Aria’s eyes squeaked open. “My head…” She rolled over and spotted her blaring alarm clock. It was morning.

She shot straight up in her bed and kicked off her blankets. It was another haunting dream. The pills did not work as well when she did not follow instructions.

Try as she might, she could not remember how last night came to a close. What she could recall was exciting. She felt a soreness on her forehead. Her cool palm tenderly touched a bump. It hurt. She looked at her bedside table and the pointed edge that she may have collided with in the middle of the night. Or was that not what happened? Something told her no.

Despite all this, her awake mind felt refreshingly light, less pulled in the directions of lust and worry. Was one romp really enough to take the edge off? Perhaps she was cured. No additional so-called investing in oneself was necessary. Her time and attention were better used elsewhere.

She checked the clock. She would have to choose between squeezing in a quick follow up session as prescribed or cleansing her sticky body after a night of self care. While the Captain did order her to seek therapy, she technically did already talk to Doc and was already feeling a little better. She also knew she would feel a lot more comfortable during her mission if she did not feel disgusting in her clothes. The choice seemed clear. Besides, Doc’s therapy was fine, but sometimes a steaming shower was all the medicine you needed.

She enjoyed the long shower. Hot water pipes were a luxury reserved for officers and dignitaries and so was Plutonian scotch hidden inside a false shampoo bottle.

Stepping out of the shower wrapped in a towel, a knock came from her quarter’s door.

“Aria?” Hansel inquired. He was early.

“Come in.”

He opened the door and slipped quietly in. At the sight of her towel-compressed bosom, Hansel perked up and focused his eyes like tractor beams.

“Hey. Eyes up here,” she said. A flash of a memory from the night before returned to her mind. Oh, how delicious that was! Perhaps because of this memory, she betrayed her own demand and allowed her own gaze to wander below Hansel’s belt. He was enjoying the show. A seed of desire burst through the soil in her soul and she squeezed her thighs together in an attempt to quell it. This troubled her because the mood levelers were still not working at one-hundred percent.

She forced her own line of sight upwards. She did not want to be a hypocrite. “Hey! I said eyes up here!”

“Sorry!” He held his head up. His eyes honed in on her forehead. “What happened to you? Are you okay?”

It was considerate of him to notice. She faced her mirror and ran a brush through her hair. “It’s nothing serious. I just bumped my head on my end table.”

He sighed. “Did you forget to tether yourself again? You were always a forgetful one,” he said with a slight smile.

She smiled sheepishly. She had certainly tethered herself, but not in the right way. “Um, yeah. I may have overlooked that little important step. I was a little frantic in preparation for…” She paused before she said more than she was willing to share. “I was up late thinking about the mission and must have just fallen asleep sitting in bed.”

He chuckled. “What are we going to do with you, Lieutenant Pantel?” He took a seat at her desk. “You know, it feels really good to not be on edge around you.”

“What, like I’m a real person with feelings whom you have to be civil around for once?” Aria peered through the reflection of her mirror. He was admiring her form from behind. He never earned the right to see what she looked like under the Academy’s uniform all those years ago. She did not know him well enough back then. By the time their romance was over, she thought she would never think of him in that realm ever again. But it was not because she found him unattractive. It was mostly that prickly personality. Oh how the times had changed.

She pretended not to notice because she wanted to tease this jerk. She pushed her hips slowly side to side and finished brushing very slowly. She placed her brush on the mirror ledge and, for a split second, their eyes met in the reflection. His eyebrows shot up.

He turned around quickly and faced the door. “A-are you almost ready to go? It’s still early enough that foot traffic is light. I know Saturdays are your day off, but I had to mark today as a sick day so I don’t want to be seen prancing around the ship too much. Oh, and did you figure out the problems we discussed?”

“I did. I have it all worked out. Let’s get to the shuttle then promptly.”

He slowly turned back to see her almost fully clothed. “Oh, and I’ve been thinking about this since yesterday. How exactly are you going to check out a shuttle without anyone knowing? Your name will be on the hanger manifest.”

