Semper Fi above the spotty cloud cover until Vallery patches in the landing coordinates. Then he plunges into the planet’s atmosphere, into a steady, driving drizzle that fogs up our external screens and leaves us flying blind because he’s going too fast. “I hate it here already,” he mutters. The Semper Fi is small and the nav deck is merely an extension of the cockpit, so I’m sitting where a co-pilot would on the carrier, all my nav screens right here in front of me, but we still wear headsets and when he speaks, I hear his words echo deep within me. Parker and Shanley are strapped down behind us, in the tiny corridor that leads from the cockpit to the crew quarters. Twin benches line the walls back there, and rigging keeps the shocks and bumps of a landing to a minimum. As we hit a pocke
