"This is getting worse." I muttered, staring outside the windows. More and more enemy ships were pounding us as we made our way to the other side of planet. We may have been successful in jamming the signals, making sure the base didn't know about our plans yet, but it was just a matter of time before they figured it out. I saw with my own eyes, as Charlie Five went down right behind us, killing everyone on board. We had expected this, but the Kenjah's air force was better equipped than we had anticipated. "I can hardly keep up with this." Holder said, as he veered left dodging a laser beam. "How many minutes till drop?" I yelled. "Five minutes more!" He yelled back. Everyone, including me, had their suits on, and I brushed my hand across the lower part of my leg just to make sure that I still had the secret weapon Montwik had given me. I looked at Profus again, who was looking out of the window, from where we had a direct view of the photrox. The were a lot of jets surrounding us, each of them engaged with some or other of our ships. "Everyone, hold on!" Holder said, as he prepped the ship for the drop. "We are almost near the drop point, make sure your helmets are on and your comms are switched on." he said. I put on my helmet and turned on the comm system, just like he had ordered.
"We are here." Holder's voice said over the suit comms. "Prepare for drop in three..two..one..drop initiated." I've gone through the drop once, but that just couldn't prepare me for this. One minute I was looking out towards Charlie Four, and the next second, we were dropping down at several thousand miles per hour. I could feel the thrust from the engines pushing us downwards, causing the ship to go faster with each passing second. I gripped my seat as my heart crawled into my throat, just like the previous time I experienced a drop. I could see Emanta looking at me, suppressing her smile, like she found it amusing I was terrified of this. I looked at Reneesh, who did not seem like he was comfortable with the drop either. In fact, he seemed more terrified than I was. He had his eyes squeezed shut and I could actually see him sweating. By now we were entering the outer layers of the photrox's atmosphere. The exteriors of the jet were rattling to due the resistance of the photrox's atmosphere. "Alright. we're in the planet's inner boundaries. We expect their second line of air defense to start pounding us soon. We just got an update from Charlie One that the second line could not be taken offline. get ready to face the heat boys." Holder announced. The jet slowly started slowing down, it's thrusters in full reverse action. "All right, here they come!" Holder yelled, as the ship banked leftwards. One of the soldier, who had removed his safety straps from his seat soon after entry to the atmosphere, tumbled down onto then floor. Just as he was helped by two soldiers, I saw two red laser beams missing the jet by just a few metres. The jet violently banked leftwards again, before we had another near miss by another one of the laser beams. "Alright guys, this ain't going to work. We cannot take out these laser beams, and it won't be long before our luck runs out. The base now knows there is a jet in their airspace but we are justified in assuming that they are not aware of why we are here and what our goal is. Even their most sophisticated radars cannot track anything below one thousand feet. If we can fool the system into believing that our jet has crashed, it would stop firing the laser beams and we could fly to our location below one thousand feet and hope we get to the place and land before patrol jets come along to check for wreckage." Holder said. "I'm sorry." I interrupted, identifying myself with my identification number. "What happens when they don't find the wreckage?" I asked. "All the radar and defense mechanisms are fully automated and do not have any manual intervention. When they find no wreckage, they would have to manually go through the logs and only then would they figure out what we had done. And then they would need to launch a search operation and by the time they triangulate our position, we should be done with the whole thing." Holder replied. "Alright guys. Our computer tracks another laser coming right at us. And we are going to fool the computer into believing that it hit us, and we went down. Don't worry guys, I've done this a thousand times. Strap yourselves in, it's going to be a tough time. Comso, get ready. When I say ready, point the trusters backward and I want fifty percent thrust. Soon after simulated impact, I am going to point the nose downwards, just like it happens in a real crash. There will be a lot of turns are spins too. Get ready." He said, adjusting his headgear.
