Richard sent the drone out ahead of him once the sealed doors opened, feeling the warm breeze of sunlit air brush against his exposed skin. It did as its programming directed; cloaking itself with reflective panelling, flying as high as its propellers would allow, and providing overwatch wherever its operator commanded it. A video feed of whatever it saw on its cameras came in through his neural implants — one of the many dubious benefits of joining the marines with a college degree.
His pod's surroundings revealed an impressive gash in the dirt around the pod's propulsion systems, the less sturdy flora in the vicinity having been forced to bend away from wherever its thrusters blew. Though the minor devastation wrought by his landing was cool to see, that was nothing compared to where he'd actually landed.
It was a forest!
An actual forest, just like the ones from all the ancient, grainy pre-federation footage from centuries ago on the cradle world. Lush green trees towered over each other, plants grew up and out wherever the sun shone, animals chittered and yelped their little mating songs without a care in the world — it was almost as if he'd been brought back to the past!
He suppressed the urge to step out and experience it all first-hand, reminding himself that there was still work to be done.
Cycling through the drone's different cameras, nothing really seemed out of place given the assumption of a diverse ecosystem. There were a few concerning spots of movement circling his pod, sure, but those didn't look like organized groups of people — probably just some weird-looking social fauna checking out what the weird sounds were.
Now confident he wouldn't be caught off guard, he stepped out at once before bringing his rifle to bear. Scanning for threats was an instinct the marines drilled into him since he was sixteen cycles old. Doing it alone didn't feel quite right, though. He was already missing the palpable safety that came with knowing one of his marines would be watching whatever he wasn't.
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Time passed.
One tree checked, then a bush, then another tree.
To the left of the pod, to its right, then behind it.
Nothing.
He lowered his rifle and sent the drone ahead to scout for him, now confident he wouldn't be caught off guard for the next hour or so. Time was of the essence with so many unknowns at play, so he went about getting power generation up and running at once; he chucked loose organic matter into the generator, installed the panel arrays on top of the pod, and then laid the cables that hooked it all up to the pod's batteries.
It was while he did all this that the deep rumbling of a distant explosion caught his attention.
It was the battered Pathfinder, visible in the sky through holes in the forest canopy, firing at something in the distance. He could hear each tungsten slug hit the ground with the deafening force of a meteor, not too far away from where he was now. He covered his ears.
An orbital cannon, then?
As if to answer his question, the air around him seemed to... move, for lack of a better word, towards wherever the ship was firing. Stranger still was the faint glow that permeated the moving air around him, but his skin didn't feel the winds shift at all!
He felt his body conjure up the sensation of a breeze tickling his skin as the air was drawn to the site faster and faster, but he knew there wasn't one to be felt.
Did the Pathfinder drop a vacuum bomb on them?
The air stopped moving.
Three rotating, reddish-white rings shimmered into coherence hundreds of feet in the sky, symbols appearing in the spaces between before locking into place. The first two rings and their accompanying glyphs glowed a brighter light before shrinking, condensing into a massive spear of red light.
The third ring did the same, though upon contact with the red spear, the air around it seemed to shimmer before violently lashing out with the force of a thousand suns.
The red spear was propelled towards the Pathfinder at speeds he couldn't fathom, turning to face the ship unerringly as it tried to evade. It took all of about one minute before it found its mark, and the results were devastating.
Richard "Dick" Fletcher couldn't help but stare in slack-jawed awe, ignoring a ping from the drone overhead as a single question escaped his gaping mouth.
"What the fuck?"