they aren’t exactly gourmet, but it will keep them all alive.

Using a pair of small shears, Kyungsoo trims a few leaves off the potatoes, to stop them from overflowing from their pots, and keeps the ts to put into the compost bin. Nothing is needlessly wasted on this ship.

The PA sounds and Joonmyeon’s voice echoes throughout the ship.

“Baekhyun? Kyungsoo? You guys might wanna see this.” She sounds odd, like something is going wrong. Worried, Kyungsoo drops her shears and sets off at a brisk pace back to the control room, hardly able to wait for the decontamination process. She bursts into the room, causing both women’s heads to turn her way, surprised.

“What’s wrong?” Kyungsoo asks, breathless.

“It’s not wrong exactly, it’s just… look at this.” Jongdae points to one of the many screens. Kyungsoo edges in closer to get a better look. It’s a sonar detection system, green circles expanding from the centre every second and reverberating off whatever is in the surrounding area. But that’s not the interesting part: there are somewhere upwards of forty dots floating around their ship, and more showing up with every beep.It should be more static-y than that, considering the fact that there’s only water here, but each individual dot registers clearly. Joonmyeon rotates the image, showing them just how many there are, surrounding the entire underside of their ship.

“What are they?” Kyungsoo wonders, amazed and a little unnerved. Could the landing have attracted the attention of the local wildlife? What could they be? A type of large fish?

“I don’t know, but I don’t want to open the main hatch until I get the cameras ready. We don’t know if they, whatever they are, are aggressive. We haven’t noticed any sounds that could be them attacking the ship, but who knows?” Joonmyeon says, waiting for the cctv console to load up.

She’s right, Kyungsoo thinks. They should observe them for a little while first, to be as sure as possible they won’t try to attack. Hopefully whatever they are, they are peaceful creatures. It would be a terrible shame to have to leave here already because of them; they had vowed that if any residents of this planet, should they find any, wanted them to leave then they would. No one wanted a repeat of planet Corot-7b.

A moment later, Baekhyun hobbles in, still looking as bad as earlier. She’s followed by a short squat droid, it’s activation lights blinking.

“What’s going on?” She rasps, settling in a seat as soon as she can. Jongdae gives her the rundown, explaining everything. Baekhyun gapes, but doesn’t get up to inspect the monitor. Kyungsoo doesn’t blame her really. Honestly, she hadn’t expected to be thrown in the deep end this quickly- the fact that these creatures are gathered around the ship like this means they must be smart. Smart, and confident in their abilities to fend predators off, if they turned out to be space invaders. A lesser creature would have run, or swam, for their life if a huge metal object crashed into the water.

“This is pretty cool, really. I’d hoped that there would be wildlife.”

“Yeah, me too. We just need to establish that we’re here peacefully. And not disrupt them any more than we already have done.” Kyungsoo agrees.

“Aha!” Joonmyeon claps, a blurry image of the outside world coming into view on the screen in front of her. Everyone crowds around her, vying to get a good look. The camera takes a second to focus, zooming in and out until the clarity of the image is good: but it’s just water. It looks like any old photo of the ocean at night back on earth.

“Hm.” Joonmyeon drags her hand through the image, and the camera pans to the left much like a larger version of an iPhone. More nothing. “I don’t understand, they’re right there. We’re looking right at them.”

“They’re probably under the water.” Jongdae rolls her eyes. “It’s dark, what did you expect?”

“Should I turn the lights on?” Joonmyeon asks, fingers poised over the button that will activate them.

“I don’t know.” Jongdae sighs, obviously having come to the same conclusion as Kyungsoo. Might they take a light as a threat? A sudden flash could be intimidating.

“Don’t we have underwater cameras as well?” Baekhyun asks, “because if not, then that was a major oversight, when we were obviously going to an underwater planet.” Joonmyeon her lower lip into and widens her eyes. Kyungsoo tries not to laugh at their attitude; while Jongdae is the most competitive, which can cause problems, Joonmyeon has always had issues with Baekhyun’s outspokenness. Her sarcasm doesn’t change even when the she feels like death, apparently.

“Let me just load them up too.” Joonmyeon says, gritting her teeth and pressing the appropriate buttons. Another console bleeps at her and there’s a faint whirring sound somewhere beneath them. A second camera screen flickers to life and displays itself on another holoscreen. At first, there’s not much to see there either, just murky water with dust particles floating in it; but then a watery shadow passes across the foreground.

“What was that?” Jongdae breathes. It looked like a fish, but much bigger than any of them had expected. Some kind of predatory fish? Like a shark, maybe?

“There it goes again! Can you turn the camera?” Jongdae urges, her fingers clamped tight on Joonmyeon’s shoulder.

