This part is where they land and run into a big problem on the surface. It'll probably be a few chapters before they meet the natives while they recover and set up camp.
"Alright guys, get on the shuttle. We're ending the burn soon and will enter the orbit of whatever's close, so hold on. " There was a lurch as the ship decelerated and stopped moving. I was still on the bridge with the bridge crew while the rest of the crew boarded the last shuttle. The shuttle could carry 50 people and had four plasma cannons on it, two on top and two on the underside. Our plan was to board the shuttle, get the crew into the in atmosphere pods, which were basically paramotors with survival kits attached, fly down, eject the pods, and hopefully land safely. In case we didn't, the rest of the crew would be safely away and able to restart the species. "ARC, you were right. There is a moon here, and it looks have life. Deploy the drone and set us in an orbit around the moon. "
The drone was a unit that entered an atmosphere, sampled the air, and determined if it was habitable or not. A few minutes later, a report came back that confirmed that the air was breathable, but the oxygen levels were a bit low and would take some adjusting to get used to them. "Alright, air is doable, bridge crew, get to the shuttle. Let's fly down there and get set up. "
The shuttle only needed six people to fly properly, so the other six bridge crew members joined the rest of them in the pods. "Engines online, we are exiting Hope now. " A few minutes later we were entering the atmosphere of Pandora. We got lower and prepared to drop the pods from the bottom of the ship. "Pod doors should be open now. Rendezvous at the landing site. "
"Sir, the pod doors aren't opening. " said someone through the intercom
"Uh oh. Hold on!" There was a small explosion as engine 2 and 3 decided to stop working.
"Activate hover domes and landing gear!"
"Hoverdomes online! Landing gear unoperational!"
"That's okay, we can float, woah!" the ship pitched forward and the nose of the ship hit the tree canopy.
"Front hover domes offline! Reverse thrust unavailable, we're going to crash!" The bottom of the ship started to scrape the trees. The other two hover domes gave out and the whole ship crashed down, slid for a quarter mile and rolled 60 degrees to the left before coming to a rest. I stood up and looked around. The glass had shattered and I was still in the console chair, but everything was at a weird angle. There was a crash above and to my right, and I could barely tell what it was when it slammed into me and carried me with it as it slid down and crashed into the side of the ship, throwing me out of it and onto the ground outside. I blacked out when i hit the ground.