The planet below them was technically inhabitable. The news made Leon smile. An inhabitable planet was one thing, but one that was also not a giant bog or covered in titanic spider crabs was another thing. They had so far discovered several various planets with inhabitable surfaces, but this was the first that seemed to be utterly devoid of animal life.
Sabine had piloted the probe for two entire days, the cover of the trees and small blue shrubs the only thing that she had found. It seemed that the entire planet was inhabited by these few strange plant-like organisms. Myung had even put forward the possibility that they may act in a manner similar to long-dead Pando, the quaking aspen clone that had once spanned many dozens of square kilometers before its eventual death in the collapse.
She hypothesised that the large blue trees may in fact be subterranean clones. All connected extensions of the same superorganism that had so far managed to colonise vast swaths of the planet's surface. If this was true they may have discovered the largest single living entity in human history. Far larger in total scale than Pando or anything in Earth’s history.
Leon wasn’t sure how much stock he placed in the theory, but it was as good a reason as any as to why the forest of strange blue needled trees were so decidedly similar in form and function. There was virtually no variety at all.
The only way they were going to get more information though was to send a team or two down to the planet’s surface to collect actual samples for transport. He had put careful thought into who he wanted on the expedition. So far he had decided that as much as he wanted not to, he needed to bring both Samuel and Oliver again. The two were simply too invaluable to leave behind. As for the others, he had already decided to replace Joice with Aden and to also bring Myung. She had been dying for something more and when he had tentatively mentioned an expedition she had nearly come at him with a pipe wrench as she demanded the privilege to go.
He had agreed, begrudgingly. Not upset by her presence, but more so by the fact she had not expected him to comply with her wishes naturally. If she had just waited another few seconds he likely would have asked her to come anyway, no pipe wrench negotiations needed. Still, it was necessary to have at least one biologist. He had also asked Chris to accompany them but the older man had refused. He had simply told him to bring him back some geological samples and then went on with his day as if Leon had never interjected at all.
Leon stood now in front of the last crew member that he would have asked to join, one that had begged him to allow her to come. It was Natalia, and she was not in the mood to take no for an answer. Especially not from him.
She stood with her hands on her hips, her chest thrown out as she gave him a haughty glare. “You have no right to tell me I am unqualified to go. I have every qualification you have and am lighter and faster on my feet.”
Leon shook his head. “After what happened last time I can't believe I am going to go again, much less putting the person I care about the most in danger.” She stomped a single foot and huffed. He raised his arms in an apologetic manner. “I can’t say yes Nat. What if you were to get hurt, or worse. It would destroy me..” he trailed off as she turned her smouldering eyes on him forcefully, the anger in them cutting off his pleas mid sentence.
She growled, her voice full of flame and bitterness. “And you think I would be any better off if the same were to happen to you? Again?”
He hunched in on himself. She had a point. “Well, I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
She swung a hand into the air in exasperation. “Then let me come, you can see that me staying behind is hurting me just as much as watching me go alone would hurt you. So let me come.” She said bluntly.
He felt as though he should continue to argue, but found that he no longer had the strength to deny her.
She pointed at him, “I can see it in your eyes, you know I'm right.”
Leon stood, his shoulders still slightly hunched as he admitted, “Yes, you are. You are always right. I guess you could go, but you would need to stay near the ship..” She looked ready to blow a stack again and he added hastily, “At least at first. I might let you come, but I am not letting you take point on this mission. That’s where I draw the line.” He stood as straight as he could, fully aware of who truly had the power in the room. And it wasn’t him he noted with minor trepidation.
He cursed himself silently, why did he always give into her demands. It wasn’t as though she was threatening, not in the traditional sense. Maybe it had something to do with baser human instincts. He wasn’t exactly sure, but what he did know was that his mission priority was now going to be to get her to and from the surface as safely as possible He stood back a pace and shrugged. “Okay, that is settled then? You are coming, but please Natalia.. Please try and be careful. You don't have any cybernetics to keep you going if you get injured.” He chuckled as she frowned.