“Yes, oh my gosh, give me a chance!” Joonmyeon exclaims, “I’m trying!”

“Sorry,” Jongdae retreats bashfully. “Is that it there?”

“I think so. This one seems to be the leader of the pack; it’s the closest one to the ship.”

“Should we be worried?” Baekhyun pipes up, “what if it’s causing damage?”

“Oh, um. I don’t know.” Joonmyeon frowns. “Does anyone want to go out and stop it?”

“Not really.” Baekhyun says, leaning on her folded arms. Jongdae shakes her head quickly, backing out of the situation. Kyungsoo’s stomach sinks; she wants to go out there, sure, but not if there’s potentially dangerous animals lurking out there.

“I need to be up here.” Joonmyeon says, pointing at the controls and looking at Kyungsoo apologetically.

“Alright, fine.” Kyungsoo sighs. “I’ll go.”

“There’s our brave volunteer!” Jongdae claps obnoxiously. Kyungsoo glares at her and she sinks back into her seat, but doesn’t stop clapping, albeit quieter now. This was so not what Kyungsoo expected to be doing, less than an hour after she was unplugged.

“You know where the diving equipment is.” Joonmyeon mumbles apologetically, turning back to the console. “I’ll try and get a better look at what these things are while you go get changed.”

Kyungsoo grumbles to herself all the way to the lower door. There are two ways in and out of this ship: since the vessel is designed to be partially submerged, there’s a waterlock at the bottom with a drainage system, and a second one above the buoyancy ring which opens to air.

Kyungsoo wipes her clammy palms on her uniform trousers. What if these space fish are dangerous? And Joonmyeon is sending her out into the dark depths anyway! Without even getting a good look at them first! Sure, she’s the captain and Kyungsoo has to do what she says, but still. Kyungsoo drags the nanoskin wetsuit out of its storage space roughly, slamming the door open.

She should really be more mature about this but, honestly, she’s scared. Just being in this room is making her heart beat a bit faster, knowing that just beyond the reinforced glass door is the outside world. A planet unexplored by humans.

The nanoskin is so thin that it’s difficult to put on, but when it’s on it accommodates itself to the shape of Kyungsoo’s body. It doesn’t hide anything at all and Kyungsoo looks away from the mirror. She shouldn’t care about her dumb body image, especially when she’s about to plunge into a space ocean with potentially ravenous space piranhas, but she can’t help it.

“Kyungsoo- don’t forget your earpiece.” Joonmyeon reminds her through the PA system. Kyungsoo rolls her eyes, but rummages through her uniform pocket to find it, inserting it into her ear canal and wincing when all she gets is feedback. “That’s better.” Joonmyeon says, this time directly to her. “Anyway, we’ve caught a few more glimpses, but we’re still no closer to figuring out what these things are. They move fast.”

“Alright. I wish we had regular wetsuits, these don’t make me feel protected at all.” She mumbles, taking off her glasses and placing them on the side table.

“That’s because you’re not.” Jongdae chimes in, “They’re designed for temperature regulation and to protect you from getting wrinkly fingers; they aren’t armour.”

“Thanks guys, way to make me feel better.” She grumbles.

“That’s what we’re here for.” Kyungsoo can almost see the annoying feline smirk on the woman’s face. “The breathers are in the cabinet next to you.”

“Are you watching me?!” Was she watching the whole time? Kyungsoo fumes.

“No?” Jongdae doesn’t sound convincing. Kyungsoo looks for the camera and puts up her middle finger. “Charming.” Jongdae comments in her ear.

“Guys, stop it.” Joonmyeon jumps in before they can descend into a verbal brawl. “Kyungsoo, equip your breather and get into the airlock.”

“Ma’am.” Kyungsoo resists the urge to salute. Grabbing her breather, a small device that will provide her with oxygen indefinitely, and placing it in , she steps into the airlock chamber.

She hasn’t felt this nervous since her final exam period, back in university. This is worse, though.

The console by the door asks her whether she would like to activate the water exchange. She selects ‘yes’ and shivers as the inner door seals behind her. Mechanical sounds all around her unnerve her, and she shifts awkwardly as water begins to pool on the floor. It rises up past her ankles, her calves, her thighs, her waist. Her hair, still loose because it wasn’t dry from her shower anyway, floats smoothly behind her, like a black cloud.

It’s cold, as cold as the sea back on earth. Maybe even colder, since most of the sunlight is blocked out by the thick layer of clouds that cloak the planet. She takes a few breaths through the breather, wrinkling her nose at the chemical, plastic-y taste it gives the air to get used to it.

