Down South

[jammi]

Fire once again flared across the Endymion's hull as it dropped through the atmosphere for a second time. Descent thrusters flared spasmodically to alter the entry angle to, stop the little ship from burning up completely. Stressed heat reflectors glowed but otherwise did their job, making the comparatively tiny ship shine like a falling meteorite in the inky night sky. Slowly the roar subsided, the ship levelling off and beginning its controlled flight to the drop zone. The Clydesdale rapidly lost height, bursting through a massive white cloud, the Captain seeing the dull shimmer of a seemingly endless sea glistening below. The strip of land that was the peninsular was a matt black blot in the ocean that eventually attached to the mass of darkness that was its mother continent.

Before long the Endymion was roaring along the coastline, picking out the otherwise invisible terrain not too far below on the HUD to prevent a crash. A small flashing beacon painted on top of this indicated the drop zone, a level area at the bottom of a large valley. The zone would have good access to the sea, and the Lovewell's resident geologists had predicted a good level biodiversity in the ecosystem throughout the local area.

"Right, hold tight, we're going down." The Captain gripped the helm, and gently lowered the ship's bulk further and further down. The floor was as level as predicted, and would probably support a solid on solid landing. Three landing plates had already been deployed to give the underside of the Clydesdale a level purchase. The visual quality of sight out of the frontal viewscreen was further obscured by the clouds of dust and dirt that smothered the floodlights that had been switched on just moments prior. There was a tense moment of waiting as the ship hovered less than a meter above the ground, before closing the distance and dropping to the floor with a final burst from the landing thrusters. The co-pilot sighed.

"Well, thats the second time. I'll head out back and tell the brainboxes that theyre clear to go." The Captain okayed her in response. She got up and squeezed through the gap between the two pilots chairs and exited through a door into the rear of the freighter. Inside was a prefabricated box that housed five bunks, life support capability and various other essential systems. The Endymion would be unloading it along with some basic construction machinery that could be used to bolt the portacabin to the floor and dig irrigation channels and the like. After that, the Endymion's foreseeable future for the expedition would be as a pack mule to shuttle supplies to the floor teams and samples back to the orbital crews.

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