The Xenovet's Daughters

• Chapter 1 The Inheritance of Oakhaven
• Chapter 2 Dust and Stethoscopes
• Chapter 3 Anatomy of a Glimmer-Strider
• Chapter 4 Ledger Books and Empty Stalls
• Chapter 5 The Spore-Lung Outbreak
• Chapter 6 Sisterly Friction
• Chapter 7 Night Call at Red Ridge
• Chapter 8 Bloodlines and Bio-Filtration
• Chapter 9 The Land-Grabbers of Sector Four
• Chapter 10 Calving Season on Horizon-Prime
• Chapter 11 A Toxic Harvest
• Chapter 12 Ghosts in the Surgery Bay
• Chapter 13 The Nomad's Herd
• Chapter 14 Sedating the Unsedatable
• Chapter 15 Fractured Bonds
• Chapter 16 Quarantine Protocol
• Chapter 17 The Parasite's Secret
• Chapter 18 Fire Across the Plains
• Chapter 19 Emergency Surgery Under Starlight
• Chapter 20 The Frontier Guild's Ultimatum
• Chapter 21 Venom and Remedy
• Chapter 22 The Great Herd Migration
• Chapter 23 Healing the Soil
• Chapter 24 A Legacy of Scalpels and Soil
• Chapter 25 Two Doctors, One Name
• Chapter 26 Roots Beneath Distant Stars

The transport shuttle dropped out of the low cloud cover with a sound like tearing metal, its thrusters kicking up a localized hurricane of red, copper-laden dust.

Dr. Maeve Vance pressed the back of her forearm against her nose and mouth, squinting through the crimson haze as the landing skids settled into the cracked clay of the Oakhaven spaceport. Spaceport was a generous word for a stretch of compacted dirt, a rust-streaked control tower that looked abandoned during the last century, and a single, flickering holosign that read WELCOME TO HORIZON-PRIME: THE NEW GRAZING FRONTIER.

Beside her, leaning heavily on a pristine silver luggage hover-cart, her younger sister sighed. Nora’s hair was immaculate, held in place by a low-yield static net that defied the gale-force winds of the landing zone, though her high-end synth-leather boots were already coated in a thick layer of fine grit.

"Tell me again why Father’s estate lawyer couldn't just liquidate the asset," Nora said, her voice carrying crisp and clear through her neck-mounted collar communicator. "We could have split the credits. You could have bought that research lab in the Core Systems, and I could have finally put a down payment on a studio in New Geneva."

"Because there's nothing to liquidate," Maeve said, slinging her faded canvas medical kit over her shoulder. The strap was worn smooth by years of use during her residency on the rim stations, but the weight of it was familiar, comforting. "The land is under a colonial trust lease. The equipment is mortgaged. The only thing Dad actually owned free and clear was the clinic itself, three hundred acres of scrub-grass, and several million credits worth of professional liability."

"And the livestock?"

"Technically belongs to the homesteaders who can't pay their bills." Maeve pulled out a thumb-drive data pad, tapped the glass until it flickered to life, and squinted at the low-resolution map. "Our ride is supposed to be here."

The dust settled, revealing a battered ground-skimmer idling near the perimeter fence. Its hull was a patchwork of mismatched paneling—standard-issue grey alloy mixed with scuffed yellow mining plates—and the twin turbine pods hummed with a raspy, uncoordinated rhythm that suggested at least two cracked fuel injectors.

A towering figure hauled himself out of the driver’s seat. He was human, barely, built like a ballast tank, with skin tanned to the texture of boot leather and a thick grey beard that smelled faintly of ozone and dried tallow. He wore an oil-stained work vest over a thermal suit, and a pair of heavy magnetic pliers hung from his belt alongside a heavy-duty bio-scanner.

"You Vance's girls?" the man rumbled, his voice sounding like gravel churning in a cement mixer.

"Maeve and Nora Vance," Maeve corrected, stepping forward and extending a hand. "You must be Silas."

