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  “I hope this place works out. It’s so damn pretty,” Dan said and leaned forward. He peered out the windows at the spectacle of Selva.

  “Damn straight. Who knows what kind of resources here we could use. Approach is clean. If you want to take us down to five hundred knots and bring us to the northwest heading so we can sweep the savannah north of the peninsula that’d be great.”

  “On it. I’m going to bring our elevation down slower than usual in the event we’ve got airflow issues with the engines. I’d rather have a higher speed for coasting if need be and we have no idea what that series of rainclouds is like to fly near. We can ditch in the water easier that way.”

  All according to our five thousand frigging contingency plans. “Roger that.”

  It took a minute to slow the ship and slide it between the sparse rain clouds. The storm cells were so gray they were nearly black to the eye, and they drenched the land below with heavy downpours as they moved swiftly. Melody could see small specks of life avoiding the rain as it hammered down. Creatures that had never experienced humanity.

  Once the vessel slowed it tipped, and started a massive circle over a wide extension of land coming off a larger continent.

  Several kilometers wide, the peninsula grew from the outcropping of earth and held the shape of a gentle curve. From its end to the larger land mass was perhaps seven kilometers long.

  “Reminds me of those old throwing weapons. What were they called? Boomerangs?”

  “Yeah, from Australia. And it does look like one,” Dan said.

  A gentle spray of rain coated the cockpit windows. It remained for a breath, then evaporated as the vessel moved out of the moisture.

  They took multiple gentle arcs around the length of the peninsula, analyzing the scene for clues, hints of danger, or anomalies from what had been observed from orbit. At the center of the peninsula’s spine rose flat rocks that seemed like stacked sheets of rough concrete the color of honey. The geologists guessed that the stone was some kind of shale, and that it would be difficult to build on. They needed to land north of it, near the continent where the land was flat and firm.

  Clinging to the sides of the stone and running down to the shore of the clear water was a cascading carpet of dense, lush vegetation. Poking through the vibrant green canopy were strange gray tubes with a circumference of a family home. The imperfect, organic structures were capped with a growth reminiscent of a mushroom cap, but flattened out and with a gentle depression on top. The wells gathered the rain into pools. Small creatures drank from the water.

  “Look like long, skinny doorknobs. Only fucking huge,” the captain said.

  “Kinda scary,” she said.

  “Well if they’re plants, they’ve gotta be the biggest we’ve seen. Nothing like them on the moons. Closest thing I know of are the great southern kelp fields on Pacifica. Or the whales that live near them. Nothing I can remember from Earth history like them either. Look at ’em. Fucking enormous.”

  Melody felt a strange surge of nausea and looked at her watch. Her first trimester had been easy thus far, but the past two days she’d gotten very ill at almost exactly 1400 hours. Her watch read 13:50. She took a deep breath and swallowed the rising tide.

  Beagle shook as they crossed through chop. The yoke in her hands vibrated and her stomach heaved yet again.

  “If you take us down two hundred meters we’ll drop out of this chop. We need to get below the cloud level ahead too.”

  Melody thought of her husband in the back, shaken like an olive dropped in a cocktail mixer. She knew he was strapped in safe and sound, but the trip had to be less than pleasant. Melody hoped his excitement drowned out the rough approach.

  Beagle slid north and east along the outer edge of the land mass and headed toward the shoulder of the coast. The tall green trees faded into an ocean of grass the colors of adobe, sage, and honey.

  Two kilometers inland was the spot the scientists of the Selvan Expedition had chosen to land.

  Like the city of Scoville back on Ares, the first settlement of Selva would be positioned in the crook of a tiny river that headed to the eastern shore of a sea. Half a mile across in the elbow, and as flat as a carpenter’s rule, the ground had been probed numerous times since they arrived in orbit and each time it came up as a perfect building location. Packed earth far from a tectonic plate edge, covered in clay, with arable soil mixtures suitable for growing crops and fresh water flowing crisply nearby, it looked perfect.

  Few perfect things stood up to close scrutiny though.

  “See it?” Melody asked.

