The insertion pod that all seven of us were stuffed into was a cramped affair, a far cry from the proper shuttle we would be using on our return trip to the mothership. But, needs must, and this thing had a much smaller footprint, and was therefore less likely to be spotted on approach, which was important with there being nobody in the floating space tree that could make sure there were no hostiles waiting at our entry point or that we wouldn’t be shot at before even getting the chance to begin our mission.

  In space, the main limiting factor to the distance one could cover was the amount of fuel one was willing to stuff into their design, and given that, before being used, any fuel taken had to be carried around, increasing the mass of a ship and paradoxically limiting the distance one could even cover, in practice this followed one of two trends: You either packed just enough fuel for your needs and made do, like in the case of the pod we were in; or you brought what always feels like an outrageous amount of fuel that somehow never ends up being enough, like in the shuttle we would be taking to get back to our mothership once our mission was done. And then there was the mothership itself, a kilometer long mega-structure whose sheer size made it impractical to even attempt to move without using the FTL technology that allowed it to hop between star systems… with the side effect of vaporizing everything within a thousand kilometers when coming out of warp, hence the need for shuttles and pods when moving within the orbit of a planet or moon. Then, of course, there was the fact that this pod being smaller would make it harder to spot, and a smaller target in case something decided to take pot-shots at us, which I was actively trying not to think about.

  To be fair, the chances of getting shot at seemed fairly low, given that we were flying towards a literal tree. And it was actually a tree, that fact had cost me 20 creds in a bet against Mike, with its trailing roots, hard bark and somehow even a lush canopy, it had a size that dwarfed even the mothership we were rapidly distancing ourselves from. How they even managed to get something like that off-world, with its unwieldy shape and the planet below’s thick yellow atmosphere was a mystery to me, second only to why anyone would even bother in the first place.

  “Are we sure this dinghy has enough fuel to get us there? Or are we gonna have to chuck the one that’s clearly weighing us down?” Asked Curt, putting an end to any and all serious introspection.

  “Don’t look at me, you are the most throwable person in here.” Replied Alex, wrapping an arm around the smaller man’s shoulder and earning a light jab to the kidney for his trouble.

  Lighthearted antics ensued for a few minutes as all of us, with the exception of Mike who was flying this thing, took a moment to de-stress from being in the most vulnerable position we would be on this entire mission, completely unarmed and moving slowly to avoid detection. The pod was capable of impressive acceleration, but only for short periods due to its scant fuel reserves, and even then, those maneuvers meant pulling an unhealthy amount of Gs’.

  “Approaching our contact point” Informed Mike, pulling us all out of our revelry and back into serious mode. Shortly after, with a light shaking, our pod made contact and dug through the bark of the space tree, offering us a way inside. Alex was the first one out, followed by Curt and then the captain, and only once we’d been given a signal did Alice, Mike, Sarah and I follow them.

  The trio that left the pod first did a thorough check of our surroundings while we hung back, ready to move in whatever direction was required of us. Curt examined our surroundings equipped with a rifle nearly as big as he was, along with a handgun that could be quickly drawn from its holster, while the captain had a handgun in one hand and one of her ridiculously tough, sharp tipped polymer sticks on the other, the remaining stick secured to her back. Meanwhile Alex had his left arm in its gatling gun configuration, because, and I quote: ‘what’s the point of having a robot arm if it can’t turn into a huge fuck-off gun?’.

  “Clear!” Curt announced, drawing a collective sigh of relief from the rest of us that that asshole Carter hadn’t picked an insertion point that would send us directly to our deaths.

  The inside of the tree was nothing like how I had expected, but a lot like how Alice had told me it would be, which means I just lost another bet.

  Those two had better buy the rest of us some snacks or something with the amount of money they’ve been getting around this whole fiasco.

  Anyway, where the exterior resembled the hard bark one would expect from a tree anywhere near this size, the interior was… gross. The tunnels we found ourselves in were completely covered in gunk from floor to ceiling, and they weren’t completely dark but I almost would have preferred it, with spots that emitted yellow lighting distributed randomly throughout the floors, walls and ceilings, that cast everything else in a sickly light that made the slime coating everything look like vomit. At least the atmosphere was breathable, as one would expect from a Class 7 world, or a ‘vessel’ originating from one, for that matter, and the smell wasn’t as bad as its visual presentation would lead one to believe. That being, not offensively or painfully horrible. Although perhaps the strangest thing happening was one that I almost took for granted: These things had gotten artificial gravity working on a space tree, which while not all that impressive by itself, made it clear that some outside force was at play here, even if the nice and soothing 0.6 times earth's gravity, somewhere around the ballpark of what one could expect on a Class 7 world, didn't really help narrow it down.

  I crouched down to do a quick inspection of the slime that appeared to coat literally everything in our surroundings, while thanking whoever it was back home that had made it standard protocol to pack tents when going on expeditions uninvited, instead of roughing it wherever you ended up.