"Alright, here it comes!" Holder yelled as he banked the jeti rightwards, pointing the nose down. The jet picked up speed rapidly and we were losing altitude at dangerous levels. All part of the simulation, I suppose. The jet suddenly started spinning rapidly, making everyone tilt sidewards. I squeezed my eyes shut, not able to take the spinning. If there is one thing I am terrified of, it is spinning. It's been a problem since my childhood. The jet still was losing altitude rapidly and the I forced myself into opening my eyes to look out of the window just to know how close we were to the surface. The clouds parted and the surface came into view, and I was taken aback, again. It was like a green carpet, spread across the surface. Even through all the spins and turns Holder was simulating to fool the computer, I could see the beauty of photrox. Photrox was just like an imitation of Earth, like how it was, before we had destroyed it. But I didn't want to spend my time regretting what we did to Earth. I had better things to do. I saw as the surface moved closer and closer but the jet showed no signs of slowing down. "Whoa whoa WHOA!" I yelled, as I saw the surface getting closer and closer. "SLOW DOWN, HOLDER!" I yelled. "There is no slowing down until we get below one thousand feet. Believe me, I have done this a thousand times. Trust me with this one." He replied, gritting his teeth. I could see him from where I was sitting, and he had his hands on the controls the whole time, but he was relaxed, and just like he said, he seemed to have done it innumerable times, and had no doubt upon his capabilities. I closed my eyes again as I saw the surface getting closer and closer and suddenly I felt the pressure slam into me as the jet applied everything it had to slow itself down. My head was still spinning with all that spinning Holder did, coupled with the sheer amount of pressure which had slammed into me, I felt waves of nausea consuming me. The jet righted itself up, and hovered above the surface for a few moments. I slowly opened my eyes and saw trees below me in all directions. It seemed that we were in the middle of a forest. "Alright crew, thankfully everyone survived this little stunt of mine. Let's get to our destination point now." Holder said over the comms. Montwik had informed us that the atmosphere of Photrox had almost the same composition of air like Earth did and the human body would have had no problems adapting to the conditions of the planet. Even with that assurance, I did not want to take chances by taking my headgear off. Both Reneesh and I received special headgear which had some sort of air purifiers which made sure we had a continuous supply of clean air and in the exact composition like on Earth just in case our bodies could not adapt to the new conditions. The jet now started moving forward and Holder kept an eye on the altitude and made sure we never crossed a thousand feet. I looked out of the window to find a thick forest below me spreading out in all directions. A couple of weird looking birds, with red wings and large blue bodies and a golden tails flew past us and I could spot some wild animals grazing in the open patches of land we passed by. Most of these animals were like nothing I had seen before, with completely strange body structures. The average size of the animals and birds seemed larger than the ones back on Earth, probably owing to the higher levels of Oxygen in the atmosphere. Some animals were smiliar to the ones we had back on Earth such as this particular animal, which looked a lot like the tigers back on Earth except that it was completely blue in color. Also, the shade of the leaves were a little bit different due to the color of the sun. I spent the next few minutes looking out, admiring the beauty of the new planet.
"We're almost here." Holder announced. We were long past the forest area and now we were in an area which seemed like some kind of grasslands. Unusually tall grass, which was yellow in color, surrounded the jet, which had to increase it's altitude to nine hundred feet, just to maintain a certain amount of distance from the grass which could mess with the engines. "Alright, here we go. Re-establishing contact with Beta One."
"This is Alpha Twelve to Beta One. We are on our designated point. Please initiate entry protocol."
"Beta One to Alpha Twelve. Glad you made it. Please hold on while we initiate the entry protocol."
"We're waiting."
Holder and Beta One had a short conversation as we hovered over grass. I could not see any kind of infrastructure, which I expected. But I could not see the tunnel which was mentioned during the planning stages.
"For those who are not aware of it, we made some last minute changes. We are landing at a top-secret resistance base, which is underground and is just a few miles south of here. The tunnel also connects this base and we can easily hide our ship underground which would just make it less easy for them to track our ship once they realize this was all a trick." Holder said. The jet slowly moved southwards again, taking us closer to our new designated point. I could not spot any other jet in the vicinity and neither did the radar, so I guessed we were safe for the time-being.
***
"Alright, make sure your suits are intact. It would take some time to get used to the new planet's conditions given the number of months you have spent back on the Forward Base. Door will equalize the pressure in one minute." Holder announced. The jet had landed inside the base, as planned. The base was nothing from the outside. But just as we hovered over it, the ground gave way to an entrance and the jet set itself down on the landing pad inside. I could see rows and rows of men standing inside with arms and wearing full body armor. "Alright, let's get down." Holder said, as the bay doors opened downward. The first row of soldiers walked onto the surface, looking slightly disoriented from the long and highly turbulent journey. Waves of nausea swept over me again as soon as I stood up and I almost fell over, if not for Emanta who caught me. Reneesh was still sitting with his eyes closed, and it seemed like he was more terrified of this than I was. "Yo, man, what's wrong?" I asked, suppressing a smile. "Is it over?" he asked, his voice trembling a little bit. "Yeah. I didn't know you were scared of this, Reneesh." I replied, laughing now. "Well, I am now." He said, slowly opening his eyes, looking around. "Let's go." I said to Reneesh, extending my hand out for support. He stood up, and put his hand across my shoulder. "Let's go." He repeated, smiling.
Together we made our way to the exit, and became the first humans to ever set foot on the photrox.
***
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2017!
It's been an unexceptionally good year for Mission Orion, which was ranked number one on the worldwide Science Fiction Charts for months. The support I had received over the months has been tremendous and was the only thing, apart from my interest, which had kept me going. Hoping for the continued love and support from all my readers.
-Rithvik/LPS21.
P.S. There was some technical glitch because of which a minor part of the last paragraph dissapeared less than 24 hours after it was published. I have completed it now :)