Eva had put the blood sample into one of her analyzing tools and then walked back over to me, leaning back against the bed I was sitting on. We had nothing to do but wait at this point for the results to come in.

“Did Luna take good care of you?” She asked.

“Of course she did. Did you expect anything else?”

“Not really.” Eva shook her head and smiled.

“Honestly, if it didn’t hurt that much, I wouldn’t mind being sick more often and getting taken care of by her.”

“I can imagine that. But it’s best not to put too much pressure on her shoulders. She does carry a lot of stress with her just because of who she is. Not to mention the burden of being in command and then also having to take care of you.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’ll put my selfishness aside.”

“Might want to start heeding your doctor’s orders then.” Eva chuckled and squeezed my thigh really hard.

“I will, I will, I will!”

“Good.” Eva nodded and crossed her arms while we waited on the analysis to finish.

A minute or two later the tool had analyzed what it was supposed to and sent the results to Eva’s holo stick. “Your CRP levels are still a bit elevated but they are down by quite a lot. Other levels seem to be going down too so that’s all looking great. The medication is definitely doing its job. If I were talking to a civilian back on Earth I would recommend staying home from work for at least another day or two. But, knowing who I am talking to…. you are fit to go back. But do try to take it slow, alright.”

“No gym?”

“Definitely no gym. And no more silly competitions either with Gunnery Sergeant Taylor. Or I’ll be sending both of you flying into the ward myself.”

“Copy that.” I saluted our lovely, yet very terrifying, doctor.

“Alright, I’ll send the Lieutenant-Commander a summary and a note of clearance so she knows to expect you soon.”

“Are you going to include the conte-”

Eva cut me off. “Of course I am. She needs to make sure you don’t do anything stupid either.”

“...I was not going to break my word, you know.”

“Lauren… if I had a Federal for every time I’ve had a patient say that to me, only to find them doing the exact opposite, I would be a very very rich person. Even in today’s economy.”

“Fair. But I will show you that you can trust me.”

“You better.” She smiled and then tapped my thigh. “Anyway, off you go. The bridge is expecting you.”

“Thanks for always giving us the best of care, doctor.”

Eva nodded in acknowledgment of the compliment and then shooed me out of the door. The first of the other patients was already waiting on their turn to go in so I didn’t dally in front of the door and just saluted them after which I made my way to the bridge.

On the way though, I did decide to have a bit of a conversation with our lovely ship AI. “Say, Ellie…”

“Yes Commander? Is something wrong? I’m sensing a heightened note of annoyance in your voice.”

“Why exactly didn’t you notify me that Eva was on her way to our location?”

Ellie was silent for a second before she spoke up again, although she had made her voice sound a lot more robotic doing so. “Replaying audio recording from twenty minutes ago:

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

‘“Alright, let’s get into position and do this thing.”

“Don’t cry too much if you lose, okay?”

“Are you really sure about this, Commander? Docto-”

“Ellie, just count, we’ll be done in five minutes.”

“Alright Commander. I’ll commence a countdown.”

“If you would.”’ End of the recording.” Ellie went quiet again after playing that audio file to me. It had silenced me pretty darn well.

“I suppose I should be offering my most sincere apology to you, Ellie.” I looked up at the ceiling with regret.

“You definitely should, Commander. I will accept groveling on the floor a well-enough recompensation.”

“R-really? That’s going a bit far, isn’t it?”

Luckily for me Ellie chuckled her last instruction aside. “Don’t worry, Commander. Apology accepted.”

“Phew, thanks. I was already getting worried.”

After that Ellie waited a couple of moments before speaking again. “Commander, now that that’s done and said, I do want to show something to you, Lieutenant-Commander and Doctor Winter after your shift is done. Would that be okay?”

“Sure thing, Ellie.” I nodded. “What do you want to show us?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Ellie?” I stopped walking for a moment and crossed my arms.

“I don’t want to ruin the surprise, Commander.”

I sighed and nodded once more before continuing my stride towards the bridge. “I guess you deserve it after my rude behavior. Where do you want us to go?”

“Where my AI core is situated, if that’s good for you?”

“Sounds fine to me. I have to admit I’m rather intrigued. Can’t we have a bit of a hint?”

“It has something to do with a little handicraft project I’ve been working on.”

I chuckled. “Handicrafts, huh? Well. I guess we will find out after work. Will you send a message to Eva or do you want me to do it?”

“I have already sent a message to her after you gave your okay, Commander.”

“Alright.” I nodded again. “Looking forward to the surprise.”

I walked the rest of the trip to the bridge in silence. Once I walked on, I saw that Luna was busy ordering the crew around as they were doing some maneuvering through an asteroid field. I decided to stay quiet while I took up a spot behind and to the side of my XO.

All in all things went well on the bridge during this minor ordeal. The asteroid field wasn’t terribly dense and even taking a couple of direct hits wouldn’t do much to this ship. That said, we did try to avoid getting warped into one of these, but thanks to the somewhat experimental nature of jumping into unexplored space, asteroid fields like these were bound to be in our path occasionally. Most of the time though we used the opportunity to practice our maneuvering in more dangerous warlike environments like minefields.

“And we are out. Good work everyone.” Luna congratulated the crew on their job well-done.

“Great work. That was very smooth.” I commented, almost giving Luna a bit of a heart attack. By the way she jumped to the side it was obvious she hadn’t heard me coming.

“L.. Commander! I didn’t see you there.” She blushed and quickly straightened her back again.

“Sorry for making you jump. I didn’t want to interrupt the training exercise you had going on.”

It looked like Luna wanted to reply but decided to wait a bit longer for her heart to calm down again.

“Commander. Welcome back!” Lieutenant Zu called to me from her seat down below.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m doing fine. The doctor has said that I can resume duty as long as I stay out of too much trouble.”

“Glad to have you back regardless.”

I nodded and then greeted the rest of the bridge crew before I turned back to Luna. “I suppose you didn’t see the message yet that I was on my way here.”

Luna shook her head. “I was a bit too concentrated on giving commands so I didn’t notice the message coming in.” She then took out her holo stick and began reading the report that Eva had sent her. She did squint at me at the end of the message, presumably while she was going over the part of my little escapade with Gunny.

“I won’t do it again, I promise.” I whispered.

“You better.” She mumbled back and gave me a somewhat disapproving sigh. “Marines be marines I guess…”

I nodded guiltily.

She then put her holo stick away and saluted me. “The bridge is yours, Commander.”

I saluted her back. “Thank you, Lieutenant-Commander.” After which I quickly situated myself at the front of the command deck. As we had just jumped into the system not too long ago, we still needed to deploy our communication relays which was a good easy job to get back in the swing of things. In the meantime I could read up on the reports from the couple of days I had missed. Not that there was much that I missed out on to begin with.

We were still deploying buoys at regular intervals, jumping further and further back towards uncharted space. Although there was a small detour that we would make soon, the gaia world where we had left our alien allies and a part of our crew behind. It had been a while and at the least giving them a communication buoy would not be a bad idea in the case something bad happened.