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  Both Professor Robinson and Amanda stared at Doctor Simpson who again, only shrugged her shoulders and said, “It doesn’t matter, we are here now. We will have to land.”

  “How could you?” Amanda screamed. “Nick almost died.”

  “He was supposed to stay on the bridge with us,” the Doctor said. “Who knew he would run off like some ancient hero to save the day?”

  “Anyone who took the time to know him,” Amanda said with disgust as she looked into her mentor's eyes. A sense of betrayal flowed into her. Filling her with hate and despair, creating an empty hole that she thought might never be filled again.

  How could this woman have risked their lives like this? How could she have disregarded her instructions? Completely ignored any sense of right and wrong. For what?

  Doctor Simpson flinched as she saw the loss of respect in Amanda’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Amanda, but it had to be done. I knew if I tried to talk you into it, you would resist. I know your instructions from your father.”

  Amanda’s heart jumped. Not now, she silently begged.

  “What ... What is she talking about?” Nick asked with a bewildered look.

  “Later,” Amanda hissed as she tried to put off the inevitable. For some reason, the thought of Nick learning about her true self terrified her.

  Nick shook his head slowly. “Um. NO. It’s not like we are going anywhere fast. We have at least six or seven hours until we are in the right position to make our descent. So, what does your father have to do with this?”

  Amanda swallowed hard. She couldn’t tell him. Not now, not like this.

  “Her father is the Minister of Science,” Doctor Simpson revealed. “And a cousin to the Emperor himself.”

  “A distant cousin,” Amanda snapped, hating the other woman for sharing the truth.

  She quickly glanced over at Nick, his face had turned as white as their suits as his eyes stared at her in complete and total shock.

  “Minister of Science?” He asked. “So that’s how you ended up here. Got this job.”

  She nodded slightly, unable to verbalize the words.

  “It’s how we all got here,” Professor Robinson said. “The funding, the mission itself, it is all being controlled out of the Ministry of Science.”

  “And Minister Rogers wanted to ensure he stayed in control,” Doctor Simpson said with a slight smile, as if she were enjoying causing pain.

  Nick threw himself back into his chair and stared up at the overhead. “Unbelievable,” he muttered under his breath. Then he laughed slightly and said to her, “So I guess that silly comment about the intrigue at the Imperial court was based upon firsthand experience.”

  Amanda continued to nod her head. God how she hated this. Trapped in a small space, exposing her deepest secrets to this man, with two other people looking on like vultures watching her die a slow death. It was pure torture. She couldn’t run. Couldn’t hide. Couldn’t reach out to him. God how she hated it, she thought again.

  Her entire life had been like this. Always being judged. People assuming that because of her family, she was privileged, that her life was easy. They never saw the work she performed. Never her, always her family.

  “Please don’t be mad,” she said as she gently touched his shoulder. “I will explain.”

  “Hey, it doesn’t really matter,” Nick said as he shifted away from her touch. “Don’t forget, I’m just the lowly enlisted man, sent over to fix the engines. What I think, or what I care about isn’t important.”

  She saw the brief look of pain in his eyes when he said the words ‘care about’ and felt a deep sense of loss. Any possibility between them was gone forever she realized. Not because she had kept a secret from him. But because of what that secret revealed.

  He turned away from her and stared at Doctor Simpson with cold, hard eyes.

  “So, Doc, let me see if I’ve got this straight. You arranged for the failures on the Discovery so that we would have to abandon ship and land amongst the Eundai. How do you even know if we can survive down there? Hell, every other plant could be poison. They could have microbes that eat us up from the inside. Usually, it takes a full survey team months on the ground to discover that stuff.”

  The Doctor smiled, “We’ve examined everything. The plants are safe. At least the ones in the vicinity of the city. The bugs and animals are all within limits.

  “The Eundais metabolize their food like us. There might be necessary adjustments, but our Nanos should be able to handle it. They have close to the same trace elements in their blood as we do. So that should not be a problem.”

  “How do you know? How can you be sure?” he asked.

  “We got samples of their blood?” Amanda said softly.

  “How? Vampire moths,” he asked with a steady stare.

  “No, a knife cut,” the Doctor said, obviously not enjoying the cross-examination. “One of the scullery maids cut herself. When Envery the cook took her away to get it treated, we gathered a sample. We aren’t monsters.”

  “Not yet,” Nick said, “but give it time.”

  An awkward silence fell over the Pod. Amanda folded her hands in her lap while she studied the deck. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Nick, desperately afraid of what she might see.

  The silence carried on and on until finally Nick sighed heavily and shook his head.

  “You made one mistake, Doc, A big one,” he said with a resigned voice.

  “Just one,” Amanda said softly, hoping some levity might ease his distaste with her. Perhaps, he hoped, he wouldn’t stay mad at her forever. Unfortunately, he didn’t even acknowledge her attempt.

  “Well?” Doctor Simpson asked.

  “Once the Pod touches down. You’re no longer in charge. I am,” Nick said. Amanda quickly looked at the Doctor to catch her response.

  The woman narrowed her eyebrows and scowled.

