In search of distress

[RedEclipse]

Gordon, Alice and Mateo were packing their gear, preparing for the sortie to the last incident point. There was a working atmosphere in the rover. Although this was their first experience landing on previously uncharted planets, but given their experience in rock climbing and modern equipment, the new conditions shouldn't have affected the travelers much. "Gerald, you're in charge." Gordon said, "Try to keep the rover in one piece until we get there." Dylan grimaced, he wasn't happy with the arrangement "Can I come with you?" Gerald shook his head negatively and put a hand on his shoulder "If I could say no Alice, but you know her. She's afraid, but she climbs into the fray. We can't leave one person behind, you know the regulations. Those are set in stone." Gerald nodded "Fair enough, you have more climbing experience than me and Dylan" Gordon grinned, Gerald as always tried to appear older and more experienced than he was "I'm only 20 years older than you, it'll be your finest hour" Gerald laughed "All right, well, don't leave us too long, okay?". The team packed up their gear and headed off on foot towards site A.

They came to an almost sheer cliff, Gordon looked at the display on his wrist, "It's time to reminisce" he selected the point needed to secure the anchor and switched the display off. "It's easier now than it used to be" remarked Alice "That's right, blindly searching for the anchor point was a lot of fun" replied Gordon, pulling out a device behind his back, something between a shotgun and a tube. He pointed the device upwards and pulled the trigger. A bright flash illuminated the space and the hook drill swung into its target, unravelling the high-strength rope. Gordon raised his hand and switched on the display, to see how it went "Alright, the bird's in the nest. I'll go first. As I ascend, I'll fix the safety role and let you know." Gordon took the rope and threaded it through the special device on his belt and making sure it was in working order switched it on, the device buzzed and he began to gradually climb to the top.
When he reached the top he drilled an additional hole and threw the rope down "Look out, I'm lowering the rope!" he shouted over the radio. As he waited for his travelers, he checked the map once more. They still had three more of these climbs to go, but first they had a few kilometers to go. Climbing up, the team moved on, gradually getting closer to their goal.

On the last climb Gordon was looking apprehensively at the lifting mechanism, the sharp and gusty wind did not bode well and Gordon was ready to switch to manual mode. But the machine did the job, he drilled the extra hole again and waited for his travelers. They were almost there, they had only to pass the hillside and they should be there. Gordon helped Mateo and Alice to get up and they moved forward, looking round by habit.

Finally they approached site A, and the wreckage was clearly visible. Unlike even site B, it was a huge chunk of generator that they needed to examine. "Well if we don't have any luck here, I don't know what might help us." Alice said as she scanned the remains "From indirect indications nothing inside was burned on re-entry, let's go have a look." The team followed ahead and spread out around the remains. From the first sign there was no way to tell if there was any kind of entrance "There's nothing, maybe we should try sawing it open?" said Gordon, Mateo disagreed "with our inventory it would take too long, don't forget we're limited on oxygen..." Alice interrupted them "Guys, I can try to get into this hole, it looks like a vent." they took a closer look at the place "Well, give it a try. Just don't risk it if it's too small and don't try to go any further in or we won't get you out." she nodded "No worries." Alice squeezed inside and crawled to the nearest exit. She kicked the net and jumped to the floor. Looking around, she realised that all the rooms here looked the same - a mishmash of rubbish. Shining her torch, she walked around and noticed a rack piled with debris from wiring and cladding panels. Examining it, she retrieved the drives and carefully connected them to the tablet. Entering the decryption key she ran her eyes over the data "Gordon, I think we found what we were looking for. I'm transferring to you the data now" Gordon stood up as if in a daze, not believing that everything was behind him if Alice was right. He looked at the information from Alice "Okay... I see the coordinates that were put into the generator and... Logs of all the subsystems... You're my good girl, get out of this rubbish, I'm going to kiss you!" Gordon high-fived Mateo, Alice snuck backwards and jumped off the ruined generator. Gordon picked her up in his arms and spun her around, to Mateo's approving cheers. Mission accomplished and it was time for the team to go home.

They made their way back down to the rover without incident, and shared their news with Gerald and Dylan. Confused, they looked at Gordon questioningly "What are you looking at me for? Send a data message to Hyperion via Alexandria’s relay" they nodded and departed, setting up the equipment to signal. In the meantime went to check all the information from the storage capacitors "Maybe there is something else there that will be useful to the scientists" they decoded the data and sent all the information they found to Hyperion. As they moved back to Alexandria and pulled in, Gordon looked back at the frozen bizarre world that was as beautiful as it was deadly.

"Well it's time to move out" said Gordon as he sat down at the captain's chair, switching on all the ship's systems. Waiting for the engines to warm up and leave this world "What do you think of our journey?" everyone remained silent, but Alice answered for the others "Honey, you're probably the only one who likes winter extreme sports.". Alexandria took off gently, gradually rising above the ground and increasing her speed. Soon Tadmura and the entire mountainous landscape of Palmyra was hidden behind fluffy clouds as if nothing had ever happened.