The old man looked at her hand for a second, then down at Nora’s polished hover-cart, before giving Maeve’s palm a single, bone-crushing squeeze. "Silas Miller. I run the intake down at the South Grazing Block. Your old man called me when his kidneys started failing, but by the time I got the haul-truck up to the ridge, he was already cold." He spit a stream of dark blue juice from some local stimulant root onto the dirt. "Sorry for your loss, I suppose. Artie was a decent shot with a tranquillizer rifle, even if he was lousy at collecting fees."

"Thank you, Silas," Nora said, stepping carefully around a puddle of hydraulic fluid. "Is this... our transport?"

"If you want to get to the homestead before the dusk-spores drop, it is," Silas said, grunting as he grabbed Nora’s hover-cart with one hand and tossed it into the open bed of the skimmer as if it weighed nothing at all. "Hop in. The suspension on the left side is shot, so sit on the right if you don't want your kidneys rearranged."

The drive from the spaceport to the clinic took nearly two hours, taking them through a landscape that looked as though it couldn't quite decide whether it wanted to be a desert or a jungle. Huge, towering structures that resembled petrified oak trees rose from the terraformed plains—the native scythe-trees that gave the region its human name, though their leaves were stiff, metallic fronds that hummed in the dry wind. Beneath them, vast herds of heavy, hexapedal beasts grazed on the purple-tinted vegetation.

"Are those Glimmer-Striders?" Nora asked, leaning over the side of the open skimmer, her curiosity briefly overcoming her disgust at the dust.

"Bulls," Silas said without turning round. "Wild ones. The ranches keep the domestic breeds down in the valley. Smaller horns, less prone to goring the fence-drones. Your dad spent three weeks last month trying to patch up a prize bull that got its belly ripped open by a wild strider during mating season. Nearly bled to death right in your driveway."

"Did the bull survive?" Maeve asked, leaning forward.

Silas gave a dry laugh. "The bull lived. Artie’s bank account didn't. The owner paid him in forty bushels of dried blue-root and a promise to fix the surgery shed door. Door’s still broken."

Maeve looked out over the horizon. Horizon-Prime was one of the mid-tier expansion colonies—settled fifty years ago by a conglomerate of agricultural cooperatives and independent homesteaders looking to break away from the corporate monopolies of the inner rim. It was a hard world, high in atmospheric copper and seasonal fungal blooms, but it was rich in biomass. The alien fauna were massive, slow to adapt to human technology, and utterly baffling to traditional veterinary medicine. Her father, Arthur Vance, had been one of the first xenovets to establish a practice out here in the Oakhaven sector. He had spent thirty years patching together creatures that had six legs, four hearts, and blood that could corrode standard surgical steel.

And now, according to the document sitting in Maeve’s coat pocket, it all belonged to them.

The skimmer rounded a jagged outcrop of red sandstone, and the clinic finally came into view.

It sat in a shallow valley surrounded by a ring of low, wind-scoured hills. The main building was a low, sprawling structure constructed from modular foam-concrete blocks, painted an uninspired shade of faded green. A large halo-dish sat crookedly on the roof, wrapped in copper wiring to ward off the atmospheric static. Surrounding the main building were several outbuildings: a glass-roofed quarantine barn, a row of holding pens made of heavy steel mesh, and a dilapidated garage where an ancient medical trailer sat on cinder blocks, its tires flat and its diagnostic displays dark.

A rusty sign swung creakily above the main gate: VANCE XENOVETERINARY SERVICES – LIVESTOCK & LARGE FAUNA. Below it, someone had spray-painted in yellow scrawl: NO CREDIT.

"Home sweet home," Nora muttered, stepping out of the skimmer as Silas brought it to a rattling halt.

"It’s... functional," Maeve said, though her eyes were already cataloging the maintenance backlog. The solar panels on the roof were covered in a film of red dust, reducing their efficiency by at least thirty percent. The drainage gutters around the holding pens were choked with dead flora, and the perimeter field generator was emitting a high-pitched whine that meant the transformer was running hot.

Silas hauled their bags off the skimmer and dumped them on the cracked concrete of the porch. "Key-code’s still your old man's birth year. Power’s on low-yield. I set the water recycler to scrub every twelve hours, but don't drink out of the tap in the back office unless you want a week of the copper-cramps. Filter’s shot."

