“Hey, at least you didn’t lose too much money.” I shook my head, still in a slight disbelief that there was a bet going to see when Luna and I would officially get together. I’d have to have a talk with Lieutenant Zu too…

Luna was also blushing quite a lot after this little revelation.

“It was so obvious there was such a great chemistry between the two of you. Honestly, if you weren’t that dense, Lauren, I’d have betted weeks earlier.”

“I really am not that dense.” I replied.

“You aren’t?”

“In the matter of fact, I chose to not immediately go into a relationship with Luna because I believed it was better that I took some time to think things through.”

“That’s true.” Luna supported my statement. “She was very thoughtful and respectful about it.”

“Alright, then I withdraw my statement… at least partially.”

I took that as a win.

“But Lauren, does that mean you’ve finally given up on your quest?”

“What quest?” I asked.

“You know which one I’m talking about.”

“Ah…” I looked at Luna. “That quest… I told Luna about it as well, so you don’t need to be that secretive about it.”

Eva smiled. “I see, so no more alien girlfriends for Commander Lauren Davis after she has finally met her one true human love interest.”

“Yep.” I replied with confidence, I didn’t want to accidentally let it shine through that that is actually the complete opposite of what had happened and that my quest had succeeded.

That is, until Luna prodded my thigh to make me look at her. “I… I think we can tell her.”

“Hmm?” Eva tilted her head.

“You sure?” I ignored our friend.

“Mhmm.” She nodded and then looked at Eva. “Her… her quest didn’t really fail…”

“Oh?” Eva vocalized.

“Well… uh… I’m actually not that human… as you think I am…”

I put my hand on her thigh to signal that I’m here when she needs me to take over. But it seemed like she was going to pull through on her own.

“In reality, I’m not human at all.”

Eva stayed silent for a bit before she started smiling. “I see.”

“You aren’t surprised as well?” Luna asked. “Lauren didn’t have a strong reaction either.”

“Luna, as you may or may not know, I’m this ship’s doctor. It is quite literally my job to know stuff about human biology. While on the surface level, your blood works all checks out. I have never met anyone who needs such a low dose of certain medicines and painkillers.”

“But you didn’t check in with me?” I asked.

“Doctor-patient confidentiality. Plus, it could always have been a unicum in human medicine. But now that Luna mentions that she, in fact, isn’t human, it does make a lot more sense.”

“And you are not going to call me a spy either.”

“I’m pretty sure that if you would be harmful to us, the mission, or the ship, Lauren would already have done something about that. Or am I wrong.”

I shook my head. “It is relatively harmless. With the emphasis on relatively. One could argue that the fate of our planet is at stake, but from what I have learned, it shouldn’t be an issue.”

“Wait, double back for a sec…. Now that, that concerns me a bit.” Eva replied with a nervous chuckle. “Our planet is at stake?”

“Let me explain.” And thus, I explained. I told her everything Luna had told me.

“That’s… not what I expected. But at least it sounds like we don’t have to fear our planet getting blown up in the immediate future?”

Luna shook her head. “I’ll try everything to avoid that! I’ve also gotten quite fond of Earth.”

“Did you? It doesn’t look like a war-torn shithole to you?”

“It does have its bad sides…” Luna admitted. “But overall, I really like the freedoms you have that we don’t really possess…”

“Hmm.” Eva thought for a second. “I’d definitely like to learn more about you and your culture.”

“That makes two of us.” I smiled.

“And you are an alien race we’ve met before, right?”

“‘Met’ is maybe not the right word…” I replied. “It’s the race of explorers we encountered on the same planet we found the bug remains on.”

“Ah…” Eva looked at Luna. “I’m sorry that happened to your people.”

Luna shook her head. “Those are the dangers of exploration.” She then confidently looked at Eva. “Although, I would very much like your help to do some more research on our bodies.” Luna then explained the basics of what she’d found out about the gene modification.

“Right, that would probably be a lot easier to research with an actual live patient.” Eva nodded. “But I can’t guarantee that you’ll like what we find.”