She took a step towards him and punched him a bit roughly in the shoulder, his real one. “Well, I may not, but at least I know that you will be there to protect me if anything goes wrong.”
He gave her a smile and nodded. She grinned in a manner that she often did when she got her way, which was all too often, and exited the small space she had cornered him in five minutes ago.
Leon breathed out a sigh and turned back to the crates he had been busy checking. They were full of ammo for their G402-K rifles, the weapons having been sent along with their mission just in case they encountered threats that they couldn't negotiate their way out of. And so far they had not really needed them, but he wasn't about to leave them in storage simple because the planet seemed benign. That was the surest way to disaster, assumptions killed after all.
He nodded as the ammunition checked out, the hand scanner detecting no moisture damage or ruptured casings. He placed two of the heavy crates on the dolly he was pulling with a grunt and closed the door to the small storage room behind him. He made sure to seal it properly, his handprint and CAMs device ensuring that only he and Joice would have access to the munitions held within.
It was a standard safety practice, and after the multiple bouts of madness that had befallen some members of the crew it was a clearly needed one. He lugged the cart to the nearby cargo spoke, it was similar to the ladder spokes but instead had a pulley system within that would safely transport heavier objects from one ring to another without having to put a member of the crew in any danger.
He sent the ammo crates up the shaft and then walked to the nearest ladder spoke and followed them up. They may have been a distance apart on the ring, but he and the crates would converge in the same place in the ship’s core.
The climb was a breeze, his shoulders and arms now fully adapted to the stress of climbing ladders. He flew through the passage and only slowed as he neared the end of the spoke, his body now nearly weightless in the non-rotating core of the Lief Erikson.
Leon grabbed the crates, they were strapped together and so he simply slung the strap over one shoulder and pulled himself carefully along the passage towards the large hangar at the rear of the ship. Leon was still careful not to make too sudden of movements, the crates may have been weightless now, but they still possessed all of their inertia. Meaning if he made a poor move he could end up breaking a rib or worse.
It only took him a few minutes of careful maneuvering to reach the main airlock that led to the hangar, he met Samuel at the door. He gave the man a wave that the pilot returned cheerfully, his face breaking out in a smile.
“Hey Leon. I guess you are about to call us all together?” Leon nodded. “I figured as much.” Samuel said in his hoarse whisper of a voice. The man’s vocal chords had been destroyed when he had cut his own throat open in a fit of depressed mania. Leon swallowed as he looked at the faded white scar that crossed the entire front of the man’s neck like some obscene smile. He still largely blamed himself for the incidents that had led up to the mutilation. Samuel had survived, but he had been permanently changed by the experience.
Leon noticed that Samuel was looking at the ammo and shifted the boxes. “I am hoping we won't need them, but I am not allowing this expedition to be taken unawares again. I had Sabine and Chad armour the legs of the environmental suits. Nothing too drastic, but enough to keep any small snake-like creatures from biting through the material again.” he chuckled in reference to Oliver's near death experience a year before.
Samuel cracked a smile too but didn’t laugh. The action usually seemed to cause the man pain and so he was much more stoic nowdays. Samuel and Leon moved through the airlock in relative silence after that brief exchange. Only pausing to apply velcro slippers so they didn't have to worry about trying to stay attached to the floor.
They were really quite ingenious designs. One simply had to twist their foot back and forth twice while lifting to separate all the tiny hooks and take a step. It was rather slow but the tedium was much better than using magboots or trying to swim through the air.
As Leon and Samuel twist and ripped their way to one of the large shuttle-like vehicles a figure dressed entirely in one of the armoured EVA suits stepped out of the second vessel. From their current distance he couldn't make out who it was, but whoever it was moved with the practiced ease of a born astronaut. It must have been either Chad or Myung, both of them having had extensive practice in the bulky suits.
As they arrived at the shuttle the figure reached up and removed the helmet, revealing to him that it was in fact Myung as he had surmised. The small woman gave a wave and Leon was compelled to ask, “Why are you suited up already?”