"We appreciate the ride, Silas," Maeve said, reaching into her pocket and offering him a small stack of physical credit-chips—the standard currency for off-grid colonies.

Silas looked at the chips, then back at Maeve. He took them, weighed them in his palm, and slipped them into his vest. "Artie was a good man, Doc. Crazy, but good. But this plain doesn't care much for good men, and it cares even less for city folk. You got three ranches within fifty miles, all of them broke, all of them running herds that are one bad spore-season away from total collapse. If you're planning on staying, you'd better get your hands dirty fast."

He climbed back into his skimmer, slammed the rusted door shut, and sped off down the dirt track, leaving behind another cloud of red dust that hung in the still afternoon air.

Maeve walked up to the front door, wiped a layer of dirt off the key-pad, and punched in four digits. The lock clicked with a heavy pneumatic thud, and the door slid open with a soft sigh of equalization.

The smell hit them immediately. It was an unmistakable mixture of formaldehyde, dried blood, cheap disinfectant, stale coffee, and the sharp, musky odor of alien wet hide.

Nora gasped, clutching her coat tightly around her neck. "Dear Lord. It smells like a bio-hazard site."

"It smells like work," Maeve said, stepping inside.

The waiting room was tiny, holding three plastic chairs with cracked vinyl cushions and a counter covered in dusty paper files—a rarity in an age of digital storage, but Arthur Vance had never trusted cloud-servers on a planet where atmospheric storms could wipe a hard drive from ten miles away. Behind the counter, a door opened into the main examination room.

Maeve pushed it open and walked inside. The room was dominated by a heavy, hydraulic surgical table, wide enough to support a creature weighing three tons. Heavy straps hung from overhead tracks, designed to hoist sedated beasts into position. The walls were lined with cabinets containing massive instruments: broad-blade scalpels the size of butcher knives, heavy pneumatic bone-saws, long flexible endoscopes designed to navigate complex multi-chambered digestive tracks, and racks of high-potency pharmaceuticals sealed in temperature-controlled glass.

On the main desk in the corner sat a single, silver holocube. Its status light was blinking slow amber.

Nora came up behind her, looking around the cluttered space with a mix of horror and fascination. "Maeve, look at this place. The tech is twenty years out of date. Look at that bio-analyzer—it’s running on an old-gen optical core! You can't even get parts for those anymore."

"He kept it running," Maeve said quietly. She walked over to the desk and pressed the play button on the holocube.

The blue light flared, and a shimmering, slightly distorted image of their father appeared above the desk. Arthur Vance looked exhausted. His white hair was wild, his eyes sunken, and his uniform tunic was stained with deep purple blotches. He was sitting at that very desk, a glass of amber liquid in one hand and a stylus in the other.

"If you're watching this," the hologram began, his voice dry and laced with a rasping cough, "it means my second kidney finally gave up the ghost, and you two actually picked up the call from the colonial probate court."

He paused, taking a sip from his glass, his eyes looking straight out of the projection.

"Maeve... I know you wanted the hospital track on Terra. You had the marks for it, and God knows you have the temper for corporate politics. But you’re too smart to waste your life stitching up pampered show-canines for high-society bureaucrats. You've got your mother's hands—steady, precise. You belong out here, where the medicine actually matters."

Maeve folded her arms, her jaw tightening, but she didn't look away.

"And Nora," Arthur continued, a faint, melancholic smile playing on his lips. "I know you think this world is a dust-heap. You always hated the mud, hated the smell, hated the noise. But you've got an eye for numbers, girl. You know how the world works, how to make people pay what they owe, how to build something that lasts. I built this clinic with my hands, but I ruined it with my ledger. I couldn't keep it afloat. I was a terrible doctor when it came to business, and a terrible businessman when it came to medicine."

He leaned closer to the scanner, his holopic flickering slightly around the edges.

"The clinic is yours. Fifty-fifty split. If you want to sell it to the highest bidder—probably the Sector Four Development Group, those vultures have been hovering around my boundary lines for two years—you can. You'll get enough credits to pay off my funeral costs and buy yourselves a decent apartment somewhere civilized. But if you sell, Oakhaven dies. The homesteaders out here have nowhere else to go. Their herds are everything they own. If the animals die, the colony fails, and the land-grabbers buy the whole valley for pennies on the credit."