She buttoned her jacket and adjusted her pins and regalia. “Being somewhat famous has its perks. There are those who owe a favor or two to me for something I did a couple years ago.”

“You dirty dog!” he grinned with filthy motivation.

“Not like that! Don’t be gross!” They may have turned over a new leaf, but she was not prepared for him to start verbalizing her sexuality like that. “I signed a few autographs and attended a virtual birthday party for a kid once or twice. I’m going to be cashing almost all of them in today.” She pocketed her datapad and headed for her door. “If all goes well, I’ll have a new stash of fame to bank.”

“And me too?” he asked as he followed her into the hallway.

“Of course. Whether you like it or not, we’re sharing all the gloom or glory. This could be another meteoric rise for us both or the end of our careers as we know it.”

“I just want to save the environment. Let’s not make this sound like some type of lust for recognition.”

She shook her head. “Call it whatever you like for now. You won’t get the same privilege if we fail.”

They entered the hangar and Aria was pleased that there were a very few number of crew servicing the area. Officer Dary Lenzel was examining a shuttle for his morning report. He was just the malleable man she was looking for.

“Officer Lenzel. How are you this morning?”

“Lieutenant Pantel.” He saluted.

“I have a favor to ask of you.” She approached the shuttle and placed a hand on an engine. This was the one she would need. It was fast, modern, and most importantly not logged into the daily docking log yet. This was precisely why she had to be here so early.

“Oh! That’s a pleasant surprise. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about what you did for my little girl. I couldn’t believe the look on her face when she saw the hero of the Sumpter Nebula wishing her a happy birthday! Oh Lieutenant, you made me a really happy father that day.” He extended his hand hesitantly. She was kind enough to shake it and pat it gently.

“Of course, Lenzel. I know I said at the time that you didn’t owe me anything, and I mean that. I was just happy to do it. But, today I’m coming to you because I need your help.”

“Of course, Lieutenant! Please, tell me what I can do.”

“Dary, I need to do something really important today. I need to be…” She swallowed hard and tried saying the words a few times in her head before she found the resolve to articulate them out loud. “I need to be the hero of Sumpter Nebula again.”

She caught Hansel smiling off to the side. Maybe he knew how absurd it sounded to describe herself as some type of war celebrity. However, he could not have known how it truly made her feel on the inside. Anxiety and nausea all pooled together, threatening to remind her of darker days.

“Oh my god. What’s going on?” Dary placed his datapad on a maintenance cart and darted his eyes around the hanger. “Are we in danger?”

“No, no, no. Not yet, at least. Remember that ship that flew by us yesterday?”

“Ah! Don’t tell me we’re under attack!” He backed up and tripped over the maintenance cart. He scooted farther away and his chest began oscillating at an alarming pace. “Oh god! Don’t tell me it’s Quillian! Where are they? Are they here?”

“Dary, no! Calm down!” She immediately recognized the signs of a flashback caused by post-traumatic stress. She had to help him, but she felt her own heart starting to quicken. She too was wounded.

Aria huffed quickly until Hansel placed a hesitant hand on her shoulder. “Hey. Are you okay?”

She snapped out of it easier than she thought. Perhaps the pills were still good for something. She knelt in front of Dary and grabbed his shoulders. They locked their eyes together.

“Dary. You’re safe. You’re going to be okay. You’re right here in the hangar with me. The war is over. It’s over...” Her assurance was as much for him as it was for her, but she did not want to admit that. His breathing calmed down and he finally nodded that he was going to be fine.

Once she too caught her breath, she said, “Listen. That mystery ship went down to the surface and I need to follow it. Can you help me discreetly take a shuttle and keep it under wraps until I get back?”

His eyes grew two sizes too big. “You’re planning on going down there to confront a possible Quillian? Yeah, I’ve heard the rumors.”

