October 15th, 0812, 1932 (Local time), Tau Ceti Five
Forming up the Squad heads into the hills and low-mountains to the north. The Map-Board shows a basic matching trail that should get you to our destination in six days if there are no problems.
Fairly soon the Squad starts seen their first trees on planet; they looks something like a cross between pine and palm trees. The branches run from almost the base of the tree to its upper reaches, while the leaves look more like those found on palm trees. Again, the trees as with all the vegetation so far has a yellows tint to it… even the dirt seems to have a slightly more yellow coloration then it should. You get the feeling that you are going to get tired of this pretty fast.
The two Canine troopers gain all kinds of new smells and senses within the first few hours… and all the troops are affected to a lesser degree… this is a living breathing planet and there are hundreds if not thousands of living little things on every square foot that the Squad passes. It is exciting and disturbing at the same time.
Most of the wild life you see are more of the bat-bird things that you have seen before and small borrowing type rat things. By midday the trees become thicker and you start getting into your first real forest (even if it is an alien one). Screeches, hoots, cries, and other noises assault the Squad as the animals seem to greet them.
After a long days march, the team strikes camp and sets their watches. The noises of the forest seem to only get louder with the coming darkness and for that first night no one gets very good sleep.
While radio silence is to be maintained with the Lt. and dropship, there is a daily messages to be sent up to the orbiting ship UT.S.S. EMORY L. BENNETT . Pedia sends these quite, tight beam coded messages up to the ship. This message is mostly just a short "all's well" and almost impossible to detect unless you are directly above.
The next few days, the routing is the same… march, eat, march some more, camp, eat, send the message, try to sleep, awake up and repeat.
No larger wildlife is seen during this trip… a few large pig like animals are seen a few times but they avoid the Squad and cause no trouble. Once, on the fifth night, a VERY large animal roars and knocks over a few trees about 100 feet from the Squad's camp, but it does not come any closer and after a few moments it wanders off… but no one gets a good night sleep after that…
On the morning of the sixth day, moving through the rougher mountains now, the Squad's Map-Board indicates that the Squad is very close to the mine now. There are three main ways that the team can get into the camp from this area… the first is a winding path that leads up the valley where the mine is and is fairly narrow and winding. It might offer some cover from the mine, until the very end, but the opening into the valley is fairly low and comes up bellows its elevation. The second one is a bit rougher and requires some climbing, but would allow the Squad to approach the mine and valley from above and offers some good cover along the way. The third one is to come up through a died riverbed that is partly underground. It is a longer trip but would provide a lot of cover (but it would also be the easiest to defend if the rioting prisoners have thought about defense).
If the Squad wish to take an extra day they can move around to the north side of the mining valley and come at it from that side. The valley extended north a long way, and is fairly heavily forested and the Squad could move though it and come down onto the mine's spaceport and small storage building.
[occ]OK up to you now how to approach the Mine[/occ]
