The problem was still weighing heavily on Aria’s mind as she made her way to lunch. She briskly walked into the cafeteria and tapped Tinsdale on the shoulder. She beckoned Tinsdale to take what was left of her meal to go.

As they turned to leave, Hansel appeared in front of her. He seemed troubled, no longer his superior self like earlier. It was peculiar.

“Aria, we need to talk.”

She refused to make eye contact. “What do you want? I don’t have time to talk to you.”

“Aria. It’s serious. Believe me, I want to interact with you as little as possible, but I’m only coming to you because I have to.” He placed a datapad on the table.

Tinsdale watched Hansel slide the datapad across the table with a piqued interest, but it was face-down. Whatever was on it was clearly for Aria’s eyes only.

Aria picked it up with disinterest and looked at the screen. She stared. Then she blinked twice. “Is this some kind of joke?”

Hansel shook his head. “I wish it were.”

“I don’t understand why…”

Hansel shushed her. “I can explain more, but not here. We should go somewhere private.”

“What is it?” Tinsdale whined. She grabbed for the datapad.

Aria considered handing it over and blowing Hansel’s whole deal, which might finally put him in the brig, but there was a tiny chance that what he had stumbled upon was threatening to her interests. And if that was the case, she needed to do something about it but she did not have enough information yet.

She decided to see how much she could tease out of him. “Sorry,” Aria said to Tinsdale. She handed the datapad back to Hansel. “He and I are going to have a little chat. Save me a seat. I’ll be back shortly,” she glared at Hansel, “I promise.”

Aria and Hansel walked in awkward silence through the ship’s white metal corridors. Down narrow ladder tunnels and through strict security checkpoints, nothing was said.

“Where are we going?” Hansel asked hesitantly, glancing around a part of the ship he rarely walked through.

“My private quarters.”

“Why are we going there? Why not your office? Or mine for that matter.”

“Because, idiot. They have passive monitoring devices. You don’t want too many people to know how you got those photos, do you?”

Hansel did not answer.

Aria opened the door to her quarters and held it open for him. “After you.”

He stepped inside. “You want to stay behind me. Can’t have an enemy at your back, right? Is that your military training coming out?”

“Yeah, I guess it is.” She secretly wanted to bop him on the back of the head, but she needed to know more. She followed him inside and shut the door.

She made no effort to hide her gaze as she watched his shapely behind. His lab coat draped over his shoulders and left much to be desired as far as fashion sense. If he looked anything like he did in the Academy yearbook, those photos from the swim team regional competitions, then it would be a galactic crime to wear such an unflattering outfit. She felt a tingle inside her that threatened to betray her stoic demeanor. She shut her eyes, furrowed her brow, and tried to visualize her feelings draining from her body and out through the tips of her toes.

“So, you better have a good explanation for how you have ground-level photos of the settlement and surrounding area and what the heck that machine is.”

He pointed to her desk and chair. “May I?” He pulled the chair into the center of the room and sat down. Upon one of her blank walls, he projected his datapad screen across it. “Much to my chagrin, you were right when you accused me of surface visitation.”

“I knew it, you son of a…”

“I’m not here to hash that out again. Don’t forget, you’ll never be able to prove it.”

Aria scowled.

His mouth pursed with displeasure. “Seeing as how I have feeling I’m going to need your help, I offer the following as an initial peace offering. Yes, I did take a shuttle to the surface. My research has uncovered a rare form of semi-sentient fauna. I needed to gather samples and perform some in-person observations.”

She wagged her finger. “That is completely against the E-1 civilization intergalactic protocol! You could be put away for a long time.”

“I’m not stupid. I know. I wouldn’t have risked it if I didn’t think the specimen’s habitat wasn’t at grave risk.”

“Why do you care so much about a stupid bunch of plants? And that machine in the photo, what is it doing? It looks dangerous.” Whatever that boxy mechanical monstrosity was, it was too close to the native’s settlement for her comfort.

He handed her his datapad. “Exactly.”

She controlled the projection. A set of photos scrolled upon the wall. The first few were from an orbital surveillance satellite. The strange machine, that she now realized was the size of a building, sat alone on the riverbank inside the jungle just a few kilometers from Chron’s settlement. The next set of photos were from the surface. There were many of a single type of plant, a peculiar derivative of razorweed if her biology course from the Academy could be remembered. The rest were of a pillar of smoke emanating from the jungle canopy. Whatever this machine’s purpose, it seemed obvious now that it was destroying the surrounding area and Chron’s people could be in danger.

