Starsnatcher - Trapped In An Alien World [COMPLETE]

Chapter 4.x (Bonus Chapter)

Day 100

I really wish I had another human with me.

It's no coincidence that I chose to write in this summary-style again since my novelist-like narration is too remote and impersonal for this very special day.

And before you ask, yes, Crick allows me to use the singularity stone for these chapters. They're kinda important for me. I'm not allowed to text by thinking though, as cool as it is, as Crick fears our enemies could pick such transmissions up.

Back on topic, it's no coincidence that I chose to wait until day hundred to write this. A hundred days have passed since I departed from Earth. I wouldn't blame you if you had already long written me off as dead.

I just want to repeat how much I miss you. Sure, I only had Iris and my family, but now I have nothing. Not a single fellow Homo sapiens for these entire hundred days. Even if someone like Mr. Graves was together with me on this spaceship, it'd improve a lot. These aliens don't know enough about us to make convincing people simulations.
All I do here is eat, sleep, and train.

I'm not improving much with my training and I believe I'm depressed. We still haven't gotten in a serious space battle yet and I hope it stays that way.

Anyway, maybe I should summarize what I've learned about our current solar system so far.

As noted above, it's a binary system. I know you're sick of me being the astronomy professor, but a binary solar system is a solar system with two stars.

Here, we have a small M-star (a red dwarf, basically) orbiting a larger K-star (between a red dwarf and our Sun in space). Plus, five planets are orbiting the K-star.

The closest is a so-called hot Jupiter.

Hot Jupiters are gas giants that formed where gas giants normally occur, but later wandered into the inner solar system, did you know that?

Anyway, after that, we have two more terrestrial planets and two more gas giants.

The innermost of these terrestrial planets is where Starsnatcher is right now. Okay, technically, it's near a space station, but you get the point.

They have dropped a dropship on that planet which keeps emitting strange signals to the Dragonfly. If you think that's where they dropped another human, you're in good company. General and Crick think so, too.

Helix disagreed.

Here's how their conversation roughly went.

"Are you serious?" Helix asked. "Do you really think they're that stupid? They won't use the same trick twice. They probably know that we are after their humans and thus pretended to drop one on that planet to trap us. I mean, what's there to spy anyway! It's within their own solar system."

"It should be clear that what is occurring within this solar system is not under their control," Crick transmitted. "They have every reason to drop a second human."

"You're just searching an excuse to do more exobiology! We have scanned it. We know this planet has a rich biosphere and you're like 'I'm Professor and I'm the best exobiologist in the observable universe, please excuse me while I bolster my ego!'"

"Your disobedience is disappointing Doctor. You should know full well that we do not vote on this ship."

"Oh, we do. Your vote counts twice since you're the Captain and all, but we absolutely do vote here. General's the boss, not you!"

"I vote for landing on the planet."

As expected, Helix voted against it and so did Tesla.

It all depended on me, in the end. Maybe it was out of desperation, but I voted for landing on the planet.