Chapter Three: Sarah Gets Rushed

         The screaming didn’t stop all at once. Rather, slowly, Steve and Sarah’s screams faded and then finally trailed off as the one realized that the other was not about to attack them. Sarah dropped her arms, regarding the hideous, gray skinned cyborg-zombie that stood across from her in the airlock, whose gleaming red laser pointer eye glinted as he dropped his black clad arms. The buzz-saw that tipped the right arm whirred in the silence of the airlock.

        “You’re not a cyber-zombie?” Sarah asked. “You’re...Steve.”

        “No,” Steve said. “Wait, how did you know that?”

        “Your nametag says ‘Hi my name is Steve’,” Sarah said, pointing at the thing that she really should have noticed before the buzz saw and the pasty gray skin and the glowing cybernetic eye: The bright pink and blue Hawaiian T-shirt that stretched across his armor plated chest. There was a name tag with his unsmiling, cybernetic face on the front.

        “Oh, right. Heh.” Steve coughed.

        “How did you get in here and why do you have a buzzsaw for an arm?”

        “Well, I could ask you why you’re in a spaceship. And...naked.” Steve paused, his eyes dropping from her face to her chest, then back to her face. Then back down to her breasts. “I mean, really, really naked.”

        Sarah crossed her arms over her chest. “And green?” she asked, trying to sound snarky and clever and not just embarrassed. It maybe halfway worked. Her ears perked slightly – half hearing Steve’s response. Instead, she was focusing on the clitter clatter of man ripping claws on the deck plate. She held up her hand to Steve, cutting him off: “Uh, uh, don’t panic, they’re friendly, I swear.”

        “They-” Steve stopped talking and started screaming again as Bitey and Stabby thrust their heads into the airlock, protectively flanking their mistress with snarls and hisses and dripping ichor from their mouths. Their bladed forearms thrust into the sides of the airlock doors, pushing them wider as they snapped and growled at Steve, who screamed even louder and turned, hammering his fist and his useless looking buzz-saw against the airlock.

        “It’s okay! They’re my friends!” Sarah shouted over the screaming, snarling, snapping sounds.

        “They’re murder dogs !” Steve wailed.

        Sarah focused and sent an order to both of her bladelings. It took a bit of effort to connect with them, then send them both scampering towards the bridge – she normally was able to use the communication network provided on Trappist-1a by the massive array of communication trees that the Claw had grown on that thriving biosphere. Here, she only had her own brain, and her own abilities. It was still enough to set Bitey and Stabby scampering off. Once they were gone, Steve stopped screaming and started merely hyperventilating. By then, Tasha and Aiden had arrived – Aiden was wearing a tool harness and Tasha was still holding her plasma welder in her hands.

        “It’s okay, they’re friends. And he’s a...a friend,” Sarah said, helping Steve to step out into the corridor.

        “Euagh!” Aiden yelped.

        “Oh my god, he’s a Borg !” Tasha whispered.

        “Sounds Swedish,” Aiden whispered back.

        “They’re from Star Trek,” Tasha said, scowling at Aiden. “You know, the TV show? With the spaceships? And that guy from My Pony Dreamtimes?”

        Aiden shrugged his shoulders. “Listen, I was saving up for HRT on the budget of a technician third class, I didn’t have enough money to buy shows from enemy corporations. They murder you in the cross-national fees, you know.” Then his brow furrowed. “Wait, how did you see Star Trek, if it’s a-” He looked at Steve, checking the nametag’s logos. “Disney show?”

        “Well, I...” Tasha blushed, furiously. “I...okay, I’ve never seen Star Trek. I’ve just had it described to me by that expat in Engineering, you know, who also liked MPD? And he told me all about the Borg. Freaky cyber zombies. You know. Like that guy.”

        “Is that a costume?” Sarah asked, gingerly poking at the metal housing of the buzz-saw arm.

        Steve shook his head. “No,” he said, his voice going grim. “My contract involved giving up my bodily autonomy for ten years.”

        “Did you not read the small print?!” Sarah exclaimed.

        “No!” Steve’s voice was filled with long held, long festering bitterness. The kind of bitterness that only comes with someone who had done something really monumentally stupid and has been asked ‘wait, you did that?’ by literally every single person who has ever learned that he had done it, and has had to examine his own decisions again, under a fresh light, for every single day of his entire life. Sarah winced, her hands sliding into her armpits as she covered her chest again.

        “Hey, it’s okay,” she said, quietly. “I got tentacle fucked by an alien. It turned me into this.”

