The Checklist
Published in
4 min readSep 13, 2022
The crew capsule lands in a flurry of dust and fire, spitting, splattering, rising, commingling. At first Nodhj thinks this is the wrong moon, that her mission is all but doomed. With the back of her forearm she wipes the window to get a better look, but she is perspiring and her breath is like a miasma, preceding her everywhere, pulling her into its wake. She jabs at a few buttons and the low rumble begins under her feet, like a stealthy organism coming to life…