Even from different angles, she could not be sure of its purpose, but she did have an unsettling idea. Terran and Quillians were different in as many ways as they were alike. While the Quillians condemned the Terrans for their consumption of the galaxy’s natural resources to fuel their species’ expansion, Quillians too tore planets asunder in the name of eternal preservation. The reasons for the war were complicated, but most historians would agree that this ideology, whether the stars existed to be harvested or preserved, drove much of the propaganda on each side.

Aria’s recollection of the old wartime reports were of videos showing Quillian workers uprooting forests, boxing creatures by hand, and siphoning oceans into vast freighters. There was no automated process for conserving and transporting entire ecosystems. These pictures of the planet below showed the river narrowing as an unseen influence intruded upon it. A growing barren circle around the machine indicated it was the center of some type of process. Aria believed this appeared to be a razing rather than conservation effort, but she was not qualified to know the difference.

She sighed with relief. Perhaps this was not Quillian after all. It was more likely that such destruction would be the work of Terran pirates whether she wanted to admit it or not.

“What do you know about that cube?” she asked.

“Nothing. And I don’t know how to stop it. But this area of the planet seems to be the only location of this novel species of Polypodiopsida-novacula and this worries me.”

“What is that? Like the scientific jargon for razorweed?”

Hansel rolled his eyes. “Yes, in layman’s terms. But it should not be conflated with the common variety. This particular genus…”

Aria shoved his datapad back into his hands. “I don’t care about plants. I was asking about the machine. If you don’t know anything more, then we’re done here.” Yes it was true that the machine worried her, but she could continue the investigation alone.

“Wait! I need your help saving these fauna. They have the potential to rocket my research.”

“You were wrong to think I’d ever help you.” She stepped toward her door to show him the way out.

“Aria Pantel,” he said in a confident way that chilled her. “I happen to know you and I have a shared investment concerning this area of the planet.”

She froze. “What the flip are you talking about?”

“When I was passing by your office earlier, before the rogue ship appeared, I heard voices coming from inside. I may just be a biologist, but I’m still moderately aware of other areas of scientific work. Those were cro-magnon vocalizations, were they not? You are interested in the inhabitants of the settlement, right?”

She pursed her lips. This little, sneaky snake. Was he intentionally eavesdropping outside her office? Had he done this before? The possibility made her ill. Had he ever overheard her enjoying...personal time? It was one thing if Tinsdale walked in on her, but Hansel? She almost wanted to vomit at the thought.

“Get to the point!” she hollered.

“Very well. I don’t know what happens to the things this machine’s instruments touch, but...” He rose out of his chair. Two steps toward her, he said, “I can only imagine that the primitive people of your interest would not do well against such technology.”

She scoffed. “If that was true, I still don’t need your help.”

Hansel paced the room. “Oh, Aria! We don’t have time to be stubborn with each other! There isn’t time for you to go it alone. I’ve calculated the rate of destruction this machine is causing and I believe it is exponentially accelerating. In only a day's time, it will engulf the habitat of the ‘razorweed’, as you like to call it. Give it two, it’ll begin crossing into the settlement. The planet will be barren in a week.”

Her eyes narrowed. She was thinking deeply about their shared predicament. Perhaps he perceived this and chose to make one final push.

Hansel handed his datapad back toward her. “There’s one more thing to see. It’s a video.”

Her curiosity was too strong. She noticed a small notification at the bottom of the screen and tapped it. A password prompt appeared.

“It’s riri19,” he said so quietly she barely heard it.

“Riri? And the year we graduated?” Why would he use her nickname in a password?

“I, um, I knew you’d be opening this so I made it something easy for you to type. That’s all.” He coughed and looked away.

Aria pressed play upon a video file. It was blurry footage of the hourglass shaped mystery ship hovering above the jungle canopy.

“I spotted it floating in the area. Maybe it was doing reconnaissance. I don’t know. What I want you to consider is my speed projections are based on the current machine’s output. Imagine how much more efficient it would be if there were more of them. We need to stop this before the problem grows.”

Darn it, he had a point. There were too many unknown variables to assume everything was going to be all right. The Captain’s reinforcements were maybe a week away at best.

“Okay,” she sighed, tossing back his datapad. “You’re right. I want to see the settlement safe and maybe it would be better working with another pair of hands. So, what do you propose?”

Hansel sat relieved in the chair. “No consultation with the Captain?”

“If your timeline is accurate, then I already know what his response is going to be. I’m ready to take action on my own. Again, what ideas do you have?”

“Aria, I’ve always known you to be a little rebellious compared to me. We’re both sort of the ying to the other’s yang. Me, being a well-to-do son of an aristocratic family of impeccable credentials, and you...well, I think I’d summarize it adequately as the daughter of a working-class lottery winner. I think we could make a good team in the right circumstances.”

