M.T. Decker

36-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the Stars

February 5th, 2552 New Job, better job
Concerned Pilot/Metallurgist/Mechanic/Lab Rat – Katherine ‘Kat’ James Reporting

Today was the first landing on an alien planet, well, almost landing, almost tragedy. Remember how I said that we were making plans based on things we know while poking at the unknown? Yeah that…

Turns out that at least one of the planets the science teams picked out was not friendly to our craft.

Fortunately, the pilot was cautious, preferring to ‘dip their toe’ in the water prior to landing. I don’t know if it was skill or dumb luck – but only one landing gear touched down before everything when haywire.

I ended up watching the footage one frame at a time – but what happened next was a cascade failure that could have stranded the pilot. As it was they ejected the gear and tethered to the twilight just to make sure that whatever at through the gear didn’t eat through the hull. As it was, the pilot was forced to spacewalk to another craft and be hauled in in an isolation unit.

We might be able to salvage some of the lander, but we’re going to keep it tethered for now. Last thing we need are parts that break down as soon as you touch them – and we definitely don’t want the deterioration to hit one of the fleet ships.

Whatever we do – it looks like we’re about to invent a brand new field of research. It’s not the type of thing you want to be at the forefront of – but it’s not like we have much of a choice.