He set his glass down, pulled a heavy ledger into his lap, and looked up one last time.

"The work is hard. The beasts are mean. The rain rots your boots, and the light gives you headaches. But it’s real work. The choice is yours. Don't fight too much. You're all the family each other has left."

The light flickered out, and the projection dissolved into a tiny cloud of blue static before clicking off entirely.

The room fell dead silent, saved only for the hum of the failing transformer outside and the distant, lowing call of a Glimmer-Strider echoing across the copper plains.

Nora cleared her throat, though her voice still cracked slightly. "He was always so theatrical."

"He was right about one thing," Maeve said, walking over to the desk and picked up the paper ledger Arthur had held in the recording. She flipped it open. Page after page was filled with meticulous, hand-written notes: medical histories, drug dosages, anatomical diagrams of native species... and vast, uncollected debts written in red ink. "He was a terrible businessman."

"Let me see that," Nora said, snatching the book from her sister's hands. She sat down in the squeaky office chair and began scanning the pages, her fingers flying over the pages with practiced speed. Her eyes narrowed as she read down the columns of numbers. "This isn't just bad, Maeve. This is catastrophic. He owes thirty thousand credits to the regional pharmaceutical supplier. He’s six months behind on the land lease. And the local homesteaders owe him..." She stopped, recalculating in her head. "...over seventy thousand credits in unpaid fees for services rendered!"

"Which they paid in blue-root and rusty iron," Maeve added dryly.

"We have to sell," Nora declared, slamming the book shut. "We have to call Sector Four tomorrow, take whatever salvage price they offer, cut our losses, and get on the next transport back to the mid-worlds."

Maeve walked over to the large observation window that looked out over the holding pens. Beyond the rusty wire, the vast red plains stretched out toward the distant, jagged mountains of the Red Ridge. The sun was beginning to drop below the horizon, painting the sky in violent shades of violet, orange, and metallic gold. Out in the distance, a small herd of wild beasts was moving across the flats, their long necks swaying in rhythmic grace, their iridescent hides catching the last rays of light like floating jewels.

"We aren't selling, Nora," Maeve said softly.

Nora stood up so fast the chair scraped loudly against the concrete floor. "Are you out of your mind? Maeve, look around! We don't have the capital to run this place. We don't have the supplies. You’re a surgeon, not a miracle worker, and I’m an accountant, not a martyr!"

"We have thirty days before the lease comes up for renewal," Maeve said, turning around to face her sister. Her expression was calm, set with a quiet, stubborn determination that Nora recognized all too well—it was the exact same look their father used to get right before he attempted something entirely reckless. "Thirty days to clean up the clinic, collect on at least half of these debts, and show the Colonial Board that this practice is solvent."

"And if we fail?"

"Then Sector Four gets the land anyway, and we leave with our hands empty," Maeve replied. "But if we stay, we fix this. Together."

Nora opened her mouth to argue, her lips pressed into a fine white line, but before she could speak, a harsh, metallic alarm suddenly shrieked through the office. Red light began to flash from a panel near the door, accompanied by an automated voice that sounded flat and mechanical:

EMERGENCY INTAKE. BAY ONE. BIOLOGICAL CRITICAL.

Maeve’s training kicked in instantly. She grabbed her medical kit, slammed a fresh power cell into her hand-held scanner, and hit the door release. "Nora, get the lights on in the main bay!"

"I don't even know where the switches are!" Nora yelled, stumbling after her as the heavy double doors at the rear of the clinic slid open with a violent metallic screech.

Outside, under the gathering dusk, an ancient, steam-venting farm-hauler had backed up directly into the intake bay. Its rear ramp dropped with a deafening crash, hitting the concrete apron.

Standing in the bed of the truck was a towering, sweat-soaked homesteader holding a heavy restraint pole. At the end of the pole’s thick cable was a creature the size of a draft horse, covered in dark blue plates of thick chitin. Its long, whip-like tail was thrashing wildly against the side of the truck, leaving deep, silver gouges in the metal wall. The beast’s main head—a wide, flat skull with four glowing compound eyes—was tossing back and forth as it released a sound like a dragging iron chain.

