Predator: Homeland

Humidity

Before we start:
Hi all! I have limited knowledge of the AVP universe and some of the things involved may not be accurate and relatable to the original. I also want to include that predator and alien belong respectively to their own creators and owners!

By the way, my grammar is bad and I'm not an expert on spelling either, so feel free to point out my mistakes!

Thank you and enjoy!!

_____

The woman ventured into the humidity of the tropical alien planet immediately crouching down, to her discomfort, in order to take samples of the strangely colored plant that waved about with no shame in the dry, harsh draft. She took out her steel tweezers from her khaki pouch, examining the swaying plant that radiated a luminescent red, so strange, as expected from this planet. The woman then rummaged in her small pocket for a small sterile tube, taking it out of its plastic packaging with careful handling. The moist on her fingers and palms rubbing against the texture of her rubber gloves filled her with carelessness as her digits shook the moment the metal tweezers made contact with the plant. Relief escaped her dry mouth as she pulled the specimin out from the ground with dangling roots still intact and let the piece fall into the container and shut its lid tightly. 

"Sahara!" Her team called.

The researcher jolted up from her squat position, swatting some dirt off her explorer attire before struggling her way back to her team through the dense vegetation. As Sahara arrived at their camp, she wiped off a couple of sweat drops from her cocoa skin. The intense heat weighed on her body like suffocating walls, the same goes for her company too. She gestured at one person shaking the container of the newly found and rare type of plant.

"Found some!" She yelled, placing the container on the table which made a tapping sound against the aluminum paraphernalia.

A few of her colleagues gathered to view the sample. Some glaring so hard with curiosity and amazement. The plant was undeniably a very rare type of grass, although it may not look like one with the typical characteristics, for sure to this group of scientists, it was grass, more commonly a subspecies of the glowing purple ones found in abbundance on the planet. What was impressive about it was the red glow it emitted. The field researchers started to investigate even further, the flora was truly one of a kind on this desolate, harsh planet they were designated to. A land of pure dryness in the air, the vegetation is, however, plentiful, the lack of water only meant that their prosperity has something to do with the nutrients in the ground and does not necessarily require a lot of fluids. Extra terrestrial leaves sporting purple to red to orange colors, hues very different from Earth. The trees highly resembled that of Earth but were much more entangled and hard to get through, like the coiled mangrove roots.

With a loud thud of her behind hitting the dry ground, Sahara took out a bottle of water and drenched her throat with the freshening liquid. Her wondering, brown eyes fell upon the bushes of the forest that surrounded them, to the singeing vermilion sky of the planet. It was so different from Earth but she is highly fascinated to study the biology of it, like the rest of her comorades.

Her thoughts drifted to the time she and her family were sent away from their home planet, they didn't make it as suitable humans to inherit the Earth. The reasons for their banishment were unknown to Sahara, she was just a child. She thought back to the time she first became a researcher and set to observe a planet in the solar system of Alpha Centauri. Named AC24. Not much was there but a tedious atmosphere and unbreathable gases unfit for human life. She and many more teams of scientists, engineers, and literature-based personnel roamed into the furthest horizons of space, landing on dangerous territories, swampy terrains, and barren lands. There were, of course, plenty of human losses, grief, but in between sorrow and hardships, friendships and even love budded amongst friends. For the past five years of her career, not once did she and her crew find a possible home, the rest were either too violent with agressive natives or an unbreathable atmosphere, except for this one, called Eta70. Named after the sun Eta Carinae due to its blazing temperature of at least 40 to 60 degrees Celsius! On some days, the heat can reach over 100! Heatwaves were very common, often ocurring day after day, the humans would spend their time mostly inside the colony but in some more fortunate days, expeditions were sent out to learn more about the planet.