Once the water level reaches the ceiling, the outer door goes ker-chunk and slowly slides down. Kyungsoo braces herself, then starts to swim outside. It’s dark, and she can barely see anything. Even with her glasses she would probably be clueless. It’s eerie out here, strange sounds echoing from far off in the distance. A high pitched chatter, like a dolphin, followed by a lower, more drawn out sound. She shivers, goosebumps breaking out underneath her nanoskin.

“Can you see anything?” Joonmyeon asks, “the one by the camera scarpered as soon as the door started to open.”

With the breather in , Kyungsoo can’t reply. She squints into the distance, trying to find the source of her problems. She swims towards the camera, and looks around. She isn’t sure if it’s because the water is so opaque, or the low levels of light, but there’s no sign of any creatures nearby anymore. Maybe she scared them off? Swimming underneath the belly of the ship, she begins to relax, inspecting the hull calmly. There isn’t really any sign of damage, so they don’t have to worry about that at least. There’s a few scratches but they could just as easily be from entry into the atmosphere, rather than a vicious attack.

The camera next to her whirrs.

Jongdae’s voice suddenly buzzes in her ear.

“There’s one right behind you. Don’t move.” Kyungsoo stills, blood running cold. “Holy !” Jongdae gasps. That doesn’t inspire confidence. What could it be? One of the creatures? Is it dangerous? It can’t be good, that’s for sure.

Why in hell did she agree to this? If she hadn’t come on this trip she would probably be in her forties, teaching marine botany at her old university and settling into her early middle age, maybe with a family. Oh God, she's going to die here in space, and her family won't know for another few years at least. This is it. This is the end.

“I’m recording.” Joonmyeon whispers, “Kyungsoo, you should take a look.”

Crying inwardly, Kyungsoo counts to three, and slowly turns around.

It’s big, that’s the first thing she registers. Bigger than she’d expected, bigger than she is for sure, albeit not by that much. The second thing she thinks is mermaid because that’s what this creature looks like. Pale brown, leathery skin, thick black hair on it’s scalp, and a tail that starts around where a human’s waist would be. It’s- their? Kyungsoo can’t tell its , if it even has one- hands have four fingers, with a thin webbing between them. Just like a dolphin, it has a dorsal fin protruding from its back, though it’s translucent, and it has flukes at the end of its tail too.

Its eyes, though, the eyes are so intense and intelligent it makes Kyungsoo’s heart stop. Kyungsoo focuses on her breathing, staring into this creature’s oddly human face and making as little movement as possible.

The creature, or mermaid, reaches out one long arm towards her.

Immobilised by fear, Kyungsoo lets it. The creature’s fingers ever so delicately touch Kyungsoo’s neck. Mind filled with colourful scenarios of being torn out, or decapitation, Kyungsoo closes her eyes tight, waiting for the inevitable end. She whimpers.

The gentle touch vanishes, and when Kyungsoo opens her eyes, the mermaid is gone.

“Wow.” Jongdae breathes in her ear, echoing Kyungsoo’s sentiment. Kyungsoo’s legs and arms have turned to jelly. She survived.

“So, unless that was an anomaly, we can now say with approximately 70% accuracy that the natives are non-violent. This is good.” Joonmyeon is quick to ruin the moment, ordering Kyungsoo back inside.

-

The moment the pressure chamber is completely drained of water, Jongdae bursts into the small room with a towel, wrapping it around Kyungsoo's shivering shoulders and leading her into the changing room. She feels a little faint.

“C’mon, you can change later, unless you want to do it now?” Jongdae urges, ushering her along, presumably back up to the control room where the others will be waiting. Kyungsoo's entire body is shaking, both from the cold and from the shock. She's still alive, that's a good thing, but she feels like getting dressed back into her uniform will give her another moment to come back to herself, so, stuttering, she tells Jongdae that.

“I-I w-wanna get dressed.”

“Okay, shall I wait for you outside?” Jongdae asks, surprisingly nice. Maybe she's feeling like she has to be nice after her near death experience.

“Yes please.” Kyungsoo stammers. Jongdae nods and leaves Kyungsoo to get dressed.

“Call me if you need anything.”

“Ok.” Kyungsoo agrees, not knowing why she might need her help but knowing that it will get rid of her faster. The door closes behind her, leaving Kyungsoo alone with her thoughts once again.

There are mermaids on this planet. She met one, and it didn't kill her. She can still see it's pale eyes, like two moonstones, staring into her soul.

With fumbling fingers, she peels off her nanoskin wetsuit and lets it drop in a wet heap in the ground before shrugging on her uniform. She finishes the look with the towel wrapped around her hair, and slips her glasses back on.

