Laila
The following morning, the cargo bay was in chaos: people ran every which way, small bots flew along the ground, dodging people and towing carts of supplies.
Theirs wasn't the only transfer being made to the giant starship, there were also supplies to load and crew returning from leave. Routine maintenance was now complete, and it was ready to depart.
Laila was relieved when all their gear was loaded, and they could board. She had taken advantage of the ensuing down time to rest in her quarters on the Zataras, encouraging the rest of the team to do so as well.
Laila walked out of the shower, towel wrapped around her, and sat on the bed. The pack she had checked and rechecked lay next to her, ready for the coming mission. Everyone was on-board, and it wouldn't be long now until the team met to do a final briefing and do their last checks before making the approach to the moon behind Elthea.
The trip on the starship had not taken long, covering the distance from Starbase Taurus to planet Elthea in barely a day. Despite the relatively brief trip, she had read and re-read the brief for the upcoming mission what felt like a hundred times.
The starship had settled into position a few hours ago, taking cover behind one of the three moons of Elthea, perfect shields for preventing the one remaining Xakul warship from sensing them.
The planet was no longer the thriving hub of the Elthean people. They had been forced to take refuge in whichever corner of the galaxy they could. It had shocked Laila to read of the destruction that had been wrought on the previously peaceful planet. What was once the agricultural hub for the sector of space which it inhabited was now a deolate wasteland.
Reconnaissance had shown the planet was being prepared by the Xakul for use as a breeding ground, and the Eltheans who had remained on the planet to fight had been all but wiped out, previously bustling cities laid to waste. The Xakul invasion force had eventually moved off, now leaving a handful of Xakul soldiers to patrol the nursery fields. Their job was to ensure the many clutches of eggs reached maturity.
From what Laila could tell, the few remaining Eltheans were continuing to put up an admirable defense against the Xakul. Their skirmishes would provide a diversion for her team’s mission, which was to search for an abandoned, but still operational, command post and retrieve any data devices that had been left behind.
To Taurean intelligence, these small metal boxes were a treasure trove of information. They had never retrieved a fully operational unit before, despite trying several times.
Laila checked the time on her comm. Not long now until the moon the Zataras was using as a shield would orbit into position, ready for them to depart for the planet’s surface. They would use one of the starship’s shuttles, while the Zataras remained hidden behind the moon. From this position, T’arq would man the smaller shuttle that would take the team to Elthea, Tomas monitoring their progress from the bridge of the Zataras.
Laila sighed, flopping an arm over her eyes as she lay on the bed, hating the waiting that plagued military life, but knowing it was inevitable. Her thoughts drifted... to Zac.
The memory of his kisses, his body, his... It was all seared into her brain.
She wished she didn’t have to go back to Earth so soon, and did not look forward to her mission there. She was a soldier, not a politician, or some spineless PR bureaucrat. Zac had seemed upset that she was going to be leaving—but they’d both known that from the start. What they had wasn’t permanent. After all, it couldn’t be, could it?
Jumping up from the bed, she quickly donned her uniform. She had a job to do, and she needed to get her head in the game. She paused, brush in hand, taking a deep breath. As soon as she got back from this mission, she would be expected to return to Earth. She would leave Taurus and Zac behind and rejoin Space Force, albeit in a role she did not want.
It was probably for the best... it wasn’t perfect, but remaining here, working with the Taureans, couldn’t last forever.
Checking the time, she ran the brush through her hair, wincing as she snagged a knot. She quickly braided it, tucking the length neatly out of the way, grabbed her pack, and headed off to meet the team.
Even though it was huge by Earth ships’ standards, the corridors of the Zataras were smaller than those of the space station. Cool air blasted around her ankles from the wall vents as she made her way through the corridors.
Laila stopped in front of a large pair of doors marked “Shuttle Bay Five” and swiped her wrist to gain access, the doors sliding open silently.
T’arq was already performing checks on the small ship they would use, working alongside a Taurean flight engineer, the two nodding to Laila in greeting and returning to their work, their movements efficient and practised.
As Laila walked towards the shuttle, Zac appeared, walking down the ramp to greet her in full battle gear, looking hotter than he had any right to. She shivered as his green eyes met hers.
“Laila,” he said, reaching to take her pack.
“Thank you.” Still feeling a little uneasy at the way he had left the meeting of the previous day but convinced she’d been imagining things, she shook off the feeling and joined Zac to walk up the ramp and into the shuttle’s small hold.
Zac stowed their packs in a pull-down bin designated for this purpose. The rest of the team followed, quickly slipping into their seats and preparing for departure. They had run so many virtual training scenarios she felt like she had been doing this her whole life.
T’arq strapped himself into the pilot's seat, finishing his checks with Domik’s help from the co-pilot’s chair. “Alright everyone, let's hit it!”
“Take us out of here, T’arq.”
The shuttle's engines cycled, the engine noise slowly dropping away as the ramp in front of them closed shut.
Settling back into her seat, Laila tried, and failed, to ignore the hulking mass of Taurean warrior as Zac seated himself next to her. She darted a glance towards him, scowling as he caught her looking, a slight smirk tilting his lips. Yep, he was still infuriating.
The shuttle shook as T’arq moved them out of the hangar and away from the starship. As they glided past Elthea’s moon, Laila got a glimpse of the planet's surface, and she forced her thoughts towards the mission ahead of them. The trip would be quick and rough. There was only a brief window of time in which to reach their objective before the Starship Zataras would be visible to the orbiting Xakul warships. They had to be in and out quickly, or risk being seen, and that was something the shuttle’s small force desperately wanted to avoid.
