DROP
Bastion was a 'garden world'. No terraforming required, it was a near perfect gravitational pull of point nine-three gee. It sported two moons, the larger Haven was a quarter of the size of the planet while the second, Holdout was only a thousand kilometers in diameter and twice the distance from the planet than Haven was. It was mined to hell, becoming a miniature Omega becoming a cesspool of criminals and mercenaries.
The map of the planet and its moons sat next to Ryain's head as he brought them from their ship and into the atmosphere.
Thick clouds blanked the world, giving them a terrible view of the surface. Quinn leaned down over Ryain's shoulder, trying to get a better look as the black of space turned into the light blue shimmer of Bastion's sky. As the descended he could see the tall, imposing shapes of thunder heads miles high. The white crackle of lighting could be seen lancing through them.
Ryain glanced back. "You all might want to strap in for this."
Quinn rested a gloved hand on the pilot's headrest; he leaned closer to the screens. Ryain's eyes focused on him, "That goes double for you, Mal."
Quinn's head bobbed up and down, "Right." Christ that's one hell of a storm. He met the gaze and moved towards the back of the Kodiak and saw his team sitting there quietly. He settled into the seat next to Ethena.
She shot him a wary glance but said nothing.
"Problem?"
"Please tell me we're not landing in that."
"We're going to fly right over it." He replied. Plus you wanted to come anyway. He remembered how Nichols pulled him aside and tried to lay it into him on why he should be going. Quinn repeated everything Ethena had told him in their discussion, and then some. The kid didn't want to hear that but he accepted it with reluctance, a few hours with the Doctor would do him good. Maybe he would open up a bit and get whatever was nagging him off his chest. "Right Ryain?"
The pilot said nothing but Quinn saw his talon like hands working the controls. "We're in the atmosphere," he said after a few moments. "Weather sats are showing a minor weather disturbance over the Cerberus site."
"How 'minor'?" Ethena perked up.
"Tropical cyclone that's battering the northern continent, there's warning for all settlements in the region." He must be reading a weather report, Quinn noted. Ryain continued. "Sustained winds of one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour, four meter surge and some vortexes probable."
Tornadoes... Quinn hadn't seen one since Earth, ripping through his town on the mid-west plains of North America. His father had a farm there and every summer it would get dicey but they managed to survive. The wheat harvest, not so much. It was the reason his parents went off world to Eden Prime, the weather wasn't as unstable.
Quinn brought himself back to the present. "Get us on the ground, Ryain, in one piece if you will."
"Are you kidding me, Mal? When the hell did we start keeping promises?"
Ryain frowned at the view screen; it was now shrouded in gray, with heavy sheets of rain hitting the camera with wind enforced fury. His angular fingers tapped on the controls, the computer attempted to compensate for each strong gust, it was failing miserably.
To his right and left were smaller view screens, they showed the ships and crew statuses. Ethena was in the yellow; her heart beat going hard and fast. Quinn was in the green and the twins. Are they asleep? He shook his head and looked back at the weather reports. Wind gusts were increasing at one twenty-five kilometers per hour and growing stronger. The gang doesn't need to know that…
He felt his stomach slam into his throat as a gust hit, Damn it. He had flown through a lot of storms in his life time, even though he came from a drier garden world. He had been to the Salarian home world and flew in one of their rainy season storms; it made this look like a walk in the Presidium.
It had been so long ago he had forgotten and wished for the briefest of moments that their lives were not in his hands.
The ship tumbled to the right, he threw one hand up to brace against the bulkhead. The ships virtual intelligence struggled to right the ship.
"Hold on back there," He said over his shoulder.
The craft was thrown forward and back, he pushed the shuttle hard trying to underneath the cloud cover.
With a flick of his wrist he changed his main screen to infrared, it bathed everything in a rainbow of colors, and he saw the coastline as clear as day and the ground below just as well. Trees however would be a problem, but they were still twenty-thousand feet up and falling.
A finger of plasma raced from the heavens to the earth below, it showed up as a stark redline in a sea of green.
The turbulence slowed as if the lightning had given them the A-OK to land. "We're through the clouds," His words sounded horse as if he was yelling the whole time. "ETA, two minutes."
"Dandy," Quinn muttered.
"It was like bugging out of Earth, nothing to it." Ryain nervously repeated, "Nothing to it."
The Kodiak settled on the wet earth just half a klick from the Cerberus facility, Ryain noted that the scanners wouldn't have picked up a damn thing in this storm and they'd be fine –no one would come looking. That didn't stop Quinn from quietly fuming under his helmet, looking at his pilot he saw Ethena propped up against the bulkhead supply crates, trying not to heave.
"Be ready to move." Quinn brushed past her and out into the forest clearing.
The two Krogan stood there, eyes searching the forest with a predatory gaze. They didn't seem rattled by the landing, and as thunder boomed and rolled across planet, they were not shaken. Hardy beasts to the core, Quinn noted.
He approached, Wrek looked down at him. "I don't smell anything." His nostrils flared. Wreav said nothing.
"That's a good thing," The Asari walked out of the ship composed, a cloak draped over her shoulders. "If they knew we were coming they'd probably abandon the facility or shoot us down… And not in that order."
Quinn agreed with a nod.
"Wreav, you're staying here." Quinn let the thought brood in his head. They didn't need two krogan, one is enough. He also knew that Wreav wouldn't mind.
Wreav murmured something and moved back to the ship, Wrek nodded approvingly. "Alright, we're going to approach from the south, recon outskirts before moving in. Simple stuff. Once inside we find the control room, download any data and get the hell out, this place will probably get a nuke from orbit after we report back in." Or don't report back in.
He shouldn't be telling them this, they knew it all too well but it helped Quinn keep his own head on straight. They did a COM check and everything was in the green. A quick call back to Ray and Wreav before the three man team vanished into the woods like ghosts.