“I don’t want to tell you any more information than I have to. It's safer for you this way in case something goes wrong. But I’ll be okay. I’ll have Doctor Heinrich with me.” She pointed to Hansel who flashed a polite smile. “He and I can handle whatever is down there.”

Dary fussed with a pair of gloves in his hands. “A whole shuttle? Oh, I don’t know. For how long?”

She looked out of the massive hangar entryway into the stars and at the planet below. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe just a couple of hours? With the weather conditions as they are, we’ll be back well before breakfast.”

She moved her hands from his shoulders to the back of his head. She grabbed a tuft of his hair. She did not want him to feel threatened, just to be further persuaded. “Dary. This is on you now. Nobody’s seen a Quillian in a real long time. If that’s what landed down there, then the Federation needs to know what they’re up to. Wouldn’t your daughter be proud to know her father had a part in this story?”

“A-and the Captain approved of this?”

“I said this was a favor, didn’t I?”

Dary almost looked like he was going to call for help before he sighed and nodded profusely. “Yeah. Okay. I want in. I-I can buy you an hour and a half. And that’s max! Just give me a couple of minutes and I’ll have this one ready to go. Oh, and it hasn’t been checked in yet so no one will be looking for it.”

“Great plan, Lenzel.”

Aria and Hansel boarded the shuttle. Hansel sat at the controls. “Are you sure you have everything we need? You’ve read all the latest reconnaissance reports on our landing area and you’ve loaded all the necessary equipment?”

She hardly comprehended him. Instead, she was fantasizing about what her first words to Chron would be. But, that was silly. They would of course not make contact. “Huh? Oh yeah, sure. I’m not stupid.”

Hansel lifted off and programmed the shuttle’s stealth and autopilot. Aria meanwhile reviewed and submitted her morning reports on schedule to keep suspicion of her whereabouts at a minimum. Out through the hangar they flew and soared down to the surface.

They landed in a dirt field about a kilometer south of the settlement. Any closer to the settlement or the jungle and they may be spotted by either party. The latest survey report claimed the unknown ship was last seen entering the jungle canopy just west of it. Aria was first onto the ground with a backpack of field gear and Hansel trailed her with nothing but a canteen of aqua. This annoyed her a little, but she understood that he was no soldier.

“Thank god the atmosphere is breathable,” he said, inhaling the fresh air. “I don’t think I’d stay sane trapped inside one of those little helmet fish bowls I saw in the shuttle.”

Aria led the trek through the sparse grass and cracked soil while consulting her datapad for the direction toward the enemy ship. The terrain was simple, but her compass was acting unreliably. There must have been some type of magnetic interference in the atmosphere. She began to sweat. Normally this would not be an issue. There are multiple different types of compasses rated for different types of planets. However, she just grabbed the first one on a stack near the hangar. She was so excited that she carelessly failed to read the planetary magnetic field report which would have clued her into the problem. How did she not do that? That was textbook mission preparation.

Without a functioning compass, she would need to navigate manually. In order to do that, she needed to get her eyes on the settlement to keep herself oriented. As much as she wanted to see Chron’s home, this was not a good time.

She led them toward the settlement while Hansel complained. “What are those fishbowl suits even for? If your mission is to only explore habitable planets with developed Terran-like life, you’d never make landfall on something inhospitable.”

His incessant whining was distracting her. To shut him up, she said, “Hospitable is relative to the native inhabitants. If we run into any toxic plumes or acid rain that our foriegn bodies can handle, we’ll need to go back and grab them.”

“Can that really happen? Wait, you’re pulling my leg! I’ve seen the meteorological assessment of this planet and I happen to remember that it’s classified as a Level 1 exoplanet. We’re perfectly safe.”

“Wow. Lookie how smart you are,” she mumbled. In the distance, she spotted what may have been village huts, but they also could have been strange looking boulders. They needed to get closer for her to be sure. Understanding they were increasing their risk of violating galactic E-1 civilization protocol, extra insurance was now needed.