She shook her head, dark hair fluttering from the bun atop her head. “I was just getting reacquainted. I didn’t want a repeat of the last time I had a crash course in one of these.”
Leon gave a shrug, the movement tugging on his footing, but he remained firmly attached via his funny slippers. “I suppose, though from what I have heard you are getting the hang of them just fine.” Myung nodded at him and then glanced at Samuel as he entered the ship.
She just stared for a second and then turned to disappear somewhere behind a stack of crates and boxes that were firmly strapped down in the center of the bird’s cargo area.
The shuttle was one of their two SSVs, or surface to space vessels. Their design allowed for space to surface and return journeys as long as they were refueled in between uses. A game changer back on Earth, or at least they would have been. But the technology was suppressed as the UN government was afraid of the Russian alliance getting their hands on the tech and using it for less than nobel havoc.
Leon was glad there were no politics on the ship. No careful gambits that lead to deeper plots of deception. No, the ship was an honest environment dominated by trust and comradeship, Leon knew he could trust any one of the others with his life, and they knew the same of him. It was a welcome change from the UN peacekeeping forces which had been full of that same type of political infighting and prestige brownnosing.
He turned back to the task at hand, he unstrapped the ammo boxes and carefully pushed them across the room till they came to rest near the small two way airlock that led to the ship’s captain's chambers. He had been in the small room before, it was quite comfortable with a micro kitchen area and bathroom as well as a tiny sleeping quarters. As long as it was properly stocked it could be manned by a crew of two for several weeks. In fact with the use of oxygen candles this time could be extended to as long as a month and a half, though by then most pilots had started to go a bit stir crazy from being cooped up too long.
Leon finished up stowing the ammo without any trouble and turned, the rest of the lander was empty space. They had stowed a few specimen containers onboard, just in case they decided anything was worth bringing back with them. He smirked at that, they had only brought Max back from the previous planetary expedition because she had bitten Oliver and they had needed her venom to synthesize an antivenom.
He shook his head again. That had worked out alright, but he was not exactly eager to repeat the process. One of the reasons why the EVA suits had been bulked out with additional armour. It had increased their overall weight a little, but not enough to offset the benefits of the added protection.
He drifted over towards the open airlock of the SSV’s small cockpit. His velcro slippers were useless on the smooth metal flooring of the shuttle and so he slipped them off and stowed them in a mesh next to the shuttle’s door. He moved over and into the ship’s cockpit to see Samuel was already strapped into the main pilot’s seat. The other three remained vacant and it was into one of those that Leon slipped.
Samuel glanced over his shoulder towards him. “Oh, hello. I heard that you told Natalia she could come. I assume she didn’t leave you much choice?” Samuel’s raspy laugh made Leon frown, the other man nearly breaking into a coughing fit. “Ow..” Samuel grumbled, his face losing its jovial streak.
“Has everybody already heard? Yes, she told me she was coming this time, to keep an eye on me I have to assume.” Leon scowled.
Samuel shook his head. “Well, at least you have somebody that cares about you watching your back.”
Leon smiled and gestured to the younger man, “I think I saw Myung watching your backside pretty intently a little bit ago.”
Samuel turned to look at him a bit sharply. “What? What do you mean, I mean.. did she..” he trailed off, Leon’s wide smile making the man blush slightly. “Hey, that isn’t funny man.” Samuel trailed off a bit grumpilly.
Leon shrugged. “I mean, she wasn’t not looking. But who knows with that woman.”
Samuel declined to comment on the situation further and Leon chuckled again as he rose and pulled himself towards the crew compartment again. He stopped as he entered the larger area, in the short time he had been in the cockpit most of the others had arrived. He saw Aden and Oliver speaking to each other near the stacks of supplies, Max happily swimming around in the air using her fins to propel herself in lazy spirals. He could hear her happy little chirps as the small snake-like alien played in the microgravity and not for the first time Leon was forced to wonder just how intelligent the small serpent was.
He was about to ask Oliver where on Earth he was planning on leaving Oliver while they were on the planet’s surface, and then thought better of it. He decided that he really didn’t want to know.
