// FIELD LOG // HAZE TEAM 032a // DAY 2 OF ROTATION // OPERATOR: MARIC, SYLOS // // LOCATION: FORWARD BEACON BERYL Suit friction is louder than the wind today. That means the air's thick again. Less hiss, more drag. Atmo says: 91% saturation. Skin-temp at 3°C equivalent. Lower than projected. Violet frost creeping up the edge of my visor like lichen. It’s not even dawn. Kole keeps tapping his boot. We hear it through the comms, over and over. Tap, tap, pause. Tap. When I asked, he said he didn’t even realize. Says the cold makes his leg jitter. Could be. Could also be the iodine. Nara hasn’t spoken since yesterday’s second sweep. She doesn’t like these assignments, and doesn't like walking where the maps blur out. Chancellor sent out a memo reminding us they were mandatory. We pass the same silt formations every hour, it feels like. I know they shift, but still. They lean now. Like they’re tired too. We’re en route to Node Theta-9. One of the outlying towers. Old relay, used to calibrate the air-gliders Calypso donated before we got proper drones. It’s low priority. But the climb needs doing. No service signal. No driftfeed. The air smells brittle. The minibracer says everything’s nominal, but that doesn’t mean much. When we stop to recalibrate the Lancer, Kole crouches low beside a black silt dune, carves a mark in the surface with his glove. It closes over in seconds. Swallowed. ENTRY — 06:41:14 - Reaching ascent ridge. Slope covered in frozen silt curtain. Visibility: 7 meters. Wind: 110 km/h sustained. HUD adjusting dynamically. Kole swears he saw lights down in the basin. I told him not to log it. ENTRY — 07:12:55 - Contact with Theta-9. Exterior corroded. Panel reads PRESSURE LOCK FAILURE. Can’t enter. Dumping data from external ports instead. Nara’s hand trembles while she plugs in the relay line. I don’t mention it. No one mentions much, anymore. We sit in a thermal pocket while the dump completes. Silt clicks against our boots, constant. Feels like old radios tuning in. Kole hums a scale. The same one every mission. I think he’s forgotten why. I mark our time in chalk on the wall of the relay. Won’t last. I do it anyway. ENTRY — 08:33:29 - Data dump complete. No errors. Recovered 3.2 GB of drift telemetry, 1409 surface weather snapshots, and a half-corrupted audio note marked ‘SRP-EYE.’ No playback capability on-site. Time to descend. I tell the team to keep formation. No one responds. They just start walking.