She threw her pack on the ground and waved Hansel over. “Here. Put this on.”

Hansel held a shimmering poncho made of crystals. “Ooo. Camouflage? Why is it the military always gets the best toys?”

Once she slipped into her own, she used her datapad to select the camouflage setting that best matched the outfits of the natives. The ponchos sparkled until they were both dressed in primitive leaf and animal pelt attire. The fabric constricted around their body like a wetsuit until they were bonafide cave people complete with simulated tattoos.

She admired the design. “Seems the egg-heads got this one right. Let’s go.”

Aria looked up from her clothing. A young native girl had been watching them from the edge of the east treeline. She stumbled out from the jungle and began limping frantically toward the settlement.

Aria panicked and began to chase. “We need to catch her! She may communicate with the others that we’re some type of threat!”

Hansel did his best to keep up with her and slammed into her backside when Aria froze. A panther-like predator leapt out from the jungle. It zipped toward the girl and knocked her tiny frame to the ground with a massive paw.

“Stand back!” Aria said as she withdrew a pistol from her pack. She fired once and burned a wound into the panther’s side. The savage beast skittered backwards and fled into the wilds. The girl struggled to stand with distress as Aria approached her.

Aria knelt at the girl’s side. “Don’t worry. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.” The girl was much taller than Aria had estimated from a distance. This made sense since these people were practically giants compared to the common Terran. It was impossible to determine her age with certainty, but if Aria had to guess, she would have said about four or five Terran years.

“It can’t understand you,” Hansel said as he stood nervously several paces back. “I don’t mean to be a total jackass, but before you waste any of our time trying to communicate with this creature, may I point out an earlier argument I made about their ability to converse?”

“What’s that?” she said without amusement.

“See? No text messaging yet. Therefore, not Terran equivalent.”

Aria grimaced. At least when it came to conversing, he was right. However, she was quick to think of a solution. She believed these people were incredibly close to complex communication. While they were not exactly writing down epic tales, they at least understood the concepts of survival and cooperation. Could she connect with them with something as simple as hand gestures?

Aria reached out an open palm and showed both sides of her hand were empty. The shaking girl slowly sat herself up and pulled her bruised leg closer. Aria reached down slowly to her own leg and rubbed it for a moment. Then she lifted her leg and moved it freely around before taking a few slow steps. The girl seemed to understand and she lifted her hands away from her bruise as Aria stepped closer.

She waved back toward Hansel. “Hand me one of the medical gels inside the pack.”

Hansel retrieved an all-purpose first aid treatment. “Hey, I’m no field expert, but shouldn’t there be more than one?”

“Of course,” Aria said, reaching her hand back. “They come in packs of…” She glanced back. The packaging was empty except for one.

“Are you sure you want to use the last one on this? You never know what we’ll run into out here.”

“She is not an it. She is a little girl and yes. Hand it over.” She snagged the bottle from his hands and squeezed its contents onto the girl's leg. At first, the girl squirmed probably because the gel was so cold. The inside of the refrigerated bottle kept the nanobots in a barely functioning state until they were ejected and activated for service. Aria was confident that their two biologies were close enough for the gel to still be effective.

Slowly, the girl’s bruise faded and her fear transformed into wonder. Aria offered to help her up and the girl took her hand.

“What are you doing?” Hansel asked. “Shouldn’t you shoot her or whatever? She could still alert the other natives of our presence.”

Aria was aghast. “We’re not shooting a little girl! What is wrong with you? I’m just going to walk her back to the village. I’m camouflage well enough. You can stay here if you want. I’ll just drop her off and be right back.”

“And get eaten by that giant cat? No thanks!”

The three of them walked together toward the settlement. There were no natives in sight so she let her guard down for a moment and checked her datapad again in case the compass signal was working yet. Unfortunately, a surprised grunt ahead came from a set of towering warrior women eyeing them suspiciously.

“Oh no! Was this a part of your bleeding-heart plan?” Hansel asked.

