Her visor was cracked; so was her voice, the display panel on her right arm and at least two of her ribs.

Bent. Not Broken. Nora repeated those words every time she struck down a piece of unseen foliage with her Cascadium blade.

Apart from being considerably larger in size Tessier 4B's vegetation wasn't too dissimilar to Earth's.

Most forms of its flora and fauna bore physical and chemical resemblances to her home planet and thanks to those shared qualities, command had deemed the planet deserving of further assessment, citing it as a potential food source exocolonies in the sector. This possibility led to her team's -- her now dead team’s deployment.

Escort Duty. A heading she’d seen a thousand times. Back on the mothership her only concern was completing her next mission thereby fulfilling her contract then catching not just the next but the fastest ship back to Earth, Askium to be exact with it’s endless space ports.

“30 months in space and I haven't shot at shit expect CGI and animals.” Ebukah said, clearly disgusted. He'd barely read the mission briefing.

Nora couldn't tell what annoyed him more, the assignment or the fact that the notification had interrupted his game.

“You’ve barely been in space a year,” the reply was cold and fast. It came from the other side of the room, “plus it's basically free money, so who cares?”

Mao made a habit of trying to mask her disappointment under the pretext of undemanding financial gain. Who cared? She definitely did. Mao's bloodlust or rather thirst for action wasn't up there with Ebukah's but it'd been months since she'd been shot at, she no doubt needed that adrenaline fix, she wouldn’t spend half her free time maintaining her terrasuit and discussing specs.

Most of her squad had kept on lounging as they had been in their quarters before they got assigned. The message meant they actually had to work for their credits so every moment spent not in a terrasuit was a blessing.

Dieter, who'd been a more seasoned officer welcomed the mundane nature of the posting as always. Zasid was indifferent, the pretentious prick predicted this months ago.

“Told you to be realistic but you’re forever daft, we're too many systems away from any kind of action.” is what he might have said or “What'd you expect when you took the Askium survey detail?” but he didn't, he just kept yapping into his holophone like he'd been doing for the last 17 hours -- seriously the call log exists even though he doesn't anymore.

If only they… If only we-. An animatronic voice paired with a light blue radiance interrupted her thoughts.

Change of terrain detected approximately 500 feet ahead. Nora stared at the relief map displayed on her visor with dreaded obsidian eyes, the contour lines were jagged thanks to all the crevices but that just meant her suit was damaged but still functional.

Using Geo-analysis and archival data, my system is predicting a slight depression before a steep drop of approximately 15 feet.

"Well my guts’ are telling me I'll survive.” Nora said, now standing at precipice of the ridge. “ certain other parts disagree.”

Chances of a positive outcome rest between 82 to 92 percent although with the current condition of your rib cage, this victory could prove a little daunting.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

No way this AI just talked to me about pain.

To Nora's surprise the forest floor was welcoming, she heard a soft crunch as opposed to the crack she’d predicted when her weight hit the ground. She’d sustained no leg or foot injuries prior to this but was still grateful for the cushion provided.

The greenery returned to being a nuisance soon after, the foliage was wet and more than ankle deep here so Nora replaced hurried steps with gentle stomps lest she risk acquiring another outlet of hurt and God knows she didn’t need any more of those.

Her right arm was slashed, her thankfully intact head throbbed underneath its helmet and the area below her right breast flared lightly following the slightest of movement. She couldn’t entirely feel it thanks to the serum but she knew all the agony in the star system were connected to those pain receptors.

Most importantly, her mind just like her suit remained gallant. Nora took pride in that. The scenes she'd witnessed earlier would've driven even the most arcane of Magi practitioners mad.

Once again she found herself reeling back to the mothership. It was the loading decks rather than the barracks this time, a light freighter ship was being loaded by personnel and assistance droids.

Ebukah, Artwin and Mao, the three magi on the squad telekinetically lifted and dropped ammunition boxes, a task like that could've easily been assigned to assistance droids but like scientists, explorers and a lot of other professionals had been putting emphasis not becoming super dependent on artificial intelligence lest mankind become too complacent.

“Crazy how that's the most energy we'll exert for this entire mission.” Ebukah said, clearly still annoyed. Mao didn't respond till the reverberating echoes caused by the box she'd just dropped subsided.

“The planet's uncharted, so if the gods of island gigantism are good we'll run into something rabid.”

Nora had scoffed playfully when she'd overheard that then but now wading through this green sea, she'd give anything for Mao's prediction to have been even half accurate. What they would face was far from rabid.

She'd take a bout with defensive humanoids or some brazen quadruped over the mounted butchery she witnessed earlier.

That was the crazy part about all this, it was on a fucking horse! Getting ambushed by sentient indigenes, wildlife or opposition forces was nothing uncommon, Nora's job was literally to protect Earth's -- and in this case Askium's -- assets against such threats, but a mechanical fucking horse? No exoplanetary magic course could've prepared her for this.

"Un… fucking… believable." She muttered in short breaths after cutting down what felt like her thousandth vine.

Ahead of her the ground depressed chronically for about a mile before the dense greenery gave way to plains filled with what she assumed was tall grass. A bunch of conical mounds protruded the flatlands, one for every mile according to Anansi's analysis.

Nora's gaze now enhanced by her suits' telescopic night vision was fixated about 6 mounds down, making out a structure atop a moderately inclined hill on the end of a sorry excuse for a pathway that led down the hill and cut through most of the tall grass. Upon further analysis, Nora deduced the building had a North American air to its architecture; back on earth she’d spent several holidays with distant relatives that lived on what was left of the Midwestern farmlands.

Nora knew better than to let a gabled roof, a human sized door size, a porch and cheerful memories be the driving force of her hypothesis.

Exoplanetary structures shared similarities with Earth's, even a first year novice knew that. She needed something concrete, writing scripts or symbols did the trick.

Nora found the latter. She'd read somewhere that the symbol laying muddy and rusted by the porch steps was the most recognizable one on earth after the Jewish and an 'S' symbol she'd barely recalled.

No way that's a Church. Nora's mind flashed back to the image of the detail posting. Uncharted was highlighted so many times and so far she'd run into pathways, a building, an aggrieved hunter and even skeletons. Incomplete skeletons with their accompanying heads resting too far away to make any biological sense.

Uncharted my ass. This discovery paired with the other factors such as cadavers, the farm equipment and the cultivated land surrounding the church. The horseman isn't even the biggest asshole involved in all this. She'd had her suspicions but now it was clear now, someone in hierarchy must have known about this.