X

Jason Alester

Ryan got up from the pilot's chair and stretched his arms.

"Ok, we will be arriving at the Hadean orbit within 20 minutes. The plan is to use the landing pod to defend to the surface and find Jas. Then we come back to the ship, and go home." he said.

The moon Hades glowed with a bright red. The surface consisted of iron. The volcanoes on the surface were constantly erupting, releasing thick gases into the atmosphere. The M612 approached the moon from behind. The first glimpse they got of it was a reddish arc caused by the refraction of light by the moon's atmosphere. As they emerged from the shadow of the moon, the arc expanded into the moon. It just like how the engines of the space-plane appeared peaceful from a distance. Only when you look closely do you see the hellish surface.

The radio in the ship crackled for a second until a voice came out of it -

"Guys! Guys it's me Jas. I have sent you my coordinates in this transmission. Come qui-"

Ryan stood still. He had to process this. Was it really Jas? Or was it a trap by Jas' captor. He thought. He deliberated.

"Yo! Zack! Listen to this!" He called, playing back the audio once more.

Zack listened. He heard a voice that he heard more than Ryan heard. He recognised it, and confirmed with Ryan. "It is really him."

Ryan was overjoyed to hear this. He collected the audio from the transmission and noticed that the crests and peaks of the sound waves were false. In reality the audio was a code. Each spike was a 1 and each crest was a 0. Put it all together and you get a coordinate. Using this algorithm, Zack decoded the message and entered the landing point on the landing pod's computer.

As soon as the ship dropped into orbit, the team put on the spare space suits and headed into the landing pod. Ryan fumbled with the controls and figured how to detach it. The pod looked like a glass sphere attached to a cuboid. The glass was made using a new polymer that was both transparent and hard. The pod turned to the crimson surface and flew downwards at the speed of sound. Just before touching the surface, it slowed down to a landing speed and dropped to the ground breaking the the rocky surface as it landed.

Ryan opened his tracker. The coordinates sent by Jas were a few feet away. He along with the others put on radiation suits along with an air filter. They opened the airlock and a hot gust of wind hit them. A few feet away was a tall box. They slowly walked towards it and noticed a button on it. Zack pushed the button. The box opened into an elevator which opened to them. The group reluctantly got in. As the doors closed, peaceful elevator music played.

"Notes to self, if I ever become a supervillain, never use elevator music." said Sam.

After the elevator opened, what the team saw was a wreckage. Though the elevator size that the are was pressurised and has breathable air, they didn't believe it for a second. The room they walked into was a huge hall. The wires hung out of the wall, the floor was misshapen. A huge crack ran across the tiles like a fork of lightning. The walls around them were built to store military gear. The shelves attached to the walls had opened up. A few had broken guns in them and few had rotting food in them. Pieces of the ceiling had fallen to the ground. Among the wreckage was an unused exoskeleton. It looked like it would fit a well built person and definitely not a nerdy teenager. Ryan immediately wanted to take the thing apart. He was an engineer in the making. He decided to take away the weapons from it just in case.

"So there is a sniper with some ammo left, dual pistol sets, armour, spare air pistol, plasma cannon and..." he looked at the gloves placed where the arms of the exoskeleton should be "gloves"

"Dual pistols are mine" said Alex.

"I call sniper" said Sam.

"Cannon's mine. It looks like it's from Halo." said Zack.