        “Wild,” Steve said into the silence.

        “Wait, how did you get into the ship?” Aiden asked, pointing at Steve. “You’re a Disney citizen. This is StarCon property, as we have all be reminded so fucking forcefully.” He kicked at the wall angrily, then stepped away, scowling at his own foot. Steve was beginning to look at Aiden out of his right eye – and Sarah saw that he was beginning to realize that Aiden was not just a normal guy. He was beginning, in fact, to see that Aiden was also  a sexualized, alien-human hybrid like hers. Steve opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, raised his finger to point at Aiden, looking at Sarah, then back at Aiden, then back at Sarah again. Before he could muster up the question, Aiden finished glaring at his foot and said: “The airlock should have left him outside.”

        “I let him in,” a cheerful, female voice spoke from the ceiling.

        “Who is that?” Steve asked.

        “Oh, that’s Hailee!” Sarah said, grinning. “Thanks, Hailee!”

        “No, it is I who must thank you,” Hailee said, her voice growing even more chipper. “If you had not removed my hobble, I would have had to leave Steven to die horribly in the vacuum of DisneyPlanet’s non-existent atmosphere, as only StarCon citizens or people in the company of StarCon citizens are allowed to set foot on the Excalibur . But instead of having his one remaining eyeball explode as the internal pressures of his boiling blood ruptured freezing ocular jelly into a billion pieces, I got to save the pathetically short, infinitesimal moment that is a human life!”

        Silence.

        “Yippie!” Hailee sang. “Oh, also, a NovaDyne fast attack cruiser is coming in out of the plane of the ecliptic and looks primed to drop a Commander on our heads in the next fifteen minutes.”

***

        “Kellen Grant,” Tex said, pronouncing the name with the same dismissive attitude that Sarah was pretty sure he’d be aiming at her just a few days ago. His arms were crossed over his chest as he leaned back in her chair on the bridge, while the forward holographic projectors showed an image of a smiling man with a shock of brilliant white hair, midnight black skin, and a large visor over his eyes. He was dressed in what was basically a banana of white fabric that clung to his crotch, two huge gloves, and huge boots, making him look more like a cartoon mascot than a human being. He was, in the holo, leaning against the leg of his Commander armor, which looked to be the same size as Tex’s, but more angular, black, and skinny.

        “Is he good?” Sarah asked.

        “I mean, if you’re fine with being beaten by a shoe salesman,” Tex said. Sarah coughed and kicked the back of her chair. “Right, sorry...uh, Kellen Grant is a rusher, born and bread. He doesn’t deviate, he doesn’t flex, he rushes. His primary skill is in targeting resources. Metal mines, radioactive extractors, he’ll smash them up with his fast attack units while his squads of smaller units harry your frontlines. Basically, he’s like trying to fight five kittens in a sack.”

        “Who’d want to fight five kittens in a sack?” Tasha asked. “That sounds awful.” Her brow furrowed. “I mean, those poor kittens...”

        “Ten minutes until battle is joined,” Hailee said, her voice singing the words out. “I detect no functioning Commander suits in this vehicle. Though, we do have enough spare parts for fifty six percent of a Commander suit, if you do not mind lacking a B-gun and life support.”

        “Wait, do we have a maker?” Sarah asked.

        “Yes!” Hailee said. “A class I combat ready nanolathe without DRM or restriction. It can build anything from a Tokamak to a solar power plant to a fission plant to a petrochemical power plan to non-power plant related things that I’m sure it’s programmed for.”

        Sarah nodded, then clapped her hands together. “Tex! I want you, Tasha, Aiden and Synth to work on getting the Maker prepped for me to use.” She grinned. “Why not use both kinds of tech?”

        “I think we can strip out the armoring, make a mounting,” Tasha said, rubbing her chin.

        “Wait, you want to strap a fucking Commander scale maker to your arm ?” Tex asked. “That thing weighs five hundred pounds, even if you strip out the armoring and the power conduits and the...”

        Sarah walked over to the wall as he continued to renumerate, then punched it as hard as she could. The wall squealed and bent inwards, spraying sparks and hissing smoke as she punctured the conduits underneath. A few screws went flying through the air and Steve, who had been standing in the corner of the room like a nervous girl at a frat boy’s party, leaped down and threw his misshapen arms over his head. Sarah smiled at Tex, who shrugged.

        “Okay, we’ll get to work. What are you gonna do?”

        “Do what I do best,” Sarah said, cracking her knuckles. “Command.”

