Chương 100: 39.Orbital Drop 39-3

The drop from one to zero wasn't the hatch opening. It was the hatch getting torn away. Cold white light hit first. Then the pod lurched free—like a hand that had been locked around your throat finally let go—and an instant later replaced it with something worse: down. Not the theatrical weightlessness of an amusement ride. More like your organs getting yanked upward while your spine got dragged the other direction, the whole body caught between two completely opposing forces, brutally reminding you: welcome.

The clock is running. I clenched my jaw, locked both hands on the grips, and didn't make a sound. The HUD lit up in front of me, aggressively bright. Drop Initiated Surface Approach In Progress Wind Shear Correction Active Perfect. Even dropping people onto a planet, the Federation made it look like a delivery service. The pod's outer shell started heating.

Vibration hammered through the back of the seat in waves—not explosion, but friction, wind-cutting, the price paid by a metal can punching through a planet's atmosphere. Outside: white. Nothing visible. Just the interior red lights strobing across my face, persistent as someone determined to get a good memorial photo. Then Jess's voice came through the comms.

"Frost-02, status—shit, this drop sensation is worse than I expected." Her voice had a tremor, but she was keeping it controlled, forcing out a hint of her usual humor.

"Shut up and focus on staying strapped in," I said.

"Frost-03, in position. Pod integrity normal, readings stable." Harvey's voice was steady as if he were reading a repair order, not free-falling through atmosphere.

"Frost-04, breathing stable," Maki's voice came through with the same flatness.

"Perception normal." Good. At least right now, all four of us could still speak in complete sentences. The pod's vibration suddenly became more erratic. The "Wind Shear Correction Active" line on my HUD jumped rapidly, streams of values scrolling past. I knew what that meant—irregular air currents outside were buffeting this metal can, the pod's systems desperately correcting attitude to avoid us hitting the surface at an angle that would turn us into flowers blooming on the ground.

"Heads up," I exhaled, keeping my voice low but clear.

"If the system doesn't auto-announce three seconds before contact, I call it. When you hear 'brace,' lock everything down—head low, back against padding. Don't give yourself extra fractures."

"Frost-02 copy," Jess said.

"I'll do my best to protect this precious skeletal structure."

"That structure isn't worth much on the market," I said.

"But the repair costs are high," she shot back. Harvey delivered a cold cut: "High cost doesn't necessarily mean worth fixing."

"Your current argument topics are genuinely motivational," she said. I stopped paying attention to them and focused on the HUD's altitude line dropping steadily. Time stretched in that strange space between short and long—logic knew it was only seconds, but my body felt like it had been falling for half a lifetime. At some point, the vibration began to regularize. The HUD warning switched from "Wind Shear Correction" to new text. Surface Approach Buffer System Standby I bit down hard.

"Brace," I said. No extra commands. No countdown. We all knew what was coming next. The pod dropped, the buffer system engaged, taking that upward surge of violence and breaking it into segments, hammering each one into our bones piece by piece. Teeth clenched, vision still shaking from the impact. I felt my stomach get yanked up, then compressed down. Then—"Pod contact," Harvey said first, voice controlled but steadier than before.

"Structure intact." The final heavy impact passed, vibration suddenly reduced by half. The HUD's red text jumped to new instructions. Landing Complete Surface Stability: Acceptable Pod Exit Conditions: Authorized Good. One breath of relief first. Now came the real work. I pressed the transmit key.

"Frost-01, touchdown," I said, voice still low.

"Three seconds—everyone call in."

"Frost 02, still alive. For the record, I now fucking hate physics."

"Frost 03, nominal." Harvey's voice was sharp as a blade edge.

"Frost 04, nominal. Outer heat rising, touchdown window shortened." Maki Kushima still sounded steady enough to be irritating. I keyed the transmit.

"Frost 01 copies. All units prep for landing roll call. Don't step on each other's lines—survive first." The pod slammed hard. This time was different. Not wind shear. The first attitude correction had finished, and the entire drop pod was committing to final descent. The white glare outside suddenly shattered, and the forward viewport finally gave me half a second of something I could actually read. Green. Black. Red. Not the pretty kind of green.

