We had landed safely in Orchid Zone - Alpha Zulu on Jungle Planet z-890.89 in the Gemmy Belt of Outer Horatio. Me and my crew disembarked and stood panting on the steamy, humid surface of Jungle Planet z-890.89.
As Captain, or as I liked to call myself, "Admiral Bucky Top Dog of the Seven Heavens," I was responsible first and foremost for the safety of the landing crew. Unfortunately, in almost no time flat after setting down, a giant cattleya lueddemannniana maximus jungle orchid, displaying behavior very unorchid like, swept its flower head down and gobbled up my Weight Transfer Management Engineer IV (i.e. Maynard Sandak) just like that. We all started screaming as nobody expected these peaceful jungle flowers which had been seeded on all the Jungle Planets in the Gemmy Belt of Outer Horatio as they were steamy carbon dioxide rich planets with suitable soils for massive fertilizer bomb attacks as well as favorable gravitational dynamics and hydrological metrics, to be quite so, unruly.
Upon rapidly reembarking in the landing craft and wondering out loud what hellish monstrosities had we awakened in our highly paid career trajectories working for the giant florists of Alpha Centauri Florists and Gifts Inc. trying to determine the most suitable extraction technologies for all the now mature and, as we were quite suddenly made aware, robust specimens of former gorgeous earth flowerosities, I realized to my sudden horror that not all of us had reentered the craft and that our Soil Density and Hydrological Surveyer Trainee, Carmen Ollapi, was still in the jungle in Orchid Zone - Alpha Zulu. I attempted to summon Carmen on my radio but heard nothing. Then there was banging on the door of the craft, banging with a tool, likely metallic, I guessed a Soil Density Probing Auger by the ring of it, and before we could open the door to bring Trainee Ollapi in, the ship began to shake and shimmy as huge orchids and bougainvilleas and vines and many other kinds of plants encircled and attacked the landing craft!
I had a command level decision to make in that very moment, do I risk all of our lives, in the few seconds we had to restart the craft and blast out of there before we were ingested by insanely evil mutant jungle foliage, to save Trainee Ollapi who, I must now confess (although the crew knew it all along, the bastards) was my space squeeze, my interstellar love thing, and who was, at that very moment, tugging and stretching my heartstrings as though they were strings on a Zorakian Skin-Lute, as she pounded desperately, furiously, maniacally with her Soil Density Probing Auger against the only door in or out of the landing craft if you don't count the escape pod bay release hatches below, easily opened from the outside or in. There was, according to the post-incident administrative investigation exactly a 32.98% chance of successfully retrieving Trainee Carmen AND taking off.
What would you do? What do you think I did?














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