Seven days. 

A full week spent on an alien planet, filled with unique life and sentient creatures. 

[i]And I’ve spent most of that time in this [/i]fucking[i] tomb,[/i] Itxaro mused bitterly as she crawled through the Jotunheim’s guts, covered in hydraulic fluid, grease, and sweat. The air was beginning to grow stale onboard the Jo, recycled atmosphere mixed with the smell of unwashed bodies. The lower decks were even worse, the cramped spaces and dim lighting making her feel as if she was trapped in a metal coffin. 

Itxaro had spent several years working aboard spacecraft, but they were nothing like the Jotunheim’s submarine-like configuration. Both the USASR’s design philosophy and Itxaro’s need for space to house massive FTL drives she created meant that the ships she’d grown used to completely dwarfed the Jotunheim. Itxaro could bounce around in zero-g on those behemoths for weeks and never feel the slightest twinge of claustrophobia. On the Jotunheim, however, it was growing oppressive after just a few days of hard labor. 

The doctor was currently sawing away at the lifeboats, cannibalizing the tiny crafts for whatever parts they could use. The miniscule capacitors onboard the escape pod and the shattered solar panels that fed the life support system wouldn’t be enough to jumpstart the reactors, but they might get the kitchen running again. 

She hadn’t even bothered with the alien Alcubierre drive yet; there was no sense in it. Until the ship could exit the planet’s atmosphere, the device that got them here in the first place, and their only hope of returning home, would just have to wait.
 
[i]The first humans on an alien world and we’re trying to get the hell off it.[/i]

It occurred to Itxaro that she’d been here an entire week, yet she’d only seen a square mile of the planet’s surface. She hadn’t even spoken to their new friends since the last tense meeting outside the Jotunheim’s cargo bay, the frantic repairs keeping her away. Deciding it was time to change that, Itxaro wiped her face with a rag and climbed out of her dungeon. 
[hr]
Itxaro was eager to test the new translation software now installed in her datapad; she loathed the artificial intelligence that created it, but had to admit even a team of human linguists wouldn’t have been nearly as quick. The doctor fed some of her own speech into the program, recorded lectures she’d found saved on her tablet. With some tinkering, Itxaro managed to have the translator speak in her own voice. Well, an approximation. It was stiff and flat, but still better than the droning monotone of the program’s default voice. Armed with her new tool, she stepped out of the dark ship, into the bright light of an alien sun, and sought out her first target. 

The doctor knew she should probably find Nellara and drill the diplomat/soldier for as much lifesaving information as she could, but instead, Itxaro started searching the burned mountainside for a familiar, craggy, smoldering silhouette.