Myung was sitting in one of the crash seats, she had taken off the EVA suit and stowed it back along one of the back wall alcoves it seemed. Sitting next to her was Dr. Kimathi, that one had been a surprise to Leon when she had asked to join the expedition. She wasn’t exactly what he would have thought of as a field operative, not at all like Oliver. Maybe that was why she was coming, similar to Natalia she had a vested interest in one of the other crew members. Specifically Oliver, it wasn’t any news to him that the two cared deeply for each other. They had been rather clear about their emotions for almost as long as the mission had been underway.
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He looked around. The only person that seemed to be missing still was Natalia. A small part of him debated leaving without her, but he knew that not only would that not do him any favors, but it would be incredibly dangerous to try and leave at an unscheduled time.
He instead pulled himself into the open space and hung from one of the sparse ceiling handholds. The room quieted as everyone assembled turned to look his way and he cleared his throat. Right as he was preparing to give a small speech another head poked into the SSV.
He smiled as he saw the dark haired head of Natalia. She smiled in return and pulled herself onto the shuttle to the welcomes of the other assembled crew. Leon waited for a moment for the general excitement to subside once more before he began speaking. “Well, I don’t think it needs to be said.. but I am going to anyway because you know how much I like to repeat myself.” A few chuckles met his attempt at humor.
He continued in a more serious tone, “We are going to be descending to a potentially hostile alien world. This world is not Earth and never was, so there is no telling just what we might experience down on the surface. Now, we only have six armoured EVA suits so one of us will be staying aboard the shuttle. Samuel has already volunteered to be that one, but should any others of you wish to remain aboard then I would understand.” He paused, none of the assembled crew spoke or made any indication that they were to be part of that category.
He waved a hand in a dismissive manner and shifted his position so his feet were pointed more towards the floor. “Never matter. When we get to the surface the mission is simple reconnaissance for now. Maybe a bit of sample gathering.” He said while pointing at Myung who had raised a hand to ask him a question. She nodded and sat back into her harness. “If we have no issues then it is likely that we will do at least one more ground mission, some of us will be rotated out to make room for others. I want everyone who wants to have an experience on the ground. This is as much R&R as it is a scientific mission. You all know the strain of being locked up in the ship for years on end has taken, it will be good to see a sky again. I won’t deny that is the reason I am here.”
A few of the others nodded and Oliver spoke up, “Yes. But it is still nice to have you with us Leon, even if you are shit at catching snakes.” he guffawed and Leon cracked a small smile too.
“Indeed.” Leon pushed himself free from the ceiling and alighted on the floor near one of the walls. He intertwined his fingers in the mesh to hold himself stable and finished his speech with a simple phrase. “Alright, be safe and stay alert.”
Another symphony of affirmative noises answered him and he turned towards Natalia. She drifted her way over to him as the muted buzz of conversation filled the compartment again. Leon gave her a warm smile and reached out to grab her as she settled in next to him. “Hi Nat, I am actually glad you came.” He helped her stabalise herself, the woman hadn't spent nearly as much time in microgravity as he or the rest of the bridge crew.
She gave his arm a squeeze. “I knew you would be. And I will be careful Leon, I promise. And I keep my promises.” He gave her hand a pat and nodded.
“I know.” Leon looked around the crew area and then looked back at his wife. “Well, no sense in slumming it here with the others, come on.”
She gave him a curious look but did as he asked, following him towards the cockpit door. As they reached it and he started to climb through she stopped him. “Wait, we can’t go in there, doesn't Samuel need to focus?”
Leon smiled wider, his teeth showing as he shook his head. “Oh he will be, he is wearing a headset, he won't be able to hear us even if we shouted. Come on.”
She reluctantly allowed him to pull her through the small passageway into the small shuttle bridge. Samuel nodded to them and closed the secondary airlock doors behind them. “I had a feeling you would be joining me.” Samuel said with a slight smile.
