Contracts can be broken, but vows are forever.
A dying man, a corporate extermination order, and an extraordinary alien species thriving in the canopy above a mineral seam.
Caleb Reed has days left to live, and his employer has already accounted for them. Stationed alone on a remote survey outpost, one final signature stands between leaving his wife provided for—or leaving her with the funeral bill.
All he has to do is declare the colony living in the massive tree above a lucrative mineral seam as mindless vermin and sign the extermination order.
But as his body fails, Caleb discovers the true nature of the organisms thriving in the canopy. Drawing power directly from the seam below, they aren't pests—and they aren't mindless.
Caleb must make an impossible choice: condemn an extraordinary species to extinction in order to secure his wife's financial future, or sacrifice his life—and her payout—to save them.
Blue Zone is a first-contact story built around a moral dilemma with no clean answer: a dying man, a corporate extermination order, and an extraordinary alien species thriving in the canopy above a mineral seam. It's a short read about sacrifice, corporate power, and what we owe to life we barely understand. It's part of the Termination Clause Novella Series, and it can be read at any point in the series.
