Chapter 18: Merfolk

The Merfolk.

Morphology can only adopt a limited number of forms, so, the Merfolk do look a bit familiar.

Adapting probes for submerged spying isn’t difficult. Drives are gravitic and very small, solely manuevering, insufficient for flight. Non-sentient AI chips are their brains and autopilots as well as communication devices. We didn’t feel a need for probes to surface and re-submerge. A single dive and remain submerged throughout the mission. To retrieve them, an unlatching weight was incorporated, that when released, the probe regained positive buoyancy and floated to the surface. The ability to salvage was quite simply a pickup. The I served as a locator beacon.

By deploying these probes we had our first glimpses of our cohabitants of this planet, which we named Sweet. As in Home Sweet Home, but just the single word Sweet.

When we first observed the citizens of the sea bottom city I’d found, we dismissed them as mindless bottom feeders. We speculated if they might be safe and possibly delicious to eat. Resembling a hybrid between a lobster and a squid, we misidentified them as potentially local seafood.