Scene 2: A Doorway to the Heavens

"Alright, listen up. Hydrate and take five. I don’t want anyone going down from heat exhaustion before we even get started." Once more she adjusted the grip on her rifle, scanning the horizon. They could use the time to keep the MALP in sight, maybe they could collect a probe of the strange tissue with it. She looked at the overgrown shrooms again and rubbed her hands together absentmindedly.

As soon as possible she radioed in, briefly described the situation and their findings, then added:"Command, no movement, no signs of activity - biological or otherwise. We'll proceed." Static hissed in her earpiece, then the distant voice of mission control came through. Rodriguez crouched near a cluster of calcified plant life, careful not to touch it. The MALP might be able to run a biological scan - chemical composition, radiation levels, biological markers and the like. From where she was right now, the place still looked dead - the kind of dead that suggested something had taken the life from it somehow, not just the slow decay of time.

"Once MALP scans the zone, we move west along the ridge towards these mountains. That gives us elevation and line of sight over the valley. If anything’s moving out there, we’ll see it before it sees us. Agreed?"

"Sounds good to me.", Elias says readjusting his bag looking towards the mountains.

Asher salutes to Rodriguez, "Understood."

As she checks in with mission control, he does take the moment to drink deeply from his canteen before putting it away.

"That is a good plan, but we should check in on your health first. Maybe medical should check your hands and eyes, just to be sure there are no health changes?"

"We'll have time for that in a bit." She didn't feel bad or even strange and they hadn't really accomplished anything yet.

West it is then!, says Elias with a smile.

She slowed the pace slightly, one fist raised, and the team followed suit without a word.

She keyed her comms.
"Team, hold position. Visual contact, south-southeast. Unknown object."

She knelt, bracing one elbow on her knee, and raised her goggles toward the anomaly. The massive fungal stalk was unusually tall, its cap split at odd angles. And there—fluttering from the cap or perhaps impaled into it—was something geometric.

No... artificial.
Not natural. Not organic.

The shape caught the sunlight in a way no biological tissue should. Angles too regular. Edges too precise. Like a torn flag or banner, partially shredded by time, its fabric riddled with age but unmistakably made.

"Asher, Elias, get eyes on that structure at my ten o’clock—confirm what I’m seeing. If that’s manmade, or even tool-made, it changes the mission profile."

Waiting for her team to answer, Rodriguez started formulating her next radio message. She'd tell Command that they had visual contact with a potential artificial structure or object embedded in local biomass. She'd upload the coordinates and request further instruction.

She paused, taking one more long look at the flag-thing as it swayed, impossibly slow, in a place with no wind.

Whatever had killed this place—maybe it hadn’t left...

With the report of the explosive atmosphere, he takes note to be particularly careful about using a flashbang or stun grenade. Who knows if the sparks would result in more than a distraction. More concerning, would they be able to set up a fire?

Asher is also fairly alarmed by the abnormal structures on the large stalk, but is also a little excited. Intelligent life on this planet?

He grabs a set of binoculars himself and covers Elias as they find another fungus to take cover behind and observe the structure.

Elias follows Asher as they move into cover. He also pulls out his binoculars and trains it at the strange structure.

Veronica makes the call, ready to proceed and check out the structure in front of them.