“It can’t be much worse than having discovered we’ve been altered in some way already. I just want to know what and why…”

“Your black box might come in handy as well with that kind of research.” Eva continued agreeing with my girlfriend. “But I would like to ask one thing.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“If and when we can involve Grayson with this.”

“Ugh…” I blew up my cheeks a little.

“I know you don’t like him, or that you don’t want to involve him with Luna’s secret. But the truth is that he is the expert on genes and theoretical xeno-biology on this ship.” Eva reasoned with me. “I could work on this by myself, and I could make some kind of progress, but having Grayson on our side could give any kind of related research a way higher probability of giving promising results. And then we kind of need to talk about Ellie too, because if we suddenly start shutting her out of even more rooms… she’s going to get suspicious.”

I sighed. “I know, I know.”

“Did you have any timetable in mind to tell us?”

“Well, if Luna didn’t tell you today, I wouldn’t have. It was totally up to her.” I replied and looked at Luna. “We didn’t want to spring this on people all of a sudden, especially not that short after what happened with the Empire.”

“Understandably so.” Eva nodded. “I’m happy you trusted me with this, Luna.” She smiled at her.

“You’ve always supported me, so I thought it couldn’t hurt.” Luna smiled back.

“Now that the truth is completely out there, I have an important matter to discuss.” I said.

“What important matter?” Eva asked.

“What are we having for dinner?”

“Haha, Lauren.” Luna laughed.

“She did invite us for food, you know. I’m getting quite hungry.”

Eva rolled her eyes. “Just wait here, you hungry dooce.” Eva got up from her seat and walked over to one of her cabinets. Out of it she took a fondue pot.

“Oh nice, fondue. Can’t go wrong with that.” I rubbed my hands.

“I got an assortment of meats spread over a couple of plates in the fridge if you want to get it out.”

“Yep, on it.” I went over to her fridge and quickly fished out the aforementioned plates. This was gonna be good. A tray of small hamburgers, sausages, meatballs with different coatings, small cordon bleus… Everything you’d want was on it.

“That’s so much.” Luna commented as I put the plates on the table.

“Definitely, but she can always finish this tomorrow. You can bake everything in a normal pan too.”

“Or just do fondue again but by myself.” Eva said as she put the fondue set on the table.

“You can always invite us again.”

“But then I’d need to get even more meat. It’s going to be a vicious circle.”

“Eh, that doesn’t sound too bad to me.” I flicked on the set. It’d take a while for the oil to get hot enough but in the meantime we could chat a bit longer.

The oil got hot enough for the food to be fried, but that didn’t stop us from talking.

“What do you think would happen if we met other people from your race, Luna?” Eva asked while she skewered a hamburger and stuck it in the oil.

“I assume you are talking about a scouting ship?”

“Or a settlement, either or.”

“I would like to think it would go over rather peacefully, like it did with the Dokazuuk.” Luna replied. “Your ship’s design looks quite different from the Imperial designs going around so I don’t think they would fire on you with no warning.”

“You think?” I asked.

“Isn’t there a human saying that says to never expect a certainty?”

“Fair enough.” I replied. “But at least we have someone who can talk to them.”

Eva nodded. “They would probably be less inclined to shoot at vehicles who have one of them aboard, right?”

“Ehhh….”

“That doesn’t sound promising… and I thought your government thought we were the warmongers?”

“You got to understand that the Empire has used these tactics before as well… But this is all a worst case scenario. Normally, we wouldn’t just shoot on unencountered vehicles…”

I looked at Eva. “And if push comes to shove, we will probably find a way out of it. I have a lot of confidence in this ship and it’s crew.”

“And it’s Commander.” Eva smiled and put her glass to her lips.

“The Commander is indeed pretty great.” Luna added to that.

“And how great is she in bed?”

My cheeks flushed red, and so did Luna’s to that quick-witted comment from our dastardly doctor. Made worse by the fact that she was having way too much fun with our reaction.