Fifty-fifty odds.

“That good, huh? I have to say, I don’t really feel like putting my life in the hands of a coin toss.” I asked.

“Well it’s not like what you're asking for is easy. Usually you have at least a few units for this type of stuff, not one guy and an escape pod. It’ll take years*.” He pointed out. “But I’ll do my best.” He said, when he saw me rub my eyes. Dealing with him wasn’t half as bad as I made it out to be, but it was still a pain in the ass half the time.

“Thanks.” I said, relieved.

“Yeah, yeah, thank me after if it works.” A few moments later and Carver was immersed in his data pad again. It was times like these that I wished I’d been cross-trained as a tech. Of the four of us, Carver was the only one who really had anything to do right now and rushing him would be a pointless endeavour, no matter how much we wanted answers..

We sat on our hands for nearly forty minutes, occupying ourselves with busywork, exercise and snacking. By the time Carver had an answer for us we all felt mostly human again, or at least, I did. The rest of my team looked more like functioning human beings though and not three frozen vegetables so I considered that an improvement.

“Alright, I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.” Carver called out, and we crowded around his seat as he gestured at the wall screen above us.

“We can land, but if we’re going to do it soon, then you should know the planet is not uninhabited. I managed to grab some images of the surface.” He gestured, a small prompt materialised in my field of view. I accepted it without a thought, watching as the space in front of me transformed into a three-dimensional map, complete with coastlines, valleys and a dozen other geographical features.

I blinked in surprise. It was more complete than I’d expected. It didn’t cover the whole planet, but it did have most of the northern hemisphere mapped. “You got all that in forty minutes from this little pod’s sensors?”

“We’ve actually been orbiting for about eleven years, plenty of time to aggregate the data gathered and clean it up.” He explained.

“I’ll take your word for it.” I said, disturbed by the idea of so much time passing as we’d slept.

“Where are we going to land?” Chen asked, his brow furrowing as he studied the map.

“We’ve mapped the weather and seasonal changes quite well. I’ll mark some of the best locations.” Carver said, glancing around at each of us for a moment.

“I know I just woke up from stasis, but does that look like a fire to you?” Larsen asked, pointing to a bright spot near the sole continent’s north-east side.

“That it does…” I trailed off, eyes scouring the rest of the map as I reached out and zoomed in on different parts. The resolution on the pod wasn’t amazing by modern standards, but you didn’t need amazing for the kind of reconnaissance we needed done.

The work of these unknown people on the surface?” Chen said, spying decidedly artificial structures, mostly made of stone and wood.

“This pretty much confirms it, yeah.” I agreed. “A primitive people by the looks of it, if they are people, I mean. I see stone walls and a large gathering of tents in some of these images. Some farmland further to the west. How old is this?”

“The images are a little over two years old.” Larsen replied, pointing to a small piece of floating text.

I frowned at her answer. “Our years, or local years?”

“Terran years.” Larsen confirmed.

I grimaced. “This changes things. I was going to say we could land in this flat grassy region near the city, but I think it’s best we don’t attract attention from scavengers or those looking to resettle. Primitive or not, I don’t like the idea of setting ourselves up in an exposed position either. These inhabitants could be hostile or friends with giant alien spiders for all we know. There’s a forest not too far from the strait, here.” I pointed out a narrow stretch of water, bordered on three sides by land.

Chen shook his head. “Bad idea. If we want to be able to transport anything to and from the pod we need a better location. I don’t see any laser cutters for those trees, do you?”

I had to concede his point. While it might not be impossible to transport supplies through the forest, it would be more difficult, especially if we had to transport heavy payloads in large quantities through the forest as well as dense brush and vegetation.

“Good point.” My eyes roamed over the image searching for a discreet location with defensible terrain that would allow for easy transport of raw materials. We’d need to build something if we hoped to survive here for any length of time. That would mean transporting raw materials, which meant this decision was an important one.

Larsen narrowed her eyes, fingers dancing over the display in front of her for a time.

“I’m going off a hunch and some still images,” she murmured, “but I don’t think the people on this planet are much more advanced than we were in the Middle Ages.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“That’s good, but we don’t know that for certain. We have what, a few surveillance photos? That’s hardly enough to make a decisive judgment one way or another.”

“We could land and build in the city itself? It would provide decent protection from the elements and space for expansion once we had the basics built.” Carver offered up his opinion hesitantly.

I mulled it over in my head for a moment. “It’s probably the best of a bad lot. No one builds something like that without some kind of important resource nearby. With any luck, we’ll be able to make use of it.” I stabbed my finger at the site of the blazing city, which had raged two years ago, leaving behind what was now a seemingly charred, destitute and abandoned city. “That’s where we land.”

Chen laughed in disbelief at my declaration. “What? Seriously? You think we’re just going to be able to set up a base on what is effectively someone else’s land, in one their cities and things will work out?”

I shrugged. “Why not? It’s a defensible position, resources are likely nearby and it’s unlikely anyone will visit for a while. We might even be able to make use of roads leading into the city. If it’s been abandoned for two years, why would that change now?” I looked at him pointedly. “We don’t have any better options, do we?”

