John's perspective
I sat in my seat, staring at the display of the external cameras. My heart raced as I tried to see if any threat was approaching the doors. Nothing happened. Instead, as the calm chased the adrenalin away, a heaviness settled over me, growing more oppressive with each passing second.
I looked around at the eggheads; several of them had dropped their tablets at some point, faces flushed with effort, others lulled back and unconscious.
The feeling of being weighed down took some serious effort to breathe through. It felt exactly like the G-force training for this mission and the high-G training for fighter jets I had endured during my time in the service. Back then, I had been prepping for a mission that eventually got canceled.
Thank the heavens. I was supposed to get helecoptored in somewhere in the middle of the night...no thank you.
Zenthara came on the intercom. "We have touched down. Please prepare to disembark."
I lifted my hands to my faceplate, opened it, and scratched an itch that had been there since we got hit by debris.
Taking a deep breath, I held it for three seconds before exhaling slowly. My rib muscles hurt from the effort, but it didn't kill me. I unbuckled and pulled/pushed myself up. My muscles weren't used to working this hard after two-ish weeks of near-zero gravity. I stood there for a few minutes, trying to get the woozy and dizzy under control. When my head finally stopped swimming, I looked around and realized only the other military guys could move.
"Who needs help?" I asked, activating the local comms band.
"Me" and "I do" came back from multiple voices, their tones varying from sheepish to desperate. Before I could do anything, Zenthara's voice came on the intercom.
"Gabriel, do you need assistance? We are ready for you to disembark."
Mr. Torres responded for all of us. "Yes, Zenthara. It seems we lost a bit more muscle mass than we thought we did."
"Understood. Please stand by." Zenthara's said.
From the briefing, I expected humans to help us out of there. But we were on the Alien's ship.
I walked over to Mr. Torres, who was struggling to sit upright. His face was flushed, and beads of sweat formed on his forehead. As I reached out a hand to him, he grabbed it and tried to pull himself up to his feet.
"Thank you," he wheezed, but despite my support, his legs buckled under him, and he slumped back into his seat, still managing a smile. "I think only you military guys worked out enough."
I glanced around, noting that the six security guys, myself included, were indeed the only ones moving with relative ease, trying to assist the other members of the crew.
"We're security, not military," I corrected him, keeping up the cover, not letting the costume slip. He scoffed, obviously not believing me.
We had all undergone rigorous training and conditioning for this mission. We were instructed to use the onboard gym for a minimum of 2 hours a day throughout the process. I think I only missed 2 days when we were on the moon itself. I found it strange that the equipment was mostly empty.
With the help of the security guys, some of the people I recognized as former astraunots were able to at least stand vertically.
"Please stand by," Zenthara said over the intercom. "We are going to come onto your ship to assist you."
My head snapped to the monitors, where I saw a group of robots, different from Zenthara in appearance, gathering at the door. My heart raced as the doors opened, without any of our inputs or permisions, and they swarmed up the ladders like ants on a mission.
