The deck officer Gabe had picked stared blearily at him through tired eyes. Seemed he was nearing the end of his shift, and didn't have time to deal with this sort of thing.

"Not my job to fly the shuttles," he told Gabe. "You're going to the surface? Fine." Casting about, he caught the eye of one pilot who was a little too slow to look like he was busy with something else.

"Olin! This one says he's headed planetside. Find him a ride."

For the pilot, that was easy enough, and it wasn't long before the small group of acolytes was headed towards Klybo itself. The station, and then the moon, diminished behind them, their shuttle's engines silently rattling the hull as they drew further away from the only real civilisation in the system. Klybo loomed up ahead, all beige whorls without a speck of blue ocean anywhere. Here and there the surface darkened, spotted with tall rocks or craggy mesas.

Olin, their pilot, wasn't nearly as talkative as the one who had brought them to the station in the first place. He plugged the coordinates they gave him into the shuttle's computer, sullenly guiding the little craft through the atmosphere. Outside, through armourglass viewports, they could see the terrain rushing by. Then, on the horizon, the distant glint of metal flashed across their view, distinctly different from the tan sands. There was no smoke from the crashed shuttle, but that would have stopped rising days ago. From the air, the crash site seemed deserted. The wind was blowing strong, whipping sand across the exterior of the shuttle. Olin set them down a short distance away from the crash, opening up the shuttle's doors with the flick of a lever.