Dirt caked his hands and matted into little clumps dangling from his fur. Moss cursed and threw a shovel back down into the muddy pit. "Nothing!" he shouted into the dense expanses of forest. His dig site remained empty save for his meager amounts of equipment strewn about haphazardly.
He crawled from the pit to his tent and emerged a moment later bearing a holopad no larger than a man's hand. "Log #403," he said, wiping dirt from the gleaming blue surface. "Moss Vel'ija on the surface of Erida, day sixteen. In following the locations of the alleged Lehonite starmaps, I have discovered no trace of the purported Rakatan colonies in any of the specific areas marked."
Looking down, Moss found that a minute lizard was meandering its way across his boot. He gingerly brushed the lizard away and watched it scurry off into the brush.
"Limited communications infrastructure means that I won't have contact with my colleagues until we meet for conference in Ze City three days from now. I hope they're having more like than I am. Out." The blue light flickered and disappeared. Moss leaned into his tent to replace the item with his belongings, but his sleeping bag called out to him, and he saw no reason why he shouldn't have a nap to break up his monotonous failures.
When he awoke minutes later, it wasn't to the hum or engines or the gentle purring of the fauna. It was to screaming and gunfire; distant but distinct. Moss scrambled to his feet, tucking the holopad so hastily in his jacket that it fell out when he left the tent. He pulled it from the mud. Home to Naji was in museums and old ruins, not in warzones or battlefields, not on Erida, not on that afternoon.
