Beauty Like an Advert

7.3.5 SW
Early Afternoon SW-CP-Local Time
Inside APC on approach to Crowning Point settlement

As the Montero crew sat in the security team's APC, they all craned their necks to look out the windows at the natural beauty of Sutter's World. Never had they seen a sky so clear and blue outside of an advert or vid screen. In the west, there hung mounds of white puffy clouds fattened with impending rain.

"Aah! Hikari-chan, 見て!!" 'Look!' she said pointing to the mountains. Hikari marveled at the vistas.

To the east there was a vast forest that stretched slowly upward for several miles before rising more sharply into a range of green hills and rounded mountains, two of which stood taller than the others.

Hikari herself followed Tsuki's pointed fingers in awe. Though she had been to a few different colony worlds over the past 20 years, the openness and visual range of the was so new to her.

All of them were accustomed to life on a starship, space station, or a fully colonized planet with dim, polluted skies, barren, hostile terrain and a forest of buildings rather than actual trees. It was a strange juxtaposition to see this pastoral landscape dotted with the signs of technology from the encroaching civilization. Mostly, they sat in silence taking in the view before finally approaching the relatively short Hex towers of the settlement, Crowning Point. The crew would be dropped off first at the Science & Medical Hex and eventually make their way to the Administration Hex for registration, debriefing, and payment for the mission.