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Yaz stared at the screen of her phone, struggling to keep from crying. It didn’t work. Tears welled up in her eyes and her shoulders began to shake.
“Hey, Yaz, you’ll never believe the milkshakes they have here- oh, shit. What’s wrong?” Ryan said as he returned from inside the fourteenth best restaurant in the universe. Yaz had told them she would follow them inside in a minute or two, but she’d wanted to check Tumblr before she entered the planet’s natural anti-WiFi field, upon which Zorfalgan’s Diner was built. Now she wasn’t hungry.
Yaz, unable to talk, showed Ryan her phone screen, where she’d pulled up the article on the Opportunity Rover’s death.
Ryan scanned the screen before handing it back to her and enveloping her in a hug. “God, that’s awful.”
“I know,” Yaz managed, wiping her face. “Just think of poor Oppy, all alone out there. What if she was scared?”
“I mean, she was just a robot…” Ryan said unconvincingly.
“Fam!” The Doctor called, dragging Graham by the hand. “Are we going to eat or what?”
“She brings you to an alien planet and you’re looking at your phones,” Graham joked, before seeing the look on Ryan’s face. “What’s wrong, kiddo?”
The Doctor glanced at Yaz’s phone and winced, her face going sad. “Oh, no. Thirteenth of February, 2019. I’d completely forgotten. Poor dear.”
“What poor dear?” Graham asked, looking confused.
“The Opportunity Rover. NASA declares her dead after eight months without contact. Her solar panels were covered with dust in the biggest dust-storm ever recorded on Mars. By humans, anyway, not by Ice Warriors.” The Doctor shook her head. “Her resting place is in Perseverance Valley. She was such a trooper.” She squeezed Graham’s hand.
“Is there anything we can do, Doctor?” Yaz asked.
The Doctor paused, looking into Yaz’s sad, dark eyes. She had no desire to set foot on Mars ever again, not after Adelaide and Bowie Base One- but for Yaz? Absolutely. “Absolutely.”
“And here she is!” The Doctor crowed, taking the helmet off of her gaudy orange space suit. Behind her she tugged a robot about the size of a golf-cart on a dog leash she had produced from a hidden panel, jabbering about ‘K-9.’ Ryan had been poking at the secret hatch for the entire ten minutes the Doc had been rescuing Oppy, succeeding in nearly crushing his fingers twice and finding a nearly-empty bottle of brandy that Graham had swiftly confiscated.
“Oh, look at you, you beauty,” Yaz crowed, running forward. The Doctor happily opened her arms to receive Yaz, then pouted when Yaz embrace Opportunity instead of her.
“SO!” The Doctor said loudly, clapping her hands. “Who wants to get the next one?”
“The next one?” Graham asked warily.
“Well, we can’t just leave Spirit and Sojourner here all alone now, can we?” The Doctor asked, shucking off the rest of the suit and tossing it to Graham.
Graham sighed, grumbling about ‘glorified toasters’ under his breath, but he put the suit on anyway and, on his way out, he patted Opportunity on the… head? Head. “Welcome aboard, old girl.”