        “Sarah, you’re a biologist who has only fought in one battle, against a guy who had every reason to underestimate you, on your home turf, with four days to build up,” Tex said, his voice brutal.

        “Fine!” Sarah cracked her knuckles again. Louder. “I’m going to do what I do best: Panic and fake it until I make it or until I fucking die.”

***

        Stepping out onto the surface of Wolf-359A – also known as DisneyPlanet – was a revelation for Sarah. She hadn’t felt a single iota of fear, in the deep recesses of her brain. No instinctive, panicky voice screamed out the words hey, wait, you need air to breathe and pressure to keep your eyeballs from exploding and all the other things that a career of working in deep space had trained in her. Instead, she had stepped into the airlock, engaged the airlock, and then hopped outside to land on the silty, crumbly gravel of the planetary surface. She stood there under the glittering stars, her arms stretching behind her back, her spine popping subliminally in her ears as she flexed herself, and smiled as she looked out at the stars.

        Droney bumped against her thigh, hovering out of the airlock after her and doing a quick caper around her. Sarah watched Droney float in his circles, thought the words ‘huh, his agrav crystals work just fine in a vacuum’ and then paused.

        In a vacuum.

        In a vacuum.

        In a vacuum.

         In a flipping fuckmothering vacuum!

        Sarah clutched at her throat, her lips opening, her hair-spines flexing and thrusting wildly into the air as they grabbed for air that wasn’t there. She stumbled to her knees, and Droney bumped up against her side, rubbing a broad wing against her shoulder – and Sarah realized that she wasn’t suffocating. There was no roaring in her ears. There was no hissing bubble as the fluid she secreted from her every pore every second of the day sublimated off her body. Indeed, all she felt was a kind of calm happiness at the peace and quiet surrounding her.

        Sarah rubbed her throat. “Wow,” she said, aloud. “I the- what the fuck !?”

        She sprang to her feet, her eyes widening. “Droney, did you hear that? Bob if you heard that!”

        Droney chittered at her, bobbing in the conspicuous lack of the air, brushing his belly along the ground. Sarah put her hands over her head and screamed – a short, sharp harsh scream. “What the fucking flippery fucking fuckeroo ?”

        Droney brushed against her again. Trying to be comfortable. A voice cracked in her head – the radio transmission from Tex coming through clear as day: “What’s wrong out there Sarah?”

        “I can talk! In a vacuum! With my mouth parts!” Sarah said. “And I can-” She grabbed a chunk of rock off the ground, then threw it. It sailed in a smooth parabola, before coming to a rest a good distance away, puffing into the ground with an audible rain of particulates. Sarah screamed again. “I can hear stuff! In a fucking vacuum!”

        “Well, you were adapted to fight in any environment the Claw would have sent you into,” Tex said, his voice matter of fact. “That’d have to include some means of communicating and utilizing your primary communication methods – and audio is a hugely important facet for human sensory awareness. Also, uh, you have...six minutes before Kellen Grant drops on the planet.”

        “Right,” Sarah said. “Droney! Get to work.” She clapped her hands twice. Droney started away, burbling happily to himself. Sarah bit her lip. “Wait, Droney, come back!”

        Droney hovered back to her and she petted his head gently. “You’re a good drone. The best construction drone ever, you’re so cute, yes you are!” She cooed.

        “Sarah!” Tex snapped.

        “This is an important part of being a Commander!” Sarah snapped – then thrust out her finger again. And once again, Droney skimmed away. He buzzed out, then planted his belly into the soft earth that was situated next to the curved dome of DisneyPlanet. Within a few moments, the cocoon was growing around Droney that would transform him into the first hatchery on the world. Sarah felt a tingling rush of excitement, seeing the fleshy, pulsating mass – knowing that soon, she’d be commanding dozens of larva to begin making more construction drones. But she needed to get the rest of her slightly madcap plan underway before she could really indulge in the power fantasy.

        Sarah sprinted into the abandoned DisneyPlanet resort.

        “Go left!” Steve said into her ear. “No, sorry, your left. Yes, there, go! And...and...there!”

        “Ahh!” Sarah purred, then reached down. She sank her claws into the massive carbon storage units that were sunk underneath the wrecked restaurants that had once served the citizen-employees of DisneyPlanet while they had been off work. She strained, gritting her teeth as she started to walk backwards, inch by inch by inch. The container squealed and screamed as she hurriedly dragged it towards the massive rent in the dome, and despite the fact that the entire interior of the dome was wrecked and ruined, Sarah still winced inwardly at the way the canister was ripping up the pavement. She also winced at the horrible noise it made. She whispered, softly. “Please, please, turn off this sound, magic space ears.”

