Grateful for the privacy of her personal cabin, Commander Santana Lopez grinned unabashedly at the clock on her desk: 185/04:13 MET (Mission Elapsed Time). After leaving Earth's atmosphere nearly 6 months ago they were only three weeks away from Mars' orbit. Their scouting rover touched down the week before, and all preliminary scans of the Gale Crater landing site were coming back clean. For the moment she allowed the excitement of the occasion overpower her typical stoicism. She fingered the mission patch on her sleeve: A shuttle touching down on a red planet, STS-522 embroidered in gold lettering across the top. Her crew consisted of the finest group to ever come out of the NASA Astronaut Corps, and soon they would be the first humans to set foot on a new planet. She felt the soft swelling of pride for the crew she had come to rely on. It was one thing to blast off to the ISS for a few months, the Earth spinning comfortingly close below, but they were going to be on Mars for almost a year and a half; An unprecedented foray that would have implications for potential colonization. Their home world would be just another star in the night's sky.

The buzzing of the radio shattered her introspective moment.

"Lab Three-Alpha to Commander Lopez." She scowled at the small holes in the device and clicked the call back button

"Lopez by".

"What's your 20, Commander?"

"Private Quarters." She didn't bother to hide the annoyance in her voice. She was still within her designated rest quota for this period, with instructions not to be disturbed unless under emergency circumstances. And she wasn't hearing any alarms.

"Payload Specialist Pierce would like to speak with you." Usually she'd brush off the request, with a patronizing reply. Usually. She let a hint of her smile return. Sometimes exceptions were necessary. She zipped up her black coveralls and mashed the call back button.

"10-4, I'll 25 in the lab bay."

Santana stepped out of the lift on Deck 2, which housed the laboratories, medical bay, and hydroponics station. She stopped a moment to look in through the glass walls of the hydroponics lab. A thin sheen of condensation coated the inside of the glass, the few botanists milling around amongst the plants had their light blue coveralls rolled down to the waist and tied around their hips. Taller plants hung on tracks, roots exposed, cycling through aero-misters, while other smaller plants sprouted from large PVC helixes that reached from floor to ceiling. One of the botanists looked out and waved, Santana nodded her acknowledgement and turned toward the lab bay. As much as the hydroponics lab fascinated her, she had business to attend to.

She spied Payload Specialist Dr. Brittany Pierce pacing just inside the lab bay doors. Her movement caused her white lab coat to rustle around her calves and she worried her bottom lip between her teeth as she tapped something out on her datapad. Doors that read "Lab Bay" in frosted white lettering slid open as Santana approached. glanced up at the whooshing of the door.

"Commander, thank you for meeting me," Dr. Pierce smiled briefly and shoved the datapad into one of her large front pockets.

"I hope this is something good, , I was really enjoying the last of my rest hours." Santana let the corner of her mouth twitch up slightly at the jest. Dr. Pierce grinned and adjusted the glasses on her nose. Most of the crew was intimidated by Santana (which she preferred), but it meant when she did choose to joke around, she was more likely to be met with a cower than a chuckle. Dr. Pierce was a brilliant scientist, the best astrobiologist the program ever had, and above all she was an astute observer. Five weeks into the mission Santana had called a meeting with the science crew and announced that whoever was leaving empty ration packets all over the galley was going to get launched out of the airlock. Her announcement was met with a room full of pale faces, and Dr. Pierce standing the back covering a smile with her datapad. Santana caught her mirth crinkled eyes across the room, and raised an eyebrow, daring her to call her out on the ridiculous mandate. Not to be out done, Dr. Pierce just raised hers back, and left the room shaking her head at her crewmates accusing whispers.

"Trust me, it's way better than an hour spent practicing intimidating glares,"Dr. Pierce threw over her shoulder, leading Santana down the hall past the other labs. She followed with a very non-commanding eye-roll behind Dr. Pierce's back. Yes, Dr. Pierce was very skilled at observation. A little too skilled at times, Santana thought, and definitely much too damn cheeky for her own good.

They entered lab 3A. Dr. Pierce's home base and the only lab with a full window view of the starry black ocean their ship sailed. A mission specialist at one end of the lab nodded a greeting when they entered before returning to his work, pipetteing some viscous liquid into a vial. Shelves of equipment lined the walls. A bookshelf with texts whose titles went over Santana's head sat just under the window and next to an incubation rig, where petri dishes filled with varying colored specimens grew. A long shiny steel table ran the length of the glass wall bordering the hallway. Santana appreciated the few bursts of the personality amongst the sterility of the lab. Pressed up against the glass was a neat little row of vials, each containing a soil sample from a different continent of earth, labeled in neat feminine script. A poster with a parody on the "March of Progress", in which the fully evolved man looked back at his journey, and read 'Phylogeny' at the bottom, covered one of the long cabinet doors.

"Scout has been sending back atmosphere and weather information, but it's also begun taking some preliminary sediment readings," as she explained, Dr. Pierce plugged in her datapad and began sorting through files on the computer terminal, "At my request he was also equipped with microscope, with remotely controlled magnification-"

"Of course it was," Santana interrupted, trying to get a rise out of the even-tempered scientist. She ignored Santana and continued searching for the desired file.

"Anyway, we found something, in the soil, just at the base of Aeolis Mons," she pulled up played the video she had been searching for. It looked like a bunch of blurry little red rocks, just as Santana leaned in, she though she saw some movement along the corner of the screen. Whoever was recording the video increased the microscope's magnification and showed three little somethings moving slowly around the magnified pieces of dirt. "They're ciliates, Commander." Her voice wavered with excitement, but the commander didn't share in her awe.

"We've seen bacteria on Mars before…I admire your enthusiasm, but I'm not sure I share it." She frowned at the little creatures wiggling on the screen.

"With all due respect, this is not what we've seen before," Dr. Pierce closed out the video and pulled up a clearer still image of the small organisms. "These have motile cilia," she pointed to the hair-like protrusions all over the creature, "they are able to move. Motion typically evolves as an adaptation to feed. These bacteria aren't photosynthetic, like the ones we've seen before. They're heterotrophs. They aren't making energy, they're consuming it!" Santana watched Dr. Pierce's blue eyes alight with barley restrained joy. "Commander, these bacteria aren't just aimlessly growing, they're hunting, feeding on other bacteria. There's actually an ecosystem down there!"