Of course he’d known a forest on an alien planet wouldn’t look anything like the labyrinth of birch and deer tracks, rose thorns and skittish pheasants hidden in the undergrowth, where he had roamed as a boy. But with only terrestrial training and terrestrial ideas to draw reference from, he had still pictured it that way – different as a forest on another continent, maybe, not another world.

Holding his rifle half-ready against his chest, smelling only the canned, sterile air that fed his mask, he tried to see anything in the growth in front of him that fit the word forest as he knew it. But growth was the only thing, the only guiding principle they had in common. The riot of murmuring pastel that reared over twenty metres towards the off-teal sky looked more like a cancerous fireworks display than anything living, any life he had learned to recognize and respect in ways that would keep it from using his body to fuel it.

All of the rules in front of him were unknown. The rest of his squad didn’t seem to feel it, didn’t care, complaining over the comm about that tin-tasting air and joking their way through last-minute equipment checks. They had their guns, they had their training, and anything living in that abstract mash of colour would get out of their way if it knew what was good for it.

But he had grown up with birch and deer tracks and worse things that could catch a kid in the forest if they weren’t careful. It wasn’t like walking through a greenhouse or even a training ground, with its holographic targets and practice rifles loaded only with noise and light. It was like walking through a stomach, and he clutched his rifle tighter, trying not to breathe through his air too quickly as he waited for the rest of his squad to be ready to find out for themselves.