After emerging safely out of the other side of the wormhole, the shuttle touched down bumpily on the rocky surface of the as yet unidentified planet.
Aero craned his neck to try and see out of the window but the glass had frosted up from the extreme temperature changes and all he could see was the vague sketched outline of a greyish-looking landscape.
He looked back round to see Jago sat opposite him, also gazing curiously out of the window.
Aero, unfortunately, had not managed to muster up any barf with which to launch a projectile assault at his Feral partner. Turned out he had remembered to take his gag suppressants after all.
"Welcome to Planet Whiskey Lima 59, situated in Galaxy Sierra Zulu," came the mechanised voice over the shuttle's loud speakers.
"Whiskey Lima?" Aero frowned, "sounds like a dodgy cocktail."
"I've heard of this planet!" Sienna exclaimed suddenly, her eyes widening in recognition before snapping to Cody's, "this is bad, this is very bad."
"What is it?" Tyron asked with a confused expression.
"This planet's already been scouted," Sienna explained, twisting her neck to look out of the porthole behind her and Hannah. "Or at least semi-scouted. Three sets of Doll squadrons were sent here last year."
"What happened?" Thomas asked uncertainly, leaning forward in his seat, straining against the harness to get a better look at Sienna as she shrugged.
"None of them came back. I assumed their Feral counterparts went missing as well. They filed scouting logs up until a certain point and then...nothing."
"Nothing?" Aero asked, his voice rising slightly with panic.
"The planet was subsequently classed as a level one hostile environment,” Sienna replied, chewing on her lip. "It's not exactly a nice place to be."
"So why are we here?" Hannah questioned, her brow creasing. "What's here that the government want? Level one hostiles are never suitable for terraforming."
"I don't think they want to colonise it," Sienna replied thoughtfully, "I think there must be some kind of natural substance here that they want to mine or source somehow. It's the only explanation. I don't think they even know if there are any indigenous species - the reports were unclear and as I said, not complete."
There was a moment's silence before a loud pistoning noise echoed around the cabin as the harnesses automatically unlocked.
Everyone jumped and Aero hit the back of his head against the window, wincing as he looked up to see Jago staring hard at him.
"Please exit the shuttlecraft and head towards the designated survival shack," the pre-programmed speaker instructed them.
Survival shacks were the pits. They were very basically fitted shelters stranded in remote corners of hostile planets. Aero guessed he wouldn’t exactly be getting to take the long hot shower he had been craving.
"What's the air composition like here?" Zach asked Sienna, who was scrolling down an electronic tablet, undoubtedly checking the readings from outside of the craft.
"Low oxygen but nothing Dolls and Ferals aren't engineered to withstand," she replied, pursing her lips. "There's high traces of Carbon Monoxide located in clusters to the west of us but it seems to be alright in this location."
Sienna paused, frowning at the illuminated screen of her tablet. She glanced up at Cody, "according to the file there are two pairs of scouts already here."
"When did they get here?" Cody asked, looking confused, "I thought we were the primary taskforce?"
Sienna looked back down, studying the electronic text, "It says they were deployed here a year ago along with the preliminary parties. They acted as commanding officers -but when the scouts didn't return from their expeditions - they were sent back to their original postings in the Delta Foxtrot Galaxy. Then a month ago, they were re-stationed back here due to their prior experiences in this habitat. Apparently they'll be our commanding officers now. I guess it figures seeing as they've been in active service for a lot longer."
"Well let's go meet them," Thomas shrugged, "I'm opening the doors now."
He leaned upwards to press a combination of buttons on the ceiling above them. The mechanised doors hissed and pushed open with a dramatic bellow of steam.
"It's not as cold as I thought it would be," Aero murmured, squinting out at the muted daylight. “Given that this planet's quite far away from the solar system's suns."
"The climate here is very changeable according to the fact sheet," Sienna responded. "We have to be prepared for it to be completely different from day to day."
Aero sighed, it was the one thing that wasn't great for either Dolls or Ferals - changeable temperatures. Ferals ran hot and were prone to exhaustion in warmer climates, whereas Dolls were far more negatively affected by the cold.
"You're blocking the way," came a surly voice from behind where Aero was now stood in the door, gazing out after Sienna, Tyron and Zach. Aero glared round to see an answering daggered expression from Jago.
"Funny," Aero replied, "I didn't think you were particularly eager to go on this mission."
He turned back to face the outside before Jago could respond, jumping lightly out of the spacecraft and landing with a crunch onto the loosely gravelled ground.
"Can't say I never take you anywhere nice," Aero winked at Cody as the other Doll descended from the shuttle, blinking to adjust his eyes to the light.
Cody snorted as he walked past Aero, lifting his hand up to shield his face, "Where's the survival shack?"
"There!" Hannah cried out, pointing to behind the shuttle. The eight of them walked round the nose of the craft to see the quite frankly, very unimpressive looking survival shack.
"Oh god - how long are we staying here again?" Aero groaned as he eyed up the single storey bunker that looked more like a storage shed of the kind they had back on Earth for deactivated weaponry.
"This one's actually slightly more high-tech than it looks," Sienna interrupted before Aero could complain further. "There's a generator running on local surface oil so we might even get running water and some semblance of temperature control."
"You’d think our commanding officers would have come out by now to greet us," Thomas pointed out, staring hard at the shack.
"That's strange..." Sienna murmured.
"Nah not really, you know what higher-ups are like, probably waiting for us in there like royals on thrones, " Aero replied.
"No," Sienna shook her head, "that's not what I mean. I was just scanning for life-signs to see where the other scouts are and the tablet seems to think there are nine of us."
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