Leon directed Natalia to one of the seats and then took one himself. “Yes, I was never going to miss this again.” He wiped his slightly sweaty palms on his flight suit. The garment was a lot like the standard overalls they normally wore except a bit thicker around the joints where it was designed to be capable of pressure sealing under extreme G-forces.
Natalia hesitantly spoke up, “Uh, we aren't going to be an issue in here are we?” She gave Leon a timid glance and all at once he realised that she may not be worried about disturbing Samuel as much as she might actually just be a bit afraid.
In response he leaned over to her and gripped one of her small hands with his own as Samuel responded, “No, not at all. In fact, I will be wearing a headset so won't be able to hear you at all.” Leon gave her an encouraging nod as the other man settled his headset and harness on.
Leon gave Natalia’s harness a once over before he did his own with practiced precision. The precise movements served to bestow upon him a measure of calm. He had been on one of these descents to an alien world before, and many more in the simulator and test rigs back on Earth before they had left. The turbulence never ceased to cause at least a small measure of alarm in his mind though.
It took a few minutes for the great air pumps to remove the majority of the atmosphere from the hangar bay, the resource was far too valuable to simply blast it out into space after all. He watched as the lights on the ship’s sensors flicked from green to orange to red indicating that they were in a near vacuum.
Samuel spoke into his headset, “Shuttle one to main, we are a go for launch.”
Leon couldn't hear Joice’s response from the secondary bridge but she must have given the go ahead because the large door in front of the ship cracked open ever so slowly. Samuel spoke into the microphone once more, “Thanks, you as well. Shuttle one initiating launch procedures.”
The shuttle shuddered as its magnetic docking gear released and they were suddenly adrift in the hangar. The ship floated upwards another few millimeters before shuddering once more. This time it began to move though, the cold gas jets that Samuel used were less powerful than its rockets or ion thrusters but much less likely to damage anything.
As they exited the hangar into space Leon watched as Natalia leaned forwards to get a better view out of the curved armoured glass of the main window. Outside the ship it was dark. No, not dark exactly. The space was blacker than anything one might imagine as possible, but in this darkness there also shone a multitude of brilliant pinpricks of light.
Natalia seemed nearly as enamoured with them as he had found himself the first time. “Oh the stars..” She gasped as she seemed to strain against her harness that kept her firmly in place.
Leon chuckled and nodded. “They are spectacular, aren't they.”
She shook her head slowly, the look of beatific wonderment that crossed her face making him love her all the more. “I have seen them from the ship a thousand and one times, but never have they seemed to shine this brightly, nor this close.” She continued to gaze at them as the ship started to bank away from the ship.
He braced himself as the ship’s acceleration pushed them gently back into their seats. Natalia’s eyes now flicked to the large white sphere of the world they were rocketing towards at an ever increasing velocity. “Wow. Everything seems so much closer.”
Leon gave her a nod as the acceleration leveled off after a minute. “Yeah it does. Samuel once told me that it is likely a trick of the glass used in the cockpit. Something about its shape or material properties changes the perspective in subtle ways that the conscious mind doesn't even perceive. But the human mind is a magnificent organ, it can distinguish things that we don't even realise are there. Like the slight change in the way the stars look.” He said as an example to help her understand what he was referring to.
Natalia nodded. “I guess that makes some amount of sense. After a few years of seeing them one way, my mind gets a bit overloaded when the perspective is shifted ever so slightly?”
He just nodded. She reached out and he took her hand in his own. “I am glad that you decided to give me a chance, Nat.” He said.
She smiled. “None of that wishy wash stuff here, isn't that what you say?” she giggled as he grinned goofily.
Leon looked out the window towards the planet that was growing larger with every passing second. “Yea, I guess it is.”
They stayed that way for the next few minutes, the ship growing closer to the large world with every passing second, her hand in his. He could feel her squeezing his hand ever so gently, she was nervous. And he understood well why the world seemed to grow in size till it took up the entirety of the view. As titanic as Earth at least, its diameter was only a few hundred kilometers smaller.
