First opening for Fallen

The ships communication circuit blared, "Make conditions for atmosphere landings. Secure all equipment. All hands return to their racks."

Avi thought that the voice was loud enough not to require the klaxon that followed, but they always arrived in pairs. She was already strapped into her rack and had been since they had broken orbit. She was trying to read, trying to focus on something other than her environment, trying not to think about what came next: the shaking, the rattling, that deafening noise the hull made as it burned through the atmosphere, the silence (the silence that always made her think something had gone wrong), then that stomach thing where her insides shifted and pressed against her more firmly anchored organs as the ship’s thrusters finally started to battle gravity, and then that final thud.  Not too much longer now and it would all be over.

Ouch. Her head smacked the bunk above her— again. She had stopped bracing against the acceleration a little too late— again. One day she'd get that right. It had been more landings than she could remember now and she still didn't feel like she was improving, but at least they were on the ground.

When the main berthing lights came back on, she unstrapped, secured her equipment from its storage place and moved to the ships aft lock to wait for her squad to form. As she waited, her least favorite member of the squad approached, Corporal Hendricks.

"What’s up, bootcamp," he said, “ready for a little action?”

“I’m ready,” she said.

“I don’t know, you look a little pale. Sure you’re ready for the real deal?”

“I’m ready,” she repeated. She tried to look confident, but she wasn’t sure she had pulled it off. Hendricks, as always, was determined to be a jerk. Determined to scare her and make her feel unsure of herself. They both knew there wouldn’t be any action today. There was never any action. They had been scouting these sectors for months now and they’d never found anything more than evidence of other scouting units. The enemies scouting units to be sure, but still, no big deal.