The wet, almost-black kind that looked thick enough to swallow you whole. Massive canopies, tangled vines, mud baked red by heat haze, and certain leaves in colors too vivid to be honest—the kind of vivid that waits for you to come closer. Rainforest. And not the polite, edge-of-the-park version that still pretends to have manners. The kind where you took one look and knew: lots of things living here, not many rules, and the ways to die weren't going to be dignified. The next second, impact hit. Not just one sound.

First a heavy slam, then a long sideways drag, then the whole pod went boom as it wedged into something solid. The harness bit into my shoulders hard enough to numb them. The back of my head nearly kissed the buffer plate. The breath in my chest got knocked loose by half. Warning lights strobed three times, then settled to amber. TOUCHDOWN COMPLETE POD ANGLE: 11 DEGREES EXTERNAL ATMOSPHERE: SHORT-TERM UNFILTERED EXPOSURE VIABLE / FILTRATION RECOMMENDED EXTERNAL TEMPERATURE: 43. 7°C HUMIDITY: 96% Perfect.

Barely on the ground and the planet was already shoving its worst face straight into mine. I didn't rush the hatch. I listened first. That matters. One of the dumber ways to die right after landing is treating yourself like a pop-top meal. Outside was the deep, muffled baseline of hot rainforest floor. Not wind—the sound of a whole layer of wet air pressing down on vegetation, muddy water seeping through root systems, something distant brushing against leaves and leaving friction behind.

Higher up, the occasional strange metallic resonance—not machinery, the kind of unnatural echo you only get when some big insect's wings clip thick foliage just right. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. No close-range impacts. No other teams yelling outside my pod. No plants currently trying to drag me up and roast me. Clear to open. I unlatched the first restraint and hit the manual release beside the hatch.

The moment the door cracked open, heat flooded in. Not just "hot air." More like someone had wrung out a wet towel that had been soaking in a greenhouse overnight—water and stench together, straight into your face. Mud, salt, rotting leaves, wet iron, fungus, and underneath it all, faint but deeply unpleasant, something sweet. Sweet smells don't mean good things out here. I pulled my mask up, flicked filtration to low, and shoved the hatch wide.

Outside was a patch of forest floor carved into chaos by massive buttress roots and fallen timber. My pod had punched into a slanted mud slope, the right half wedged between two root walls, the left side dragging an ugly scar through the earth. Overhead, the canopy was obscenely thick—daylight came down in broken scraps, turning the ground into something like a vat of green, dirty water. Check above first. Not paranoia. Protocol. I swept my eyes up and around.

Plenty hanging overhead—vines, aerial roots, broad wet leaves, and one section of abnormally thick, dark red growth coiled high between branches, surface looking scorched, bark mottled black-red. Strangler lava vine. Great. First thing I see is something that hauls people up to roast them. This planet had excellent manners. I keyed comms.

"Frost 01, touchdown. Pod at eleven degrees, egress possible. Perimeter is rainforest—high humidity, high heat, vine threats overhead. Don't stand around staring up like idiots. Sound off in order." Harvey came back first.

"Frost 03, touchdown. Thirty-two meters northeast of you. Ground's marginal but holdable, pod's strippable. No visible fauna—just a lot of plants pretending to be dead." Jess cut in right after.

"Frost 02, touchdown. Twenty-seven meters west, hung up on the edge of a mud pit. Undignified but structurally intact. Water sounds nearby—unclear whether it's drinkable or whether it drinks people." Maki came last.

"Frost 04, touchdown. Forty meters south-southeast. Atmosphere viable short-term, but spore and salt particulate running high. Two active vine signatures overhead. Old shell casings on the ground—don't step deep." Good. All four down. And not one of them hit dirt screaming. That already put us ahead of most teams. I stepped out—left foot first, testing the mud's load-bearing. Soft, but it held. Second step onto the buttress root beside it, body dropping low, using the pod shell to block half my silhouette.

Not worried about snipers. Worried about things I couldn't see getting a clean read on my outline.

"Same protocol as briefed," I said.

"Frost 03, strip what's usable. Frost 04, eyes on overhead and anything suspicious. Frost 02, don't touch the water source yet—give me a bearing. Everyone rally on my position in three minutes."

"Frost 02, water's bearing front-left, fifteen to twenty meters out. Smells a bit salty, a bit sweet." Jess paused.

"Personal experience tells me that description usually comes with a body count."

