Commander Jo Marshall - All Things Gateside (Part III)
Jo Marshall
((Past the Outer Marker, Gateside Dimension))
The first thing Jo noticed was the light.
Not the absence of it—there was light, of a sort—yet the quality of it was wrong in a way her brain kept trying to correct and couldn't. It came from no particular direction and cast no particular shadows. It simply existed, in diffuse and bruised crimson, faintly luminescent, as if air had been lightly pickled in mild radiation. Back home, light had the decency to have a source. There it felt like part of the space, in the same way pressure was a property of deep water.
The second thing she noticed through the viewscreen was the sky. Carmine, dark, shifting as though suspended in solution. Not a liquid, nor a solid, nor a sky in any sense she had a word for in either tongue she was used to. Stars, sun, and horizon blotted out in deep restless red, pressing down from on high.
The shuttlecraft hummed around them, various readings ticking off as it scrolled lazily through this new dimensional reality. Atmospheric conditions, radiation parameters, among other sensor scans routinely processed—yet everything was anomalous. Quite in awe of the whole thing, the weird and the wonderful unfolding around them, Jo found her voice in the quiet.
Marshall: ::Quietly,:: Well, there it is.
Fenn / Kovar: Response
The ground below looked firm enough, in dusky red rock scattered across the surface, laced through with dark vines threading between rock formations. It looked navigable, but there were certainly no landmarks worth the moniker. How were they supposed to find anything in the murk? She glanced across, pulling up her own display and squinting at the readings doing their best under difficult circumstances.
Marshall: Sensors are going to have a fun time in this. What are you both getting?
Fenn / Kovar: Response
The murk beyond sat thick and unhelpful, and whatever was out there wasn't advertising itself yet. Jo let an elbow rest on the console edge as she turned over Quinn's briefing in her brain.
Marshall: There's supposed to be a Kobliad structure out here somewhere, if the briefing's worth anything. Either of you got anything that looks like it didn't grow by itself?
Fenn / Kovar: Response