Aspen had a sudden chill creep down her spine, and she leaned back on the couch, away from Tara, “My parents? What the fuck are you talking about?”

Tara sighed and rubbed her hand down her face, “I told them I wasn’t good at this shit - Aspen, I have to tell you something. It’s going to upset you, and it’s probably going to get me into trouble. A lot of trouble. Like, ‘lose my citizenship’ at best in trouble.”

Aspen’s eyebrows came together and she stared at Tara. She had been on this ship for only two days now and she thought she had a good idea of what her life going forward on the ship would be like, but she had a feeling that wasn’t the case any longer.

Aspen nodded slowly, and Tara sighed again, “When you were younger you were told your parents died of carbon monoxide poisoning, right?”

The chill on Aspen’s back suddenly turned into a cold sweat, she hadn’t told Tara that. She hadn’t told anyone that, not even Terrance.

Aspen’s voice broke slightly as she leaned forward again, “How-”

Tara held up her hand, “Let me explain. Please.”

Aspen’s eye twitched slightly and she gripped her hands together tightly in her lap and nodded, silent.

Tara continued, her voice somber, “Your parent’s did die of carbon monoxide poisoning, but whatever reason you were told is probably a load of shit. Your parents were researching the fossilized remains of… well, something, on Titan buried under a cryovolcano. They had determined that the fossil hadn’t come from Titan - or even the Sol system. They reached out to a colleague who knew a bit about xenobiology - single or multi-celled organisms, mostly. They had replied back that whatever sample they were studying was bigger than that and had similarities to a sample they had seen in Alpha Centauri. Then, they died. Your parents, and their friend.”

Aspen’s lip quivered as she searched Tara’s face for a tell that she was just pulling a mean prank on her, or that she was screwing with her in some fucked up way. Tara, unfortunately, looked dead serious.

“What the fuck does that have to do with me, though?” Aspen asked angrily.

“The Federation of Sol’s A.I chose you to come out to this system after linking your familial information with your parent’s. For whatever reason the top brass in the Federation think you will have some kind of impact on whatever the hell is going on. How they think that impact will happen is where heads started to butt and opinions differed. Marine command versus Navy command, SpecOps, and so on,” Tara grimaced, “ Marine command was able to send someone to come watch you: me.”

Aspen’s head tilted to the side, she was now trembling slightly, “You, uh, what?”

Tara nodded slowly, “Yes, I was sent to come keep an eye on you, among other things. But - don’t think that the other day was because I had to!”

Aspen stood, making Tara scoot her chair back, “Among other things?! I thought you came up to me because you liked me, not because you were ordered to! We went on, like, one fucking date and you are dropping some of the heaviest fucking information I have ever heard on me like it’s nothing!”

Tara cringed, “I know, I know. I’m telling you because I think you deserve to know. You have the right to know, even. Like I said, I like you, like, when I first saw you I got butterflies in my stomach and all that mushy stuff. I actually wasn’t even supposed to be talking to you, just observing.”

Aspen held her head in her hands and began to pace in front of the couch, “I don’t know what the fuck is going on. I have been on the Meili for less than a fucking week and I’ve already been told that there’s a potential ‘us versus them’ scenario, only to have the girl I like straight up tell me ‘hey, i got ordered to watch you, also your parents were probably murdered!’ And what was all that crap earlier about ‘Oh I don’t know why I’m on the ship’ you were giving me?”

Tara stood as well, “Can you let me finish explaining everything before you go nuclear? You can stop talking to me, or pretend I don’t exist or whatever if you want after we are done, but I think you skipped over a pretty big piece of what I just told you.”

Aspen grunted in frustration and flopped down on the couch, crossing her arms and glared at Tara.

Tara moved to the wall and leaned her back against it, crossing her arms, she looked at Aspen, “Your parents were studying fossils, Aspen. Fossils. I don’t know what these fossils were, but they didn’t come from Sol. They came from Alpha Centauri. That means they traveled more than four lightyears to somehow end up on Titan.”

Aspen’s eyes widened slightly as she realized the implication of what Tara was saying. She had glossed right over that bit of information when she said it, her attention too focused on the betrayal she felt from Tara’s revelation.

Aspen’s mind spun, and she cradled her head in hands, leaning forward on the couch, “So… Aliens?”

Tara snorted, “Maybe. Probably. Command knows there’s some fucky stuff going on out here and they are trying to search as thoroughly as possible and keep it under wraps at the same time. That’s probably what you saw on the overlay earlier, something they hadn’t identified but didn’t want the general ship crew to see. Whatever is out there, they could have the technology to get from Alpha Centauri to Sol, so they would be presumed to be dangerous. The Kardeshev scale turns into a ‘How likely are they going to kill us’ scale towards the higher end.”

Aspen chewed her bottom lip for a second, then shook her head, her hair bouncing wildly, “This is too much,” she stood and began pacing again, “I was just supposed to do my six months on this fucking ship and be done with it. There’s not supposed to be shit like this happening. A secret escort, my parents, fucking aliens?”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Tara nodded silently, then moved to the exit ladder, “I don’t expect you to believe everything I just told you, hell, I know I wouldn’t. I also don’t expect you to trust me, after I told you that I was basically assigned to you. I just want you to know that I did enjoy our night the other night, and that what I was feeling was more than just… Work. It felt right. Good, even.”

Tara gave a big sigh then turned and started up the ladder, pausing just before her head went through the exit hatch, “I hope we can still at least be friends, but I understand if not.”

