Insertion point

Sammie checked the buckles to her flight suit on automatic, her eyes roving across the rest of their landing party. Dustin had split the crew into two groups for this mission; Emely, Meli and Rye would be accompanying Bleu in their attempt to make contact with a group of locals that the ship’s medium range scanners had indicated might be hostile to the Fractal-worshiping theocrats in charge of the primitives below.

With Naera and Trea’k remaining aboard ship, Sammie would thus be ensuring Dustin, Defia and Yril’k, along with a handful of Yril’k’s security team made the drop to the planet undetected. It was all rather exciting; she’d flown crash-dives in the simulator a lot, but it was another thing entirely to do it with a fully occupied shuttle while trying to not get spotted by the locals.

Dustin nodded to her from where he was stood by the door to the shuttle. “Time to go?” She asked, flicking her eyes to the ship’s clock at the edge of the hanger. Then, with a little more confidence, she turned to the rest of the party. “Right, everybody in. We drop in ten minutes, I want us in the upper atmo while there’s still sunlight to hide any excess heat from deceleration.” Tapping her communicator as she climbed into the shuttle’s cockpit, she asked “You in position Rye?”

The bunny girl had launched some time before, and her shuttle was already drifting slowly towards the planet. Rye’s response came through clearly - and positive. With an affirmative response thus gained, Sammie closed the hatch and prepared her own craft for launch.

In the rear of the shuttle, Dustin gripped onto the harness straps by the door as the craft began to move. He would be co-pilot during the landing itself, but for now he felt it appropriate to address the individuals under his command. “Alright.” He began, swaying gently as Sammie pulled out of the hangar. “We’re on a fast trip to a hostile facility. You’ve all read the mission briefing; we get in, we get Defia to the communications unit, we get out. If the site is abandoned, she tells me the comms network should still be functional - that’s the best case scenario. Otherwise, we’re likely to be dealing with Fractals of unknown capability. Shoot first, hopefully Defia can answer any questions we have later. My main order remains standing - stay alive, first and foremost.”

The nine men and women of varying species that made up the landing party responded with a mixture of nods and thumbs up gestures as Dustin turned his attention to the other two occupants of the rear of the craft. “Yril’k, you have operational command once we’re on the ground. Give me an order and I’ll follow it. Defia, your sole objective is to get the data we need. Inform us of any need to change the plan from the one we’ve discussed, but otherwise act as agreed.”

The two women nodded, Yril’k flexing her blade arms against the straps of her harness. “Yes’k captain. I accept’k responsibility for this mission.” The Vex’ess woman said, then turned her gaze across her subordinates. “You’k will all perform to my expectations’k. We will succeed.” As Yril’k issued her command, Dustin smiled at her then turned and scrambled back through to the front of the shuttle, the cargo-bay doors hissing closed behind him. “All good up here?” he asked as he dropped into the seat next to Sammie.

His pilot was staring at a significantly different set of gauges than would be normal for atmospheric re-entry. “So far, so good. Hull temp’s rising gradually, we should just skim the danger zone - there’s a fair chunk of cloud cover over our target tho, so I’m taking us in a little hotter than I thought I’d be able to. We’ll be in position when it’s dark enough for the splashdown.” The woman tapped a control, and the viewscreen flickered to show a relayed feed from Sola’s main sensor array. “Judging by the movements down there, it looks like the locals have spotted Bleu’s group. I hope the girls stay safe.”

Dustin leaned across to wrap an arm around the dark-skinned woman briefly, before tapping his own console to review the data for himself. “They’ll be fine. Emely can talk her way into or out of anything, and Rye and Meli both are capable fighters if it comes to it. And as for Bleu… She’ll figure something out, she always does. I trust them.”

Sammie nodded, adjusting their angle of descent. “You and me both, Dustin. Just, I’m still worried for them is all.” She said, one eye on the arcing path of the other shuttle as her own craft dropped through the sky to it’s predetermined hover point.

The hardest part of the flight came next. Once they’d reached a suitable altitude, they had to hover within the cloud-cover while night slowly flowed over the hills and valleys below. The external temperature dropped rapidly, what little heat they’d picked up on re-entry fading. Dustin monitored what data he could get via Sola on the progress of the other party; things seemed to be going well but despite his absolute trust in his lovers, he shared Sammie’s concern for them.

Eventually, the computer chimed the hour. Go time. Sammie pulled a manual flight stick from it’s storage space under the console and hit the communicator. “Okay folks, hang on to your lunches!” Dustin barely had time to grab his seat before she tapped the controls - and the shuttle fell out of the sky. With the antigrav disabled, the shuttle’s stout hull dragged it towards the ground; Sammie adjusted a lever and the craft accelerated, the engines gently purring as they aided gravity in drawing the crew towards a rendezvous with the dirt below.

Dustin’s knuckles went white from gripping onto his harness, but Sammie remained remarkably cool as she watched the rapidly spinning altimeter. “Here we go… 3… 2… 1…” She said into the comms, then pushed the throttle all the way up and pulled back on the flight stick, hard.

The engines roared into life, pulsing waves of pressure and gravitational distortion rippling out from under the hull as they slowed from a full dive into a crunchy but safe landing within the height of the tallest of the nearby trees. As soon as they hit the ground, Sammie thumped her fist down on the emergency kill-switch and the shuttle’s power grid shut down. For a moment, there was nothing but the gentle plinking sound of cooling metal and the hiss of pressure equalizing, then helmet torches blinked on.

Unfastening his harness, Dustin stood and glanced at his pilot who was leaning back in her seat, feet kicked up onto the console and a smug grin on her face. “Good job” he said a little shakily, then turned to join the rest of the expedition party, adding “get us ready to lift off again once it’s safe to do so” on the way out, Sammie acknowledging his order with a wave of her hand.

In the rear of the shuttle, the others were already set to go by the time Dustin joined them. Pulse carbines at the ready, the security team had formed up around Defia, while Yril’k’s hand was on the manual release for the cargo-bay doors. At a nod from her captain, the Vex’ess warrior pushed the lever and stepped out onto the planet’s surface.

Moonlight dappled the grassy clearing they’d entered; the mound ahead of them clearly not of natural origin once you were this close. Dustin moved carefully, the path he had to take memorized from the briefing Yril’k had given after her planning sessions. Reaching his designated spot, he dropped to one knee and shouldered his weapon. Beside and opposite from him other armed personnel were moving into place, while Defia drifted through the middle of them like a ghost in the night.

Her eyes fixed on a piece of ground on one of the sloping sides of the mound, an area around which Dustin and the others were forming a loose semi-circle. “Statement. Access hatch detected in expected location. Request permission from unit Yril’k to begin breach.” The voice seemed to come from nowhere as a cloud obscured the nearest of the moons, Defia’s body blending into the night so that only her red eyes glowed to light her position.

Yril’k shifted, her blade arms moving to the ready position as she stepped alongside the fallen Fractal. “Breach when ready’k.” She said tersely. Defia nodded once, then raised her hand. For a moment, Dustin could have sworn he felt a chittering sound at the edge of his hearing - and then part of the hill swung up to reveal an interior filled with angular dark metal shapes, gloomy in the dim light of their torches. Without a word, Yril’k moved forward into that darkness, her helmet torch casting a pale pool against the metal. The others followed swiftly; behind them, the doorway slid shut without a sound leaving only moonlight to spill across the grassy hillside as the clouds moved on once more.