Water lapped gently against the flat-bottomed skiff, adding a soft ambience to the early morning dawn. The two suns had not yet risen and the sky was awash with a deep purple hue. Distant stars could still be seen low against the opposite horizon, and the planetary ring was visible behind a layer of atmospheric blue haze, wide over the northern skyline at this latitude. The Solemn hour was upon them, and while the sky waited for the rising suns, only the holy light of the ring was cast down upon them.
It was the perfect time to offer prayers to Shanshara. The flat-bottomed skiff was low to the water and wide, easy to kneel on and prostrate oneself while preforming the early morning ritual of thanks and gratitude for another day. The fisherman raised her hands to the sky and then bowed low to the skiff fingers splayed towards the brightening horizon, light diffusing through the delicate webs between her three fingers.
She bowed again, the fins on her sides and back rippling in a warm humid breeze. Her long flat tail gently paddled against the water behind her as she offered her prayers to the deep one, while her little skiff floated above a shallow sea. Beneath her the water was clear, and cool shallow enough she could see the familiar ecosystem of colorful plants and animals alive under the surface, warm and safe within the shallow sea.
Lifting her head once again to the sky she contemplated the water stretching out from horizon to horizon.
The beauty and the solitude captivated her in a bubble of calm silence that lifted her floating into a state of near euphoria. What a beautiful time to simply be.
Beyond that the stars were just beginning to wink out. Her prayers over she pulled her tail from the water and gently leaned back against the spongy surface of her little boat, resting her hands behind her head as she stared up at the sky listening to the water lap and simply enjoying the moment: just her, the water, and the sky.
And a sudden flare of golden light.
She sat up suddenly causing her skiff to rock dangerously from side to side, watching wide eyed as the flare of golden light resolved itself into a streak that cut across the sky almost directly over her head. The meteorite, cut a blazing trail across the purple heavens so close she could hear the popping crackle of flame. The object grew larger, and larger and larger, until it shot over her head. She craned her neck to follow it, spinning in place and nearly tipping over into the water.
The meteorite flared brightly one last time before plowing into the ocean surface, so close she saw the spray of water displaced by the object as it fountained into the air. She saw the impact before she heard it, but when the sound hit her, it was almost like an the short rapport of a concussion blast . Still the object must not have been very big as her skiff easily rode the wave resulting from the object's impact.
She sat there for a long moment wondering if she had really seen what she thought she saw, but with steam rising from the water's distant surface she knew she hadn't just imagined it. Eyes still wide with shock and awe, she dipped her tail int other water, using it as a rudder to propel herself forward across the surface of the shallow sea. Below her animals fled from the sight of the impact in droves, and the closer she got the better she could see the landing sight. The ripples were gone now but a few dead animals had floated to the surface savaged by the impact of whatever it was. She peered down into the water but saw only a cloud of thick murky silt.
Perhaps it was a satellite or a downed diplomatic ship from one of the dry planets, but then again, the object seemed to small to be a ship. Either way curiosity got the better of her and she lifted her tail from the water, to stand before neatly diving into the murky surface. Water rushed over her gill flaps, forcing them open and running cool water through her system. The silt was filtered out, and she quickly blew out all the air left in her surface lungs reducing her buoyancy and causing her to sink deeper into the water.
More dead aquatic life floated past her in the murkiness as she kicked downward arms and feet held tight to her body as her tail did most of the work. Her sharp angular head cut through the water in a rush as she headed down, down and down.
The object had hit the water not so far from a tolp forest, large, flat plants wider than her head and several times longer than her body which grew up from the shallow ocean floor in big forest colonies. The area around where the object had landed was mostly sandy but contained an assortment of colorful plant life mostly in shades of yellow or blue. The sand here was rather thick, almost grainy, so it separated from the water quickly, and sunk back to the ocean floor clearing the water ahead of her enough that she could finally see.
She was a fast swimmer.
Not as good as her Second mother or her first father, but still she was fast and had made it to the bottom in mere seconds from the moment of diving in. Overhead the two suns broke the distant horizon sending shafts of light cutting through the water over her head in great beams that shattered and fused back together as water currents disrupted the path of the light.
One beam of light in particular, cut past her through the water in a thin shaft, before coming to rest on the bottom of the ocean and the strange object that rested there, glittering with a sort of metallic sheen. The object had been partially covered by grit and sand obscuring a good portion of it from view.
But still, Whatever It was, it was clearly artificial.
Downed satellite was looking to be the most plausible explanation.
She swam closer, close enough to touch the object.
The water around her was still cool, so whatever excess heat it had brought with it from entry, had diffused in the time it took her to get here.
She swam closer, so close her tail touched the sand with every slow paddle.
The object was in remarkably good shape for soemthing that had caught fire during entry. Through her second eyelid she could see mat black metal and scuffed green pigment which did show some sign of fire damage.
An unfamiliar logo peered out from under the sand, and she brushed it away with her hand. The metal was still warm, not hot.
She brushed away more and more sand in an effort to get a better look at what she was seeing. She brushed off another layer of sand from a curved surface. This one was also metallic but smooth, more like glass not entirely opaque.