His little dig was in reference to her father. If it was not for his heroic actions during the first days of the short-lived and doomed Quillian-Terran alliance, actions that gathered the information that eventually led to the war, then he nor she would be people of any significant note. However, that was not the reality. Her father was a war hero. She too had claimed her own brand of fame during the war proper. To claim that they were anything but aristocrats as well was insulting. They had earned the right, although she was not born with it. What did it matter in the end?

The fact that he would even mention her father caused an eruption of anger. “Do you want to work together or not? Saying crap like that is exactly my problem with you!”

Hansel laughed nervously. “I-I didn’t realize you’d be so sensitive to that. I, uh, guess I didn’t mean it in a bad way, but I just mean that we’re very different.”

“It sure didn’t sound like that.”

“So I like to push your buttons,” he shrugged. “I thought we were just destined to go at each other. Suppose it’s just an extension of our little habit. But you’re right. We should stop that now if we’re going to work together.” A picture frame near her bed caught his eye.

Aria watched curiously as he picked up the frame. “Don’t touch my things.”

He ignored her. “Is this your parents?” he asked, surprised.

“Yes. What of it?” She crept up to look around him. She wanted to make sure he was treating her photo with care.

“I’ve never heard you talk about your mother for as long as I’ve known you. Why is that?”

This was certainly a strange question. What did he care about her family? She would be cautious about what she revealed. “My mom died when I was eleven. There isn’t a lot to say to other people, less to say to you.”

He stared at the picture. A tender smile emerged. “I never had a mother. I’m a clone. Did you know that?”

Aria did not gasp, but she did tilt her head a tad and her eyes widened. For all the years she had known him, this had never come up in conversation. She supposed the secrecy was not entirely unreasonable. Those born through the cloning process did not generally disclose this fact. There was significant prejudice with being associated with the cloning industry. She did not count herself as one of the haters. She had no qualms with the idea. However, she did not really understand the appeal or benefits of such a decision. It seemed silly to her. Why opt out of the most fun part of making a child?

“No. You’ve never mentioned that to me. Why are you still touching my picture? Please, put it down.”

“I, too, don’t speak about this to a lot of people. But, I bet we keep these things to ourselves for very different reasons.” He gingerly placed the photo back down. “Interestingly, I know your mother.”

“Of course you do,” she said unimpressed. “Everyone knows about the Mother of the Million.”

“No, not just of her humanitarian efforts. Don’t get me wrong, her sacrifice and bravery that saved countless lives during the Martian Famine is worthy of all the attention she gets, but I mean I knew her. I met her in-person when I was little.”

Aria’s brow furrowed with puzzlement. She sat on her bed and shook her head. “There’s no way. You’re a home worlder. I was born and raised on Mars. There wouldn’t have been a time you’d ever have crossed paths with my family.”

“I spent my grade school days at a Martian boarding school. My father sent me there to give me an off worlder’s perspective of things before coming of age back on Earth. He said that if I grew up too cushy, with all the luxury and excess of our home, I may not have developed the tenacity to survive and succeed like our Martian siblings.”

Aria could see his eyes drifting up to the ceiling. His shoulders were relaxed and his attention was off of her.

“I was there during the revolt and famine. At least seventy-five percent of my school died of starvation.” He placed a hand on his cheek and smiled with a chuckle. “You know, I was so sure my father was going to show up at the school’s steps and whisk me back home. He had the means, the ability to do so. I had dual-citizenship so I wouldn’t have been quarantined like the majority of Martians. But, he never came. He never so much as called, or sent a communique, or anything. It was like he forgot about me.”

Aria never felt sympathy for Hansel before, and she was resistant to start now, but she was at a loss for the feeling he was describing. She never questioned the love of her parents, even after her mother gave her life to help end Earth’s blockade of off-world goods that brought Mars to its knees. She knew everything the two of them did was because they loved her. What Hansel was recounting was completely foriegn to her. A parent that did not love their child? Perhaps this was just how a donor feels about their clone child.

“She saved me.” He looked directly into Aria’s eyes. “Your mother, I mean.”

Aria stared back. She had no words to respond. This entire experience was like a confusing dream.

“Oh, wow,” he said, his gaze analyzing her pupils. “I never noticed this before, but you have the same eyes as hers.”

Aria blinked twice and hastily turned away. “I never heard of my mom working with a charter school. You must be mistaken.”