When she leaves the room, Jongdae is waiting just outside as promised. They walk back to the control room in near silence, broken only when Jongdae asks if she's doing OK, to which Kyungsoo replies ‘I'll be fine’. She will be, when she's had a hot drink. If there are any to be found in this ship.

Joonmyeon and Baekhyun are crowded around the monitor when they enter the control room, but they look up to welcome them inside.

“Look who it is.” Baekhyun croaks, “I can't believe you got to see one of those things up close.”

“She had her eyes shut for most of it” Jongdae remarks, pulling out seats for them both and dragging them closer to the screens. Even Joonmyeon lets out a laugh at that.

“Like you would have been any better.” Kyungsoo gripes, scooting forwards on her chair. “What's so interesting on here.” She asks, referring to the monitor in front of them. The captain touches the screen, and the media begins to play, the sounds of underwater loud in the small room. Within seconds, Kyungsoo recognises it to be a video feed of what just happened. There she is, coming into view, turning her head to try and see something. Although it doesn't show up in the recording, she can tell when she being spoken to through her earpiece by her reactions. She holds her breath, waiting for the moment the mermaid will appear. It swims closer to her, eerily graceful in its movements, ghostly against the blackness of the water. Once again, the word beautiful comes to mind. Watching the moment from a different viewpoint makes it seem smaller than it felt in the moment, and she's a little embarrassed by how much of a wimp she is in the face of the unknown.

The mermaid's expression is unreadable it runs it's finger against Kyungsoo's bare skin. It tilts it's head, hair following the movement and curling in the tendrils of water.

“Did you wet yourself there? No one would know anyway.” Baekhyun teases. The mermaid turns tail and swims away, fast enough that if Kyungsoo had blinked, she would've missed it.

“I did not.” Kyungsoo snaps, glaring in her crew mate’s direction. Baekhyun laughs.

“Seriously though, you seem pretty shaken up. Are you alright?”

“I'm fine.” Kyungsoo reassures them all, “all it did was touch me, I'm not hurt. I… I think it was just curious.”

“I think so too.” Jongdae pipes up. She would know best, after all: she's their marine biologist, and is well studied in the natures of wild animals. “I can't believe we've got this lucky. We've really hit the jackpot.” Jongdae enthuses, flopping back in her seat. Of course she would be excited with a whole new species to study.

“They seem intelligent, do you think they could be a class four species?” Baekhyun wonders.

“Or even class five.” Jongdae gasps, throwing her hands up in the air in excitement. “See that around it's neck? It seems to have woven some kind of underwater plant into a garment of some sort.”

“So there's got to be plants, right?” Kyungsoo perks up at the thought of her abilities being put to good use. She looks closer at the garment in question, and it seems like an underwater grass, pale enough to grow at the very bottom of the ocean.

“Oh, definitely.” She moans, dragging her hands down her face, “then there's the possibility of their own agricultural system, or construction, or economy-”

“Don't you think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself?” Baekhyun cuts in, one eyebrow raised. Jongdae side eyes her,

“I'm sure there's some dirt for you to study as well, don't worry.”

“Alright, alright.” Joonmyeon stops them before they can start bickering. “We're all exhausted and over excited. We've done all the standard checks so I think it's time for us to take a break. We should go back to sleep for a bit or go to the recreation room.” Joonmyeon advises. It's true; now that the adrenaline is wearing off, Kyungsoo is feeling drained. Maybe a rest would do her good. Feeling tired after just waking up from neostasis is normal anyway, so she might as well just go sleep for a while.

“What about you?” Kyungsoo asks, concerned for their captain's well-being. Even back in training she had a habit of taking on a little too much at once, always in an effort to take care of her team.

“Someone has to stay awake. I'll be fine. I can sleep once one of you guys wake up.” She adds, when Kyungsoo stares her down.

“Alright. Try not to overwork yourself, you've only just woken up as well.”

“I won't.” Joonmyeon promises, smiling a little under the attention and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “Have a nice rest now.” She says, “if you're not back up here in a couple of hours I'll send a drone to get you.” She directs the last part to all of them, lips pursed sternly.

“Yes ma'am.” Jongdae jokes, standing up. Baekhyun follows soon after, saluting. Kyungsoo is the last to leave her, not wanting her to be by herself. Joonmyeon puts on some music, and starts humming to herself as she scrolls through lists of numbers that mean very little to Kyungsoo, and that's when she knows she'll be fine for a few hours. If worse comes to worst, she can strike up a conversation with the AI system.

She slips out of the room halfway through a slow ballad that the other woman is belting out, just slightly off pitch, and heads back to her room.

Changing back into her sleepwear and falling into her bed feels like heaven is taking her in and she falls asleep within minutes.