OUTWORLD: Dark Planet

OUTWORLD: Dark Planet Part 2

Okay, make that two things I hate about going into space, Doreen thought to herself. The food, and the space suits.

The Mucky Pup had put down on the asteroid without incident some moments earlier, and Doreen was making her best effort to struggle into a vaguely bipedal Mog-Link rig with more armour on it than a heavy tank and the comfort and articulation of a garden shed. Still, she thought as she slipped the fishbowl helmet over her head and winced as it pressed her ears down against her head and gave her the appearance of a cartoon bunny, it would all be worth it.

She hefted her precious scanner in her gauntleted right paw. She found Oliver a little brash sometimes, but he did have a way of designing something down to the last detail. "Hope that thing does what it says on the tin," Rodolfo said from beside her. "I hate those bloody mass-produced units we get stuck with."

Doreen laughed, though the suit's communicator was off and the sound rebounded inside the helmet. She switched it on and laughed again. "Oh, it will."

Hachi was calibrating her Dragon's Breath mining laser. The large, rifle-shaped weapon had also been modified by Oliver; this modification gave the laser a more concentrated beam. The stock model tended to 'splash' the blast about. "Oliver might be a condescending fuzz-butt," she was saying, "but he does good work. This thing has been optimized seven ways from hoo-ha."

A fourth voice failed to make an announcement.

Doreen glanced over at the ship's medic, Fleur. The little Newfoundland was hovering behind them, looking as if she would topple over if someone breathed in her direction. She looked positively tiny inside her suit. "Think we might have some tension in the ranks, Rodolfo."

Rodolfo smiled and called over to Fleur. "You alright, Miss Marlow?"

Fleur nodded fractionally. "Yeah, I'm okay. Just a little nervous."

"You're nervous, and you're going to be responsible for our well-being out there?" Hachi asked. "That doesn't fill me with confidence."

"Save it, Hachi," Rodolfo put in.

Hachi scowled, but she acquiesced. Doreen just made out Hachi's sullen utterance of "Bloody nervous" and found that her communicator's receiving volume was five percent above recommended levels. She reset it.

"Captain Hayes," Rodolfo called over the main channel, "we're all suited and booted down here. Open the lock."

"Copy that. Opening the lock," was Hayes' response. Doreen felt her chest tighten with anticipation as a rhythmic alarm began to sound and the lock was bathed in red emergency lighting. A countdown timer next to the ship's exterior doors began to blink down. The doors leading back into the vessel shut with a resounding clang, and every quart of air was expelled from the space as the exterior doors wrenched themselves open. There was a rush of wind – and then nothing.

Silence.

Doreen tensed up as the only sound to reach her ears for a few seconds was her own breathing, the only sight to reach her eyes the condensation on her visor. Then she was staring out of the Mucky Pup onto the exterior access lift, lit by a stark system of floodlights. She couldn't see anything of the asteroid beyond the ship's superstructure.

"Let's go, troops," Rodolfo called out, moving ahead. "Hachi, take my six. Doreen, Fleur, you flank us." He lumbered onto the lift, followed by Hachi, then Doreen and Fleur brought up the rear.

Doreen had expected the asteroid's surface to be amazing, but she hadn't prepared herself for actually seeing it. As the lift carrying her and the team descended from the belly of the Mucky Pup, a brassy ocean shone up at them. Huge crystalline towers came powering up from the rock, catching the light from suits and floods and refracting it in all directions.