Aspen woke in her room, bleary eyed as she pawed at the screen on her tab, the kitten on her background ringing a handbell obnoxiously acting as her wake up alarm. Silencing it, she sat on the edge of her bed and rubbed her eyes and sighed.

Standing, she began her morning stretches and thought about the contents of her day. She knew she would have to report to Sick Bay with Dr. Holt as soon as she got some coffee, and as far as she knew there was nothing scheduled for her to do, but the ever-present possibility for a medical emergency could yank her away from whatever she would find to do.

She also knew she wanted to speak to Tara about their conversation yesterday. She was still conflicted as to what she wanted to do about the deluge of information she was hit with, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to process it alone. Despite knowing that Tara was basically planted to be her friend, she couldn’t help but want to reach out to her about it. She barely knew anyone else on the ship, and Tara even told her she liked her to the point that she skirted her orders to keep her out of the loop.

Aspen sighed again as she finished her stretches and ran her hand down her face, “Ugh. This is going to be so fucking awkward.”

Brushing her hair quickly and checking her appearance in her tab’s camera, she exited her room and made her way down to the common area and entered the queue for a cup of coffee. An unexciting wait later, she was on her way back to Sick Bay, a steaming cup of what passed for coffee aboard the Meili in a styrofoam cup cradled in her hands.

Passing through the waiting room and into the patient care area and noting that she was the first to arrive, she set her cup down and began preparing for the day.

Humming tunelessly as she worked, Aspen began by removing the previous day’s blood samples from the analysis machines and linking their information to the appropriate patient files, then began calibrating control samples for all of the analyzers - a blue liquid dripped into a vial and spun up on the analyzer to ensure accuracy. Finishing that, she booted Dr. Holt’s workstation and then began to prepare several kits for easy patient assessment - disposable blood pressure cuff, IV supplies, and a pulse oximetry sticker probe.

Finishing that, she sat in a chair and checked over the blood results she had linked previously as she sipped her coffee. Unsurprised to see near perfect blood work on the complete blood count samples obtained from the Marine’s the previous day, she forwarded a few samples to Dr. Holt for review, mostly elevated liver enzymes for a few of the older Marines, probably from long term use of the low dose SARMs provided by the Federation of Sol for it’s infantry members.

Dr. Holt arrived as she finished reviewing the last Marine’s sample. She nodded in greeting at the man as he walked in, a cup of coffee in one hand and his tab in another as he entered through the door. Looking around at all the ready equipment, he looked at Aspen, “I know I gave Captain Marcus shit for getting me a new SRT but I gotta say I’m starting to like having you here.”

Aspen smiled, “Need to prove my worth somehow.”

“Well, you’re making good progress in my book,” he looked around a bit more before sitting at his workstation, “Really not much for us to do today. Chart reviews, walk-ins and so on. We have medicine audits tomorrow.”

Aspen tilted her head, “Already? I assume you did one before we left the dock, right?”

Dr. Holt nodded, “Yeah, but since we carry narcotics and so on we have to audit every five days at least. I’ll pull David for that, it’s pretty monotonous work since you are just counting vials and comparing control members against a screen. Perfect for a lazy turd like him.”

Aspen grunted in assent and settled back into her chair, watching Dr. Holt from the side of her eye as he sipped his coffee and idly tapped at his terminal. She couldn’t help but think of her conversation with Tara and Dr. Holt’s own cryptic remark from the other day. Did he know what her situation was? She couldn’t imagine he didn’t, being her commanding officer. She had a sudden urge to ask him about it, but quickly suppressed it. She didn’t know Dr. Holt well enough for a conversation like that, and even if she did, she could get Tara into a lot of trouble.

Aspen mentally shelved the thought and refocused on her terminal screen, idly reading a continuing education self-study course on blast injuries randomly assigned to her to keep her knowledge sharp and up to date.

Just as she was getting to the section on the pathophysiology of primary blast injuries in low atmosphere and vacuum space, the door opened and David entered the care area, bobbing his head with no apparent rhythm, the oversized headphones on his head audible from across the room as they blasted some very aggressive sounding music. Pausing his music, he waved at Aspen and greeted Dr. Holt, “Mornin’ doc.”

