The Orville cruised casually through space, passing by bright stars as it made its way through the blackness. A small vessel appeared, seemingly out of now where. It was oval shaped, with alien markings colored red along the side. It flickered a few times, and then it disappeared in the darkness. The space around the ship rippled softly as the ship continued to follow the Orville cloaked in darkness. The alien ship let down a length of metallic wire that attached itself to the larger vessel's outer wing. The Orville pulled it along, obliviously to its new passenger. There, it waited for the right time to pounce.

Inside the Orville, Ed was sitting down at his desk and glaring up at John LaMarr and Gordon Malloy who both looked very guilty.

"I already have two reports of damaged equipment. All the scientific instruments in storage have been broken, Yaphit who was coming out of sickbay got sucked into the room and is still picking pieces of himself off the ceiling. What the hell were you two thinking?" Ed said sternly, looking between John and Gordon. Both men stood in front of him, with their hands by their sides. Neither of them was looking at him in the eye.

"It was my fault. In all honesty, sir. I thought it would be fun." John said after a few beats of silence.

"You thought it would be fun to turn off the artificial gravity in the loading bay so you could play basketball?" Ed asked.

John looked up at him, and their eyes met. "Yes. I thought it would be fun. Those two men we lost were part of my engineering team. I thought if we could blow off some steam-."

"But why in the loading bay? Why not in the simulator?" Ed said

John paused, and then his head dropped. "The simulator. We could have done it in the simulator. I hadn't thought of that until right now."

"Next time, use your brain. You are the head of engineering, I thought you were smarter than this." He said, and then he turned to Gordon.

"I gave you sick leave so you could rest, not run amuck playing like an irresponsible kid." He said. Gordon nodded his head but didn't say anything.

"Captain-." John started, but Ed kept talking.

"You are an officer of the union, you hold a responsibility to this ship and to me. When I asked the commander to have you as my pilot, I fought for you because I believed you had matured enough to be part of this crew. I fight every day for you and this is how you repay me?" Ed said, feeling his frustration with Gordon reach a boiling point.

Gordon remained silent and still, staring down at the floor. Ed saw the muscles moving in his face as he clenched his jaw tight. Then Ed realized that Gordon was battling for composure and all of a sudden he felt like the biggest jerk on the ship.

Ed straightened his back and looked back to John.

"This is your verbal warning. Next time something happens like this I will be forced to put a report on your record. Understand?"

John nodded his head.

"Yes. Sir."

"Good. Dismissed. Gordon, stay here for a minute I want to ask you a few more questions." Ed said

John left, the door swooshing softly behind him. Now they were alone together in Ed's office. Gordon remained standing where he was, hands at his side and eyes cast to the ground. Ed then realized he had no idea what to say to Gordon. He had never done this before. Everything that came to his head either sounded just plain dumb (So you got tortured, eh? What a bummer!) or clichéd (I wish they had taken me instead of you. If I could go back in time and stop the Krill from coming I would….). Going all Captain Hard Ass suddenly seemed like it was the total wrong thing to do. He thought if he could get Gordon to just tell him what was wrong, then maybe they could get started on fixing it.

"Uh…." Ed started, and then stopped and paused.

"I…um…I am finishing up the report for the Krill attack. I need you to tell me what happened while you were held captive." Ed finally said.

Gordon's eyes flashed up in panic.

"I already told you, nothing happened to me." He said quietly.

"That's a lie, and you know it. Please, what happened to you, Gordon? Look at you, you're shaking." Ed said, and he stood up and took a step towards Gordon, reaching out his hand.

"You can tell-." Ed started

"Stop." The quiet whisper made Ed freeze. His arm stilled in the air, and he slowly closed his fingers into a fist and lowered his hand.

"Gordon-."

"Please."

"You haven't been-." Ed started, but then stopped when he saw his friend wince and then step away from him. Gordon moved to cross his arms over his chest, and Ed did not miss the shaking of his hands. Ed let out a sigh; maybe he was approaching this the wrong way? He needed to show Gordon that he could be trusted, of course, that was hard when Ed had just spent the last ten minutes yelling at John and Gordon for their little basketball fiasco in the docking bay.

"Come on, Gordon. It's me. Ed. I'm your friend. You can tell me anything" Ed said

Gordon shook his head, "it's not that simple."

Ed took a step towards him, and in turn, Gordon backed away up to the window. He glanced outside into the empty space, refusing to look Ed in the eye.

"Gordon, look-."

"Ed. Stop. I can't even think about it right now. Let alone talk. I need…I need some space. Please"

"But I want to help you-."

"Ed. I can't. Not now, maybe not ever. It won't go away, it won't stop" Gordon uncrossed his arms and put his hands on either side of his forehead as if he was trying to block the memories out.

Ed reached to touch Gordon, just as a gesture of camaraderie and Gordon flinched away as if Ed had burned him.

"Please. Don't touch me." He whispered.

"Gordon."

Gordon then straightened up, putting his hands by his side. "Requesting permission to leave, sir"

The sudden change startled Ed.

"Uh, Okay. Forget about the report. I just wanted to ask, if you wanted to get a drink with me sometime? We haven't talked in a while." Ed said softly, changing his plans in mid air.

Gordon looked up at him and nodded his head.

"Okay."

Ed watched his friend leave his office and then sunk into his chair. He turned to Kermit, who was sitting on his lampstand and seemed to be casting judgment upon him.

"What would you have said?" he asked, and then rested his head on the table. Could this day get any worse?