“Stand behind me. Follow my lead. No sudden movements.” Aria released the girl and watched as she ran toward one of the women. The other one hollered into the sky. This summoned other natives.

Aria and Hansel were quickly encircled by warriors. Their clothing was a mixture of animal hide and plant fibers as predicted, but the notably sparser coverage than their own camouflage left little to the imagination. The warrior’s breasts were barely bound to their chests. Tassets around their waist kept the insects away, but probably did little else.

Aria felt like she was surrounded by colossal cliff sides, ones that could collapse and crush them at any moment. Surely these women were confused by these clean-faced strangers who may be dressed like them but did not smell or walk the same. She lifted both of her arms slowly. She lowered herself to her knees. Hansel did the same. They stayed like this for a little while until, to Aria’s great anticipation, the lumbering Chron revealed himself and approached with the little girl perched on his shoulder. She was equal parts elated and dreading this situation.

“What are we going to do, master planner?” Hansel asked under his breath. “We are in direct violation of galactic policy!”

“Not yet! I know the letter of the law. Technically, we can still be good with it as long as we don’t reveal our advanced, off-world nature. We need to blend in. Do as I do!”

Chron came to halt directly in front of them. His massive footsteps behind him left an impression in the dirt. Aria hoped he would not leave a similar impression upon her face, but maybe a smaller mark upon her bottom would not be a crime. This thought instantly summoned a desire from just under her surface. Her palms began to sweat, thoughts of lust were pushing strategy out of her mind and she desperately wanted to do anything she could to scratch an insatiable itch. Her previous night’s fun was great, but she should have seen Doc for her follow up to actually get results. Now her half-baked therapy was falling apart and building the potential to derail her entire mission.

“I...I think we’re in trouble,” Hansel said. Chron’s massive head turned toward him.

“Don’t. Say. Anything.”

Chron turned toward Aria. He came one step closer to her. He was easily three meters tall rivaling the head clearance of her private quarters. He lifted the girl off his shoulder and placed her gently upon the ground. The girl pointed at her leg and then at Aria. Startling Aria, she wrapped her arms around her and squeezed briefly. Aria did not speak, but she wanted to ask the girl to take it a little easier. Her strong embrace was suffocating.

Aria began to lower her arms to return the hug until Chron began to frown. She swiftly sent them back up and waited for the girl to step away and back into the surrounding crowd.

Chron crashed his knee into the soil and knelt before them. The silence in the circle was deafening. Aria looked up into his deep eyes and let herself get lost in his pools of emerald. She yelped when, without warning, he scooped her up into his arms and gave her a massive squeeze.

“Oh my god!” she cried. Her legs dangled helplessly. Her arms were too restricted for her to push away.

“Aria!” Hansel leapt up. He reached into the pack. He drew the pistol and pointed it forward.

“No! Don’t! It’s...it’s just a hug!” Aria screamed.

Hansel hesitated. The rest of the circle seemed to understand he was being aggressive. They pointed their spears and closed in around him. He reluctantly tossed the pistol back into the pack and threw his hands up again.

Chron threw Aria over his shoulder and stormed off further into the settlement. Far behind, she witnessed Hansel being hassled by the warriors and eventually coaxed toward somewhere else where she could not see.

“Put me down! Let me go!” She pounded upon Chron’s back, but he did not flinch. He carried her into a hut and tossed her like a doll upon a bed of dry grass. Her landing was soft. Only her sense of authority was bruised.

“W-what are you going to do to me?” she demanded.

Her fear melted away when she gazed above at his broad form and bronzed, defined muscles looming over her like an eclipse. “You immodest, big…strong…” She paused to smack her chapped lips. “Whatever you do, just please be gentle.” She covered her eyes with her forearm and feigned a cower. Every hair on her body stood up and she held her excited breath. It was finally time and she was not afraid.

He just grunted. Instead of touching her, he dragged a large rock from across the hut and sat down next to her. Behind them was a wooden chest. He opened it and plucked out a set of crude playthings. They were dolls. He handed them to her.