  “What do you mean? Of course I am in charge.”

  Nick scoffed and shook his head. “You should have read your Imperial orders. I’m sure it says that you and this mission, like all Imperial funded missions, is subject to Imperial regulations.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, “So what?”

  “So, Imperial regs are pretty clear on this kind of thing. Any emergency landing on an uncharted planet comes under the purview of the senior military person.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said with a wave of her hand. “You aren’t even an officer.”

  Amanda watched him flinch just a little at the officer comment, but he quickly put it behind him and moved on.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Commander Jones gave me explicit instructions to keep you people alive. A task you repeatedly made more difficult, I might add. Navy regulations say that I am supposed to take over in a situation like this. And that is what I am going to have to do.”

  “Don’t be silly,” the Doctor said with a wave of her arm. “You can’t possibly know what to do.”

  “And you do? You have a lot of experience meeting new races of intelligent life, do you? Have you crashed a lot of pods onto strange new worlds?”

  Amanda had to bite back a smile. The man was tying her up in knots.

  The Doctor shook her head, “It doesn’t matter,” she said, “We won’t follow your orders. A leader without followers is not much of a leader.”

  Nick folded his arms across his chest and simply smiled at her. The awkward silence immediately returned to the interior of the Pod.

  Holding her breath, Amanda watched the two of them stare at each other. Neither blinking.

  When it felt as if the tension should surely rip the ship apart. Professor Robinson cleared his throat.

  “Actually, Rebecca,” he said to his colleague, “He is right. Once we touch down, this becomes a military mission.”

  “No,” Doctor Simpson yelled. “It is a scientific mission.”

  Professor Robinson slowly shook his head. “Actually, it stopped being a science-
gathering mission the second we stepped into this escape Pod. The moment you decided to take matters into your own hand and introduce us into the experiment, it became an Imperial Government matter, and their regulations apply.”

  “Thank you, Professor,” Nick said then turned to look at Amanda.

  She stared back as his eyebrow slowly rose in question.

  “What?” she asked.

  “What do you think?”

  Amanda laughed, “She’s a conniving bitch, so yeah, the military is in charge.”

  Nick didn’t smile at her, sending a sick feeling to the bottom of her gut.

  Again, the silence returned to the Pod. But this time, Amanda did not feel the awkwardness. Things would work out. She was positive.

  “So, what happens next?” she asked.

  “We land,” Nick said as if the answer were obvious.

  “But where? One of the distant islands? The mountains?

  He slowly shook his head and looked at her sadly. “This is a Pod. We have very little control. All we can do is aim for the middle of the largest land mass and hope for the best.”

  It took a long moment for his words to sink in.

  “The City? You want to aim for the city itself,” she asked with disbelief.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We won’t hit it. If we are lucky, we’ll land within a hundred miles.”

  “But,” she stammered, “that will still put us in contact with the Eundai. If we are that close, it will be impossible to hide.”

  “Saving the Eundai is not my mission. Saving you three is.”

  Amanda’s heart stopped beating for a moment as the seriousness finally settled in. They were going to ruin a culture. The Eundai would never be the same again.

  The one thing her father had feared the most. The one thing she had been entrusted to make sure didn’t happen, and she had failed completely.

  Chapter Nine

  Nick rested his head on the back of his chair and tried to sleep. He was pretty sure it was going to be the last opportunity for a while.

  How did he end up here? he wondered. Damn, he was an Engineer. He fixed engines for a living. What did he know about contacting alien races?

  But what choice did he have? After what happened on Intrepid a few years ago, every spacer had been read the regulations. Every person knew their duty. Keep the team alive.

  Sighing heavily, he glanced over at Amanda from the corner of his eye. The Emperor’s cousin, distant cousin maybe. But still. He should have known it was too good to be true.

  When they talked about a girl being out of a guy’s league. She sort of went to the head of the list. Beautiful, super intelligent, sweet and kind. And oh yeah, politically connected you might say. The kind of connections that could get a guy stationed on an asteroid in the Felanie system if he wasn’t careful.

  He was torn. He couldn’t ignore her. The team was too small, and she was too vital. Besides, this was Amanda. She was impossible to ignore. But, she was the daughter of a very important man and cousin to the Emperor himself. He shouldn’t even be talking to her, let alone having the wild fantasies that seemed to refuse to stay out of his mind.

  “You ready for this?” he asked softly.

  She scoffed for a moment then shook her head. “I’m more worried about the Eundai.”

  “I wouldn’t get too worked up about it,” he said. “It was bound to happen someday. As soon as we discovered them, eventually there was going to be contact. Maybe it is better this way. At least there will be someone in the party concerned about their issues.”

  She looked back at him, her eyes searching his, hoping that things might not be too bad.

  “Besides,” he continued. “It’s not like we are going down there to conquer and enslave.”

  She smiled back at his attempt to relieve her concerns, but he could tell she was still worried. Unfortunately, it was a problem he couldn’t fix. Not now. The good Doctor had seen to that.