Dr. Holt rolled his eyes, “David. If you listen to music that loud much longer you’re going to go deaf. And don’t think that’ll get you out of work, you know just as well as I do that we can replace your eardrums in an afternoon.”

David gave Dr. Holt a smile, “I do it because I know you can fix it, I have the utmost faith in your capabilities, sir.”

Dr. Holt rolled his eyes, “Whatever. David, you have medicine audits. Aspen, you are free to go do whatever you wish barring any emergencies.”

David scowled at that, “That’s not fair.”

Aspen winked at David as she stood from her terminal, “I already did the blood analyses and set up for the day, you can handle some audits, right?”

Dr. Holt chuckled, “Of course he can.”

Aspen tapped the logout button on her terminal and quickly made her escape from the patient care area right as Dr. Holt and David’s bickering was beginning, the sound of David’s whining cut off as the door shut behind her. She stood in the waiting area for a moment and pulled her tab from her pocket, the kitten on the screen curled up in a ball, digital Z’s floating above it’s head. Thumbing the screen awake, she opened up her messaging app and stared at Tara’s name on her screen, biting her lip.

Should she message her about yesterday? No, she should find her and talk to her in person. The tone of the conversation she wanted to have was not best conveyed over text. She had a rough idea of where Tara would be, but wasn’t sure if she would be free to talk.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Shrugging, Aspen pocketed her tab. She could use a walk to think about what she wanted to say to Tara.

Taking off down the corridor at a slow walk, she let her mind wonder.

Tara’s information dump yesterday was still knocking around inside her mind like a bouncy ball in a dryer. Why the other woman had decided to tell her all that she didn’t know.

But…

Aliens? Aspen knew that the Federation of Sol had found alien life elsewhere, sure. Everyone knew that. Simple creatures. But the kind of aliens Tara was talking about implied sentient beings. To end up multiple light years away needed a technology on par with the Federation’s Bifrost.

Aspen wasn’t super knowledgeable on what her parents worked on during their time on Titan, she had been fairly young and knew from an even younger age she didn’t want to follow in their footsteps into a world of academia and research. She chuckled slightly as she rounded a corner, almost bumping into a crewman. Guess she knew even less about what they did than she thought she did.

Still, she was skeptical about the entire situation. She couldn’t help but think in the back of her mind that she was being manipulated in some way by Tara. She knew she grew attached to her pretty quickly, and had even had issues with relationships due to becoming too infatuated with a new romantic prospect in the past. Aspen frowned, wishing she could talk to Clarence about this, despite his own relationship issues he was often a readily available source of comfort and. She didn’t dare message him about the situation, though. The Federation of Sol monitored everything.

She wanted to believe that she wasn’t being manipulated. She didn’t have any way to prove Tara’s story other than her own words. She stopped and leaned against the bulkhead just before entering the common room and rested the back of her head against the wall, getting some weird looks from passing crewmembers that she completely ignored.

Should she ask for proof? How would Tara even be able to prove something like what she had said? Aspen shook her head. No, this isn’t something she should take at face value - even if she did get some of the information about her parent’s death correct, she needed actual proof. She was going to tell Tara to prove her claims, or she would simply not believe it. She hated that she needed to make an ultimatum for herself, but she refused to be a victim.

Aspen pushed off the wall and down the mezzanine, and started to make her way across the common room and towards the Meili’s gymnasium in the aft of the ship, waving at Ericka as she walked by. They were currently sitting at a table playing with a small handheld game console.

Aspen stopped as they called out to her, “Hey, Aspen! How’s it goin’?”

Aspen redirected herself to where Ericka was sitting and stopped next to them, peeking at the screen on the console, they were playing some kind of racing game, “Oh, not too bad. I keep getting free time from sick bay so I’m out and about. Heading to the gym, right now actually.”

Ericka paused their game and set the console down, “Well free time from sick bay is a good thing, that means everyone is healthy,” she eyed Aspen, “Those aren’t gym clothes though, whatcha gonna do at the gym?”

Aspen looked down at her clothes and pulled at her BDUs, “Not exercise, ha. I’m hoping to meet up with someone, actually.”