"Doc!" the homesteader screamed over the noise, his face slick with sweat and streaked with soot. "You gotta help me! It's my prime breeding bull—he's bloated, he's thrashing, and if he goes down, his second stomach is gonna burst!"

Maeve didn't hesitate. She stepped right up to the edge of the ramp, pulling her scanner out and snapping it open. The blue sensor line swept over the thrashing, terrifying creature, recording heart rates, internal pressures, and chemical levels.

"Nora!" Maeve shouted over her shoulder, her voice echoing off the concrete walls of the bay. "Welcome to Oakhaven! Grab the three-inch cannula and the sedatives from cabinet B—we've got five minutes before this thing blows!"

Nora stood frozen on the threshold of the surgery bay, looking at the massive, wild-eyed alien beast, then at her ruined leather boots, and finally at her sister, who was already climbing into the back of the hauler alongside the frantic farmer.

Sighing heavily, Nora kicked off her designer footwear, grabbed a rubber apron off a hook on the wall, and stepped into the mud.

"Cabinet B! The blue label, not the orange!" Maeve shouted over the shrieking hiss of the beast’s spiracles.

Nora splashed through a puddle of stagnant rainwater and hydraulic fluid, her high-end silk stockings instantly ruined as she skidded into the dim, fluorescent-lit preparation room. Her hands trembled as she pulled open the dented metal doors of Cabinet B. Racks of glass ampoules and pressurized bio-injectors clicked against one another. Labels flashed before her eyes in dense, technical medical script—Poly-Xylazine, Scythe-Toxin Antidote, Hyper-Calcic Suspension.

"Three-inch cannula! Sedatives!" Nora repeated like a frantic mantra. She snatched a heavy, stainless-steel trocar with a wide-bore sleeve and a pneumatic injector loaded with a thick, purple fluid labeled Glimmer-Sedate 4. Clasping them to her chest, she bolted back out to the intake bay.

The homesteader—a wiry man with a face like baked earth, wearing an oil-stained work harness—was leaning all his weight against the restraint pole. The animal, a heavy-set bull with six thick, muscular limbs and broad plates of indigo carapace running down its back, was wedged tightly against the hauler’s sidewalls. Its body was visibly distended; its flank hummed with an unnatural, high-pitched vibration as trapped gaseous byproducts expanded inside its primary rumen.

"He was grazing near the copper-weed fence!" the homesteader yelled, gasping for breath as the beast slammed its massive hind leg against the iron deck. "Must've swallowed a hunk of old wire! The bio-fermentation went crazy! Doc, he’s gonna rupture!"

Maeve was already up on the hauler’s side rail, balancing precariously over the thrashing hexaped. She grabbed the bio-scanner and pressed the heavy sensor node directly against the unarmored, leathery skin just behind the bull’s fifth ribs. The diagnostic display lit up in violent scarlet.

"Rumen pressure is at four hundred kilopascals," Maeve said, her voice dropping into the cool, rapid cadence of emergency surgery. "If it hits five hundred, the diaphragm collapses. Nora! Hand me the sedative first. Right into the neck muscle, behind the third chitin plate!"

Nora scrambled up the hauler’s access ladder. The smell of the beast was overwhelming—a rank combination of hot copper, fermented vegetation, and acidic ozone that burned the back of her throat. She handed the heavy pneumatic injector up to Maeve.

Maeve didn't hesitate. She aligned the tip of the injector with a small gap in the creature's neck armor and slammed the lever home. A loud thwack-hiss echoed through the bay. The bull grunted, a deep sound that vibrated through the metal structure of the vehicle. For a terrifying two seconds, the animal thrashing grew worse—its tail whipping around and striking the steel frame hard enough to throw off a shower of sparks. Then, slowly, its heavy, four-eyed head began to sag, the luminous purple pupils dilating as the compound eyes went dull.

"Good. Now the cannula," Maeve commanded, extending a gloved hand without looking away from the animal's swollen flank. "We need to decompress the rumen before the cardiac arterial branch pinches shut."

