The deck of the light carrier is warm and humid, a welcome change after the dry cold of stasis. Dim, recessed lighting glows a gentle amber to let your eyes adapt to seeing once more. The stasis headache is a miserable bastard – you’ll have to reassess your hydration cocktail, shout at the autodoc for that one – but tea and a seat will help. For now, you are the only ones awake on this deck. The artificial dawn is yours to enjoy. You pad barefoot from your roomette to an observation blister, find a couch, and sit. The dome above you populates, void blooming across an opaque hexagonal field like ink dropped on a blank page.<br/><br/>Space. You sit alone on a soft, semi-gimballed couch, the vacuum of space projected around you. Your gut twists and the old fear sends a bolt of adrenaline to the back of your throat, but it passes; you know you’re still inside the observation blister. A jade and white disk hangs on the velvet field above you. Hercynia. Big as a dinner table. What do you know about the place? Not much, and the packet was slim: early testing ground for the mechanized chassis, hostile local fauna, isolated for centuries before being forgotten, rediscovered and snapped up by a high-risk firm with a few other colonies under its belt. Apparently there was a local indigenous population that the hi-ri colonists didn't know about, which led to some legal tangle between SSC and Union. A mess, in other words. An emerald mess.<br/><br/>You order the ship to play the sound of rain. You lay back upon the couch, tea on your chest – it’s still a little too hot – and float, surrounded by stars. You’ll be there in a few days. Around you, the others are waking up. Systems organic and synthetic cycling to life. Some of you might not return to this little ship. Maybe you’ll die down on that world. But right now you have the sound of rain. The hush of broad fronds rasping against their neighbors. The background hiss of air. The comfortable gravity.<br/>Peace.<br/><br/>Your slate pings in your pocket. The amber light floods the periphery of the blister. Your aurals hum a notification tone.<br/>Ah well. Time to go to work.