Claimed by the Captain | [COMPLETE]

Chapter 1

Word Count: 4405

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It didn't make sense that I was on this mission.

I wasn't quite sure if I had pissed off someone higher-up who wanted to teach me a lesson or if I had pleased someone higher-up who thought they were doing me a favor, but I couldn't help but feel like one of the two had to be true. After all, it was Dr. Albrecht who proposed my name for the Krulfelo expedition in the first place, though I was unsure if he had enough weight to get me all the way through the program so that I was the chosen scientist sitting here besides Captain Devonport.

I tried not to look at the captain as I re-read the files on the rovers across Krulfelo's surface. There wasn't much else to do to avoid looking at him or at the glittering vastness of space flying past at a speed faster than light. He was too handsome and space was too scary, so reading or typing up conference proposals was preferable. It was safer.

To be honest, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of pity for the star-pilot. He was the best in the business—a celebrity even among other pilots—and here he was, stuck with me. I supposed we were meant to be vastly opposite each other; him, the trained soldier with piloting reflexes that reached the very peak of human capability, and me, the mechanic and space tech engineer who'd presented a paper at a conference about the very drones we were about to retrieve. Still, the disdainful words I had overheard from the other star-pilots up for the mission were ringing in my head.

Any scientist they pick is dead weight. Just another thing to worry about.

Yeah, we don't really need scared little calculators who don't know the first thing about space. We should have two pilots on the mission. Just in case something happens to one.

The scientists can get their hands on drones and data after we get the rovers, right? They're extraneous.

"I thought you were going to lessen your technology usage, Dr. Rosales," said Captain Devonport, his accent making his voice a gentle, almost musical lilt as always. Stars, I could listen to his voice all day. "You've been on your holo-screens for over an hour without a break."

I couldn't help but look at him as he spoke, his voice demanding my attention. His inky black hair was as pristine as ever, and even though the scruff he'd grown since I met him wasn't exactly military regulation, it was also neatly trimmed and maintained. I didn't even think there were wrinkles in his dark blue flight suit. How anybody could be so put-together, I couldn't understand. Maybe that was what military discipline did?

Riley Devonport, the Irish gentleman sitting in the pilot's seat next to me, was a med-pilot and a retrieval operative before he'd started training to be a star-pilot. We were at war with incorporated countries (now dissolved) on Mars, and Devonport speedily and stealthily slipped through enemy ranks to rescue imprisoned soldiers in between flight missions to move wounded soldiers to army hospitals and bring supplies to those still fighting on the front lines against the tyranny of outer-space colonialism. For his bravery and the lives he'd saved with his quick thinking, he was highly decorated and instantly recommended for star-piloting at the end of the war. And he was somehow the fastest and most precise star-pilot trainee of the first official class of pilots handling faster-than-light travel.

I'd read his file a couple times on this flight, too. Just so that I didn't get bored of reading the rover files, though. It wouldn't do for me to scan over files for the ten drones we had to retrieve to the point of boredom, especially since I'd already done that once as an undergrad writing a hyperfixation-induced paper about them.