  Leaning back, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

  It was some time later when the suit’s alarm pulled himself up out of a deep slumber. The memories of where he was, and who he was with, came flooding back into his mind. He wondered briefly if he had snored.

  “Time to get ready,” he said.

  The others slowly woke, rubbing eyes and wiping mouths.

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered to Amanda, “You didn’t drool.”

  She shot him a terrified look for a second then turned a pretty pink before squaring her shoulders and pulling her four-point belts tight.

  “You guys ready for this. Once the Pod starts down, there is no going back.”

  Each of the other occupants nodded slowly. He could tell they were worried. With good reason, he thought. A thousand things could go wrong, and they could very well end up as nothing more than a deep hole in a forgotten forest. The rescue team would scrape them up with a trowel.

  “Okay then,” he said as he held his finger above his tablet, waiting for the right numbers to line up.

  He held his breath, and then, when things turned green, he lightly tapped the go button.

  Almost immediately, the pod’s small thrusters kicked the ship in the butt, sending her screaming towards the surface.

  “The gravity field should damper the effects of our descent,” he said to no one. “It will slow us down and hide the buffeting. Just think of it as a long elevator ride.”

  Professor Robinson scoffed but kept quiet. Nick could tell the other man was hanging on by a thread. Doctor Simpson looked her normal taciturn self. Like a stone wall and just as friendly.

  It was Amanda though that worried him. Without really thinking, he reached out and took her hand in his. She smiled back at him, obviously appreciating his gesture.

  Glancing out the small portal, he watched the green world below grow bigger and bigger. After a few minutes, the picture faded to orange and then disappeared as the ship dug into the atmosphere.

  He wondered briefly if the Eundai could see the fireball descending towards them. And if so, what did they think. He was relatively sure they had no idea what they were in store for.

  Amanda squeezed his hands and closed her eyes. The ship shook a little as the gravity field fought to maintain balance.

  Nick sighed and waited. The descent was as exciting as one of his sister’s parties. Long and boring.

  At last, his tablet beeped at him, letting him know the ship was down. Hovering a few feet above the ground.

  “Hang on,” he said as he disengaged the gravity field.

  A sharp jolt traveled up his spine as the ship fell the last three feet. A gray cloud of dust and dirt erupted outside the portals.

  “We’re down,” Professor Robinson said with surprise.

  “Looks that way,” Nick said as he began to unbuckle his belts. “Welcome to the world of the Eundai.”

  Amanda looked like a little girl, anxious to explore but afraid of getting started. Afraid of what she might find.

  Doctor Simpson looked like she’d was going grocery shopping and was reviewing the list in her mind.

  Nick sighed and tried to pull up a full exterior view, but the sensors weren’t working. They’d probably been burnt to a crisp during the descent. Instead, he made his way to the small portal window in the exit door.

  Placing his face as close as possible, he looked outside, twisting and turning to get as much of a view as possible.

  “You sure the air is good?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Doctor Simpson said with a hint of offense that anyone could question her.

  “In that case,” Nick said. “No time like the present.”

  He grabbed the handle and pulled, cracking the hatch and getting ready to shove it open.

  “Wait!” Amanda yelled from behind him.

  He turned and looked back at her, waiting for her come to the realization that they couldn’t put this off forever.

  She sighed as her shoulders slumped in defeat. Nodding, she sile
ntly told him to go ahead.

  Nick looked once more through the portal, but the place looked deserted. They’d landed in a field. Tall, leafy trees stood off in the distance.

  Gritting his teeth, he pushed the door open and stepped back.

  Life, sweet, clean, life, filled the air. The scent of dirt, mold, distant rain hung in the air. A thousand things washed over him all at once.

  It was the same smell a spacer always got when he hit planet-side. A reminder of what the universe was supposed to smell like. No scrubbed, soulless, pristine air. But dirty, thick, life-giving nectar.

  He smiled and filled his lungs.

  Better get this over with, he thought, as he stuck his head out and twisted back and forth to see their surroundings.

  He had been right, it was a field. A plowed field. The farmer was going to be upset to find this giant ball sitting in the middle of his field.

  Thank God for minor miracles, the place looked empty. They hadn’t landed on somebody’s barn, or in the middle of the ocean. Nope, a nice field.

  Smiling to himself, he jumped down from the ledge and stepped out onto the world. Looking up, he marveled at the crystal blue sky. Above that, he thought, sat the Discovery. Empty, hollow and God how he wished they were still up there.

  The other’s followed him, each of them looking around. Desperately taking in the foreign sights. Nick noticed that Doctor Simpson took two small packages from under her seat and slipped them into each of the side pockets on her suit. He’d have to ask her about that later, he told himself.

  Amanda came up to stand next to him. Silently they stood there and observed. Each of them lost in their own thoughts.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said. “We are here.”

  He laughed, “Yep, at least for the next ten to twelve weeks. Until the rescue party gets here. If we can keep ourselves alive,” he added.

  “Do you really think it’s that dangerous?” she asked.

  He could only shake his head at her naivety. “Listen, Amanda, until we get home. I want you always to assume the worst. Just when you think things are safe. That is the time to worry the most.”