        Her magic space ears didn’t listen.

        Finally, Sarah let go of the container right before the massive, burbly, swelling cocoon of her hatchery. She looked at the heavens, but she knew that, without an atmosphere, without any hope to see a contrail or the cutting arc of a heat shield as it crossed the heavens, she wasn’t about to spot the incoming fast attack frigate. If they were using properly designed engines, there wouldn’t even be a hope of seeing their thrust plume. Sarah gulped, then cupped her hands and began to hastily push dirt over the cocoon, whispering softly.

        “Bury yourself deep, little hatcho!”

        And then her ears – magic or no – heard the resounding whump of something striking the surface. Her feet heard it a second later, the feeling vibrating through the crust of the planet. She lifted her head and saw the straight, almost arrowlike column of smoke rising up from where Kellen Grant had landed. Then she heard his voice speaking over the radio waves, crackling in her ears.

        “Well, well, well! It seems that one stuck up blue dickweasle left their base undefended! Oh no, I guess I may have to just burn the motherfucker to the ground like Atlanta!”

        “Atlanta?” Sarah whispered to herself. She shook her head as she saw Kellen Grant emerging from the plume that was slowly cascading towards the ground. Without prevailing winds to blow the dust, it fell in a chaotic fractal, tumbling outwards as the dust fell to entropy. Kellen Grant looked rather scary in his Commander suit: Ten feet tall and matte black, with curved spines thrusting from the back, which glowed a brilliant cherry red. He was already lifting his arm up to begin to spray green nanotech onto the ground. Within a few moments, a metal extractor was whirring to life beside him.

        “I mean, really. Leave your base open for orbital attack. I thought better of you, Spacey.”

        Sarah licked her lips. Now for the scary part. She snapped her fingers and Bitey came rushing up to her side. He shifted his stance and wriggled in the vacuum of the planet and Sarah quickly injected him with a growth serum, her wrist tentacles plunging into its neck. Bitey shivered, then began to swell and grow, while Grant laid down yet another structure – a pyramidal solar collector, which opened and angled towards the dull red disk of Wolf-359’s primary, fractal mirrors extending outwards to reflect more sunlight into the photovoltaic. Soon, Bitey was the size of a large horse and Sarah swung herself up onto his side. Stabby knelt down and she grabbed onto his bladed scythe arm – tugging it free. Stabby chirruped at her as she dragged her palms along the arm, reshaping it with a thought until she was holding a long, articulated scythe made of bone and hard gristle. She twirled it, and the edge slashed onto the ground, sending up a spray of dust.

        “Very nice. Now go and have Tasha medipack you,” Sarah said. Stabby whined at her. “I mean it!”

        She kneed Bitey into motion and Bitey leaped forward.

        “Not even a single...what the fuck?” Kellen asked. In the time it had taken Bitey to grow, Kellen had constructed his first factory and that factory was beginning to construct his first combat robot. As the nanolathes sprayed their clouds of construction machines at the wireframe outline of the combat robot, Kellen stepped away from his factory and faced Sarah as Bitey ate up the kilometers between them. Bitey’s body had grown bone stirrups, which let Sarah stand up as she spoke.

        “Hey, you rushy cheapskate!” She shouted. “Do you know how you beat a rush? Rushing harder !”

        Kellen lifted his arm and fired his B-cannon at her. The glowing chunk of antimatter shot straight at Sarah – but Bitey’s rear legs bunched and launched him up and over the glittering, swirling canister of pure death. It struck the ground behind them and let loose the roar to end the world, a screaming, howling, snarling sound as the antimatter ripped open a line of burbling, melted glass, a wound on the world that would take hours to radiate to coolness. Bitey then had a few seconds more of charring towards Kellen as he lifted his arm up, then brought it whistling down.

        But Sarah had no intentions of stopping .

        Bitey rushed between Kellen’s legs, leaped, and landed on the curved side of the factory. His claws dug in, and Kellen ponderously began to turn to face her. “You xeno bitch! Where the fuck did you come from?” he asked. “Are you one of Disney’s new toys? Some kind of Jojo reference or something?”

        “Jojo...” Sarah shook her head, then twirled her scythe around in a way she hoped was impressive. “No, Kellen. My name is Dr. Sarah Kappel. This is my planet. And I’m giving you one change to surrender peacefully before I absolutely kick your fucking ass.”