There were three. One was a big mass of plant stalk and rope, big like him. The second was a smaller feminine figure with the same length of hair as the young girl she saved. And the third was a woman with what appeared to be a protruding belly.

“A-are these you? Is...is this your family?” she asked as she pointed between the large doll and himself.

He grunted.

A woman parted the hut’s cloth entrance and carried herself inside. Her skin was glowing and so was her smile. She cradled her abdomen and was careful to direct her gift slowly as she waddled toward them. Behind her, the young girl tugged at the woman’s hide tasset and pointed at Aria repeatedly. She verbalized with what Aria believed were the earliest stages of a language. Sounds like this had not yet been captured by the instruments. It sounded so different in person. Perhaps their monitoring tools were not calibrated to this planet’s atmosphere correctly. She would need to look further into that. If she survived this experience, that is.

The linguist in Aria automatically started to decipher the girl’s primitive syntax. The chaotic strings of words sounded distinct, but she already knew they had no meaning. She recalled from her personal research that they had not yet developed sentence structure to form complex speech. There was no need to exert herself further.

Aria squeezed her eyes shut and slowly exhaled a sigh that lasted what she believed was a thousand years. She realized that she had been lusting over a married man, for all intents and purposes. This made her feel sour and repulsed at her own thoughts. She would never have considered herself an adulterer and she did not want to start now. Although, Chron’s tribe probably had no formal institution of marriage and...no! She dispelled the notion of justifying any contemplation from her mind and resolved herself to look at Chron in a different light. She slowly opened her eyes.

The girl was sitting directly in front of her with the dolls. She was playing pretend and she offered Aria the father figure. Aria respectfully took it and moved it around in an aggressive fashion. He stomped his foot and swung his arms like a brute. The girl stopped her with a light touch of her fingers and moved Aria’s hands in a gentle, dignified pace. These people were not animalistic cavemen like they were portrayed aboard. They were indeed more compassionate as she had hypothesized.

Aria waved until she attracted Chron’s attention. “Excuse me, Chron. Oh,” she withdrew. “I suppose there’s no reason to address you by name. Or to speak at such lengths about anything at all.” She thought for a moment. What she really needed to do was communicate her desires in the simplest of terms.

She nodded to herself and tried again. “Aria,” she pointed to herself. “Go.” She used two fingers to simulate walking. “Friend.” She pulled up her hair to the length of Hansel’s and then pantomimed firing a pistol. “Aria, me. Go friend. Understand?”

Chron stared at her or perhaps through her. She was unsure if he was even listening until he arose and offered her his hand.

“You want go? Go with you?” She pointed to herself and to his hand. He nodded. She placed her small palm in his large fist and he led her out of the hut. The woman and girl waved goodbye and she smiled back. They walked through the settlement and to a hut near where they had come. She heard Hansel scream inside. She broke from Chron’s grasp and sprinted into the tent.

“Get your hands off of him!” she screamed.

“Ha, ha, ha! That tickles!” Hansel stood in the middle of the hut completely naked with a gaggle of curious native women poking his body with their fingers. He was fully erect and clearly admiring their scantily clad accouterments. One woman had her full hand around his shaft and seemed to be more curious than sensual.

“Hansel! What are you doing?”

“Aria! Oh my god!” He politely excused himself and ran into her arms.

She recoiled at the feeling of his excitement poking her in the thigh.

He backed away. “Sorry! Sorry about that. So yeah, pretty crazy huh? Were you worshiped too, wherever they took you?” He noticed Chron standing patiently just outside. “No way! Did you get serviced by the head honcho?”

“Knock it off!” she said with considerable embarrassment. She located Hansel’s clothing and poncho and shoved them into his arms. “Get dressed. We’re going to find that ship and do what we came here to do.”

She turned away as he dressed himself. The native women appeared to lose interest during this process. They exited.

