<h4>Chapter 608 Parkering It</h4>


    The entirending was being broadcast, both through external cameras on thender 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 thender 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 zed over as they watched thending in full, glorious augmented reality.


    The silent stare statested a full minute before the sensors studding the exterior of thender 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 thender and the world outside.


    The exterior camera on the aft of thender 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 ount 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 thender hade 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 ANDst crew member of any exploration mission to be selected via random draw to first-foot an alien.


    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 syble as he passed the point of no return and began his tumble.


    Hey there for a moment, then mbered 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’tst 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,st 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 ofughter and was thankful that the armorss portion of her helmet was prized so nobody could see the uncontroble 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 tough.


    While she stood there battling the bellyughs, a whole host ofnd-restricted rovers and their apanying flying drones came down the ramp and entered sleep mode. They wouldn’t be activated again until after thender 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 thending 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 minutester, 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 urring on either side, and they would be handled aboard specializedb modules that could—and would—be instantly ejected and self-destruct should any idents ur.


    The inspection was soon finished and Ayaka led the crew back into thender 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 thender 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 thender, a mere ten feet past the breaking point of that particr beach.


    While waiting for the drones to return with their samples, the Henry’s Eye sensor on thender showed an anomaly. On the screen, it looked like mana flows were pulsing around thender like the roots of a tree, or perhaps the dendrites in the brain. A soft rm sounded and drew the attention of everyone to the disy.


    Thender’s VI, detecting a possible threat,municated with the AI of the Farsight and the decision was made to slowly increase thender’s altitude. Then, just a single secondter, an rm whooped throughout the entire transport bay of thender and it rose as fast as its inertialpensators 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 inertialpensators that were being held together only by the safety interlocks built into the smallnding craft’s gravity drive.


    Beneath them, a sonic boom exploded so close to thender that the entire craft shuddered. An enormous gnarled tree root had cracked like a whip mere centimeters away from the exterior of thender, 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 thender and those still paying attention to the broadcast being sent through the system.


    Shit had just gotten real for them.