With a "thud", a small dark coloured ship, the Bloomburg  by designation, suddenly popped out of hyperspace in a new system. Its sharp and pointed prow knifed though space and it loomed over the system. Small in length, at 485 meters, she was a new model battle frigate keeled five years earlier in the Valtrax system. The triple main thrusters fired orange and red as it began a slow turn towards the small green and grey planet approaching ever closer in the foreground of the picture. All was quiet. All was calm.

            “Shields reporting in!” Drive Reporting in! Communications at ready! Ship computer online!“Report complete! The bridge officer declared at the fore of the ship. He was a stout man with a large frown and high cheekbones, turning forward and looking up at the captain’s chair perched above him. “Millimeter sensor scan complete, no life out there in space, Captain. Swerving around in a large leather chair, a slender man with a captain’s insignia embroidered carefully on a pressed grey shirt smiled and raised his left arm. “Thank you stations for reporting in. Precise and efficient… my my, you do learn. Please bring us to 2, 0, ,5 heading towards the planet and prepare a boarding party. These natives signaled to us, and just because they’re shy doesn’t mean we can’t go down there and say hello.” 

             He smiled, and the bridge lost some of the normal tension aroused from the ranks of military command. Commander Walker Jay Peterson, old and greying by military standards, with a long but trimmed grey moustache and several lines on his older face, briskly strode forward out of his chair to take a commanding place at the front of the bridge. “There is real life out there, now, we must find it." This diligent and competent commander, a retired admiral, wielded great respect from his crew and had commanded a battle force during the Sy3th project crisis 50 years earlier. He was on the “life search” tour pioneered 30 years before by the High Martian Council. Undertaken in a period of peace after the Martian Wars, the project called for the interstellar search of complex life, but had yielded few results to that day. “Prepare a boarding party and descend to the planet to do a ground search of the western mountain range at 02:00 hours please. “He commanded in his powerful voice that boomed over the bridge. “Maybe, we will get lucky this time”.

Aaron Horth descended from the white shuttle onto a rocky plateau surrounded a variety of small shrubs and trees. He whistled, holding a small laser gun in one hand while beckoning with his other. Opening up a hologram transmitter, he informed there the bridge of the landing, the clambered nimbly into the small buggy of which he was a pilot. The vehicle, the most prolific one of Mars’s forces, was a agile ground and air exploring/battle model, equipped with twin plasma cannons capable of delivering heavy and light bullets, of two different heats and colours. This buggy was a powerful weapon and tool in the expeditions’ arsenal, and would be exploring in  moderate numbers the surface of this rocky planet. He powered up his reflector orb, electric transmission and infrared scanner, and trundled off into the lower areas of a nearby valley. The forest he came upon was dark, dense, and totally unforgiving,. As new pilot, this was his search quadrant, and he was required to examine it, but,...something was wrong, he could sense it in the air. This wasn't like before... his sensors were jamming, and the infrared camera had a lower range than normal. Still, enough checked out for him to get the green go-ahead, so he proceeded over the landscape. But, with a sigh, he thought “I have a bad feeling about this”.