There was something very intimidating to him about watching the planet slowly grow in scale till it seemed to become everything. Soon they would be down on its surface and the perspective would have shifted, but until then he still had that same deep sense of foreboding.
The shuttle shuddered slightly, then bucked much more severely as they made contact with the world’s extensive atmosphere. They were still quite far from the surface and already the shuttle was slowing. The shaking of reentry manifested as a dark orange glow that slowly spread over the windows, darkening them automatically as the flames washed over the ship.
The heat would be spread evenly over the special surface of the ship, absorbed by heat tiles and dispersed throughout the ship’s robust steel frame. Leon’s hand felt as if it had gotten caught in a vice as Natalia’s grip became crushing, a series of particularly violent shakes making the shuttle groan around them.
Leon leaned as close to her as he was able in the tight body harness he wore. “Natalia, look at me.” She did, her eyes misted with fear as those lovely brown orbs latched onto his face like the arms of a drowning man. “It is just some turbulence, we are perfectly fine.” She shook her head, closing her eyes. He shook her arm causing her to fixate on him once more. “Look at me, do I look scared?” he asked her sincerely.
She shook her head. It was a lie, in truth he was just as terrified as she. Years of military training and other less savory diplomatic work had trained him to mask his emotions when in times of immense stress and it was those skills that he drew on to remain as outwardly calm as possible. He wanted to give her something to focus on, and so he started to talk to her. Not about anything in particular, just making noise to help keep her attention off the loud roaring of the flames outside the hull or the shaking of the shuttle as it fell towards the ground like a flaming meteor.
The turbulence continued for a little longer than he had expected, even adjusting for the planet’s thicker atmosphere. They must have lost more speed in the descent than their last planetary reentry, thus making the entire journey take longer.
All too slowly the flames receded and the shuddering lessened. Samuel seemed to sigh in relief as he glanced towards them with a smile on his face. “We made it in one piece. Now all we have to do is find a good spot to land.”
Natalia gave Leon a small squeeze as she shifted in her seat, clearly not as comforted by the other man’s optimism as Samuel thought they would be. “We should be on final approach now, and Samuel already has a landing spot targeted. We made sure to have at least three potential sites picked out before the shuttle even left the hangar.” He gave her another reassuring smile that she returned.
The rest of the flight was smooth, no turbulence assailed them as the shuttle glided towards their previously mapped landing site. As they neared it Samuel activated the ship’s air breathing engines and slowed them down before entering VTOL mode.
Leon watched the ground as it slowly rose towards them, the small clearing they were descending towards filled with nothing but strewn debris and short blueish shrubs that clung to the bare ice near to the final site. The SSV slowed even more till it was hovering millimeters above the icy terrain, with a final jostle of thrust the ship set down heavily. The landing gear absorbed the brunt of the impact, but enough of it still traveled through the ship to make his teeth click together painfully, nearly lopping off the tip of his tongue in the process.
“Acktppft.” Leon spluttered as his tongue smarted. He rubbed it along the back of his upper teeth in a futile attempt to soothe the sore spot.
Samuel undid his restraints and stood in the planet’s natural gravity. “Wha.. Oh, that is strange. It's like a cross between the ship’s gravity and Earths. Maybe around ninety percent Earth gravity?” The pilot mused aloud.
Leon undid the restraints holding him as well and followed suit, the first thing he noticed was that the gravity was indeed heavier than he had grown accustomed to on the ship. The second was the view from the front facing window. They were in the midst of one of those strange blue forests, the trees were massive he realised. Towering nearly as high as the extinct redwoods of pre-collapse Earth.
Natalia seemed similarly affected by the sight. “Wow. Look at those.. Trees?” She seemed to ask him, her face turning his way.
Leon scrunched his face and shrugged. “I guess that’s as good a thing as any to refer to them by. Maybe we can call em bluewoods, as a play on redwoods?” She smiled and Samuel chuckled from behind them.
“Yeah, that’s a good one. Now, if you would kindly exit my domain?” Samuel stood next to the opened airlock that led to the main cargo and crew area.