He studied the map intently for a moment. “Alright, I'm still convinced we should land and build in the open, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Noted.” I replied with mirth. “If we’re attacked in the night by a band of marauding pirates, I’ll be sure to listen when you say ‘I told you so’.”

“Bandits, Ed, it would be bandits.” He scowled. “Pirates have ships and are sea-bound.”

Larsen cleared her throat. “Ready to breathe some fresh air?”

I looked around. “Carver?”

“As good a place as any, I suppose.” He said disinterestedly.

Nodding, I spoke up. “Proc, new task. Prepare the escape pod for landing.”

“Confirmed. Designate coordinates.”

I flicked the coordinates of a point just outside the abandoned city from my implants to the pod’s processor. There wasn't a perfect landing point, but I felt this one was the best we were going to get. A loud double chirp was followed by a simple request from the pod's processor.

“Coordinates received. Read back coordinates.”

“Five-three Sierra, Lima Romeo, one-seven-five-two.” I stated.

“Read back correct. Confirm landing?” The monotone voice queried me. I responded without hesitation.

“Confirmed.”

Another double chirp. “Estimated time to landfall, thirteen minutes, fifty-eight seconds. Brace for turbulence and gravity shift.”

“Everybody strap in.” I led the way towards the padded crash seats in an adjacent room.

As we finished securing ourselves in our crash seats, I slid out of my seat as the pod rotated, but quickly grabbed on tight to part of my seat and dragged myself back onto it. Securing myself there was the work of moments. I exhaled, feeling the adrenaline course through me. Noticing Chen's eyes on me out of the corner of my eye, I shot him a grin.

“Nothing to worry about! I’m fine.” I reassured him, making a show of tugging at the thick straps over my shoulders.

“Sure, sure, just don’t break your damn neck on me. I don’t want to be the biggest dumbass in this team if I can help it.” Chen’s scowl turned into a nervous laugh as a particularly rough shove reminded us of our current situation. Falling from orbit, that is.

“I didn’t exactly tell the damn pod to throw me out of my crash seat like I’d pissed on its favourite circuit board.”

“Actually…” Carver trailed off, ignoring my joke.

I stared at him, or in his direction anyway. “If you say what I think you’re going to say Carver and I don’t make it out of this, I swear to God, your ass is haunted.”

“Hey, genius.” Carver began. “If you died, so would I. How would you haunt a corpse?”

I laughed. “For you, Carver, I’d find a way. Though if I’m honest I’d probably haunt the shit out of the engineers who built this thing.”

The rest of the drop was done in relative silence, minus a bit of banter here and there. Larsen and Chen were silent, but Carver and I were two of a kind it seemed, preferring to toss witty insults and remarks around to avoid the fact we were falling to our death with nothing but a couple dozen parachutes to stop our descent.

Some time later when the shaking had mostly stopped and we could feel the straps digging into the tops of our shoulders, I leaned forward as far as I could.

“Hey Larsen. This is fun right?”

She leaned her own head forward and turned to look at me. Her expression was flat and her reply short.

“I’m glad you’re not an officer. I draw the line at saluting someone as insane as Chen.”

“Hey, fuck you guys!”

I gaped like a fish for a moment. “You think I could be an officer? I’m touched, no fuck that! I’m insulted!”

“I didn’t say that!” She protested.

“You were thinking it!” I countered.

Further banter, or alternatively screaming if something went wrong, was interrupted by the pod’s onboard processor giving us a loud warning.

“Standby, standby. Final descent in progress.”

Dull thumps rang out, causing the pod to shudder and shake a bit. First four, then a single larger one.

“Just the chutes deploying.” I said half to them and half to myself. “Proc, time to touchdown?”

“Fifty-four seconds.”

Larsen leaned out of her seat again looking over at me. “What’s the plan?”

“Proc, run a threat assessment and give me diagnostics on the pod and fabricator.”

“Affirmative.”

A few seconds passed, then I got the reply I was hoping for.

“Threat assessment complete. No threats found. Pod diagnostics complete, communications offline, retrorocket and aerobrake non-functional.”

While the threat assessment didn’t give me a lot of comfort, this being an alien world, the fabricator being intact and operational was good news.

I cleared my throat. “Well, looks like we’re all set. The plan, Larsen, is to get ourselves set up with the essentials and get the lay of the land. So who’s up for a little scouting mission?” I asked, more than a little eager to get outside and into some fresh air after being cooped up in one vessel or another for months.

“I’m staying here.” Carver said immediately.

“See if you can get the fabricator churning out some harvesters. We should have one or two already here, yeah?”

“Probably, yeah. I hope the drones work or we’re probably screwed.”

I nodded, he was right about that. “Who else is staying?”

“I’ll stay.” Chen raised his hand slightly.

“Okay, Larsen, you’re with me. Let’s see if we can find water and failing that, something to eat. Can’t eat MRE’s forever.” I turned to Carver and Chen. “You two, stay out of trouble.”

“No promises.” Chen said chuckling.

“What? Why me?” Carver asked, offended.

“Do you really have to ask?” Chen chuckled.

With the beginnings of a rudimentary plan in place, I didn’t have to wait long before we touched down. When the sound of shit breaking didn’t materialise, I breathed a sigh of relief. We settled down with little more than a harsh jolt so I unstrapped myself from my crash seat and got to work.