Sorry for the delay, but I've been busy giving birth. Hope this was worth the wait!

The sun set and the moons rose, and Gordon and Kelly hadn't said a word to each other since they'd set off downriver. Kelly hadn't even looked at him, just kept her eyes glued to the trail with her mouth a thin, grim line as the kilometers passed beneath their feet.

Just as stubbornly, Gordon refused to break the silence either. After all, he hadn't done anything wrong. He hadn't almost killed them by throwing them off a cliff or said anything that wasn't true. So if she expected him to make polite small talk or offer an apology, she had another think coming. He could be just as quiet as she could for just as long, and they'd see how she liked it. It certainly didn't bother him that Commander Harpy wasn't speaking to him, even if she was quite possibly the last human in the galaxy who would ever see him alive…

God dammit.

"I don't suppose you feel like letting me in on what the plan is?" he said.

"I told you the plan," Kelly said, eyes still straight ahead. "We find a cave in the bluffs and hide out until daylight."

"You said we'd find one before dark if we were lucky. Well, it's dark, so we can't be that lucky. And I think I'm getting a blister."

Kelly stopped walking, prompting Gordon to trip to a halt with her. Silhouetted by the moonlight, she stood with her hands on her hips, like a schoolmarm who'd had enough spitballs for one day.

"I'm sure you'll survive. But we won't if I have to stop and explain everything."

Gordon threw up his hands. "What do you want from me, Commander? I'm a pilot, and there's nothing for me to fly right now. And maybe I'm not as smart as you or as brave as you or as tall as you, but I ought to at least know if I should prepare myself for waking up dead tomorrow."

Kelly hesitated for so long that he was surprised her next words weren't something to the effect of Get bent. "The rock faces will block the signal of our homing beacon. We're going to have to get about a hundred meters higher if The Orville is going to have any chance of finding it. Not that we can do anything tonight; with the Krill and their night vision, they're just as likely to shoot us as we are to lose our footing in the dark and fall to our demise. Happy now?"

Gordon looked from the smooth, towering rock faces to Kelly and back. "No!"

"Gordon-"

"No, wait! You're telling me that we have to climb back up where we just jumped from if we're going to have any shot at being found? Why didn't you tell me this before we walked all this distance from our only sure way back up? Why didn't you tell me before we jumped?" He put up a hand and turned back toward the trail. "Never mind, I don't want to know. I'm sure it was in another of those academy classes I'm not smart enough for, because it's not like being a pilot takes any brains. Maybe calculus wasn't my strong suit, or physics, or typing, or…"

He was about ten paces farther down the trail when he noticed that Kelly wasn't beside him. His glance back over his shoulder turned into a double-take when he saw her in a pool of moonlight, collapsed onto the ground on one hip and elbow with a dizzy look in her eyes.

"Kelly?" Gordon dashed back to her and dropped to his knees. "What is it?"

"My back…" she gasped.

Gordon gingerly took her shoulders and turned her a bit to get a look. When he peeled the edge of her jacket up, he found the bandage he'd placed earlier was saturated with blood, and dripping into her waistband.

"Shit! Just-a-graze my ass. You know, for a smart person, you think you'd notice something like this!"

"I… didn't…" Kelly sighed and slumped in his grip.

"Kelly? Kelly! No, no, no, don't do this to me! Fuck!"

He grabbed the emergency kit and tore though it again, tossing extraneous items as he went: climbing rope, tarp, tiny Frisbee… good grief. Did the people who stocked these things expect them to get bored? Finally, he came up with a pair of scissors. He cut off the old bandage and clapped a new one over the oozing wound, cinching it as tight as he dared. It was all he could do until he got somewhere with better light.

"All right," he said, as much to quell the panic as anything. "All right. First things first, let's get the hell out of here."

He pulled her up by her wrists and hefted her onto his shoulder in a fireman's carry, eliciting a semi-conscious moan from her and a grunt from him. Why did she have to be so freakishly tall?

Just then, thunder cracked overhead and he felt the first drops of rain on his red hair. He sighed. Just when his uniform had gotten dry!

He set off in the same direction as before, despite the sinking feeling that Kelly hadn't actually had any idea which way was best, but had just picked one arbitrarily and pretended it was the best way because that's what commanders are for. He made it about fifty yards around a small bend in the river when the lightning flashed on the rock face, where an opening yawned into the mouth of a cave.

So she had known where she was going after all. And that was why Gordon Malloy never listened to his gut unless it came to piloting.

Ed settled into the pilot seat of the shuttle, running a mental checklist before he closed the hatch. Plotted course: Check. Excuses made to the chain of command: Check. Duties assigned to the appropriate underlings, including Kermit the Frog puppet: Check.

The sound of boots on the deck made him frown up from his console, and there was Talla, plopping herself into the copilot seat.

"Whew!" she said. "I thought I'd never get here in time. Ever get stuck in an elevator conversation with Dann? I was ready to stun him just to escape."

"Talla, what are you doing?"

"Risking my career to do the right thing, same as you."

"Talla –"

"And before you order me not to," Talla said, already logging into her own console, "think about this: would my talents be better suited helping you rescue Kelly and Gordon, or helping Bortus babysit a bunch of spoiled bureaucrats who care more about which fork to use than they do about getting home in time for dinner? Not to mention how you plan to stop a woman who can lift you both with one hand."

Just then, the com chimed. "Bortus to Mercer."

"Go ahead," said Ed, still frowning at Talla.

