Tarla
Randall Cunningham III was the most incompetent prat I’d ever met in my life. He was also the captain of the Axion-9 research ship I co-piloted with two other prats. We were ferrying an all-woman expedition to the planet Clarion-4. It was newly discovered but vetted by dozens of probes. It had a habitable environment, strong resources, and was worth sending a team out to study it.
I rubbed a hand over my face and stared at my wraparound screen. I had been on duty for ten hours straight. I was tired, but—no surprise—no one had come to relieve me. Our mission was to bring the large research ship safely down to the planet's surface, leave it there to function as the team’s base, then take the smaller, attached ship back to Earth. A separate team would return in a year to bring the exp