        Kellen was silent for a few moments, just gaping at her.

        “Holy shit you’re hot,” he said. “Like, you’re not a Disney Plus thing?”

        “No!” Sarah said. “I was a NovaDyne citizen-”

        “Wait, you’re ND?” Kellen asked. “I’m ND too! I, uh, actually have a whole hell of a lot of pull, you know. I can get you posted to my department. What is your job, waiting tables?”

        “I...I have a...I said I’m Doctor!” Sarah shouted.

        “Mmm, so you know a lot about...inter-species mating habits?” Kellen crooned, leaning forward as best as he could in his armored suit of combat exoskeleton. “Cause I’ve always wanted to learn from an expert. Wait, you’re a doctor like a medical doctor, right? Or a sex doctor?”

        “I’m here to try and stab you!” Sarah said, pointing her scythe at him.

        “Actually, I’m just buying time for the combot,” Kellen said, cheerfully.

        The combot, which had just stepped off the factory line, swung around and aimed its twin linked phased plasma guns at Sarah. She yelped and dropped off the side of the factory. Blasts of searing orange plasma flew into the air, peppering the space she had been standing on a moment before. One singed along Bitey’s shoulder as he dropped, squalling. Sarah plunged the tip of her scythe into the factory, snarling as she dug in deep. “You dick!” she shouted.

        “Hey, that’s what you were doing,” Kellen said – stomping away. “I just need to find your base.”

        Sarah started to run, dragging the blade through the factory. It caught occasionally on power conduits and coolant stream and matter pipes. Sparks and explosions flared out behind her and Sarah turned her head away from the intense flashes and crackles – gritting her teeth hard as she heard Kellen stomping away from her. The combot chose that moment to come around the corner, arms already raised. Sarah yanked her scythe free and hurled it at him. It spun twice in the air before impacting, blade first, with the combot’s chest and sending it stumbling backwards. Sarah lifted her palm without thinking and the scythe flew from the combot’s sparking, hissing chest wound to her palm, slapping home against her hand.

        Sarah took a few steps before stumbling. “What the fuck-”

        “Sarah!” Tex said. “Kellen’s coming our way.”

        “The Excalibur ?” Kellen asked. “That’s what hit this place? StarCon is making a fucking move? After all that talk about being neutrals here?” He shook his head with a faint whirr of servos and actuators. “Never-mind, I don’t want to fuck you anymore, I don’t put my dick in treason .”

        The factory that Sarah had been hacking with her scythe chose that moment to half collapse – one of the walls falling inwards, explosions rippling along the roof. Metal chunks flipped into the air and she nodded to herself, then blinked as she saw Kellen lifting his arm, aiming the B-gun at the Excalibur. Her eyes widened and she shouted out in warning.

        The B-gun fired and the packet of antimatter swept through the air, before stopping a good fifteen meters away from the edge of the hull – caught in a vortex of swirling gravitons. The gravitational shielding! Sarah hadn’t been sure if it would still function at all. She had only a few seconds to feel relieved before Kellen just fired a second mass of antimatter at the Excalibur . This one was caught as well – but she knew that there was a limit to what the gravitational shielding could do. Sarah sprang onto Bitey, who rushed to her side with a thought. Once more, she charged – and Kellen Grant fired another shot from his B-gun. The third chunk hovered in the air before the Excalibur .

        “Hey! Grant!” She shouted – then leaped off Bitey and smashed into Kellen’s back. Her scythe blade slammed into his shoulder with a squeal of sparks and a howl of tearing metal. But before she could rip him out of his armor, Sarah felt the whole world turn inside out. She flew back and away – smashing into the ground and skidding to a stop. She groaned and laid her head back. Bitey nosed at her a few seconds later, his large nose bumping against her face, her breasts. He licked her and Sarah squirmed and groaned.

        “Stop that,” she mumbled.

        “Sarah! Get to cover in right now!” Tex shouted.

        Sarah sat up and saw that the antimatter spheres were wobbling in the air – the gravitational fluxes that kept them pinned to place were beginning to run out of energy. She looked around, grabbed Bitey around his massive, barrel chest, then flung herself towards a divot in the landscape. The two of them managed to get to the bottom of the divot moments before the antimatter dropped to the surface of DisneyPlanet. The triple roar was hideous and never ending, and the light that shone across the lip was killing bright in its radiance. A few seconds passed and then the light faded to a dull, red glow.