"Rare that your experience is actually useful," I said.

"Don't approach. Check the perimeter for bugs first."

"Copy, Frost 01. You're sounding more and more like the real thing today."

"You're talking exactly as much shit as always." While answering her, I started stripping my pod of everything worth taking. Outer thermal blanket, two sets of tie-downs, one emergency cutter, one standard concentrated water tube, one folding reflector panel. Back at port, this stuff looked like freebies. Out here, it was the difference between making it and not. Harvey was faster. Under thirty seconds and he was already hauling a stripped side panel over, dropping it with a clang, then checking my legs.

"Injured?"

"No."

"Sure?"

"Sure. You're annoying."

"Then you're fine." He glanced at where my pod had wedged.

"Don't try to shift this one. Root structure on the right is unstable—force it and the whole slope comes down."

"Got it." That was what I liked about Harvey. Not in any gross way—don't get excited. Just that his mouth might as well be sandpaper, but every word out of it did work. Maki arrived before Jess. She slipped through the gap between two buttress roots, moving light, barely disturbing the mud. Mask already up, short stylus-form environmental reader in hand, pack straps darkened by humidity. She didn't look at me first. She checked above the pod, then the ground.

"Overhead is clear for now," she said.

"Large specimen at your back-left, two o'clock, approximately twenty-five meters—calcified leaf margins, morphology consistent with juvenile or secondary-variant flycatcher patriarch. Recommend avoidance."

"Man-eating plants already rolling out the welcome wagon," I said. Maki looked at me.

"You okay?"

"You sound like you're running diagnostics on equipment."

"Your landing impact was the loudest." …Fair. Very Maki logic. Jess arrived last, wiping sweat off her forehead the moment she cleared the roots, looking like she'd just wrung herself out of a steam basket.

"Good news, the mud pit didn't eat me. Bad news, something next to it was trying way too hard to look friendly." She tilted her chin left.

"Shallow brackish pool, surrounded by plants that might as well be labeled 'come on, have a drink.' I didn't get close, but the sweetness was fake as hell."

"Logged." Maki was already marking her clipboard. I crouched and scratched a rough diagram in the mud with the cutter tip.

"Current position here." I tapped the scar my pod had left.

"Left flank has suspect water and plants—provisional no-go zone. Back-right slope is unstable, we don't use it. Buttress root section ahead is our first-ring cover. Questions?" Harvey looked around once and went straight to the point.

"Kill the drop signatures first. Four pods sitting in open ground is basically a flag."

"Agreed," I said.

"Frost 03 and 02, handle the ground scarring—keep it quiet. Frost 04, you're with me on first perimeter sweep. Twenty-meter radius, line of sight at all times." Jess raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, already doing mixed-gender—wait, I mean, paired patrols?" I looked at her.

"You want to be our first buried casualty?"

"I'm using humor to maintain unit cohesion."

"You're maintaining my urge to cause you harm." Maki had already turned away, clearly unwilling to participate in this low-nutrition conversation, dropping one flat line:"Three-minute loop. No extensions."

"Copy." I fell in behind her and added: "Any anomalies, report first. No solo heroics."

"Frost 02 copies. Relax, I only ever play the victim."

"Frost 03, copy," Harvey said. Maki and I moved out along the buttress root section, staying low. That kind of terrain is a headache—your sightlines get chopped to pieces. One second you think there's a clear path, next it's thick leaves, a curtain of aerial roots, or shadows that are too quiet. The ground wasn't the swallowing kind of mud, just the kind that grabbed your boot on every step and held it there, like it was testing how much you hated yourself. Gravity started making itself known around then too.

Not dropping you to your knees. Just making every piece of kit feel heavier—shoulder straps, hip pack, water bladder, knife sheath, all pulling down a little harder, reminding you that yes, even breathing cost extra here. Maki stayed half a step ahead to my right, moving steady, picking root edges and hard ground. Not weightless—the kind of steady where every footfall looked calculated. She raised her hand suddenly, two fingers pointing up. I stopped. A hanging vine overhead was swaying slightly.

Not the way wind moves a whole canopy—just one middle section shifting on its own, like something inside had redistributed its weight. I brought my breathing down. Maki stepped back slowly, voice barely above a murmur.

"Alive."