  “Yep,” Dan said and toggled several switches on his touch screen panels. “Prepare for landing,” he said, then chuckled with excitement. “We are about to land on a foreign planet.”

  “You are very correct. Everyone in back, thirty seconds out, prepare for landing.”

  “VTOL engaged,” Dan said.

  Beagle shook and shuddered once more as the cylindrical engines mounted under her massive wings rotated in place, adjusting their thrust from backward to downward, allowing the ship to travel slower yet. The world below slid around and by. The grass on the alien fields danced into the air from the down blast of the engines. Rain water vaporized as it was spun up and cooked off in the engine wake. Melody watched as the temperature and humidity outside rose. It would be almost forty degrees centigrade with eighty percent humidity on the surface.

  “Fifty meters,” Melody said.

  “Landing gear down and locked,” Dan said.

  “Forty.”

  “Thirty.”

  “Twenty. Bring us twenty meters to port, there’s a crosswind.”

  “On it,” Dan said and adjusted the ship’s descent with calm and precise movements on the yoke.

  “Ten meters. Perfect,” she said.

  Beagle shook a few seconds later as her landing gear planted into the soil. Dan spun the engines into an idle position that could be ramped up fast, and the two pilots went on a spree of checking and double checking a list of settings, switches, gauges and data streams to ensure the ship had made the journey safely.

  It had.

  “Holy shit,” Dan said.

  A steady rain of alien water spattered against the ship. It sizzled and cooked off the hot hull, but once it cooled the drops ran down. Dan breathed a deep sigh of relief and thumbed the intercom on.

  “Welcome to Selva, marines. Disembark as you wish. Lieutenant Hauptman, the mission control is now yours.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Unnamed plains near the coast, planet of Selva

  17 August 163 GA

  “Dusty, check me again please,” Waren said inside his sealed helmet with its black, polished surface and narrow visor. The helmet’s neck sealed to the shoulder of his FEMAS–Foreign Environment Mission Armor System–and created a seal, though Waren sounded like he was unsure of the quality of that safety feature.

  A few steps away inside Beagle’s cargo bay the other FEM fire team moved cases of gear and checked their equipment meticulously. Dustin watched the enormous Theo Wendell heft a two hundred kilogram case as if it were a stack of pillows and set it down near the rear exit ramp. Helping him were Ping-Pong and Remy, though they were focused as much on heckling one another as they were helping.

  Gravity is low. We’re going to feel strong here. Inside his suit, Dustin felt safe. The holographic projections on the inside of his faceplate told him that his suit’s seal was perfect, and that Hauptman and Waren were safe in theirs, too.

  “Sergeant Waren Dillon, are you afraid of catching an alien cold today?”

  Waren extended an armored middle finger. It looked like a shard of articulated obsidian. “Yes, Sergeant First Class, I am. I don’t want microscopic alien organisms inside my brain, sir. Or my cock. Please check my seals again.”

  Waren bent over so the shorter marine could reach and see his head and neck easier. Dustin checked his friend’s seals a third time, and patted him soundly on his higher,
armored shoulders. “Good to go. Reading good for me. Are you reading good?”

  “Yeah. It’s just . . . You know,” Waren said as he slung his rail gun over his shoulder and adjusted it out of the way. Maybe the gun wouldn’t be needed on Selva, but when it came to safety . . . Waren liked his safety off, and a trigger near his hands.

  “Only one chance needed to get it wrong. I got you brother. Another day in the sunshine out there. Well, if the rain stops,” Dustin said, arranging several sealed steel and plastic cases near the slanted rear door that was about to open.

  “Why are we scouting a location that doesn’t have a bigger supply of fresh water?” Steve asked. “Seems silly.”

  “Well there is a fresh running stream near the site so there’s that. And they’re not worried because Titan and Kenya have Lake Makers,” Destin replied.

  “Holy shit, they brought them?” Ping-Pong replied. “I thought they used them all on Ares.”