Nora thrust the thick steel spike into her sister's hand. Maeve adjusted her grip, holding the trocar with both hands, positioned herself directly over the distended flank, and drove the sharp instrument through the thick outer hide and into the internal digestive sac with all her body weight.

A sound like a jet engine bleeding off pressure filled the bay. A jet of foul-smelling, greenish gas hissed out of the central lumen of the cannula, smelling strongly of sulfur and sour damp hay.

The homesteader let out a long, ragged exhale and slumped against his restraint pole. "Sweet merciful stars..."

The bull's sides shrank visibly as the gas vented, the high-frequency vibration gradually settling into a slow, heavy pulse. Maeve held the cannula steady, monitoring the sensor display on her wrist until the pressure graph dipped back into the green zone. She pulled a flexible drainage hose from her belt, attached it to the valve, and routed the remaining effluent into the bay’s waste sink.

"He's stabilized," Maeve said, wiping a mixture of sweat and red dust from her forehead with the sleeve of her lab coat. "The gas buildup is down. But if he swallowed metallic scrap, we’re going to have to do a full rumenotomy to pull it out, or this will happen again by tomorrow morning."

dropped his grip on the pole, his shoulders hunching in defeat. He looked down at the concrete floor of the bay, then up at the twin Vance sisters. "I... I can't afford a rumenotomy, Doc. Not right now. The drought took half my feed crop, and the cooperative reduced the credit value on blue-root."

Maeve looked at the tired farmer, then at the sedated beast breathing heavily on the truck bed.

Nora stepped forward, brushing off her dirt-caked skirt. "What’s your name?" she asked, her sharp tone cutting through the hum of the cooling hauler engine.

"Jonas," the man said, looking startled. "Jonas Reed. I run the smallholding up at Split Rock."

Nora pulled her small hand-held data slate from her pocket—the clean, white-and-silver glass looking entirely out of place in the blood-splattered bay. She tapped the screen twice. "Jonas Reed. Split Rock. You have an outstanding account with Vance Xenoveterinary Services dating back eleven months. Four hundred credits for emergency antitoxin, six hundred for parasite drenches, and ninety credits for a de-sporing wash."

Jonas flushed dark red under his weather-beaten skin. "Your dad told me I could pay him after the spring harvest."

"Our dad is dead," Nora said flatly, ignoring Maeve’s warning glance. "And this clinic is sitting on ninety days of unpaid land lease. If we perform an invasive abdominal retrieval on this bull, it requires three units of surgical plasma, two hours of surgical suite power, and half a liter of broad-spectrum antibiotic. That’s five hundred credits in materials alone."

Jonas gripped his greasy cap in his hands, crushing it down into a tight ball. "If I lose this bull, I lose my breeding license for the season. The Sector Four syndicate will buy out my mortgage by winter. I won't have a farm to pay you back with."

Maeve stepped off the truck bed, her boots hitting the concrete with a heavy thud. She looked at the bull, then at Nora, and finally at Jonas. "We'll perform the retrieval tonight," she said smoothly.

"Maeve!" Nora snapped. "We literally just read the ledger!"

"We perform the retrieval tonight," Maeve repeated, fixing her sister with an unyielding gaze, "on one condition, Mr. Reed. You don't pay us in blue-root. You don't pay us in promises. You bring us three work-drones to repair the solar array on the roof, two cases of unrefined fuel cells for the backup generator, and you sign a legally binding wage-attachment through the Frontier Guild for twenty percent of your spring harvest proceeds."

Jonas looked between the two sisters, his mouth slightly open. "Work-drones? I... I have two functional repair rigs back at the barn. I can bring 'em down by dawn."

"Deal," Maeve said. "Nora, prepare the operating bay track hoist. We need to move three thousand pounds of sedated alien cattle onto the table."

Nora stared at her sister in utter disbelief. "You want me to operate a three-ton hydraulic ceiling crane?"

"You read the manual while we were on the shuttle," Maeve said, walking back toward the sink to scrub her arms. "You told me you memorized the lift capacities."

"That was theoretical!"

