Location Unknown
Approximately 1820 hours
Day before first contact

Vasilyev paced back and forth across their makeshift camp. It was two hours after the sighting of the… ponies, and the fact that mythical creatures like unicorns and pegasi existed here meant something special. There was no way to contact any satellites, because there weren’t any. If there weren’t any satellites, then they must not be on Earth. It all made sense to him, except the part about the ponies.

“Lieutenant,” Petrov warned. “If you keep pacing like that, you’ll wear down a rut all the way to whatever is on the other side of the fucking planet. I very much doubt that it is China, or any other recognizable place, for that matter.”

Vasilyev only grunted in reply.

Now that they were in uncharted territory, he had no idea what he was supposed to do. MVD training and doctrine had no answer for this, and his training as an officer had never gone into hypotheticals this absurd, so his first presumption was that this would be off-the-book. He noticed he was still carrying around his AUG as if it were a baby. With a sigh, he slung it, stopping his walking. He turned to his men slowly, their fatigue showing.

`“Men,” He said. “We have a first contact situation here. We can’t connect to any satellites, and there are mythical creatures here I haven’t heard of since my days in the university, so we will need to be cautious. Set up a camp a hundred meters back into the woods. The SVZ is showing a secluded clearing we can use in that direction, so save the current map to your HUD before I turn this damn thing off.

“One more thing: We will observe before making contact. They quite obviously will not speak any language we know of, so we have to establish everything we can about them before contact. Dismissed.”

Most of the soldiers and pilots jumped up, even Kozlov showing some enthusiasm. Vasilyev reached around behind him, groping his bag. He quickly slipped a hand inside and found the switch, sliding it, instantly shutting the small, portable radar off.

Vasilyev jogged over to the location he had specified to find the men unpacking their bags, looking for anything which might help them. Novikov was found to have a folded pile of camouflage netting (which he swore was issued to him, although Vasilyev had his doubts), which, when stretched out, was around fifteen square meters. They quickly knocked down several small trees in the miniature clearing with the survival ax that Sokolov has been issued as a pilot, and stretched the netting between several trees that surrounded the small area.

They were at least a hundred meters back from the end of the woods, so the risk of discovery was minimal. Vasilyev was thankful the area was heavily wooded. It left small areas like this untouched, but overall, it was hard to see twenty meters in the mess that was the trees.

The small trees that Sokolov hacked down were cut into manageable lengths two meters long, and stacked in a pile by the edge of the small camp. That being accomplished, it was still around six o’ clock in the afternoon, or so said their mission clocks. They were inclined to trust that time, judging by the sun. They still had around four hours of sunlight left after all that work, so Vasilyev decided that, tonight, they would attempt to find out more about their ‘neighbors.’

“Good job, everyone.” He said to the sweat-soaked group. “Get as much rest as you can in the next six hours. At midnight, we are moving out to scout the town under darkness.”

The soldiers could do nothing more than nod as they collapsed onto their packs. They had cleared the space under the netting of the gathered leaves and set it atop the netting, so at least they had a soft cushion of grass to rest on. Even Vasilyev slowly drifted off, watching as the other ‘Net’ headsets were turned off. Before he finally rested, he instructed his to turn on and wake him up in six hours. Closing his eyes, he drifted off to sleep.

Author's Note

Revision finished on 8/15/2014