A star fell from the sky.

MAIN STREET - 1800 - EARLY SUNSET.  

The light from the descending meteor gradually lit up Hal's HUD with shades of pink and scarlet, until he could no longer see the fine details of the exhaust nozzle barrel he was trying to poke the carbon out of with his cleaning brush. Rolling his shoulders back and feeling his joints and muscles crack, he blinked instead and let his visor tint itself darker. He shone a torch down the barrel again, trying to ignore how the colony street itself was lit up brighter and brighter, what with the secondary explosions from the meteor.

"Oh, for Kristos' sake, Hal," his short-haired, and also very short, assistant said. "Stop trying to evade your responsibilities and call your partner already!"

Hal sighed, and laid the nozzle down with a clank on his workbench. It rolled off before he could make more than a fleeting grab at it. His assistant caught the part instantly, holding it hostage against her chest, a full two meters below where Hal was sat. Hal glared at her, then tapped the side of his head to let the visor slide up so that his assistant could actually see his glare.

"Don't blame me for what I'm doing," his assistant said. "After what Anda did to us the last time you ignored your responsibilities..." She trailed off into a shudder.

"Septic duty isn't so bad, Melinde," Hal rumbled. 

"Yeah, not for you maybe," Melinde said, "Given how many times Anda's made you do it. But me and 'Lissa, we both hate it, thank you very much. We had to shower for hours - hours! - to get it off, and then Anda made us do extra septic duty to make up for the water we used!"

 "Hardening up is good for you," Hal rumbled, then sighed, vaulting off the side of his elevated bench. He bent his knees as he landed with a mild thump, the circuits on his bulky legs flashing a dim gold under his suit pants. 

"Says 'The Turtle'," Melinde said, then rolled her eyes as Hal advanced on her with his hand held out. "Not giving this back until you call Anda. Nuh-uh. Nuh-uh. No way, Hal!"

Hal swiped at her, trying to get the part off her. Melinde stuck her tongue out at him, craning her neck - she was still shorter than him by more than two heads and a half - and stuck the nozzle inside her coveralls. 

"Melinde. Are you nineteen, or nine?"

"I'm doing nein-thing until you call Anda!"

Hal brought his hand up to cover his face. His comm buzzed, insistently, inside his vest pocket.

"...Or they could call you first, maybe!"

 Hal fixed a look at his assistant, who was still keeping more than an arms-length away from him. He sighed.

"Promise you'll give back my nozzle if I answer this call?"

"And talk for more than five minutes. I'll be timing it!" Melinde fished her multitool out of her coveralls, setting up an overt, and very visible, stopwatch app that started at 00:00:00.

Hal rolled his eyes and pulled out his comm, clearing his throat before engaging the call. 

"Hey, gorgeous -" 

"Don't you 'hey, gorgeous' me," his partner said, clad as always in only a lab coat and silvery, form-clinging pants. "You're outside, so you're definitely aware of the falling pod."

"Pod?" 

"Meteors don't have secondary explosions!" Melinde chimed in.

"Oh, good, you're there too, and where you are, your twin usually is," Anda said, her tone over the comms softening to something only slightly less than icy. "So you have absolutely no excuse not to go out on a scouting expedition, Scoutmaster Hal."

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"But, Anda -" 

"No buts! Get out there and get me some readings!"

Melinde stifled a giggle behind her hand. Hal threw her a look that promised pain in simulation training. Melinde stiffened and took on a blank expression. 

"And when you're done, maybe I can finally call it a night for once -"

"I'll be fast," Hal interrupted his partner, smiling into the comm. 

"See that you do." Despite the dismissive words, the tone that carried over the comm was almost shy.

"Love you, babe," Hal said.

"Love you, Hal," Anda said. The call cut.

"See, Melinde? Actual communication," Hal said. The numbers on Melinde's app flashed once, brightly, then vanished.

