Date: 24th August, 2311. 19:25 (ES/GMT)
Location: Inbound to Erebus Base, Oridius (Delta-Fujisaki Two)


The cold, red star of Delta-Fujisaki hung low against the curve of the second planet as Tessa triggered maneuvering thrusters to a gentle burn, aligned her approach to the wild, storm-beaten atmosphere that swirled white and grey below. Her rig’s resident A.I blinked a cool blue in response to her movements, gently monitored and unobtrusively assisted every gesture, every command, streamlining her approach. Together, they worked like a pair of seasoned partners, each anticipating the other’s moves, flowing seamlessly within the framework of expected actions. Tessa had spent so much time in the cockpit of her rig that it felt almost like an extension of her body, not enough to lose herself in, but close. To her, the rig was both friend and prosthetic, something close, the medium through which she exerted herself into space. The advanced cognitive reasoning programming and baseline personality of the resident A.I. lent to the overall feeling of humanity it had, and at times it was almost too easy to forget that her rig was something separate, something mechanical, cold and automatic.
White-gloved fingers traced a line across the polyquid touch screen, highlighted a series of command parameters, then tracked their way to the radio, checking the cohesion of the open frequency with a series of mic clicks that came back from the Hephaestus strong and clear. Her main hand tightened around the control stick, edged her rig into the wispy white atmosphere as her other gently touched the throttle, adjusted the drive incrementally before coming back to rest at her side. Absently, she ran a finger across the cool composite of the overhead grip on the stocky, modular bullpup rifle strapped down beside her and against the seat, then patted the pair of reserve clips rigger-taped to the stock. Standard equipment for Ultima Thila, everything but the extra clips the usual for rigs that ran for the Gray Society. Funny. She thought. Of all the missions I’ve flown, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually had to use it.
Cottony haze skimmed over the wings of her rig as she dropped steadily into the stormy sky, shaving the surface, disappearing into the high edges of violent clouds. She smiled; one thumb flexed, keyed the radio.
“Eisenherz to Hephaestus,” Tessa paused, licked her lips as boiling white rose up around the bubble of her rig’s cockpit. “I’m in. Atmospheric conditions are loose and smooth right now, but it looks like things are going to get real bumpy real soon.”
“We read you, Major.” Blavatsky’s voice filled the frequency, gave the darkening, thickening atmosphere an almost haunting quality. “You found the pair of extra MREs I had packed in the back, I believe.”
“Noticed them on preflight.” Tessa grinned. “Got something to tell me?”
“Other than that I guarantee they’re going to come in handy?” Came the smiling response, the secretive pause. “No.”
“Oh, come on.” Tessa grinned again, adjusted her rig’s approach through the dilation and flexing of her rig’s S-Vectoring panels. “The hospital food at Erebus can’t be that bad.”
“I like your sense of humor, Major, but I doubt two MREs are going to get you through more than a day or two of recovery.”
“Well, there’s always the Ninsar implant system.” Tessa made a loose gesture out of habit, “I can probably get enough light indoors to get a few more days out of a military ration at least.”
“You’ll recover faster if you actually eat, Major.” The edge of a laugh, a thin line of unbreakable seriousness. All around her, the sky dropped further and further into swirling gray, became so dark and oppressive that interior glow-lighting automatically switched on. Winds rocked the edges of her wings, worked a vibration into the airframe that was constant, impossible to ignore. “Your ability to photosynthesize was only designed with emergency situations in mind.”
“I remember signing the waiver.” Tessa smiled, keyed a sequence of checks and command sequences across the polyquid display. “Don’t worry about me, Admiral. If anything bad were to happen, you would have seen it and called the whole thing off, right?”
“I can’t see everything, Major. Every change I make changes the future that will become our present.” Another pause, as thick as the sky. “And what I do see, I can’t always share.”
“Hence the secret rations in the back.”
“And the paper note that was rolled up beside them.” The admiral said solidly. “You can leave the rations in your rig, but keep the note in your pocket.”
Reaching into the folds of her flight suit, Tessa’s fingers found the note, pulled it out and unrolled it, eyes lingering on the single word scrawled there.
Jericho
Lips moved, formed the word. “Jericho?”
“It’s the name of a dog. You’ll know what it means when the time comes.” Blavatsky’s tone came firm yet soft, the advising tone of a grandparent. “Keep it with you at all times while you’re at Erebus. We’ll be back to pick you up in three weeks.”
“Roger that, Admiral.” Eyes hovered for a moment longer, snapped back to the display as she rolled the note up and pushed it back into her pocket. “Stay safe.”
“You too, Major.” The haze lightened for a moment, gave way to pockets of rushing air. Tessa licked her lips as the admiral finished. “You too.”
A quick nod, fingers tightening across the stick as Tessa’s rig dropped into a hazy, frost-beaten tunnel of viciously fast air “Switching to ground frequencies.”
There was a crackle of static as the sudden front of fast gusting wind hammered at her rig, blasting against the airframe, pushing at her Seindrive like the fingers of a massive hand. In the end, she would win out– her rig was rated for anything up to and including the kinds of weather conditions that whipped up within the clouds of a gas giant. There was nothing Delta-Fujisaki 2 could throw at her that she couldn’t handle. Grinning into the increasing turbulence, one gloved hand reached up, switched the channel, flicked the radio.
“Erebus Ground, this is UT-11858, inbound to your position, vector eight-niner to relative,” she grinned again. “copy?”
In the endless hazy white, the whole world seemed to coalesce into a cottony snowbank, a whirling grey-white thickness where the only sense of movement came from the steady blizzard of fluff and jagged ice that shot past her, hammering into and over her wings. A moment later, someone coughed into the channel, paused, breathed through static.
“UT, uh, 11858, we have you on our screens.” He paused again, sniffed. “Looks like you’re about fifteen hundred klicks out, two hundred and seventy-seven thousand feel AGL, cruising the band over the Kvalbeinoya continent.” Another pause, the edge of a smile coming through as he added: “What’s the weather like out there, Major?”
“A hundred and eighty-nine below zero, winds gusting to one-five-five, visibility zero.” She grinned. “Just like flying dawn patrol over the Martian caps in the middle of winter.”
“Thank god for IFR, eh?” He laughed. “We’ll leave the light on for you. Runway eighty-four North.”
“Eighty-four north.” She glanced at the resident A.I. and it blinked an easy green back at her in response. “I appreciate it Ground. See you in twenty.”
“No hurry Major.” Came the tired response. “It can get pretty wild out there. Fly safe.”
Tessa grinned again, adjusted the dilation of her rig’s S-Vectoring panels again.
“That’s what I do, Erebus Ground.”