  “Hey Sarah, come take a look at this.” I said, seeking the expertise of our group’s chemist. The bit of mucus I had scraped up with my gloved fingers was actually translucent, with the green color coming from the walls and floor behind it.

  “Looks like snot.” Was her brilliant insight.

  “I can already see the Nobel that’s waiting for you for that.” Said Curt, clearly agreeing with me, and drawing an evil look from his girlfriend’s face.

  “Oh yeah? Well, it does look a lot like the snot you have on your nose.” She said, taking the bit of slime from my hand and throwing it at his face. He managed to dodge, but was almost thrown off balance and barely managed to avoid face planting in the very thing he had tried to avoid.

  “Careful there, you wouldn’t want to end up covered in goop. Then again, it just might be an improvement.” Said Alex, sensing an opportunity and pouncing on it, which, of course, Curt wouldn’t fail to reciprocate.

  “Well, the bigger they are…” He said, following the uninspired half one liner with a kick to the back of the other man’s foot near the Achilles’ heel, causing him to go tumbling down and only managing to stop himself with his organic hand.

  “Woah dude! Not cool.” He said, shaking and trying to clean up his hand.

  “I dunno man, wouldn’t want to see you two end up wrestling in here and getting all oiled up.” Coyly suggested Sarah, drawing horrified looks from the wrestlers in question.

  “ “ Gross. “ “ They both said, wrongly, at the same time.

  Ok, maybe they weren’t wrong but that is now one of the things I’ve ever imagined. In fact, it would look something like…

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  [Technician’s note: Nobody wants to see this. How did she even do this? These are supposed to be text format only, gave the machine a stroke.]

  Hehe. The fact that someone might have to read these at some point gives me endless amounts of joy.

  Hey you! Yeah, you reading this! Whenever you find this, give me a call, I’ll buy you a beer!

  [Technician’s note: No thanks.]

  “Alright, children! Put your grown-up pants on! It’s time to move! Mike, Alice, conceal the hatch so we can go find a spot to camp. Science crew, hold off on doing any more sciences until we have an area secure. Move out!” Ordered the captain, putting an end to our shenanigans and shifting everyone back to serious mode.

  We all got moving in loose formation once Mike and Alice were done hiding the entry to our pod so it wouldn’t arouse suspicion from anything passing by, the metal hatch not exactly blending in with the surrounding goop covered walls. This had the advantage of us being able to use the pod as a fallback position, should we need to hide behind its bulletproof hatch, but it did have two big disadvantages. The first being that it would technically be leaving a big, conspicuous metal wart on the outside of the space tree, although, to be fair, the many orders of magnitude difference in their respective sizes would make spotting it pretty hard. The other drawback was that the pod didn’t actually have enough fuel to get us back to the mothership due to its size constraints, so we would have to keep the rescue team on speed dial, since locking ourselves in there would also mean we would be stuck there until they could come pick us up. Asshats though they were, the 6 left behind at the mothership would let nothing stop them from putting together a rescue op the second they stopped receiving a signal from us.

  The formation we settled in had Curt, our scout, taking point at the front, followed by the captain, and then Mike, Alice, Sarah and myself clustered in the middle as part of the science crew, with Alex, the only person equipped with rearview mirrors, taking up the back of it.

  As we trudged on through the goop covered tunnels, I eventually had enough and decided to deploy my secret weapon. “Hey Alex, mind giving me a ride?” I asked, already knowing the answer, having asked a million times before. “Sure,” he responded “as long as you don’t mind getting dumped on your ass if anything comes up.” He gave me the ‘professionally responsible’ version of the answer, which was right of him, but come on! Like anything’s gonna happen.

  I pressed a hidden button on his left arm that caused it to bend 90 degrees at the elbow and turn into a gyro stabilized seat that I climbed onto after turning my backpack to sit on my lap, giving me a smooth, goop free ride through the gross, sticky tunnels. Everyone gave me looks of what I will always choose to interpret as jealousy, but nobody called me out on my taking advantage of my particular situation, so, sucks to be them.

  As long as I’m sitting here, I might as well check up on The Project, just gotta make sure I do it discreetly.

  Oops, probably shouldn’t let that get into the log, don’t want to ruin the surprise. N???o???w??? ???t???o??? ???g???e???t??? ???i???n???t???o??? ???t???h???e??? ???r???i???g???h???t??? ???s???t???a???t???e??? ???o???f??? ???m???i???n???d???.???.???.???

  [DATA CORRUPTED]

  …And with that, just have one more button to push and…

  I watched as the cupholder deployed itself from Alex’s arm and used it to hold the drink I had pulled up.

  “This looks like a decent spot to camp.” Announced Curt, fucking finally. My legs had started to hurt from getting stuck in the muck some time ago, and the sight of Fae getting her munchies like this was just a normal Tuesday, while at first had been so jarring it looped back around to being funny, was not helping at this point. And then there was also what had been making me anxious this whole trip.

  “Any signals or communications from the locals?” Asked Captain Chloe, and that was it, it wasn’t that anything was happening, it was that what I had expected wasn’t happening.