"Get your sister, we're going to take our skimmers out in twenty minutes," Hal said, looking up at the pod in the sky. It was still falling, but angled such that it would fall over ten kilometers away from where the colony's furthest outposts lay. "And tune your disruptors. We might be going out into infested territory and I'd like to minimize the number of surprises that we get. Vibroblades, too."

"You're the boss!" Melinde said, turning to skip away.

Hal growled from behind her, freezing her in place on one foot.

"Nozzle." 

----------------------------------------

COLONY OUTER GATES - 1832 - EVENING.

The skimmers were silent except for a few coughs from Hal's still malfunctioning exhaust. He twisted around in his seat and banged heavily on the rear engine block until it coughed slightly more quietly. As the gates whirred and hummed into life, having been given permission to open this late at night by Anda, Hal exchanged glances with both his assistants. They were really more his second-in-commands - members of his personal scout team and tasked with both administrative duties for the militia patrol system as well as command staff. For such a routine expedition Hal didn't think he'd need a full backup team, especially given that the skimmers they had were more than capable of outrunning any of the known infested so far. Even if his skimmer was still slightly dodgy - he eyed the exhaust again, his right eye starting to twitch - Melinde and Melissa's skimmers were both fully functional, Melinde was a great in-the-field mechanic, and he could always ride double with one of them if everything went to hell in a handbasket. Even if Anda would get on his case again about wasting metal.

 Hal closed his eyes, listening for the light hums of the disruptors. Both seemed to be set at the correct frequencies for infested, and would serve to get the scout group past a small pack of chasers - maybe even a medium pack. He checked his grav-lance again, a small gesture of security, even though he knew it was firmly magnetically locked in place. The readout read at 15 charges, and would only keep increasing as the skimmers covered the distance between the colony and their expedition target.

 "Boss," Melissa greeted him, sliding her skimmer up next to his. Compared to her twin, Melissa was taller, skinnier, and blonder. She also had her hair tied back in a serviceable updo, preventing any blockage of the readings scrolling across her visor. At that reminder, Hal lowered his, waiting a moment until it adjusted to the glare to present his skimmer metrics across his vision at 30% opacity.  

"Melissa," he responded.

"Anda sent me the rough coordinates of where he figured the pod might have landed, so I've calculated our most efficient route based on our last infested territories, our fuel gauge, and the charges on our weapons."

"She."

"Pardon, Boss?"

"Anda said she felt like being a 'she' today."

"Oh. Understood, Boss."

The colony gates slowly rose open, revealing a rolling green landscape not unlike Mother Earth - a deceptively idyllic landscape. Hal tensed as his eyes tracked the horizon, checking both his skimmer's sensors as well as his own in a well-practiced search pattern. Nothing jumped out at him immediately. 

"Lock in the data with our skimmers - we'll slave them to the route you've plotted. But leave the speed control up to me, and give me temporary override. Usual protocol." 

"Roger, Boss."

Melissa subvocalized a series of commands, and the skimmers slid forward together, the gates humming and creating a shimmering forcefield behind them.

Overhead, the lightshow had finally faded, leaving behind a series of wispy clouds and the searing light of the single moon orbiting their planet. Given the lack of a pressure wave, Hal estimated that it'd be a relatively long ride... so, 95% boring, 3% tension as they crossed infested territory, and 2% sheer terror in case they actually ran into a pack of infested. In other words, a totally standard scouting expedition.

Hal leaned over his controls, gripping the handles of his skimmer tightly and revving the engines. He gauged their readiness by the vibrations under his hands and his body, eyeing his assistants as they did the same. Their disruptors cancelled out the noise of the skimmers, what little they made, and they were in the appropriate formation such that their disruptors cancelled his skimmer's noise as well. As he focused on the far distance, the circuits on his body traced bright gold along his veins. Melinde and Melissa barely cast him a single look, which he appreciated - some of the newer militia members acted just as civilians in the colony did - with great distrust.

"Let's go."

The three skimmers took off into the plains, moving almost silently, disturbing the grass-equivalents with about as much force as a summer breeze.