  “Apparently not. We’re going to scout this location, drop a colony on it, find a location for the first star port and if they need a lake, they’ll drop one of those devices from orbit. Blow a hole in the world big enough for all the fresh water they’ll ever need,” Dustin said.

  “Flight deck, this is Lieutenant Hauptman. We are prepared to open the rear doors for dismount to the surface. Are you sealed and ready?”

  In their ears, they all heard Dan Aribella. “Roger that. Cockpit is sealed and suits are on. Outside is stable. Temps are good, rain is slowing. A few creatures moving in the plains a klick to the north. They look like leathery, hairless cows with armor plating. The landing probes are still feeding us data that shows the air is breathable. I would wait for the testing equipment to confirm the microbe and bacteria stuff before your helmets come off, but you are good to go.”

  “So, our helm cams will be recording everything as soon as I hit the master switch. Dan’s controls for the bay cameras and audio are slaved to mine right now, so as soon as I hit that button, everything we say and do is public record.”

  “Fuck,” Waren said under his breath.

  “Precisely what I’d like to avoid. Profanity doesn’t belong in the history books if we can avoid it. Waren, Dusty, you’re on notice. Pretend you’re in church. Or back at the wedding,” Hauptman said half as a laugh.

  “Yes, sir,” the two sergeants said in unison, but the way they said it, it sounded like one word, Yessir.

  “Furthermore, Theo and I have been talking about who gets to set foot on Selva first and we’ve got an idea.”

  Dustin’s heart skipped a beat. “Yeah?”

  Lionel nodded in his head-to-toe light armor. “Yeah. Here’s the script; communications get switched on. Ramp goes down. We walk shoulder to shoulder to the edge of the ramp. I say something meaningful, and we all step off to the ground as one. One unit. One honor.”

  Dustin was struck with the graciousness of the gesture. He felt oddly short of breath as his emotions kicked up. The other men were suitably affected. “That’s amazing.”

  “Fu-heck yeah,” Waren said, clapping his gauntlets together.

  “Comms are going on. Tuck in your blouses, boys,” Lionel said as he flipped open an armored panel on the inside of his left forearm. “Dan. Going live in three, two, one.” He tapped a button, and a faint hiss popped into their ears like a breeze coming in under a door. They were being streamed, broadcasted, and recorded.

  “This is Lieutenant Lionel Hauptman of First Expeditionary Marine Alpha Squad, leader of the Selvan initial landing. Time is Gharian central 14:45. Local time appears to be 11:15. We have been on Ghara for one hour and thirty-five minutes and are now ready to disembark to the planet’s surface.

  “On this mission are myself, Sergeant First Class Dustin Cline of Ares, Sergeant Waren Dillon of Sota, Lieutenant Theo Wendell of Ares, Sergeant Remy Lemieux and Sergeant Steve Ziu, both of Pacifica. I myself hail from Phoenix. All four of the Gharian moons are represented by this group of men, and I could not be more confident or proud of them.”

  “Captain Aribella, Lieutenant Cline and Flight Sergeant Morris are the Beagle crew, and I’d like to thank them for a safe voyage across the void, and for delivering us here to the surface of Selva. Further proof the human race can achieve anything against any odds when we work together.”

  Lionel moved his hand to the safety switches that would disengage the landing ramp, and break the vehicle’s seal to an outer environment for the first time since they left Pacifica.

  “Door opening,” he said.

  The red light Hauptman’s finger hovered over turned green, and he touched the smooth, illuminated glass. The green square flashed to a yellow-and-black striped hazard symbol, and a short klaxon sounded. The crew stepped back from the inside edge of the ramp and watched as equally spaced hisses of decompression flooded the hold. A series of powerful hydraulics hummed to life, and the door moved.

  Then, as if some deity above had decreed that light should be made, a rectangular outline of white-hot luminescence appeared at the door’s edge.

  Oh my shit, Dustin thought, shutting his eyes inside his helm. They felt seared to ash. He hadn’t seen sunlight in this abundance since Ares, and his eyes had gone soft during the journey. A moment later the glass of his faceplate tinted according to its programming, and he could see again. The light continued to grow, and the world of Selva was revealed within it.