"Welcome to practical application," Maeve said over the sound of running water. "Turn the dial to three, press the green coupling stud, and try not to drop the bull on my head."

Three hours later, the main surgery room smelled of disinfectant, burnt flesh, and iron.

The large hydraulic table in the center of the bay was tilted at a fifteen-degree angle. Overhead, high-intensity halogen lamps cast a harsh, clinical white light across the exposed abdomen of the Glimmer-Strider. Maeve was washed up to her elbows, wearing a clear plastic surgical shield over her face. She worked with a terrifyingly smooth efficiency—her hands moving with the precise, rhythmic economy of a surgeon who had trained in the high-density emergency wards of the orbital stations.

Nora stood at the head of the table, holding a suction tube and monitoring the vitals console. The machine was making a rhythmic, low-pitched beep... beep... beep, but every few seconds, a high-frequency chirp indicated a flutter in the beast's secondary heart.

"Suction here," Maeve commanded, her voice muffled behind her mask. "The second rumen wall is thicker than the text-books say. Give me the heavy-duty retractors."

Nora reached down to the tray, her fingers greasy with sterile lubricant. She picked up a pair of massive, chrome-plated steel clamps that looked more like tools from an auto-repair shop than medical equipment. She positioned them where Maeve indicated and pulled back, revealing the interior lining of the digestive organ.

"Look at that," Maeve whispered, leaning close.

Inside the dark, velvety lining of the third gastric pouch lay a jagged mass of fused metal—a clump of rusted fence wire, several ancient iron rivets, and what looked like the shattered housing of an old radio transmitter, all bound together by a grey, calcified secretion that the beast’s body had produced in a desperate attempt to protect itself.

"It’s been in there for months," Maeve observed, carefully sliding a pair of long-handled forceps into the cavity. "The metal was reacting with the copper in the animal's natural gastric juices, creating a battery effect. It was shocking his internal nerves every time his stomach contracted. That’s what triggered the spasm and gas lock."

With a series of precise, delicate twists, Maeve extracted the rusted chunk of metal. It dropped into a stainless-steel basin with a loud clatter.

"Nora, hand me the bio-suture gun," Maeve said, holding the wound open. "The fast-absorb synth-thread."

Nora handed over the applicator, watching as Maeve laid a double row of perfect, glowing blue sutures along the stomach wall. The skill was undeniable. For all of Maeve’s stubbornness, watching her move through an operative field was like watching a master artisan. There was no hesitation, no wasted motion, even when dealing with anatomy that was fundamentally bizarre compared to human physiology.

By the time the final outer skin staples were clicked into place, the clock on the wall read three in the morning.

The twin sisters sat side-by-side on two plastic crates near the surgery room drain, their surgical gowns tossed into the bio-hazard hamper. The bull was back on his feet, though still groggy from the nerve blockers, resting in the padded recovery stall at the back of the bay. His four compound eyes were dark, his rhythmic breathing a low, comforting bellows sound in the quiet night.

Nora leaned her head back against the cold foam-concrete wall, her face pale with exhaustion. "I have blood in my hair," she said quietly. "I don't even know whose blood it is. Mine, the bull's, or yours."

"It’s probably the bull’s," Maeve said, taking a sip from a dented cup of cold, bitter tea she had found in the office kitchen. "Their blood has high hemocyanin content. It turns blue when it oxidizes, but it washes out of cotton fairly easily. Synth-leather, though... that's ruined."

Nora looked down at her feet. She had discarded her designer shoes hours ago, and now wore a pair of oversized, yellow rubber work-boots she had found under the sink. "My life was completely mapped out, Maeve. I had an interview next month with a financial consultancy firm in Olympus City. A real office. With air filtration that doesn't smell like rotting cabbage."

"You would have been bored in three weeks," Maeve said softly.

"I like being bored!" Nora snapped, though there was no real heat behind it. "Boredom is vastly underrated. Boredom doesn't kick you with six legs while you're trying to inject it with sedatives."

She sat up, resting her elbows on her knees and looking around the dilapidated surgery bay. The paint on the walls was peeling in long, curling strips. The diagnostic monitors flickered every time the wind picked up outside, and the single halo-dish overhead groaned on its mounts.

