Leama turned on the invisibility settings as their ship approached Earth. The mostly blue planet caught the ship in orbit so she turned off the thrusters. While their scanners searched for any Qwortarian signal, they programmed the engine to activate in order to stay in orbit and to avoid crashing into any satellites already around Earth. In fact, Leama tethered their ship's orbit to a nearby satellite, no aimless drifting for their ship. The last thing Leama needed was to knock something catawampus and alert more Earthlings to something being amiss.
The tracking program beeped, twice. Twisting their eye stalk, Leama looked at the image of Earth, finding two red dots, though one blipped off before they had a chance to even zoom in and get the exact coordinates. Did Leama imagine the second blip? Was it a glitch? Or a trap?
They set up their personal database, securing it safely inside their gelatinous body. One of their tentacles bumped the control panel. Their settings inverted, so their ship did a barrel roll. While a sickening shudder went through their ship Leama quickly grew suckers along their tentacles, in order to stay near the controls.
Another alarm was blaring. Outside the ship Leama caught a glimpse of the satellite they had tethered too and it had started rotating. A solar panel had ripped off the side of the human’s machine. Before even righting their own ship, Leama activated the exterior arms of the ship.
With a jerk of the left joystick, Leama tried to reach the solar panel. But it was the wrong arm. “Right.”
Left and right were inverted, as well as up and down. Slowing down so they could do it right the first time, Leama grabbed both the satellite and the dislodged solar panel.
Magnifying their view, Leama was able to line up the broken metal. Extending the solder tip from the belly of their own ship took a third tentacle. Eye stalk nearly pressed to the view screen Leama affixed the solar panel once more and then flipped the satellite back to its original position.
They did another scan of Earth, but didn’t see any worrying signs of retaliation. It was with a long sigh Leama made their decision to investigation of the short lived Qwortarian signal first.
Their ship righted, their database locked on their ship signal, and prayers to the All-Seeing-Eye, Leama stepped inside the transportation pod. It was time to find Skylar.
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