Space is Big

Part 2: Heron Montague

"Hey, gorgeous!" Heron called from the door of the bar he'd been lurking in for the better part of two hours. The woman he was calling flipped him off and kept walking. Heron nodded and took another drink from the bottle in his hand as he stumbled to the curb and sat down hard on the concrete. He tended to have some sort of existential crisis whenever he drank, but he continued to drink nonetheless.
Now, Heron Montague was not a creep or a weird man in any way, he just seemed to think he had the whole world wrapped around his finger after he drank a few shots. He tended to shoot his shot, and take it gracefully when he gets rejected (which is most of the time). He groaned as he stood back up and wobbled his way back to the garrison that he lived in.
After managing to avoid the guards whom he knew would do nothing but grill him which would to nothing to help his emerging headache, he flopped into his bed without even bothering to remove his shoes or coat. It didn't take long for him to fall into a somewhat fitful sleep. A few hours later, his alarm began to blare, successfully jolting him awake. He rolled out of bed, hitting the floor with a grunt. His head was screaming at him along with his hip that he must have messed up somewhere between the bar and the garrison. A reminder popped up on his holodeck with a chime before the gentle voice came over the speakers,
"Good morning, Heron."
"Morning." He mumbled from the floor.
"Just as a reminder, your team is being briefed for the Tempes mission in forty-five minutes. I would suggest that you eat something beforehand seeing as how you were drinking on an empty stomach once again. I am surprised that you even made it back here."
"Why did I update you again?"
"Because you would have been kicked out of the garrison without me."
"Fuck off." Heron said as he grabbed a pillow and threw it at nothing in particular.
"Gladly. Don't be late or I'm turning off your hot water again."
Heron scrambled up and threw open his closet, grabbing his uniform. He fished out his shoes from under his bed, grabbed a cereal bar from the kitchen, and high-tailed it across the garrison to the briefing room that his team was assigned to. He slid in just as their commander stood up and he took his seat.
"Good of you to join us, Montague." Commander Xander said with a glare. Heron smiled awkwardly and slid a little further down in his chair. "Now. As you five know, The Tempes System is a gray area in terms of information so I will give you everything we know currently. First, that system was inhabited at one point or another by the Asteroid Crawlers, and we don't know if there are any more there currently. Your mission is to land on the furthest planet from the system's center. It does not have an official name yet, so we are currently calling it Tempes 6. According to the scans, it has an atmosphere, oxygen, and an ecosystem, so it is able to support life. However, there has been some interference getting some of the smaller ships to the surface because of the insane amount of storms over the entire planet, but your pod should be fine. If there are any issues, pull back and return to the outpost to make a new plan. You will have minimal contact with the outpost and with earth because of the interference from the storms, but keep an ear out for any communication. Understood?"
Everyone in the room made noises of agreement and the commander nodded.
"Alright. On to the logistics of the mission."
Heron zoned out soon after the commander started talking about setting up their own outpost on the planet, but he snapped back to attention at the mention of the actual exploration.
"You will set up sensors six miles in each cardinal direction. If anything so much as blinks within those six miles, you'll know about it. You will be on Tempes 6 for two years with supplies coming every six months. After you finish your rounds on the planet, you will swap with the secondary team who will be there for two more years. You will come back to earth where you will brief the media about your exploration. However." Commander Xander's eyes got very dark as he spoke, "If you are briefed to say something to the media that did not happen, you must follow that script to the letter or you will be suspended at best. At worst, you will be put into the Outlander Program."

The Outlander Program was something of a taboo subject among the less important government workers. It was formed after years of paranoia surrounding the protection of government secrets finally reached a head when a NASA employee leaked the news about the Asteroid Crawler corpse, which in turn sent the whole Solar System into a panicked frenzy for about three years. Outlander would send the offending individual to an asteroid in the Kuiper Belt and into what was essentially seclusion with no way off the asteroid and no one to visit them. Not that anyone would want to.
Everyone nodded, the air in the room suddenly feeling cold and still. As soon as the briefing finished, Heron stood, saluted the commander, and left to go finish packing his things.
Now, Heron didn't have many sentimental things. His parents put him up for adoption when he was three and because of it, he hadn't gotten the chance to form attachments to gifts he was given or the people that surrounded him. He ran away from the orphanage when he was seventeen and joined the NASA team as a janitor. One of the old commanders took notice of how smart and enthusiastic Heron was and even though Heron didn't have a college education, the commander pushed him through the basic training and managed to get him into the NASA Exploration Program where he began to thrive and quickly established himself as "the fun one" or "Heron, you know, the drunk guy" depending on who one talked to.
Heron didn't particularly know the other people on his team, but a quick search through the garrison's logs showed him that he at least wouldn't die horribly as a result of inexperience of his coworkers. There was one other man, and two women. The man was named Aiden Allen, a scientist who had a penchant for discovery. The younger of the two women was named Ashley Jade, she was newer to the program, but she was insanely smart and was most of the reason that they didn't need more people. The older woman was named Alexus Hawking, she was trans, although Heron didn't quite see the point of including that or what that had to do with her qualifications as she had more doctorates and IQ points than the rest of them combined. After he was satisfied, he sat back down on his bed and sighed. Even though he didn't have much attachment to the place he lived, he had gotten used to his room in the garrison, and the thought of being gone for two years made him a little sadder than he would have initially thought.
"Heron?" The soft voice of his garrison assistant came out of the speakers.
"Yeah?" Heron said as he lit a cigarette.
"You're leaving tomorrow, right?"
Heron took a long drag and exhaled into the air above him.
"I am. I'm excited about it, but I suppose I'll miss this place while I'm gone." He chuckled and looked up at the ceiling above his bed. "What are you going to do without me? You'll be bored as hell, won't you?"
"I suppose my life, such as it is, will certainly be quieter while you're gone. Have you packed everything?"
"I have."
"You forgot your anxiety meds. They're still under the sink. Also, you won't be allowed to smoke there. You'll have to leave the packs here." The voice chuckled. Heron jumped out of bed and, sure enough, his medication was still sitting under the sink.
"Thanks. I guess I'll miss you while I'm gone. And yes, I know I won't be able to smoke, but I have a couple vapes so I'll be fine. Don't get into too much trouble." He smiled at the nearest speaker and put his meds into his bag. There was a list of things that people weren't allowed to bring on the ships, and Heron had gone over his things about twenty times before he was certain that he wasn't breaking any rules, except the one, of course.