"We can't survive on barter, Maeve," Nora said, her tone shifting back to the sharp, analytical register she used when looking at a balance sheet. "I ran the preliminary projections while you were closing the skin incision. Jonas Reed's work-drones will save us about twelve hundred credits in contractor fees for the roof, but that doesn't pay the drug bill. The pharmaceutical firm in the central dome—the one Dad owed thirty thousand credits to—they're not going to take blue-root or repaired solar panels. They want hard credit transfers."

Maeve set her cup down on the floor between her boots. "What's the grace period on the debt?"

"Thirty days before they initiate legal asset seizure," Nora replied. "And the Sector Four Development Group owns thirty-five percent of that supply company’s debt portfolio. If we default, Sector Four buys the debt, forecloses on the clinic, and sweeps in to claim the land lease."

"Why do they want this land so badly?" Maeve asked, frowning. "It’s three hundred acres of scythe-tree scrub and sandstone. The soil is too high in copper for standard Terran crops, and the native stock requires specialized veterinary care just to stay alive."

Nora leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. "Because Sector Four isn't an agricultural company, Maeve. They're a logistical infrastructure syndicate. I pulled up the planetary survey maps while we were waiting for the transport shuttle. The proposed rail-link between the deep-water port at New Geneva and the interior mining districts runs right through this valley. If the clinic stays here, they have to re-route the track five miles north through the sandstone canyons, which costs them millions. If they buy this land at a bankruptcy auction, they flatten the clinic, lay the magnetic rails, and pocket the difference."

Maeve looked out the small reinforced window toward the dark plains. The two suns of Horizon-Prime had both set, but the night sky was far from dark. The native vegetation—the scythe-trees and the dense carpets of purple grass—were faintly bioluminescent, glowing with a soft, shifting emerald light that rippled across the valley whenever the wind blew. Out in the distance, the silhouettes of a wild herd moved against the luminescent horizon, their long, elegant necks swaying like ships on a calm sea.

"Dad knew," Maeve said softly.

"Of course he knew," Nora said, her voice dropping. "That’s why he didn't sell, even when he was broke. If Sector Four puts that rail line through here, it cuts off the natural migration route of the Glimmer-Striders. It breaks the ecosystem of the whole sector."

"He was stubborn to the end," Maeve murmured.

"He was an idiot," Nora corrected, though her voice lacked conviction. She leaned back against the wall again, closing her eyes. "He was a brilliant, stubborn, impractical idiot who left us a mountain of trash, three hundred acres of dirt, and a debt load that would sink a small corporation."

Silence descended on the bay, filled only by the hum of the air recyclers and the slow, heavy breathing of the recovering bull in the back stall.

After a long time, Nora opened one eye and looked at her sister. "So. What’s the plan for tomorrow?"

Maeve offered a faint, tired smile. "Tomorrow, we clean the surgery bay. Then we go through Dad's patient files, item by item. We figure out which ranches actually have credit, which ones have assets we can use, and which ones are just lying to us."

"And the debt to the pharmaceutical company?"

"You're the financial expert," Maeve said, standing up and stretching her sore back until her spine popped. "You're going to call their billing department at eight in the morning, use every bit of high-society charm and legal jargon you learned in school, and convince them to grant us a thirty-day extension on the principal."

Nora groaned, covering her face with her dirt-stained hands. "They'll laugh in my face."

"Not if you threaten to audit their local distribution tariffs," Maeve said, turning toward the living quarters door. "I've seen you work, Nora. You're meaner than any land-grabber in Sector Four when someone touches your ledger."

Nora stayed sitting on her crate for a moment longer. She looked down at her hands—her manicured nails were chipped, her palms were stained with purple fluid, and she smelled like an alien barnyard. She let out a long, slow breath that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

"Thirty days," Nora muttered to the empty room. "Thirty days, and if we're still broke, I'm personally selling this place to the railway company and buying a yacht."

She stood up, kicked off the oversized rubber boots, and followed her sister into the dark house, leaving the clean scalpels drying on the tray beneath the emerald light of the frontier sky.