Senjen gave a quick look at what their sensors were telling them about the environment below. “Let’s see...temperature on the dark side is not too far above absolute zero, but no atmosphere, so the vacuum will be a fine insulator for you. Initial scans show the planet’s crust is rich in heavy elements and metals. Very dense, overall. It’s gravitational pull is a little under twice that of Korit, so be ready to deal with that. Radiation on the daylight side is intense, as expected, but the planet shields the far side pretty well. Your suits should be more than enough for the background radiation, and it’s not nearly enough to fry my electronics.” He spun his body around to face Jess. “You do have a suit, right?”

“Obviously. I was expecting this job to be EVA salvage; I packed it with my things.” Jess moved past Senjen, then braced herself against the nearest wall before shoving Senjen out of the way. Since he was unsupported, she was actually able to push his relatively massive body away. On his part, he simply accepted his new, slowly spinning trajectory. “Damn, don’t like that gravity, though. Those crates ain’t exactly lightweight. Would’ve been easy to push ‘em through space, but now they’re going to be twice as heavy.”

“Then I guess it’s good you brought a friend with more muscle than a Tindrel and unlimited stamina.” Senjen answered. He made a motion as if flexing, despite the fact that his plating was rigid. 

This time, Jess did not mirror his levity. “Maybe, depending on the state of the ship. Could still be hard to get it out if it’s a wreck. Though if it’s [i]too[/i] much of a wreck, then the cargo probably wouldn’t even be intact to begin with.”

“Well, let’s not think like that. Like Light said, it might even end up as a rescue mission. If not...do we even need the crates? Could we just unpack them and move over the cargo like that?” He asked. 

Jess paused a moment, staring at the console. “Eh, could work. Our cargo hold has enough radiation shielding for the components. And it’s not like we’ll be sticking around long after we have them. I guess we’ll just see what it looks like on the ground.”

[hr]

Heading down to the planet’s surface, they could see that the freighter had at least been in a position to choose a sensible landing site. They had set down in a wide, flat, open field that was more dusty than rocky. That said, it still looked to have been a hard landing. There was some debris from the ship scattered in a short line behind it where it had slid across the ground, but it was mostly intact. 

“Okay, not...the worst.” Jess remarked. “Ship doesn’t look like it’s powered, though. No distress signal, nothing.”

Now that they were under the rather substantial pull of gravity, Senjen kept himself on the floor. He could still climb even under these circumstances, but his falling body would be about twice as dangerous now if he made a mistake. “We probably wouldn’t be able to detect it if they were rationing power to a safe room. Not from here, anyway. If we’re going in to investigate, we should probably be careful not to crack them open to the vacuum.”

It was up to Light where to land and what other precautions to take. The area around the crash site was all open and flat, while the nearest surface feature was a crater about half a kilometer away. Although they had not detected any yet, they did need to be cautious about other potential scavengers or pirates in the system.