"The Okuulians are ready for you in the briefing room."

"Acknowledged. Tell them I've a bit been delayed, but I'll be with them as soon as I can."

The sound of Bortus clearing his throat made it clearly over the air. "They are most insistent, Captain."

Ed groaned, then paused halfway through running his hand through his hair. "Bortus, have Lieutenant Dann give my regrets. Then, lock the door."

"Understood, Sir. Bortus out."

Ed couldn't remember ever seeing the big Moclan smirk before, but if it was possible to hear someone smirk, Ed was pretty sure it had just happened. He closed the hatch and opened the shuttle bay door.

"Let's go get our people, Lieutenant."

For one sweet moment, Kelly thought she'd fallen asleep on the floor, as she often had in younger, wilder days. She half expected that she could roll over and find Ed snuggled up against her back, and was about to test the fantasy when a stabbing pain just to the left of her spine catapulted her to full consciousness.

As her body spasmed, a gasp escaped her, and her hand clawed out for something to grab onto. Another hand appeared from nowhere and pinned it to the ground.

"Hey, hey! Hold still."

Waking up to the voice of the Gordon Malloy of all people behind her made her blink the blurriness from her vision as fast as she could. She was lying on her side on the lumpy floor of a cave. Light glowed from a small camping lantern nearby, and outside, a hard rain pounded in the night. Next to the lamp, there was a pile of bloody gauze.

"How… Where..?"

"We're in that cave you saw in the bluff," said Gordon. "Right where you said it'd be. I guess that's one to you, Commander."

Kelly squeezed her eyes shut as the pain quieted to an ache. "How long was I out?"

"I don't know; long enough for me to get us here, but not long enough for me to finish patching you up."

"I'm okay. I just need to… Aigh!"

When she tried to sit up, the pain returned tenfold. Gordon pushed her back down, and for the first time, Kelly caught a look at the worried furrow between his eyebrows.

"Hey, cut that out! This isn't as easy as Claire makes it look, you know."

That was when she noticed that her attempt to rise had caused the corner of the crinkly thermal sleeping bag she was in to fall away from her bare shoulder. She snatched the edge of it and drew it up to her chin.

"My clothes!"

With his face turning redder than his hair, Gordon pointed to a spot several feet away, where Kelly's jacket, shirt, and pants were draped over some boulders.

"They were wet," he said.

Kelly let her head fall back with a light thump. "Lord."

"Look, if me seeing you in your underwear is the worst thing that happens to you today, it's going better than I thought." He laughed awkwardly. "Try to hold still."

"Yeah, that's easy for you to say – Ow!"

"Sorry. So, what's the plan?"

"Um…" Kelly searched her foggy brain for the answer. "We hide until daylight. Then we find a way to higher ground, activate the beacon, and hold out until pickup."

"No offense, but do you really think you're in any shape to be climbing up a vertical rock – Whoops!"

"Ungh!"

"Sorry - vertical rock face? I mean, you were unconscious about two minutes ago."

Kelly tried to laugh. "Why, Gordon. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were concerned."

"About Ed strangling me if I let you die? Yes, I totally am. Is there a plan B?"

"Don't you worry about me. I'm not just going to lie here and die with – Ooh!" Kelly shoved her fist into her mouth and bit it. "What are you doing back there?"

"That would be the other bad news. I think the Krill weapon hit you with some kind of old fashioned projectile. Crude, but effective. It's called a bullet."

"I know what a bullet is, Gordon."

"Well, I think it hit something important, because you keep bleeding. I'm trying to find it and plug the hole."

"Then we'd better get out of here before I run out. Ow! Mother- ! If those jackasses were going to shoot me with a bullet, they could have at least given me a second one to bite on." Kelly took a few breaths to steady herself. "The pack. Where is it?"

Gordon paused in his fumbling ministrations to pull the bag into Kelly's reach. She took it and picked through it until she reached the bottom. Then, she went through it again.

"Shit, where is it? Ouch!"

"Sorry. Where's what?"

"The homing beacon. The one we've got to get to the top of the bluff."

Mercifully, Gordon stopped whatever he was doing to her back and took the bag from her. "Relax, I'll find it. What's it look like?"

"Metal disk about the size of your hand, with a spiral-shaped iris in the middle."

Gordon froze mid-rummage. "Doesn't happen to look like a tiny Frisbee, does it?"

Not liking his tone, Kelly peered back over her shoulder at him. "As a matter of fact. Why?"

"Nothing! Nothing. I think I see it right here under the granola bars. Hold that thought, I'm going to take a whiz."

He grabbed the lantern, jumped up and ran out into the rain before Kelly could say another word.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Gordon splashed through the darkness, rain and mud, the little lantern casting just enough light to show the ground under his own feet. The way he had to hunch over made him feel like a pig on the trail of forest truffles. "If something's that important, you'd think they could at least put a sign on it!"

He rounded the river bend back the way they'd come, and stopped short when he almost tripped over something. Looking down, he saw what looked like the edge of a tarp sticking out of the mud. He dropped to his knees and dug through the muck until his hand closed on something hard and curved. Yanking it out of the mud with a loud sucking noise, he found it was indeed the filthy homing beacon in his grasp.

"Yeah!" he crowed. "God, I hope this is waterproof."

The lightning cracked, and for an instant, the whole area was thrown into relief. He saw the river. He saw the tree line. And there, halfway between the two, he saw the bare white face of a Krill, rain dripping down the contortions of rage and triumph as he lifted his weapon at Gordon.

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