--13th of January 2205.--

I went down to the armoury and started getting into my armour while the other marines did the same. These suits of armour hadn’t changed much since the unification war, except for some minor adjustments for space exploration. Thanks to the advanced rebreathers, one could stay outside almost indefinitely, as long as your suit’s internal water tanks and food provisions lasted. The suits of armour were form fitting, so technically you didn’t even need to wear anything underneath, some marines preferred this, but I always went in with a long sleeved shirt and tight pants to avoid being butt naked when you had to ditch your armour for some reason.

As for the paint job, right now they were your typical naval grey, except for the pauldrons that had stripes on them to easily discern which rank everyone had. Mine had three gold stripes, painted horizontally. While Corporal Jones, who was fitting her armour next to me, just had two black stripes chevrons.

“Are you ready for the mission, Corporal?” I said as I locked my helmet into place and checked the microphone. The visor wasn’t terribly large, but you still had plenty of vision out of it.

“Yes, ma’am. I was born ready.” Corporal Jones was struggling a bit with her helmet, so I helped her a bit. The locks on these things could be somewhat annoying to get on, but it was better than them unintentionally popping off in a lethal environment.

“Speaking in clichés, huh?” I laughed. “Just don’t get too cocky and keep your eyes open.”

“I will, ma’am.” She saluted me once her helmet was locked on tight.

Before we left, we took our weapons with us, together with any accessories we preferred. I took a couple of high explosive plasma grenades and hung them from my belt, on the other side of my sidearm’s holster. You can’t go wrong with explosives when shit hits the fan. As for my primary weapon, I selected the P900-R. Compact enough to use in tight spaces, but still packing a punch thanks to the incredible velocity at which it launched bullets out of the barrel. An assault rifle would have been fine as well, but I preferred the enhanced mobility I gained, especially when we weren’t necessarily expecting hostiles. And as I said, I still had the plasma grenades if things went wrong anyway.

From the armoury it was only a little walk to the hangar bay where I saw our newest addition to the crew doing a last check of the shuttle electronics.

“Hey Commander, all the electronics are perfectly in order, I even added a little bit of an upgrade.”

I shook Ensign Yuigahama’s hand. “Good job, Ensign. I see you’ve gotten used to the new ship already.”

“She’s been a huge help.” Lieutenant Steyer came to salute us. He was in charge of the ins and outs of the hanger bay. “The upgrade she added increased the engine efficiency of all shuttles, so you can put more power into the shielding.”

“The crew on the Antananarivo must be cursing their luck right about now.” Another electronics engineer started laughing.

“I take it everyone has been nice to you?” I directed myself back to Yuki.

“Yes, ma’am, everyone has been great.”

“Good to hear.” I saluted the entire group, after which we waited on the rest of the ground team. Apart from the marines, we’d also take a biologist and a geologist with us so they could start analysing the moment we’d landed.

Gunny arrived as the last marine, together with the two scientists we’d be taking along on the ride down. In typical Gunny fashion, he’d picked a machine gun instead of a lighter weapon, with a couple of boxes of ammunition hanging from his suit of armour. He’d also attached a lightweight exoskeleton to help bear the weight.

Ensign Yuigahama looked at me with wide open eyes when she saw the scene of Gunnery-Sergeant Taylor approaching. “Wa-wasn’t this just a reconnaissance mission, ma’am?”

“That’s the Gunnery-Sergeant for you.” I laughed. “He will be staying behind with the scientists anyway, so it’s not like he’ll have to do much recon himself.”

“T-that’s fair I guess…”

“Anyhow, it’s time to board the shuttle. Make sure my ship doesn’t fall apart while we are away, will you?”

“Yes, ma’am!” Yuki saluted together with the other engineers.

I let everyone board the shuttle before I got in myself and sat down next to Gunny who needed quite a bit of room on the shuttle’s bench but that still left plenty of space. These shuttles weren’t necessarily built for comfort, but the both of us definitely had seen other things during the war. Compared to the shuttles back then, these might as well be limousines.

The shuttle pilot flew us out of the hangar bay after I sent a message to the bridge that we were leaving. Due to the proximity of the ship with the planet, the trip down wouldn’t take very long. In the meantime, I debriefed the marines and scientists on board.