Aspen stopped pacing and faced Tara as she climbed, “I don’t know what the fuck to think right now. I need time, Tara. This is happening too quickly for me to process.”

Tara nodded silently and continued climbing, Aspen watching as her feet disappeared through the hatch.

Aspen spun and threw herself down on the couch, her thoughts spinning wildly as she reran the conversation she just had with Tara. Feeling tears begin to well up at the corners of her eyes, she pressed her face into the ugly orange couch and let out a wracking sob.

Of all the information she had just been told, even the story about her parents, if that was even true, she was most upset about Tara’s revelation that she hadn’t shown interest in her of her own volition. Yes, she had said she went further than she should have, but Aspen couldn’t shake that sense of betrayal. Maybe she got attached too quickly, maybe she shouldn’t be crying over a woman she had met less than three days ago, but the tears she shed were more an outlet for the frustration she felt at the situation than sadness.

She still felt like she liked Tara, despite everything. She was definitely attracted to her, but she felt frustrated that she liked this woman who, within three days, had turned her entire world upside down. How could she continue to see her in the same light after the conversation they just had? How could she continue her work aboard the Meili after what she had been told about its real mission? It’s not like her role aboard the ship had anything to do with what Tara had been talking about, but from what Tara had said, she was tied into the bigger picture in ways even Federation command didn’t understand.

Aspen sat up and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, she could feel her eyes puffed up from crying, and moved to the desk in the room and grabbed a tissue out of the box sitting atop it, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose, then looked over to the ladder where Tara had ascended.

Aspen shook her head and moved back over to the couch, the ugly orange fabric strangely comfortable as she lay down on her side and curled her legs up to her chest, hugging them. She closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind the best she could, but the same thoughts kept coming.

What the hell was she going to do now?

\\\

Aspen jerked awake on the couch as her tab chirped at her, the digital kitten on her background pawing at the screen as she swiped open her notifications. She didn’t mean to fall asleep down here in the freight office, but luckily she had only been out for about an hour.

She sat up and looked at her notifications, a shipwide message that mealtime would be over shortly. Her stomach growled loudly as she read the message, she knew when to take a hint.

Pocketing her tab, she climbed the ladder out of the office and entered the hallway, heading towards the common room to get whatever Ericka had cooked for the day’s meal, her mind returned to her conversation with Tara and the events of the past day.

Her unplanned nap had done well to clear her mind, but she still felt a weight at the bottom of her stomach while thinking about what happened in that office. She knew she should be more shocked knowing that the Meili’s true mission was searching for alien life, but she couldn’t help but feel rocked by Tara’s ulterior motives for approaching her. Yes, she’d come clean after an admittedly very short amount of time, but Aspen would have liked to think that she could have gotten Tara’s attention by her own volition.

She knew that whatever relationship she had with Tara going forward would be strained due to this information, but she couldn’t help but hope that things would be somewhat the same as they had been with the short amount of time they had spent with each other. Aspen made a fist in determination and nodded to herself, she would message Tara again soon after they both had some time to think and they’d talk some more about it.

Aspen turned her thoughts to her parents and what they had been researching as she entered the common room and joined the queue for the cafeteria window. She didn’t have any reason to think Tara had been lying to her about that information, and what she had seen on the overlay earlier had helped her believe what she’d been told, but she would need some more proof than what Tara had told her. Finding that truth would be the hard part, since Tara had said she would be in a world of trouble if it got out that she found out.

Aspen approached the cafeteria window and accepted a tray of food from Ericka. A bowl of what was advertised as Italian Wedding soup and what appeared to be a couple of freshly baked bread sticks gave off a mouth watering aroma. She gave them a smile, “Thanks, Ericka. It looks great!”

They gave Aspen a smile and a nod, not stopping to talk as they churned out trays to the queued up crew members trying to get a meal before official chow time was over, forcing them to eat prepackaged meals instead of the freshly cooked food.

Aspen searched the common room for an empty table, but wasn’t able to find one, the low rumble of conversation in the large room filled her ears as she made a lap around the room searching for a less occupied table. Finding a table with only two other crew members at it, she sat and gave them a nod in greeting, tuned out the conversation the two were having before she approached, and began to eat. The meatballs and pasta in the soup were both cooked to perfection, and the green veggies tender as could be. She ripped a chunk of bread off and dunked it in her soup, then took a bite. She let out a small involuntary groan as she ate, not realizing exactly how hungry she was.

Finishing her soup and nibbling on her last breadstick, she let her mind drift back to that previous conversation once more, the common room emptying slowly around her as they returned to their duties.

The fact that she, a newly graduated SRT on her very first deployment, would be in the sights of some of the highest ranked Federation command staffers didn’t sit well with her. The circumstances surrounding the reason for that was even harder to wrap her mind around. She had already mourned her parents, but what Tara had told her about their deaths, if it was true, opened up a new wound, so to say. Had their deaths been some coverup to keep people from finding out about other life elsewhere in the galaxy?

A thought strange enough to feel almost ridiculous, but one she had anyway. Tara had no reason she could think of to lie to her. She needed to know for sure, though, that this was what was actually going on out here. Logically, it made some amount of sense, a border patrol ship for a system with only a few hundred thousand people, and a relatively low number of ships flying about.

Whatever the truth was, Aspen knew she had to feign ignorance of the grand scheme that was allegedly revolving around her and continue her duties. She knew Captain Marcus was watching her interactions with the Marines, and any abrupt change in behavior would seem suspicious.

Standing, Aspen deposited her dishes and cutlery into the recycler at the edge of the common room and made her way back to her room, her mind spinning as she considered her next move.