She cupped her hands together trying to reduce what glare her second eyelids couldn't remove and pressed them up against the strange metallic surface peering in through her fingers. It took her a moment to make sense of what she was seeing, and then when she did, she squealed in shock and fear propelling herself back with a burst of water.
That wasn't a satellite.
That was a space suit.
With Something inside it.
***
At first he worried it was a black hole, the orange light burning around it, a spinning event horizon, the dark point at it's center a singularity, but as the ranging orange fire reached up to meet him, Adam felt himself pass through. The sensation was strange, but not unpleasant, nothing near like how he imagined being pulled apart by a black hole would be. Behind him one world vanished and another appeared, and it was for a moment he saw two different pictures.
One, the raging battle of maker vs void, with the Empyrean, a beacon of golden light racing towards him from the darkness, the Judas Everette floating off in the opposite direction.
And then to his right, a tranquil night sky, and the serene surface of a blue planet below him.
For a moment, he thought he was looking down at Earth, that was until his body passed fully through, and he was sent spinning out into space with the planet rolling beneath him. Hundreds of thousands of miles of open water and swirling clouds, if there was land, he didn't have time to make it out before he realized.
He was falling.
Whatever that thing was, it had let him out right in the middle of this planet's gravity well beyond the point he would have fallen into orbit.
Adam's stomach dropped out from under him as the pull of the planet's gravity kicked in and he plunged downward, gaining speed in a way you only could in a frictionless environment.
Shit.
He tried to fire his jetpack, but even as he tried a warning menu popped up on his HUD.
Critical Power Overload/ System Error power cells corrupted.
Fealty was still there, but the AI was weak.
The suit was just barely clinging on, rapidly feeding off whatever energy the electronics could handle, but bleeding it away like a civ. Adam tried to generate his own power, tried to tap into anima like he had done just moments before only to find.
He too was spent.
He felt himself hit atmosphere, his smooth fall turning into a sudden rattling, and then a shaking that could have jarred his teeth straight from his head. Fire licked up around him as friction caught the outer layer of his suit on fire , but the temperature resistant surface made it so that he himself felt nothing as he fell, except for the horrific rattling in his bones.
HIGH VELOCITY DETECTED
"No SHIT!" He shouted
Arms and legs pinned together, Adam did his best to reduce the friction, but it was hardly helping.
JETPACK SYSTEM CRITICAL
"Be more helpful!"
GRAVITY DETECTED.
"Fuck me."
WOULD YOU LIKE TO ENGAGE CRITAL SYSTEM LOCK FOR HIGH ALTITUDE REENTRY?
"Why ARE YOU ASKING!"
PLEASE ANSWER WITH A YES OR NO.
"YES!"
ACTIVATING HIGH ALTITUDE SYSTEM LOCK.
And then the joints of his suit hardened and constricted. Adam found himself locked in a rictus unable to move his arms or his legs as he plunged from the sky. And he had to admit, not being able to flail his arms as he fell to his death was surprisingly very stressful. There must have been soemthing cathartic about being able to move your arms and legs before you died, perhaps it was a false sense of control, but now he was practically paralyzed, completely out of control.
And heading straight for the open ocean.
Water was more dangerous than concrete at terminal velocity. The faster you were going the faster the water needs to displace and the higher the surface tension. Concrete and dirt can compress, but water..... water can't.
He screamed.
STRESS DETECTED.
"No SHIT." He yelled again, the fear and the stress and the fire licking up around him reducing his ability to do much more than curse. Forget about all of your big university words, because when you are falling the brain's vocabulary shrinks to include only what is known in the profanity library, mommy, and whatever deity you pray to.
ENGAGING SEDATIVE
"no wait I."
And then his own suit gassed him.
The Steel eye Fealty integrated suit was very expensive, top quality equipment designed specifically as a combat modular system intended for high orbit insertion troops and high intensity combat situations. The scientists who had designed the original steel eye exo suits had integrated the suit with the exo skeleton to create a superior system to the original designs, at least those of them that hadn't been sent to prison for the original steel eye fiasco.
The more humane and superior system had been put through every conceivable scenario that drop scientists and a focus group of UNSC marines could come up with. A high altitude fall without a parachute was one of the first scenarios they had considered. A high altitude fall into water was one of the second. High altitude reentry was on the top of the list.
High altitude reentry into water with low battery power was one of the more specific scenarios they had come up with, and one of the more complex. The steel eye system required power to keep the suit running and there were multiple backup systems to achieve this, however when the system is running through energy at a massive rate it is best to shut down all extraneous systems.
And those include the systems trying to calm and control the pilot.
So.
Solution.
Knock them out.
It has the added bonus of relaxing the body which decreases the likelihood of bone breakage by at least 65%. In each of the aforementioned tests, the suit had preformed admirably. The success rate for high entry low power water landings without a parachute were around 70%, that rate measured in the amount of test dummies that were deemed "alive" when the test was over. As long as you didn't hit anything sharp or jagged on the way down, that success rate jumped to 92%
At least when he died he wouldn't have to see it coming.