Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Humans are Space Pets

"Tell us your oddest story, Captain."

"Weirdest story, huh?" Captain Vir sets his glass down on the bar and tilts his head back thinking as he stares at the ceiling, "Well, you know what, since it's been declassified, I suppose I can go ahead and tell you." He picks up his drink again and takes a draw.

"Have you ever heard of Heaven's Gate Nebula?"..."Of course you have. Well, so it's this really weird cluster of stars just off Andromeda, not technically part of the galaxy but sort of orbiting it. Now you Know Nebulas are actually star nurseries, so generally stars within nebula tend to be really young..... the problem here is that emissions form Heaven's Gate indicated 100-200 main sequence stars. I know, not a whole lot for a cluster. The GA had tried to investigate before, but with no real luck, they thought maybe a human crew would have more luck. And as a newly promoted captain with a newly christened ship, I was ready for any job they wanted to throw at me. So, with my new crew, and my new ship, I headed in, this was all before I met Sunny and Krill, and before I lost my eye."

He finishes the glass and wipes his mouth on his sleeve, "We took it into the dust cloud, and I had to take manual control of the ship. I was nervous, I fly jets, and jets are relatively small, but I had to remember that I was about a thousand feet wider than I am used to. We were navigating mostly by short range radar, so I would only have a few seconds to make it through. Luckily there was no real debris in our way, and when we broke out of the cloud a few hours later, we enter this ..... Open area about solar system wide. Scans showed it had one main sequence star and four planets with a collective 12 moons. There was one planet in the goldilocks zone, so we took her in. I ordered our navigations expert to plot a landing course onto the planet for a shuttle, and then I went down and got together a team of Marines to take our first look. Ok, maybe I was being an idiot, I'm the captain, leading search parties isn't exactly my job, but I would be damned if I was going to miss exploring an entirely undiscovered planet."

***

"Alright, Jar Heads, suit up, we're approaching the LZ." Behind him the sound of helmets clipping into place over suits was comforting. Captain Vir pulled on his own helmet quickly locking it into pace with one hand as he maneuvered the shuttle towards the planet's surface. It was green, Like Earth, very green though it wasn't really due to trees. The ground itself was covered with a very thin layer of moss.... Or so it appeared. The foliage itself was rather sparse, with an odd assortment of trees, and some sort of ferns.

He chose an area next to one of these little clusters, lading their craft with a soft whirr of air. He cut the engines and grabbed his weapon.

The marines were waiting for him ready for exit weapons at the ready, "Alright, Chairfroce, your orders?" The sergeant asked with a good natured nod.

"I defer to you, jarhead. This is simple recon, stay quiet, and keep low. If you see anything, do not engage, we aren't here to start trouble." The men nodded, at the front one held up a hand counting down from five before pressing the button to drop the ramp, and in a coordinated unit, the group rushed from the craft and into a wide circle around the ship leaving the copilot to watch over the ship. Captain Vir stopped behind the point man lowering his weapon and checking the readings from his suit. He had been trained to determine the safety of a particular atmosphere. It was a chill 22 degrees F but the oxygen level was 14.8% oxygen content which would equal out to feel like a relatively high altitude. The rest was nitrogen like you would expect on Earth. With one hand, he slapped the point man on the shoulder who, in turn, gave a hand signal to the rest of the group. One of their designated men reached up, and pressed the release sequence on his helmet. It dropped into his hand with a hiss and he took a deep breath. The group watched as he took a few more deep breaths monitoring his blood oxygen content from the monitor on his suit before giving a nod to the captain, who gave another signal. The rest of the group removed their helmets, though a few kept face masks close at hand, not comfortable completely with the low oxygen content. Helmets were strapped to their waists.