Finally both camouflaged again, they emerged from the hut. Aria stepped in front of Chron. “Sky rock. Big flash. Crash, boom.” She used her hands to illustrate the best she could and eventually found the right combination to get her point across. Chron pointed into the treeline far away. Aria spotted what appeared to be a faint column of smoke rising in the sky.

“There it is,” she said to Hansel. “Grab the pack and let’s go.”

“I’m not built for this kind of labor. Why do I have to carry it this time?”

“Because I already did! Stop your belly-aching and let’s go!”

Chron and a small group of natives waved goodbye as they traversed into the plains again toward the wilderness. As they walked, Hansel tugged at his poncho. “Do we still need to wear these get-ups?”

“Actually, no. You can take it off if you want.”

He did not and neither did she. Maybe they just felt more comfortable in another layer that separated them from this strange world. It was a mystery what they were about to walk into. Aria knew that she would take any advantage, no matter how trivial, that she could get.

They approached the west treeline. Hansel said, “I’m glad that all turned out so well, but how did you know Chron was trying to hug you and not squish you to death?”

Aria was silent for a moment. And then she admitted, “I didn’t.”

In front of them, Hansel pointed to a line of peculiar flora. “Ah! There it is. Polypodiopsida-novacula!” He rushed to the jungle’s edge and fell to his knees to examine a sprout. “G-give me the pack! I want to take a second sample to my lab since we have the opportunity.”

“We don't have time for this!” Aria protested.

“But you had time to meet your little friends, didn’t you?”

“That was by accident! Come on, let’s go…”

Aria stepped past Hansel into the razorweed. One of the long, sharp leaves unfurled and whipped the side of her leg. “Ah!” She stumbled back as several plants whacked her. They cut right through her clothes.

“My word!” Hansel scrambled back. “It seems this variety has evolved serious barbs and muscle strength beyond anything documented to date! This is incredible.”

Aria fell on her bottom. She lifted the flashing poncho, damaged and failing to maintain the camouflage indefinitely. Her pants were torn and her legs were covered in lacerations. “Are you not more worried about my sliced up legs?”

“Oh!” Hansel glanced at her. “Of course. I’m very sorry for you. We should just apply some…” He placed the pack down. He retrieved an empty bottle. “Oh. That’s right. We’re out of medical gel.”

“Just hand it over.” Aria snatched the bottle. She squeezed it as best she could and managed to extract a little treatment. Her legs cooled, but the visible sores still remained. She scanned the horizon before them. Razorweed as far as the eye could see. “So, we have a problem. We can’t enter the jungle.”

“We could just go back to the shuttle and grab those hazard suits...”

“We can’t use the suits. They aren’t rated as armor. And there aren’t any in the shuttle.”

“But didn’t you say you packed all the supplies we’d need when we left?”

She had said that. She in fact had not checked the shuttle’s inventory because she had her head in the clouds.

“We-well then, let’s just fly over the jungle.”

“Nope.” She shook her head. She was frustrated with herself. “We’d risk giving ourselves away on our approach. We have to go in low and slow through the terrain. We need proper expedition equipment. I can get it, but we need to go back to the ship.”

“Good point. So let’s just zip back up to the ship really quick and...wait, no.” He consulted his datapad. “We wouldn’t have enough time to fly back and forth a second time.”

“Damn it,” she said as she picked herself up and started walking back to the shuttle. How could she have overlooked such a basic preparation point? She put them in danger by not confirming their types of suits onboard, not ensuring her compass would work in this environment, and failing to stock proper amounts of medical gel. Her mind was still very much a mess despite her believing she was already cured. Not seeing Doc and completing her treatment this morning was an error.

“Well, I guess our little preservation mission was a bust. But at least we didn’t get caught and end our careers…”

“We’re going to have to try again tomorrow.”

Hansel tripped over his feet but caught himself. “Tomorrow? Do you really think we could pull this off again?”

They started jogging back to the shuttle. “We have to. We’re so close to finding out what that ship is. I think this is much bigger than us.”