Better Gardening 9 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Kejmur

Better Gardening

Chapter 9

-VB-

After I got Umma, I felt more confident to back out there and collect more samples and data for my garden world. 

So! 

What did I need to do to make my garden world a beautiful place? 

For one, I needed actual animals and plants that wasn’t just some moss. Moss was great right now to gauge the stability and suitability of animals to the environment of Garden World 9. If the moss couldn’t survive, then I either needed to find creatures that could or do some heavy terraforming so that more prevalent forms of life known to humanity would. 

I already had samples of a lot of plants but not enough of animals. 

“Mana, do you have a recommendation on where I should go to collect more samples?” I asked my trusted AI friend.

The AI woman hummed as through the speakers of the station before a physical screen came flying around and came to hover around me. 

“Depends on how exciting you want this adventure to be,” she teased as she appeared on the screen and switched from station speakers to the screen’s speakers. “There are many worlds out there that are quite quaint by our standard and others that are … dangerous.”

“More dangerous than von Neumann mechanoids hell bent on killing all humans but have the luck of a roadkill?” I asked her, having recently read history about that particular bit of software and hardware mishap. Or had it been engineered intentionally?

“Yes, even more dangerous,” she replied. 

I stopped walking.

“... Wait,” I muttered as I got an idea. “If my garden world is dangerous, then wouldn’t that mean that it would be that much harder for assholes to come and do whatever it is that they want?”

Mana stared at me with a very concerned look. “Daniel, no.”

“But Mana, think about it! The illegal logging operation with enslaved people would not have taken place in a forest where its denizens can curbstomp most droids!” 

“It would also make your world a death world by the standards of all polities.”

“But a death world is still a garden world, right?” I asked with a grin.

Mana would take a picture and later show it to me once I got my memories back, and I would go on to say that I looked like a mad scientist. Too bad that the mad scientist got his way and now I have to deal with the mess the mad scientist-me made.

“... Here are the worlds that fit your deal if that is truly what you want, administrator,” she told him as a separate screen came flying around and showed him the list of worlds with their threat ratings, expected biodiversity, and more. “But I highly advise you to reconsider, especially because Garden World 9 is currently not ready to host any complex lifeform beyond flora.”

“I’ll think about it. Besides, those worlds should also have a lot of plants, right?”

She narrowed her eyes at me.

I grinned back innocently. 

-VB-

On top of my cybernetically augmented and bioengineered sentient elephant Umma, I opened a portal.

“Umma, let’s go~!” I giggled as the thought of a new world sent another tingle up my spine. 

My elephant guardian rumbled forward and we went through the portal. 

We went from a perfectly environmentally controlled mission lobby surrounded by blue grey bulkheads, flooring, walls, and ceiling to a world of blue skies, white clouds, and a mountain chain covered in trees. 

I grinned as I took in all of the sights. As the portal closed behind me, I looked around and saw all sorts of birds (or bird-like creatures) flying in the sky. Some were alone while others were moving in a swarm. Flock? Murder? 

I looked down at the ground and saw more than a few animals scurrying away from Umma as she began a leisurely walk towards somewhere. Maybe she spotted a very nice fruit tree in the distance. 

I took out my scanner and began scanning away… and my eyes started bugging out in shock as I started detecting some of the non-standard energy levels of creatures around us. 

A fucking bug that I was scanning had enough energy inside it to become a ton of TNT if it could!

“We really are in a place that’s dangerous as hell, aren’t we, Umma?”

My guardian grunted, which rumbled along her five meter trunk. 

The sound immediately scared off a lot of the small critters, which made both her and me wither a little.

“Let’s just keep going.”

And we did.

Or at least we wanted to because no more than two hundred paces from where we landed, we ran into our first trouble. 

A giant brown shrike with a red headcrest of all things came bursting out of the forest around us with a screech.

Umma didn’t rear back, just raise an eyebrow. She knew just as well as I did that nothing short of heavy naval weapon was going to damage her. So a giant bird squawking at her was … annoying.

Or at least I found it annoying. 

“Shoo!” I yelled at it. “I don’t want to tell Umma to make a modern art piece out of you! Shoo!” 

The giant brown shrike seemed to get the tone of what I was implying and it squawked even louder. Then it -.

“Ayo what the fuck?” I muttered when it sudden nosedived at us, drawing its wings close to its body and spinning wildly. My eyes flew open when the potential energy I’ve been reading from my scanner became an active energy that I could see and wrapped up the giant bird into a shell of some kind. 

Then it struck at us at its divebombing speed.

And promptly ran into Umma’s energy barrier. 

I winced as the two energies ground against each other and made a ear-splitting shrieking scream.

Then Umma raised her trunk and slapped.

I watched it happen almost in slow-motion as her trunk came down almost comically slowly compared to the spinning speed of the giant shrike but when it landed, it broke through the energy shell and punted the creature to the ground where it slammed into the ground so hard that, instead of bouncing, its body dug into the ground and made an imprint. 

“... Is it dead?” I asked. Umma grunted again, picked up a nearby stick with the tip of her trunk, and poked at the bug. It squawked painfully and pitifully. “Guess not.”

Well… this really was a dangerous world. 

I felt my grin return.

Yeah, there were animals here that I definitely wanted to take back to my garden world.