“Everyone, this will be a standard planetary recon mission, you all know what you have to do. Gunnery Sergeant Taylor will stick close to the scientists, together with Sergeant Major Thompson. In the meantime, we will form three groups of three and fan out to see if we can find some points of interest on the ground. I don’t think I need to repeat this, but please do keep your helmets on at all times, initial indicators say the atmosphere should be breathable but don’t take any chances before analysis is complete. And as always, keep your eyes open and expect the unexpected.”

“Ma’am, what are the teams?” Sergeant Setiawan asked.

“I’ll take Jones and Kasongo. Sergeant De Vries will lead Garcia and Taumata. You’ll lead team Charlie with Kristjánsdóttir and Roberts.”

Everyone nodded as the shuttle started shaking because we entered the atmosphere.

“Keep coms open and check in every 10 minutes.”

When we hit the ground we immediately secured a perimeter around the shuttle with me and Gunny jumping out of the back first.

“It’s eerily quiet.” Gunny commented once everyone was in position. You couldn’t hear a single bird. The only thing that was audible was the wind rustling through the leaves of the outright enormous trees. They were comparable to the Coast Redwood trees I saw in North America when I was stationed there, only these were even larger than those.

“Commander, are you there?” LC Moore contacted me over my suit’s intercom.

“Yes, what’s up, LC?”

“We’ve got more data concerning the day and night cycle now, if you would like that.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“This planet completes a turn around its axis within 14 hours. Considering your current position, this means you have approximately 5 hours of daylight left.”

“Thanks for the info, LC.” I then turned to my marines. “Okay people, let’s spread out. Gunny, you hold the fort.”

“Aye aye.” He saluted and joined the scientists together with Sergeant Major Thompson.

I took my team North, while bravo and Charlie went East and West respectively. We’d discussed over the coms to head out for 5 clicks before heading back to the shuttle.

All things considered, it was actually quite a relaxing walk. We didn’t encounter anything except for pristine nature that hadn’t seemingly been touched in forever. We’d also walked past a couple of small lakes. But still, not a single sign of any kind of life to be seen.

“Hey, Commander.” Private Kasongo sped up a little so he could walk next to me. “Don’t you think this soil is a bit strange?”

“How so, Private?” I looked down and stopped for a bit.

“I don’t know, it’s just all moss.”

“I’m not an astrobiologist, so I really wouldn’t know.” I crouched down and rubbed the moss with my gauntlet. It was a bit springy, but as far as I could tell that was pretty normal for moss.

“Wouldn’t you expect a little bit of grass?”

I shrugged. “Maybe this planet doesn’t have grass.”

“Commander! Come look at this!” Corporal Jones had been moving forward and was standing 20 meters away from us. She’d been wiping away something from the ground.

“What’s up, Jones?” I stood back up.

“I’m pretty sure this is concrete, ma’am.”

“Really?” Private Kasongo and I walked over to Corporal when suddenly we could hear a large crack. I saw the ground around Corporal Jones start giving away. “Jones!”

I called out to her but thanks to the sudden movement, Jones had fallen on the floor as the entire slab of ground started to give way.

“Shit.” In an instant I threw down my weapon, shot out a grappling hook into a nearby tree and started running at the Corporal. When the floor gave way completely, I jumped after her. And with blind luck, I managed to grab her hand before she completely disappeared into the dark below. Catching her did send a shockwave through my spine as my arm and shoulder had to catch her entire weight. If not for my armour, that would have ended pretty poorly. I groaned a little while Corporal Jones was hanging on my hand for dear life, breathing incredibly heavily.

“T-t-thanks Commander…”

“We’re not out of this yet, Jones.” I bit through the shock and looked around.

“Commander! Are you alright?” Private Kasongo was looking down on us from the ledge above.

I tried to make my servo motor in my gauntlet pull the both of us up, but by the sound it was making, I could tell that something had malfunctioned while catching Jones’ fall.

“I can’t pull us up.” I called up to Kasongo. “Can you throw down a glow stick to see how far the bottom is?”

The Private immediately did as I asked, opening a compartment in his thigh case and throwing down a couple of light sticks. Luckily, they didn’t seem to drop down that low before stopping.

“I’ll lower us down, then we’ll see how we can get out of this mess.” At least the servo could still lower us down without dropping us.

When we got to the bottom, we both activated our flashlights. Which incidentally made me find my weapon I’d thrown down earlier. It was a bit banged up, but these weapons could generally handle more than that.

“Uh, Private, you might want to come down here too…” I called Private Kasongo through my microphone. “It looks like we found something.” I raised my gun as I was staring down a massive concrete complex, with in the distance a couple of humanoid forms sat against the wall...