  A prairie appeared out of the ocean of glare. Covered with knee-high grasses in a multitude of gentle earthen colors it ran over a slight hill and down to the distant sandy shores of a beach. Under cloudy skies and through the haze of a gentle rain the waves lapped at the shore, their small white swells daring to roll over themselves in an infinite dance that had played out on this world longer than humanity had existed. To the north, the mouth of a small river could be seen as it emptied into the ocean, kicking up a playful white froth. Dustin’s breath hitched again. He heard several other quiet gasps from his brothers in the feed.

  It’s so beautiful.

  Disturbing the scene of idyllic beauty sat a ring of tall probes embedded into the ground. Beagle. had landed directly in the center. Each probe reached eight feet in height, and bristled in all directions with every manner of sensor. Dark solar umbrellas blossomed from the top, soaking the power from the sun. The probes had been sent down to test the local environment for landing suitability, and most important, for the suitability of human life. Their life.

  The aft cargo ramp planted against the earth of Selva and the hydraulics ceased their hum. Outside, the ship’s engines rumbled and buzzed, idling in the event they needed a fast take-off. Circular areas of the alien grass were scorched away, leaving bare brown earth and blackened rocks. Mankind’s first caress.

  Hauptman motioned with a slow flick of his wrist for the men to approach the ground. They walked, lined up to his right and stopped at his side just at the inside edge of the lowered ramp. Each of them stood inches from blowing grass and soft soil that no human had ever touched. The drop from the lowered door was a cliff of minor physical significance, but considerable emotional importance. The lieutenant reached out with his right hand and took Dustin’s. Dustin reached out and took Waren’s and so on until all six men were linked in a chain.

  Hauptman spoke.

  “From continent to continent. From planet to space. Space to moon. From Earth to Ghara. Now from the four moons to Selva. Exploration has been the human way since before humanity learned how to document our journeys on the walls of caves. One united race of mankind puts foot on a world that will bear life and joy for centuries. Together as one today, the children of Ghara step forward into our future. May Selva bring us life, love, and prosperity.”

  The marines took their step together, and Selva’s colonization began.

  From the distant forests, a multitude of eyes watched as the humans arrived. Hunger grew in their bellies.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rasima Plains, planet of Selva

  18 Aug
ust 163 GA

  The Selvan day baked the human travelers in a moist oven. The fat sun above seemed to hover just out of arm’s reach, casting down its rays more powerfully than anyone present had experienced. Inside their head-to-toe sealed suits, the colonists sweated and cursed at the sky. They stared longingly at the grass blowing in the coastal breeze and at the beach and its presumably cool waters. Waters that had yet to be deemed safe to drink or swim in.

  “Come ten degrees right.” Waren spoke on the pilot frequency to the cockpit of TOV Svoboda, hovering a hundred meters above and sinking slowly. “Excellent, descend and land.”

  Svoboda’s captain lowered the thrust from its twin engines and the delta shaped vessel sank down to the surface of Selva. When the six wheels of its landing gear touched down onto the hard plains of the ground they flattened the grass and penetrated into the foreign soil. The turbines cut, and the shocks absorbed the weight of the ship’s smooth landing. Curls of smoke rose from the burnt organic matter beneath the thrusters and then disappeared in the breeze.

  Good job not landing on top of me. Six for six. That’s the last one, Major Duncan,” Waren said over the colony’s radio network.

  “Nice job landing them all, Sergeant,” Duncan said after a brief delay.

  Waren waited a minute to see if any additional instructions were to come his way from the Major, but none came. He reached over to the inside of his left forearm and flipped open the control pad for his armor’s electronics. He switched his suit’s broadcast frequency to the channel the expeditionary marines used.

  He hailed his boss. “Lieutenant Hauptman?”

  “Hauptman here. Go ahead, Sergeant.”

  “I’m done with the landings. I’m going to finish helping the ground crew chock the wheels and then I’d love to get out of this armor. I’m sweating like a piss-filled sponge being squeezed by a three year-old out here.”