Ericka wiggled their eyebrows at Aspen, “Nice. Well, don’t let me keep you from your date.”

Aspen blushed slightly, “Not a date, but thanks,” she turned to leave as Ericka picked up their game again.

Making her way down the hall to the gymnasium, Aspen slowed her already sedate pace to a crawl. She wasn’t even sure if Tara was in there, but she knew it wouldn’t be hard to get her away from whatever she would be doing. Unless, of course, if their Second Lieutenant was also in there with them. She couldn’t imagine the man would let Tara skip out on whatever group exercises he had planned even though Tara could probably outlift the man by a long shot.

Aspen approached the doorway and peeked her head in, then quickly pulled her head back.

Tara was there. She was standing with a group of people watching a video on a screen embedded into the wall, her back to the door.

Suddenly nervous, Aspen took a deep breath and marched into the gymnasium, and stood behind Tara.

One of the people next to Tara nudged her and nodded towards Aspen. Turning, Tara’s eyes widened slightly as she spotted Aspen, “Oh, uh. Hey Aspen.”

Aspen crossed her arms, “Can we talk?”

Tara shot a mean look at one of the crewmen near her that snickered at Aspen’s question and looked back to the video screen, then pulled her tab out of her pocket and checked the time, “Give me like fifteen minutes?”

Aspen nodded, “Uh, yeah, I’ll meet you in the hallway.”

Aspen moved into the hallway outside of the gym once more and pulled her tab from her pocket and began to scroll mindlessly through her feeds.

A short time later, Tara exited the gym with several other people who made off in different directions. Waving for Aspen to follow her, Tara took off down the hall in a different direction from the majority of the others leaving. Aspen pocketed her tab and followed close behind. Around a corner from the gym, and away from others, Tara stopped and turned to Aspen.

Before Tara could say anything, Aspen jumped to say what she wanted to say before her nerves could catch up to her, “I thought a lot about what you told me. I want to believe you. I do believe you… kind of. But I need you to prove it. Prove you aren’t just fucking with me.”

Tara cocked an eyebrow at Aspen, “Prove it? Sure, I can prove it. I’m honestly surprised you came to talk to me about this so quickly…”

Aspen shrugged, “I’ve done nothing but think about this since last night. I need to get some kind of closure on this or these thoughts are going to eat me alive.”

“I get it. I dropped a shit load of information on you like it was nothing and then just left…” Tara scratched the back of her head, “I don’t regret telling you any of this, but I do regret the way I did it… And how quickly I dropped it on you.”

“Yeah, that was a hell of a bomb shell, but if you are going to be honest with me then the earlier the better.”

Nodding, Tara fished her tab out of her pocket and poked at the screen a few times, “I’ll see what I can do to get your proof. I can’t say it’ll be anything other than you scrolling through some text on my tab, though. I probably should have started with that yesterday, too.”

Aspen rolled her eyes, “Yeah, that would have been nice… By the way, who all is in the know on this whole ‘situation?’”

Tara shrugged, “None of the other Marines other than the Second Lieutenant, that I know of. I’d expect any of the upper command staff on the ship would know.”

Aspen’s eyebrows came together, “You think Dr. Holt knows? I know he seems to hate the other SRT, David, but it seems like he gives me a lot of preferential treatment.”

Tara shrugged again, “He’s a pretty high rank I bet, as the ship's Medical Officer, and he’s your direct CO so I imagine he would.”

“Well, for now it’s working in my favor, I guess. The amount of free time I’m getting will let me look into this more.”

Tara’s face darkened as she looked up from her tab, “You need to be careful. If people start to suspect that you know anything, the blame for the information getting out will go straight to me.”

Aspen gave Tara a crooked smile, “Well, you did tell me. But I’ll be careful, don’t worry. I honestly don’t know where to start other than schmoozing up to some of the officers.”

“That’s probably a good start, I guess,” Tara pocketed her tab, “I’ll have to show you the proof I’m able to get later tonight, I have to go meet with the Second Lieutenant soon. I’ll message you and let you know when.”

Aspen nodded, “Thank you for not questioning why I want proof.”

Tara chuckled, “I’d want it, too.”