Milo was shaken from his contemplation of the rolling dunes by a familiar voice. Happy to have his rather bleak train of thought derailed, he smiled over at Lieutenant Aarom, staggering slightly when the bigger man clapped him on the shoulder, but chuckling. 
"I suppose I could be worse." He replied to Laytn, straitening his large glasses. "Just trying to focus on the idea that we'll all be going back into space soon, I hope." He spread his arms to indicate his anemic frame. "Gravity never agreed with me all that much, know what I mean?"
Hearing an ill-used voice behind him, the young supply officer turned around to see Lieutenant Joshua Gordon and, a little ways behind him, Lt. Cmdr. Greg McKnight coming toward him. He smiled at them, shrugging at Joshua's question.
"Bigger they are, the more shade they cast, and in this heat I'll take what I can get!" Milo called, saluting his superior before thrusting his hands in his pockets. "And this has been a blast, yeah! I mean look at this exciting, varied landscape!"
The Lieutenant gestured out at the rocky expanse of the depression slope, stretching off into the distance to where the hazy, golden shapes of sand dunes could be seen rolling along the horizon. He supposed it was majestic, but after three months of seeing pretty much the same terrain day in and day out, Milo was fairly desensitized to it.
He glanced toward where a pack of mechanics were clustered around the disabled No.5 Samson, moving aside to allow one of the convoy's Zaku Tanks to lift the heavy truck off the sand, expediting the removal of the tire, which had been gashed open by something sharp in the road which no-one had yet been able to find. Hanging off the back of the truck was a similarly punctured tire, and on No.4 ahead of it hung another; Zeon forces were very conscientious about collecting their trash on Earth.
But this would make the third blown tire today. Even if Zeon tires weren't as good as the Federation's, this had to be some kind of record on sandy terrain.
[i]Maybe there's a lot of jagged flint around here.[/i] He mused.
Milo shook his head and turned away from the repairs.
"I gotta say, though." He continued, turning back to his friends. "I almost have to think the Earth [i]itself[/i] wants us to stop and look at the scenery! What's this, the third flat today?"