“No, I’m sure of it. Mrs. Alynnise Pantel of the Martian Cooperative organization. She brought food and medicine to my school and saved my butt just before I died of malnutrition. Lying in my hospital bed, that’s when I first learned of you.”

“What?” Aria said disturbed. “How could that be? Why would I even come up?”

“Your mother spoke about you all the time. She first mentioned you because she noted I was about the same age as her daughter. Back then, wow, I barely remember those days because it was all a sickly blur, but I remember not understanding her relationship with you. This idea of a person who incubated, carried, and gave birth to another person and then stayed to raise them for their entire life was a complete wonder to me. The closest thing I had to that was my father and he was a poor substitute.”

Aria shifted uncomfortably on her bed. “Why are you telling me all this? We’re not friends. We just need to work together to save the planet.”

“We had our little thing once. It was incredibly brief…”

“Three weeks, two days, and ten hours,” she said curtly.

He smiled, cheekily. “My, my. I didn’t know I had that kind of impact on you.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. It’s not a memory I ever relive.” That was partially a lie. On occasion, she thought back to those simpler, youthful days. They were both stupid and unwilling to compromise. Maybe things would have turned out differently if they were more mature like they were now.

He laughed a little. “I know it didn’t last, but we once maybe would have talked like this.”

“I don’t understand why you’ve never mentioned this before. Or why you’ve always been such an ass to me for as long as I can remember. Explain that.”

Hansel leaned against the wall and slid to the floor. “My feelings about you are...complicated. Always have been. After I got well and your mother left my school, I was both fascinated and jealous of you. Your mother was like an angel who would give her life for others. I never thought I could be like her, and I was right, but I always wondered if you would grow up to achieve such a feat. As I continued my studies, I sort of forgot about you until we met at the Academy. I couldn’t believe it.”

Aria remembered that meeting. She now looked back upon it with an inquisitive lens. She had always thought he was a self-absorbed prick. But now, she wondered if his actions were colored by his expectations of her. “Was I not who you thought I would be? You seemed awfully put off by me”

“I...may have created you to be someone in my mind that couldn’t have existed.”

“I was a teenager. People have a limit as to what they can become even if their parents are capable.”

He nodded solemnly. “I eventually came to understand that.” He paused. He caught her gaze again. “I was always jealous of you.”

She scoffed. “Jealous? You grew up with enough money to buy a colony and got to travel the planets before I even took my first spaceflight. Sure you got a little hungry, but so did I. I’d say, overall, you had it better.”

“But you had a family. A bonafide, cared if you were alive or dead pair of caretakers who loved you. I overheard your mother talking with her peers. She had dreams of what you’d become, what you’d grow up to be. She wished all the best for your future and your desires. My father?” He paced and waved his hand dismissively. “I was created to carry on his empire and legacy. I was never encouraged to have any dreams of my own. They say you can’t miss what you don’t know. But, I have a feeling I have an inkling of what I missed out on just by knowing you.

“I’m telling you all of this because I guess I thought I needed to explain myself. I had no idea you thought of me as a bully. I always just wanted to get on your case, sort of like a friendly rivalry but also partially because I was jealous of you. Oh, and of course there’s the whole me responding to you trying to attack me as well.”

“I do that because you attack me.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Who’s to say who was first?”

“You are always first.”

He shook his head with a smile. “I admit I never considered how you took it all. That was selfish of me. I see that now. But, I never did it to make you feel bad on purpose. Maybe just a little challenged.”

Aria’s head was filled with contradicting thoughts. This man, who she had spent years despising, was actually her admirer of sorts. The circumstances of their birth tore them apart before they even had a chance and it was not for the reasons she once believed. She was warming up a little to the idea of them working together especially considering the urgent situation on the planet below. She would not call it a complete change of heart, but at least she was not solely expecting him to stab her in the back at any moment. Maybe if they spoke a little more candidly, they could start to tear down these misconceptions they had created about each other.

“Okay. I believe you,” she said. “You knock off your stupid digs at me being Martian all the time and I’ll try let some of the stupid stuff you did in the past go. But, not all of it!”

He closed his eyes and nodded. “Fair. Aria Pantel, you’re a kinder soul than I am. Your mother would be proud.”

For the first time in a very long time, she did not want to slap him. But, time would tell if she would ever want to thank him for anything.

She hopped to her feet. “So, what’s the plan?”

“I have some ideas, but I’m still not sure how to make it all work. I know you have a knack for this kind of logistical stuff. Maybe you can figure something out, what with having more power and knowledge of the ship?”

Finally. It only took years, but he had given her one small piece of recognition regarding her talent. She nodded smugly. “Ah. I can see already we’re going to make an okay team.”