  “Nothing yet.” I answered with a worried tone.

  It wasn’t that we hadn’t seen anything, we had watched several of the pillslugs from afar, going about their business in organized trails that sometimes intersected with each other but never collided. We had even hidden from numerous Guardians, and not even once did we catch a whiff of them talking to each other, with no electrical signals being fired.

  Are they being mind controlled or something? Why aren’t they talking to each other? There’s no way they can coordinate without some form of communication. Maybe our equipment isn’t sensitive enough, although I’m pretty sure I calibrated it…

  It had almost got to the point where I started to wonder if our intel had been wrong, or if they were being blocked by the pervasive slime that covered everything, but it hadn’t been time to test that theory.

  What was working in our favor, however, was that unlike the pillslugs, the Guardians always walked on two, four or six legs, making them easy to notice well before being spotted by keeping an ear out for footsteps other than our own.

  Less in our favor was just how intimidating those creatures were, their surprisingly large bodies rippling with the kind of tightly packed muscle you wouldn’t expect to see on a gardenworld, but then again, that also made everyone take staying out of their sight seriously, so it might just balance itself out.

  “Alright, then, Mike, Curt, Alex and I will secure a perimeter and get to work on pitching our tents, the rest of the science crew, if you don’t have anything you need to get done right now, help out with the tents.” Commanded the captain, and that had been what I was waiting for.

  “Fae, Sarah, help me out with an experiment?” I called out before they could go off and do whatever was on their minds.

  “Sure! Whatcha’ thinkin’?” Asked Fae, walking up with a skip in her step that I just could not empathize with.

  “I’m gonna need an insulated surface, electrodes, and a bit of slime…” I said, and all three of us got to work.

  …

  “That’s amazing!” “This doesn’t look good…” Said Sarah and I, respectively, having had wildly different reactions to the results of our little experiment. When prompted, she elaborated.

  “This conducts electricity in its own, unique way! Send out a quick pulse and it goes through, no problem, send a continuous current, and it gets stopped completely! Just think about what we could do back home with a semi-conductor like this! It’s almost like a non-Newtonian fluid, slap it and it turns solid, move it carefully and it stays liquid, except instead of changing its state, this changes its conductivity!” She explained with unmasked excitement, and, to be fair, I couldn’t blame her. As the group’s chemist, she was the first to catch that, followed quickly by Fae when she started her explanation.

  For the sake of redundancy, everyone in the group had at least a basic idea of how to do the tasks everyone else had been assigned, but we each had our own specialization. For example, while any of us was technically capable of flying a ship or keeping track of where we’d been, Mike, as our Navigator, was the only one who could reliably dock his ship with another in space on his first try, or get out of a maze by following a paper map. So, once she told me her thought process, the possibilities did cheer me up somewhat, but they ultimately did nothing to calm my anxiety, because they had missed the point entirely.

  “So, what’s eating you up?” Asked Fae from beside me.

  “Well, I was starting to think maybe we hadn’t heard any of the aliens speak because the signals were being blocked by the slime, but according to this, they should be coming through just fine, so why haven’t we picked up any pulses?”

  “Huh, that’s a good point.” Fae said, to which Sarah nodded after quickly calming down. “So, what are you thinking?” She asked me, so I shared my thoughts. “Hmm, I’m thinking that either our intel was wrong and the pillslugs don’t actually communicate with electric signals, or they are just going about their lives without ever feeling the need to communicate with each other. Ever. Which I’m just not buying. So, if that last one is correct then that would imply someone else is pulling the strings, directing them somehow in a different way than how they would normally talk to each other.”

  “Right, and depending on the circumstances, that could count as inhumanely exploiting a lesser species, so no wonder they would be trying to hide it.” Said Fae, to which Sarah agreed, saying “It’s worth telling the captain either way.”

  So, we got up to do just that, but were intercepted by Mike, who informed us that the tents were all set up and that Curt would be taking first watch in case any Guardians wandered too close, so the girls went on to give their report while we looked for a spot to settle down.

  “Something wrong?” He asked, noticing my downcast gaze. “Just wandering how accurate our intel was.” I gave him the abridged version, not wanting to get into it again, and being aware that, despite the fact that he was trying to be nice, he’s actually even more easily scared than me, which was evidenced by how he almost stopped walking for a second and quickly swallowed, before changing topics entirely.

  “Ah! Here we are, our own little treehouse!” He said, pointing excitedly at an unassuming tent filled with inflated air mattresses and sleeping bags, all around completely different from anyone’s idea of what a treehouse would look like.

  “But it’s a tent?” I voiced my doubts, to which he answered with a grin. “And we are inside of a tree, so…”

  “A tree floating in space!”

  “Then it’s a space treehouse! How many people can say they’ve been in one of those?”

  At that, I couldn’t help myself. I chuckled, both at the absurdity of what he was saying and how it contrasted with our actual, unimpressive setup, mood successfully lifted and mind completely elsewhere.

  Chapter 3: Do Not The Weird Aliens.