Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten Read Online Free

in the typical two-fold capacity – one, provide food and two, provide oxygen.  The upper reaches of Jupiter’s atmosphere held sky-farms thousands of square miles in size.  Each one consumed massive amounts of hydrogen, forever stoking the millions of turbines necessary to produce the heat so that hectare upon hectare of viable crops could grow at the very edge of space.  Still though, those who could afford it, preferred fresh produce, meats and grains from earth over their out-world counterparts or the synthetic crap churned out by machinery or the “almost new” sustenance that had been preserved to the point it looked – and tasted - more like cardboard than anything else.
    Only food from the sea could be garnered from earth, because conditions in the oceans of earth were nearly impossible to recreate en masse.  People had long since stopped trying to construct bio-systems of that sort, resorting to tanks instead.  There were too many variables when trying to build an ocean able to produce seafood fit for consumption.  Most of the time, what came out of them was poisonous to Humans – Celeste and Being alike.
    The one true exception was Europa, but that moon had been off-limits to the outside worlds for centuries…
    “Do you think Dr. Ahmed and his people have good reason to fear for the Shadow Spark?” queried Flavia, once she maneuvered to the fast lane and accelerated the Glide-car past 300kph.
    “That too needs to be investigated before a suitable answer can be applied to your question,” grumbled the Keeper, preferring to continue with his musings on plants and beasts and things of the waters , then to deal with the issue at hand.
    Flavia chanced a glance his way.  “Hypothetically speaking then, Effy, would his people have reason to fear an outsider trying to get a hold of it?”
    Estefan considered her query, scratching at his bald head, traveling at such high speed always made his scalp itch.  “If what he says is true, then it is possible many entities – government and private alike – would have a huge interest in garnering something as potent as the ‘Spark.”  He paused to look directly at her.  “But then again, if we decided to go after it, they’d have reason to be frightened just the same. We both know, they couldn’t hold out long against the Synod.”
    She nodded, and then her face bunched.  “What about us, could we stop this so called Destro-Mancer the good doctor was speaking about?”
    He bounced with ironic mirth.  “That would be bloody as hell, if everything he says about this creature is true.  If not, then we’d crush him - or her - like a bug.”
    “Yeah, I figured the same, but what are we going to do about it?”
    He clicked the roof of his mouth again.  She wasn’t going to give up, was she?   “We’ll do nothing, for now.  We will send out our teams to investigate these claims regarding the creature, while, at the same time, we consult the archives in order to attempt to learn more about the Shadow Spark.  We need to see if the damned thing exists in the first place.  We’ll go from there.”
    “It would be incredible and fearsome at the same time , if the Shadow Spark were real,” she ruminated.
    “Yeah, anything that can manipulate Celestial Mutations would be an awesome weapon…”  He fell silent, a new thought stopping him for a moment.  “Have we heard anything unusual coming out of Haumea?”
    She shook her head in the negative.
    “That’s another thing bothering me about this whole thing.  We have eyes and ears everywhere, why haven’t we caught so much as a whisper about this Destro-Mancer?  If it is, in fact, conquering the dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, why hasn’t word gotten back to us?”
    Now, she shook her head with indecision, a gesture identical to the earlier one, but Estefan could tell the difference.  Three hundred and fifty years together did such things.
    “And another thing,” began Estefan, waving his