Natalia and Leon bustled through the portal, the door hissing closed behind them as an intense dark light washed over them. It was the UV scanner making sure they were free of external contamination.
They stepped through and into the crew compartment to a scene of minor chaos. Everyone seemed to be milling about, stretching their legs or in Dr. Kimathi’s case, looking over another member of the crew who seemed to have had a rough descent.
All eyes turned to him as he entered the room, his soft soled shoes making faint clanking sounds as he stepped into the cargo bay. He looked around, appraising the gathered crew before he nodded. “You all look ready to move out, get suited up. Make sure to double and triple check your seals before you head out. We will be sticking in pairs, at least one of each pair will be armed.” A few mouths opened and he waved a hand for silence that was reluctantly obeyed. “This is not optional. We have no idea what is out there, I am not willing to risk anyone over appearances. That is all. Those of you assigned to each other, work it out.”
Leon nodded as he finished. He turned to Natalia and she frowned slightly. “I am assuming you are going to be carrying the gun then?”
Leon walked towards the alcoves that housed the recently up armoured EVA suits. “Do you want to?” She shook her head. “Then it looks like I will.”
Leon reached the suit he had been designated to wear, it was a large sized one, tall enough for him to fit comfortably inside and had all of the life support systems he would need for uninterrupted exploration on the surface for nearly ten hours. Maybe a little less under the harsh conditions outside the ship.
Donning the heavy suit alone was a bit of a chore, but he managed. As he squirmed inside and stumbled around getting it to fit right he was once more impressed by the sheer weight of the suit. It was a very good thing it had power assisted synthmuscle fibers in the joints that would assist his movement slightly. Not enough to make wearing it easy, but more than enough to make mobility in the bulky contraption possible.
Leon finished suiting up and triple checked his seals, the gloves of the suit and his neck as well as his waist where the thick rotary joint allowed for his waist to move freely. He flexed and then took a few experimental steps across the deck. It felt fine, a little cumbersome, but much better than freezing out in the cold.
He walked over to Natalia, she was struggling with one of her gloves and he stepped in to help. “Here Nat, let me..”
She allowed him to help and muttered, “Thank you.” Leon smiled in return, the thick armoured glass of his visor slightly warping her features as she was wearing a large armoured helmet as well.
He gestured towards the shuttle’s airlock where several of the others had already exited the ship. “Well, shall we?” She nodded inside her helmet, her voice coming back to him through the speakers inside his own helmet.
“Yes, we shall.” Natalia led them to the doorway. Beside it was a small armoury from which Leon grabbed a rifle and several spare magazines of ammunition. Natalia gave the gun a sideways glance but said nothing as she knew his mind was set. Instead they entered the small airlock, the dark rays of the blacklights dusting them for contamination in a near futile bit to avoid contaminating the local environment.
They stepped through and out, the short ramp that extended to the ground allowing them to quickly reach the snow covered ground of the planet’s surface.
Leon turned around and admired the surroundings. The snow crackled underfoot, the surface layers having melted and refrozen into a thin sheet of ice from the heat of the shuttle’s landing. The large blue needled trees that surrounded their clearing seemed to loom overhead. Their height was intimidating in a way that he had often only felt when viewing deep sea fauna.
He switched his radio to general frequency and spoke over the small cacophony of noise. “Everyone!!” The sounds of radio conversation died down a tad as most of them turned to look his way. “Our main objective is simply to scout out our immediate area, I don't expect that we will get more than a thousand meters from the shuttle. So please, keep your wits about you and above all be careful.”
A series of affirmative noises met his cautionary speech and he looked once more at Natalia. She smiled through the thick glass of her visor and took his hand. Leon nodded in a satisfied way before he looked out into the dark depths of the surrounding forest. The branches on the trees seemed to move subtly in a wind that he couldn't feel through the insulating layers of his EVA suit. He took a deep breath and then stepped out ahead of the group towards the great unknown, his rifle held in a low ready position at his waist as the forest swallowed them in its shadowy embrace.