Green eyes locked with brown.
"Liv, no."
"Liv, yes!"
She heard him breath out a sigh and shake his head.
"No, it makes sense! We're only 300 kilometers away due to a damn dust storm. I just want to go see it in person!" She exclaimed, leaning back in her seat. Her lips moved into a pout.
"We do have time…" Mark started, a knowing glint in his eyes. "Might make the drive smoother over there."
"And if we wanted to, hook up a spare battery for it and dust off the panels…."
"Give NASA one hell of a scare."
Four sols later saw Liv eagerly stepping on the martian surface once more, but this time, her eyes were locked on the target.
Opportunity.
The Mars Exploration Rover was still in the same place it had been in since 2018. The June dust storm that had taken over the planet made it so NASA lost contact with the Rover. It was declared mission over in 2019, after many failed attempts at contacting it.
Liv knelt down to the rover and wiped off some dust from the camera. Her fingers shook ever so slightly with the motion.
"You were a good Rover Oppy." She softly spoke, almost embarrassed at the way that tears instantly welled in her eyes.
"Getting choked up over a rover again Liv?" Mark's voice spoke teasingly as he knelt next to her.
Her eyes glanced over the rover. "Just this one. Oppy was the main reason that I got into astrobiology once I was old enough."
"Fucking nerd." He spoke as he leaned into her side.
"And yet Beth is still a bigger nerd than all of us."
"Says the one crying over a rover."
Knocking her shoulder against his, she brushed a hand over a wheel.
"Oppy is the main reason why I got into space. How it broke all those records on Mars and discovered so many things that brought us here." She spoke. "Hell, my dad even worked on her, and every night before it launched I would ask how it was doing so far. He even got permission to bring me for the Launch. It was the best thing that I could ever ask for."
"Exactly what I said, you're a nerd Liv."
"And being a nerd is what brought me here, and to you."
"Sap."
Olivia wished at that moment for a camera that she could take a picture of the Rover. But for now, she settled with dusting off the solar panels and digging the rover out of the sand. If a spare battery was set up for the Rover, no one would notice that it was them. And if a little note was tapped to the side, she had no idea.
No idea whatsoever…
With one last look over her shoulder, she let Mark lead her back into the Rover.
One bucket item checked off her list.
Bucket Item number 4; See Opportunity Rover in person.
So uh not dead!
Just gonna ignore the fact that i havent updated in a year or so now. I do apologize about that. Life has been pretty crazy the last year but I'm really hoping that it wont take as long to get an actual update out. I am working on a new chapter but writer's block is a pain lately. Not just for this fic, but really for all of mine. As always this chapter is dedicated to my best friend on here JP. Your support for this always brings be joy and I cannot thank you enough dude.
But I hope yall enjoyed a short lil interlude involving my favorite Rover.
Nova xx
