Calria Adae-ith-Adae: Depressurizing… pump-down complete.  Pressurization amber.  Opening outer door.

Wow.  Sky’s foamy with stars out here.  Are they getting the picture groundside, Airin?

Airin Muetry-ith-Mirari: Communications check, video and audio; blue and blue.  Opscon has us 8/12.

Calria Adae-ith-Adae: Attaching tether.  Moving to the ladder…  Surface is as white as it looked from orbit, only brighter at this angle.  Looks like one of the beaches at Cenval, almost.  Okay.  Everything looks in order on the ship.  I’m getting the wand out, doing radiation check.

There’s a little leakage around the base of the shroud, well under safety range.  Nothing showing above the plate or around the radiators.  Ship is clean.  Looks like there’s some disturbance under the thrusters, but only shallow.  Gear hasn’t sunk much, maybe a couple of inches.

Stepping off the ladder now… and down.  Tether is slack.  Not much give in the ground, but it’s powder, finer than that sand.  Scatters at a touch.  Shifting to the dorsal tether, and –

Airin Muetry-ith-Mirari: Ah, Calry?

Calria Adae-ith-Adae: …ha.  As a representative of the Imperial Couple and the Spaceflight Initiative, I claim this new world for the Empire and her people.  We’ve taken the first step on the road to the stars, and while we two must return, from now we will always be a people of two worlds.  The future is here.  Let’s build it.

[pause]

Shifting to the dorsal tether, and proceeding around the ship.

– Spaceflight Initiative transcript of Silverfall Four mission, MET +4:17:22 – +4:17:39

“I didn’t remember myself, either; Beran [Beran Irithyl-ith-Issarthyl was in charge of flight communications at OPSCON during the Silverfall Four mission] had to prompt me from the ground.  We’d both been training for this mission for so long, and dreaming about it even longer, that… well, we were concentrating hard on our procedures to resist the urge to leap out of the airlock and just roll around in the regolith, you know?  Embrace the world we’d fought to get to.  That’s enough to make anyone forget her speech.”

– Airin Muetry-ith-Mirari, interviewed at the centennial of the Seléne landing