Lieutenant Dominic Durham

A loud impact and the sound of shrieking metal sounded around them as the emergency lights switched on and the escape pod capsules slammed shut sealing the soldiers inside a protective bubble as more metallic shrieking occurred with flares of orange light edging from all sides. Then the egg like capsules were catapulted away from the burning wreckage of their shuttle as it burned up on its uncontrolled decent into the atmosphere.

Lieutenant Dominic Durham knew one thing, and that was he was on his own as he climbed out of the escape pod. His radio crackled in his ear, it was only short range as the natural EM field enveloping the planet blocked any form of electronic driven communications. He needed to get to the rally point and rejoin with his unit, their mission tenure was for two weeks. They needed to survive on this planet for that long before they would send another shuttle to come and rescue them.

He did a check of his gear to ensure he had everything, he had enough food and water with him to last two weeks on this planet, but he didn’t have any shelter, once they had regrouped they would need to find some place to shelter from this planet’s strong storm cells. The humidity was intense as sweat dripped off his brow.

The initial scans of the planet showed that it was mostly covered in dense rainforest, but in places there were stretches of grasslands that would be perfect for building colonies. They were supposed to have been landing near one of the grassland areas. He pulled out his compass that had been specifically calibrated to adjust for the planet’s EM levels, from the descent angle he was pretty certain that he needed to head north as he looked up at the sky.

It was an unusual colour, slightly between blue and green with pearl white cloud masses moving around. A trail of smoke curled up in the distance, off on a right angle from the rally point. One or more of his unit could be over there, if the escape pods had been damaged during ejection there could be injuries.