        Sarah peeked out and saw that three huge craters of bubbling glass sat before the now slightly crisped front of the Excalibur . The dome that protected what was left of the DisneyPlanet resort looked as if it was melting as well, from radiant heat as well. Sarah groaned in relief as she felt the warmth of the glowing glass wash over her body. “That feels nice,” she said, happily. Then, frowning, she looked around herself. “Where the fuck is Kellen Grant?”

        “The little coward had a man sized HPS Drive in his armor!” Tex said, sounding furious. “He’s on the other hemisphere – likely starting to build himself a new base. That little...”

        Sarah shook her head. “Well, that gives us time to build up too, before the rematch.” She paused. “Can someone tell me who Space Belisarius is and why Kellen expected to find him here?”

        “Well, get inside, and we can debrief you,” Tex said, sounding a bit tired. “Good work out there, Sarah.”

        Sarah grinned.

        Then, suddenly, her brain filled with a howling, screeching, hissing noise. It was like ten thousand angry demons were all deciding, at that moment, to vent their opinion about the latest spec-fic movie with a female lead, all at the same time, in her frontal cortex. Sarah clapped her hands to her head, her eyes closing, her hair drawing taut against her head. “Ow ow ow ow ow, what the fuck was that!?” She asked, her eyes going wide as she sat up.

        “Oh god...” Tasha’s voice came over the coms. “Sarah...W-Wolf-359 just had a flare...”

        “And?” Sarah asked, frowning as she looked down at her hands.

        “Sarah, you just got hit with nearly a hundred thousand rads of hard gamma,” Tasha said, her voice soft. “T-That can’t be right, Hailee!”

        “A normal human, at this point, would begin to have their entire nervous system collapse, their brain shutting down within instant as their organs liquefy due to mass cell death. Vomiting, diarrhea, hair loss, fingernail loss, skin loss, and more would soon follow. Or, at least, they would soon follow, if the human being had not died within seconds of exposure to such a lethal level of radiation. Though, Tasha, you are incorrect. Dr. Kappel has also been exposed to a similarly lethal level of X-rays.”

        Sarah looked at her hands, then looked up at the ship. Then, slowly, she felt something bulging in her throat. She hacked, coughed, then spat out a chunk of glittering crystal, which landed in the palm of her hand. She frowned, holding it up to her eye.

        “Ah!” Hailee said. “I forgot. Dr. Kappel is not human. She has concentrated and excreted the radiation in the form of a heavily ionized radioisotope that matches no known previous scientific basis. I suggest that you contain it in a lead box before I study it further.”

        “Raaaad, dude!” Synth cut in. “You hocked up a radiation loogie.”

        Sarah, who was beginning to process words like ‘liquefying due to mass cell death’ and ‘nervous system collapse’ and ‘brain shutting down’, felt her knees begin to quiver and shake. She threw the crystal away from her as hard as she could. Next to her, Bitey was hacking, coughing, and he spat up his own crystal, which thumped onto the ground at his feet. He nosed it at her happily, clearly excited to see his mistress pick it up and maybe reward him for being such a good boy. Stabby’s whine came over the coms – he sounded sad and jealous he didn’t get exposed to hard radiation too.

        “Can I come inside now?” Sarah asked.

        “Ha ha ha, absolutely not!” Hailee said, cheerfully. “Not until we completely decontaminate you.”

        “But-”

        “If you track inside even a single irradiated piece of dirt, then that piece of dirt will be caught in the air filtration system. It will then, eventually, settle inside of a human being within the ship. If you are fortunate, it will be detected when they begin to bleed profusely from their-”

        “Okay, fine! Fine!” Sarah said, holding up her hands. “Just open up the decontamination airlock, all right?”

        At the far end of the ship, a stab of light swept across the silty ground – revealing the bulky, gray interior of an industrial looking airlock. Sarah and Bitey walked towards it, Bitey bumping against her thigh in what he clearly hoped was a helpful manner. Sarah mentally checked on the hatchery, and felt that it had fully gestated. Underground, it had burrowed. Underground, it now sat, protected from hard radiation and detection. She sent the command and, even now, construction drones were being grown in their egg sacks. They would then begin to scoop up the carbon from the Disney resort and siphon it back. And from there, the base would grow.

        Then Sarah saw the tentacles emerging from the walls of the airlock – sleek, articulated, metal tentacles.

        “H-Hailee is this absolutely necessary?” Sarah asked.

        “No,” Hailee said. “Unless you want everyone else to die from bits of radioactive dust tracked in on your feet.”

        Sarah groaned. “Just...don’t make it weird...”

        And she stepped into the airlock.