Chapter 608 Parkering It
The entire landing was being broadcast, both through external cameras on the lander and helmet cameras from each crew member, for anyone in Task Force Proxima to watch. At least if they were off watch, anyway; people who were on duty were prohibited from watching the broadcast instead of doing their jobs. It drew every eye in the entire task force save only the most dedicated of researchers still on the cityship studying the gravitational tides between Proxima Centauri and the Alpha Centauri binary system.
The altimeter continued ticking down as the lander crept toward the surface at an agonizingly slow speed. One hundred... fifty... thirty... twenty... ten.... The numbers finally stopped creeping down when it reached ten centimeters from the surface of “New Australia”. A collective stare state swept over the crew of the task force as everyone currently standing watch at their stations were suddenly given permission to watch the live broadcast. Fleet Admiral of the Red Bianchi had considered the tradeoff between distraction and morale, and had chosen morale.
Thus, nearly a million people had dropped what they were doing and stood or sat where they were, eyes glazed over as they watched the landing in full, glorious augmented reality.
The silent stare state lasted a full minute before the sensors studding the exterior of the lander performed detailed close-in scans determined that the area was “safe” and allowed the ramp to drop from the aft of the vessel. The only thing separating the explorers from the surface of Proxima Centauri b now was a thin ionic atmosphere shield, which had the sole task of preventing atmospheric and microbiological exchange between the interior of the lander and the world outside.
The exterior camera on the aft of the lander panned around and focused on the exit ramp, where someone in an Ordinary Crewman’s environmental protection suit was tottering toward the ramp, quivering and swaying from side to side as if he was drunk. He stopped at the top of the ramp and looked down at the pistol that had been stuck to the chest of his suit in a tactical quick-draw holster, then squared his shoulders and stomped on the ramp.
He failed to account for the increased gravity though, as Proxima Centauri b had gravity that was 17% stronger than Earth, and stumbled. Then he failed to recover and rolled down the ramp to the loamy soil in the clearing the lander had come down in.
Commander Takahasi, Captain Marinakis, and Fleet Admiral Bianchi simultaneously facepalmed, almost loud enough to be heard through the vacuum of space. Thankfully, OC Parker would be the first AND last crew member of any exploration mission to be selected via random draw to first-foot an alien planet.
What made the tumble even worse was that OC Parker had already started his “famous quote for posterity” before taking the fateful step. “A new horIII—OH SHIT!” he said, his voice breaking on the final syllable as he passed the point of no return and began his tumble.
He lay there for a moment, then clambered to his feet and cleared his throat. Once again, he took a deep, settling breath and squared his shoulders, then began, “A new horizon, a fresh beginning. Today I take the first... step of... humanity and the Tron—err, Terran—empire and dream of ambition to explore and.... Uh, ahh, fuck it.” His shoulders slumped back to their original posture and he raised the index finger of his right hand straight up above him. “To infinity and beyond!”
It was perhaps less Buzz Aldrin and more Buzz Lightyear, but the moment provided a brief respite in levity to the men and women of Task Force Proxima, who had perhaps been entirely too stressed and anxious as they slowly moved in system upon dropping out of warp for the final time.
The moment didn’t last long, however, as the rest of the explorers swarmed down the ramp—none of them, thankfully, repeating OC Parker’s mistake—and began collecting their samples. In keeping with the tradition of first on, last off, Ayaka finally strolled down the ramp and stopped at Parker’s side.
She patted his shoulder and said, “That was definitely a stylish fall, Mister Parker.”
Lee Joon-ho put his arm around Parker’s shoulders from his other side and added, “Don’t worry, I’m sure the term ‘Parkering it’ will be added to great military sayings in the future, up there with Murphy’s Law and the Seventy Maxims.”
Ayaka almost couldn’t hold back a snort of laughter and was thankful that the armorglass portion of her helmet was polarized so nobody could see the uncontrollable twitching of her lips as she fought against the smile that would have been the point of no return in her loss against the urge to laugh.
While she stood there battling the belly laughs, a whole host of land-restricted rovers and their accompanying flying drones came down the ramp and entered sleep mode. They wouldn’t be activated again until after the lander had departed the atmosphere and returned to the Farsight.
Many would perhaps say they were being extremely cautious, if not overly so. But everyone who was participating in the landing had experienced a brief visit to one of Athena’s many hellworlds, ripped straight from the reaper final training exercise. So their opinion was that anyone else who had an opinion about how careful they were being could go pound sand; the explorers knew beyond a shadow of a doubt just how shitty worlds could be to fragile scientists like them.
Twenty-seven minutes later, the scientists had gathered at the bottom of the ramp again, their sample containers presented to Ayaka for inspection. They were kept in specialized stasis boxes that would prevent any contamination from occurring on either side, and they would be handled aboard specialized lab modules that could—and would—be instantly ejected and self-destruct should any accidents occur.
The inspection was soon finished and Ayaka led the crew back into the lander and it lifted off even as the ramp began closing. It wasn’t returning to the Farsight quite yet, but rather heading out to the ocean to gather samples of the seabed and water from just off the coast, then drop a submersible rover for further exploration.
Once the lander reached its second and final stop in the atmosphere, it released dozens of drones, whose purpose was to gather water and soil samples from directly under the lander, a mere ten feet past the breaking point of that particular beach.
While waiting for the drones to return with their samples, the Henry’s Eye sensor on the lander showed an anomaly. On the screen, it looked like mana flows were pulsing around the lander like the roots of a tree, or perhaps the dendrites in the brain. A soft alarm sounded and drew the attention of everyone to the display.
The lander’s VI, detecting a possible threat, communicated with the AI of the Farsight and the decision was made to slowly increase the lander’s altitude. Then, just a single second later, an alarm whooped throughout the entire transport bay of the lander and it rose as fast as its inertial compensators would allow. The people inside were pressed to the floor, briefly experiencing in excess of 30G and the ringing of tinnitus in their ears mirrored the whine of overstressed inertial compensators that were being held together only by the safety interlocks built into the small landing craft’s gravity drive.
Beneath them, a sonic boom exploded so close to the lander that the entire craft shuddered. An enormous gnarled tree root had cracked like a whip mere centimeters away from the exterior of the lander, destroying dozens of sensors, but thankfully leaving it flightworthy.
“What the fuck...?”
As fast as the root had appeared, it disappeared back into the ocean and everything returned to its previous calm. Everything, that is, except the heart rates of the people in the lander and those still paying attention to the broadcast being sent through the system.
Shit had just gotten real for them.
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