Matthias Ettrich, founder of the KDE desktop environment, was decorated (haha!) with the German Federal Cross of Merit. (many thanks to slashdot for the notification!)

Shoot.

Remember when mum used to give candy if you cleaned your room? 

Planet leave... a common tradition amongst ship-goers, even in these advanced years.  I'd read history books on its origins, and usually approached it with a measure of caution.  Paranoia was trademark in my profession, after all, and nothing of shore leave suggested to me that it could be of worth.  But after being in transit for months on end, even with the botanical and sky gardens fore and aft, one eventually felt the need to plant one's feet on solid ground.  Not turf a few inches to perhaps a foot thick, purposefully placed and held together by advanced force-generating machines the details of which I cared not for, until they ceased to function according to design.

I had to allow ship leave this once.  Otherwise, she would've mutinied against me.  And given the slowly fading color of her skin and the ebbing energy, I had to submit.  Her well-being was in my trust, after all.

How she had managed to slip away from the rest of the tightly chaperoned group and find this secluded field was beyond my reasoning.  She had a dangerous deficiency of fear for the unknown, choosing instead to charge head-first into it, usually dragging me along to put out the fires after her smile failed to quell the trouble.  But this time was different.  This time, she had managed to loose even myself.

Something with the planet's magnetic core had schooled my tracker in a game of no-holds-barred Gibfir Roulette, and there was too much life to use my echo-enhancements.  I had to rely entirely on my own raw senses, with only minor access to the enhancements I was so used to using.  I was up to the challenge; this planet's gravity was about 1.5 times what I was used to, and the ship's was around 0.8 times.  But there was an advanced weight training room on board and I had grilled tirelessly the whole of our flight.  Quickly I discovered that the area we had disembarked was criss-crossed with confusing latices of hewn trails, their design and purpose not entirely clear but their origin too obvious; something, a lot of something, lived nearby.  Where the woods thinned gave way to dangerous marshes that were entirely hidden in reeds, or massive fields of barley-like crops.  And it all seemed natural, not cultivated in any way.  The life on the planet was not used to my mercenary presence, and I make quick progress, covering three times the distance our group had.  I double back twice, keeping my direction only by gut instinct.  Dangerous to be sure, but my compass was useless in this planet's apparently turbulent magnetic core.

I had found her surprisingly quickly in this immense field, almost by accident.  While straffing the trees she had cried out with her customary gasp of surprise, a noise I could recognize instantly from across a crowded pub brawl.  I ascertained her health and had straightened to deliver my customary round of verbal discipline, when I stopped quite suddenly.  I saw in her eyes something I had never once glimpsed before, and it was poured out so openly that I immediately lost all sense of anger and found myself confused.

Of course, before I could get comfortable with my new status, all emotion ebbed away and I saw the usual glee return to her shining eyes...

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caption (mine)

"Oh how cute!" Miho giggled, scooping the innocuously soft and innocent-looking gray-tufted femir into her arms.  My outstretched hand, intended to restrain her innocent ignorance, tremored.  As her laughter echoed around the habitat I carefully moved for the station's intercom; an interstellar creature this deadly should not have gotten on board, and was probably the cause of the disaster down corridor 19.

"Miho," I struggled, "let's move on..."

"But look!" Miho exclaimed, thrusting the femir towards me.  Cold sweat broke on my brow, my whole body frozen as this seemingly weak and soft crossbreed of a rabbit eyed me with its pale blue eyes.  Flashes of the devastation on Nikar pulsed through my mind; but more pressing, was how I could get Miho to release the creature and escape with me...