“Alright, let’s finish packing everything up so we can go do some proper exploring!” Exclaimed Chloe, showcasing that boundless well of energy she always had whenever there was a job to be done. Not that the order was strictly necessary in this case, as we were almost completely done putting away our tents and beginning to settle into our usual formation.

  I had talked about the kinds of paths we should follow with Mike to give some direction to our exploration efforts, even though, strictly speaking, we didn’t really know where we were going, and was just about to take point to lead the group through the tunnels ahead when I noticed something that made me pause. Sitting on the floor I was just about to step on, was a tiny one of those pillslugs. At just under 30 cm tall and twice as long, with a slimy, mottled green top and myriad legs barely poking out from under it, it was not nearly as big as some of the others we had seen, and it didn’t really seem to be doing anything particularly important, so it was likely a juvenile, or something along those lines.

  “Uh, guys! We have a bit of a tiny roadblock situation! You’d better watch your steps!” I called out to the others after getting some distance from the little guy, before getting closer again and crouching down to give it a proper look.

  “Huh, it’s almost cute, in a sort of ‘that thing had better not jump at me’ kind of way” I muttered to no one in particular, although, naturally it was caught by the captain, who had walked up to assess the situation, and of course, because Murphy seems to hate me, caught me at what was probably the worst possible time. “I’m gonna name you Goobe-“

  “Woodsward…” She said, with the tone of a disappointed parent. “What did we say about interacting with the locals?”

  I flinched, not having heard her footsteps from being too distracted looking at little Goober. So, having been caught with my metaphorical pants down, I had no choice but to give her the answer she was looking for. “Aye aye, Cap’n.” I said, getting up from where I had crouched. “Do not the weird aliens, I got it.”

  “That’s right,” she said, with some amount of condescension in her voice. “do not approach them, do not touch them, do not disturb them, and just generally do not, so just let it pass, and we’ll move on with our mission.” She finished, a small smile playing at her lips as her tone went from falsely condescending to amused. “And besides, this is their world, you are the only weird alien here.” She finally added, all attempts to hide her humor having completely disappeared.

  “I guess I walked right into that one.” I said with a chuckle.

  I think I’ve had it up to here with this dumb space tree.

  After walking and walking and trudging through bogs filled with slime, followed by more walking, for a whole week and change, I would very much like to say that I’ve seen all there is to see in here. Of course, I don’t even need to ask Mike to know that is not even close to the truth.

  It turns out, the colossal mega-structure that dwarfs even our mothership… Is bigger on the inside! Imagine that!

  The sights were pretty nice, once you got used to everything being covered in sticky stuff, with narrow tunnels that led into vast, open chambers held together by columns that seemed to go on forever, and were themselves filled with tunnels and pillslugs industriously going in and out and up and down them in swarms of controlled chaos. We didn’t get to explore these chambers due to the aforementioned swarm of creatures, but further exploration revealed sheer cliffs with sprawling vistas, lakes filled with drinking water that had settled above the ever-present slime without mixing at all, and even botanical gardens, containing both plants and fungi.

  Heh, growing trees inside of a tree, tree-nception.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  A few times, the path forward had been unreachable, due to it being at a higher elevation. The slugs apparently had no issue walking straight up walls but that wasn’t something we could all copy without having someone fall on their ass at least once. In those cases, Mike proved his worth as a navigator, knowing exactly how much to backtrack to lead us to a spot where a quick use of an explosive charge could open a new path onward. Those were always risky to use, with the potential to draw a lot of attention, so we always made sure there were absolutely no locals around before using them, and legged it out of there immediately after. So far, our precautions had kept us out of danger, even if the first few uses had been more than a little nerve-wracking.

  But of course, this had all lost its novelty some days ago, and now, as I led the group through the labyrinthine tunnels, I was inwardly thanking Mike for having somehow kept track of our position the entire time.

  Sure, I might be able to retrace our steps from the last day and MAYBE get back to our pod, but if you asked me to get to anywhere specific, I would only be able to find it by chance.

  The captain, for her part, was proving to be as reliable as ever, even if she hadn’t been able to properly use her unique talent of disabling the shit out of whatever poor soul decided to pick a fight with her. She had been picking up whenever I slacked out of sheer boredom and keeping a close eye on the science crew, who had been getting progressively more and more worried about not having detected any signals from the creatures no matter how much they fiddled with their tools.

  “Alright everyone!” I said, as I finished inspecting a clearing that looked just like the ones we had made camp in the days before. It was so uncanny that I would have believed they were the same, had I not been told otherwise. “This looks as good a spot as any, so let’s… you know… do the thing.” I told the rest of the group and then proceeded to begin the work of setting up our tents.

  At this point, I was not even trying to hide my grumbling from them. Physical exhaustion is something I have a lot of training for, but the mental exhaustion that came from the monotony of this whole affair, was really starting to get to me, and I wasn’t the only one, with Sarah and Alex openly sharing my thoughts, and everyone else pressing onwards out of fear of being the first to fall.

  When was the last time I played a prank on the big oaf, anyway? I thought to myself as Sarah and I finished pitching our tent, the air mattresses inside quickly inflating themselves thanks to some chemical reaction she had told me about at some point.

  “Are we there yeeeet?” Sarah whined, having wasted no time getting into her sleeping bag and collapsing onto her mattress.

  “Well, I don’t know where we’re going, but we are definitely somewhere.” I said, like a smartass, which was apparently the wrong thing to say, as my only answer was a groan. It can’t have been too wrong of an answer though, since she quickly signaled for me to join her in the tent, and we both almost immediately passed out, comfortably lying next to each other in companionable silence, this being a night when we weren’t scheduled to keep a look out.

  I returned to consciousness to Sarah’s sleeping face right in front of me, so that was a good way to start the day. What wasn’t as good, however, were Alice’s vaguely confused screams of ”Uh.. Help!” That quickly got everyone up and rushing in their direction.

  “Status!” Captain Chloe commanded, not wasting a second.

  “Uhm, well…” Alice responded, seemingly not picking up on the urgency in the captain’s tone. “We kinda forgot to fully close our tent’s flap after our watch last night and…” She trailed off while fully opening the flap to reveal the tent’s interior, along with one completely paralyzed Michael Hayes and…

  “Hey! That’s Goober!” I said, drawing quizzical looks from everyone and a facepalm from Chloe. “What? I found it a few days ago, looks like it’s been following us. It likes you!” I told everyone my thoughts on the little creature that had climbed onto our poor navigator while he was asleep.

  My explanation was almost cut short by Mike’s sobbing “W-w-w-what do I do?”

  “Do not the weird aliens.” The captain repeated her mantra, not really helping calm his fears.

  “That’s not helping!” He said, proving my point.

  “Just calm down, stay still, let it get off of you on its own, and then you can slowly get out of the tent.” The captain told him, and he quickly tried to steady his breathing before responding between gasps.

  “Ok… Ok… I think I can- OW!” He startled, sending poor little Goober flying past all of us. “That thing bit me!” He exclaimed, more to himself than to anybody else.

  “Uhm, guys… I just picked up an electric pulse.” Interjected Fae, likely the one person thinking about anything important at the moment, namely how Mike had just broken the one rule of ‘Do Not the weird aliens’.

  “You think it might have been a distress sig-“ Tried to say Alice, but was quickly interrupted by the captain, taking command of the situation.

  “Yup! Time to move! Emergency evac as practiced, right now!” She commanded in no uncertain terms

  Chapter 4: Class 7 My Ass!