REZQ-themed commission for http://weasyl.com/~daxtered

Horticulture. Geology. Cultivation. Most people would probably consider these things to be relatively sedate pursuits—a practice of contemplation and record-keeping, mostly done in the organised comfort of the greenhouse or the pristine cool of the research laboratory. Strange then that Dax would find that, increasingly, his expertise in these areas sees him gathering samples from inside active volcanoes, recording hours of sunlight in caustically sulphuric marshlands, or, as in this case, rappelling down the side of a cliff to gain access to a particularly interesting crater that’s not stable enough to land a shuttle.

As part of the initial planetary horticulturist research team hired by a pharmaceutical suppliers, Dax is responsible for surveying the possibility of growing a delicate, awkward, prima donna of a crop on this planet. Fortunately, he may actually be in line for something of a bonus. When the survey team originally arrived here, enthusiastic about the possibility of growing their crop on the planet owing to its solar positioning, climate, and so on, they had initially found the soil to have an absence of the correct mineral balance for that crop. And while it is possible to ship out mineral supplements and fertilisers, to do so would be expensive, and eat into the company’s margins.

What Dax realised is that areas of the planet had been bombarded by giant meteorites at some point in its history — and explorations of the crater sites had shown that those at least some of these giant space rocks had considerably enriched the soil where they had impacted. In other words, the planet is pockmarked with craters full of exactly the kind of fertiliser that the crop needs.

So now, with one cultivation site on the planet already operational, Dax is scouting out other craters, to see if the same goldmine of minerals can be found in them too. Sometimes job satisfaction does exist, even in the crappy space future.