"I can see that."

"Moving slow. Hasn't locked onto us yet."

"Then let's not give it a reason." We angled away and skirted the area. Two steps clear, I caught a heavier wave of damp sweetness—like overripe fruit sealed in plastic and left to ferment. In a clean environment, that smell might mean food. Out here, it only meant alarm. I looked toward the source. In a shallow depression, there was water. And it looked even more like "come on, have a drink" than Jess had described.

Thin surface layer reflecting broken light, ringed by thick, fleshy leaves with inward-curling edges, green too fake to be honest. Scattered around the rim—fragments of hard shell that didn't belong to any plant. Not a water source. A stomach. I crouched, picked up a small stone, and tossed it at the edge of the water. Smack. The ring of leaves snapped shut in one motion, fast as clapping hands. Rows of calcified teeth flashed through the gap, the bite sharp enough that I felt it in the back of my neck.

Maki watched it, voice flat as always.

"Flycatcher patriarch."

"Yeah," I stood.

"Healthy appetite." She made a mark on her clipboard.

"No-go zone, logged." I nodded and turned to head back. Then Harvey's voice came through comms.

"Frost 03 to 01."

"Go."

"Ground scarring's almost handled, but we might not be first arrivals." He paused.

"I've got another team's landing drag-marks here, cutting northwest. At least three people, moving fast, not bothering to cover tracks." I frowned.

"Fresh?"

"Very. Mud's still seeping back in." Jess cut in.

"Frost 02 addendum—I just caught metal-on-metal contact, front-left, distant. Not natural. Not much, but it's not us." Perfect. Five minutes on the ground. Plants trying to eat people, another team already moving around nearby. Completely standard opening for day one. I turned to look at Maki. She was clearly running the same numbers, eyes a degree colder than before.

"Northwest bearing puts them roughly at the entry corridor for the resource-dense zone," she said.

"If they're pushing that direction fast, it's about to get crowded."

"Then we don't sit at the first table," I said. Harvey's voice over comms: "Rally?"

"Rally," I ordered immediately.

"All units back to pod site. Move in thirty seconds. Frost 02, don't follow the sound. Frost 03, hold onto the stripped panels and cordage. Frost 04, watch overhead on return—we're relocating."

"Frost 02 copies. Shame, I was genuinely curious which team was about to become a cautionary tale."

"Focus on not becoming someone's viewing experience yourself." Maki and I cut back fast. Even running, she stayed clean—short stride, consistent rhythm, picking root edges and hard ground. Someone like that in your squad becomes very easy to start trusting without meaning to. Dangerous. Especially for someone like me. Harvey and Jess had already buried the worst of the drag scars by the time we got back—at least it no longer looked like four iron cans had detonated in sequence.

All four of us together, I didn't waste time.

"Left flank has a flycatcher patriarch—no-go zone. One active vine overhead. Northwest has a fresh team cutting toward what's probably the resource corridor. We're not following." Jess wiped sweat off her jaw.

"So where are we going?" I checked the HUD. The official shelter coordinates were live—a cold little waypoint sitting deeper in the rainforest, blinking at me like: come on in, we've got bunks, water, and interpersonal conflict. We've got everything. Shit. I pushed the marker to the corner of my display.

"Southeast first," I said.

"Clear the drop-density overlap zone. Find a short-term hide, then deal with water. Don't rush the official site—the first wave charging in there isn't the bravest. It's the loudest." Harvey nodded. Jess shrugged. Maki looked at me for one brief moment.

"Works," she said. Not agreement. Confirmation. I steadied my breathing and took one last look around.

"All right. Frost, reform. 03 on point, 04 watching overhead, 02 left flank, I'm rear and navigation. From here on, nobody moves like they just fell out of a drop pod." Jess's mouth pulled at one corner.

"Copy, Frost 01. That almost sounded like a real person talking."

"Thanks. You almost sounded like a real team member." I chopped my hand down.

"Move." That was how Team 144 took its first real steps into the Evaporation Forest. No swelling score. No rallying cry. Nobody stepping forward to say we were all getting out together. Just four people with packs on their backs, in forty-three degrees and ninety-six percent humidity, mud grabbing at every step, live vines overhead, carnivorous plants on the flanks—doing their best to walk like they still intended to be alive at the end of it.