“I did no such thing, you blithering nitwit,” the companion replied crossly, stepping through the gate into ground (ostensibly) unsullied by the foot of man until they very moment.

Her callsign was Meteor; a name chosen for her by her colleagues rather than one she’d chosen herself, but over time it had grown into a comfortable enough fit.  She was a bare slip of a thing next to Enki’s sturdy warrior’s bulk; barely more than a meter and a half tall and built like a girl who’d forgotten to go to class on the day they handed out puberty, Meteor was not a very imposing figure at all.  She was dressed more for a camping trip than a danger-fraught venture into the wild unknown, in a set of rugged cargo pants, a fleece shirt, a rainproofed poncho, a set of hiking boots, and a rather silly-looking floppy-brimmed fishing hat.  Meteor had threatened seven years of her personal attentions to anyone who laughed at her hat; no one had laughed at her hat.  The only concession she’d made to the potentially hazardous nature of the Survey Corps’ first-through missions was the sword belt around her waist, bearing her smallsword, one case of the steel marbles, and two cases of the steel darts she occasionally toyed with.

The scene she’d emerged into hardly seemed to warrant such martial precautions.  Indeed, Enki looked quite out of place in all his bristling military so-called splendor amidst the idyllic morning woodland, the sun streaming through the trees overhead in the sort of richly golden beams artists went out of their way to paint…but Meteor knew better than that.  Even as she’d told Enki off, her [i]Mind’s Eye[/i] was open and searching, scrutinizing the area around them for a few hundred meters in every direction, including up and down.  For all that it looked like something out of a Roufus’ Trails commercial, this was an alien world.  Unexplored, unbroken, untamed.  There was no safety here save that which they ensured for themselves.

“Command, the world is obviously life-bearing,” Meteor said, adding her own take on Enki’s report.  “No sign in the immediate vicinity of sapient species.  Will commence ten-kilometer sweep in preparation for the initial survey.  Recommend the survey team bring their civilian cameras if they can find somewhere to hide them in time; the place really is quite picturesque, they’ll probably want to take a few illicit holos to hang in their offices somewhere,” she finished with a faint smirk.

“Copy that, Meteor.  Keep us apprised.  A reminder to all Survey Corps field personnel: current ongoing exploration operations are [i]classified[/i]; all materials relating to newly discovered worlds, [i]including[/i] civilian holocam shots, are…”

Meteor tuned out Survey Command’s injunction with a wicked little smile – right before whipping a compact, high-end civilian holocam out of one of the ‘dart’ cases on her belt and snapping a few stills of the woods around her.

“Forethought and planning always triumph in the end,” Meteor announced to no one in particular, immensely satisfied with herself.  Enki could only shake his head.  “Did you have to throw the rest of the team under a bus like that?”

“If they’re nice to me I’ll share some of mine with them,” Meteor responded.  “Perk of being on the first-through team.  All right, let’s get on it.  A ten-kilometer radius is hardly going to sweep itself.”