Inhabitable

   Whatever world used to be here ended. It did not go quietly; without a fight. It was harsh and abrupt. There were overgrown remains of strange structures and contraptions all around the surrounding area of our landing vessel. Our people found this dead, lush, vibrant world a long time after the last body fell or crumbled where it had stood on that final day, that final moment of an entire civilization. Fragments of bone are all that remain.
   Unhindered, nature took its course. Everywhere is "The Wilds" on this planet. Life of a kind found a way to begin anew upon the ruins and ash; of the desolation that was wrought in a cataclysmic finale. Enormous trees, vines, and plants of all kinds grow everywhere, untamed and in constant competition for space. Flying creatures unlike anything I've ever seen before, rule the skies, and the wild calls of beasts among the foliage are unrecognizable to my ears. It is a world that looked like it had been reset, the slate wiped clean.
   It was here that our people attempted to rebuild our own civilization. We had been adrift amongst the cosmos for thousands of years aboard our ship. An ark of sorts. Generations had passed, and our former home world was akin to a tiny star among the cluttered night sky. It had ended abruptly, much the same as this place. We did not wish to leave, but had no other choice. It was simply a case of advance or die.
   Nomadic by nature, our race embraced the challenge ahead of them then with caution and skepticism at first, but as the fate of our world became increasingly evident, with vigor and a sense of urgency. Our people came together as one to achieve their goal of interstellar flight on a sustainable scale that would allow each massive vessel that left our planet behind forever to succeed in their quest to find not one, but many new homes. Courses were plotted based off of hundreds of years of research of the universe. We would attempt to re-establish contact with the other settler ships over time.
   Ours was the longest journey, to a planet simply known as Inhabitable-3854. It was approximately thirty three hundred light years from our world.
   We had been in orbit for months before this first landing, and I was the head of landing vessel three. Our mission was to collect soil, air and water samples for analysis and return to the mother ship. All was going according to plan so far, but that did nothing to ease the pain of planet-side gravity slowly crushing my body after a lifetime in artificial gravity.
   It would take us two days to gather all the samples we required from a large enough area to sustain our people if indeed it was safe to inhabit this place.
   While the vegetation and calls of the wild were promising, it did little to ease my mind of the 'what if' scenario that would see us set adrift once again.
   I took in the sky with awe as I stretched to my full seven foot three inch height, the first real sky I had ever seen, with two suns and three moons visible in various sizes. My spine popped in several places as it adjusted to the gravity a little more with the stretching. The pain was excruciating, but the gravmeds were keeping the worst at bay.
   The first shadows of nightfall were beginning to creep across the landscape of the valley we had landed in as the second of the two suns began to dip behind the mountain range to my left as I looked up the valley. Orange fire danced off the surface of a river that wove its way through the flat of the valley, bending through grasslands on both sides before dipping beneath the forest canopy once again.
   My peaceful serenity was shattered by a piercing cry, deep and guttural, with three echoing cries following it. The bass of the cries shook my bones and I knew without a doubt that whatever beast was king in this place was awake and ready for a hunt. The hairs on the back of my neck were on end as I signaled to the rest of my team that it was time to return to our landing vessel for the evening. Seven of us in total. Five scientists and two guards including myself.
   One by one they filed into the ship with their equipment in tow, and I found myself eager to hear what they had seen over the course of the day, and even more excited to see what they would find in the data from their samples they had already collected. The landing ramp closed behind me as I thumped the closing switch with the heel of my hand and waited for the enviro-chamber to clean and vent, then stabilize the air before opening the inner hatch for us to enter the ship proper.
   We stripped out of our suits and stored our equipment before heading to the mess hall to eat. Every one of our faces was aglow with the dreams of a tomorrow on the surface of an actual planet. It was going to be a long night.