Out of the Cradle

Commander Anna Wilson took a few long moments to close her eyes, breathe deeply, and center herself. The air, of course, smelled like plastic and moisture, but years of training had made it a familiar smell, even comforting. It was the smell of the air recycler working properly. Her weight on this world was lower than she was used to, but the three-month trip here had been spent in a gradually-slowing gravity centrifuge, allowing her body to properly adjust to a third the gravity she had grown up in. What she wasn't prepared for was the silence.
Since the air outside was a hundredth as dense as Earth's, it carried sound poorly. After the engines had shut off and the Kittinger had settled against the ground, the only sounds left to hear were her own pounding heartbeat and racing breath, which she sought to calm now.
Anna took her hands off the flight controls, now that the quiet stillness was absolute, and reached out to either side. Arseni Petrov, the mission's communications technician, grasped her right hand; Hiraoka Ayami, the biology specialist, gently took her left. The flight engineer, Akande Oyekan, put a hand on her shoulder from behind. They were in this together, sharing a moment of profound relief and excitement. The effort of thousands of people, over eight years of preparation, was about to come to fruition.
"Mission control," Anna said at last, "Ares One has landed safe and sound. Preparing to disembark."
There was no immediate reply; the message was still blazing across the sixteen light-minutes between her and Earth. There didn't need to be a reply. Knowing they were there, watching, celebrating, was enough.
Anna reluctantly let go of her crewmates' hands, and unfastened her harness dutifully. The others did the same, taking time to stand and stretch out the muscles that had reflexively tensed up during the harrowing ride to the surface. Anna peered out the porthole at this strange desert, ice blue eyes seeing nothing but rust red to the horizon, before turning to face her crew. Her mind raced, primarily preoccupied by a previous conversation, but she masked the anxiety with a trademark confident smirk. She placed a hand on the hatch handle.
"Helmets on, people. Let's make history."
The conversation itself had come up roughly a month ago, when Earth and Mars were both so far away that neither one was more than a bright dot in a sea of bright dots. It was dinner, going by the time on the Athena's clocks; Greenwich time was the elective time zone of deep space.
"So Anna," Akande had said with a sly grin, "how are you planning to announce the arrival of the human race?"
The other two chuckled while Anna just sighed. "I'm working on it. As a matter of fact I’ve been working on it for years now, but I'm never happy with it."
Ayami leaned over and lightly elbowed her. "Come on, it can't be that bad!"
"I appreciate the optimism, Ami," Anna sighed, "but has to be perfect. I only get one shot, after all."
"And whatever it is, you know it will be your epitaph," Ari added jokingly, through a mouthful of rehydrated meatloaf.
Anna just grimaced. "I'm painfully aware of that. It's gonna be in every history book too, from next year 'til the end of time." She paused, then scoffed: "I love Neil Armstrong, but God damn, that man is hard to upstage."
That got all four of them laughing.
"You know what really gets me," the commander continued, "is that the crew coordinator -you know, Gary? He sent a four-page PDF of options. Four pages. Seems like everyone at Johnson has some ideas on what I should say for the cameras."
"Don't use any," Ayami advised, still giggling. "It has to come from you."
"I'm sure what you decide to say will be amazing," added Akande, raising his water bottle. "A toast to our friend and captain, hm?"
The other two raised their bottles as well, smiling and laughing. "To Anna!"
Anna beamed at her friends, blushing. "Thanks, crew."
She was outside now, on the long ladder that led down the side of the towering rocket. Kittinger was shorter than an equivalent rocket would be on Earth, but fourteen meters was still a respectable height –and a terrible distance to fall, even in one-third of normal gravity. Anna focused on climbing, keeping her breath steady and her movements deliberate. She glanced up every so often to check on her crew, following her down in single file, and smiled.
At the bottom of the ladder, she paused, and turned to stare across the silent, cold floodplain of Chryse Planitia. Her gaze was drawn upward, into the amber morning sky from whence they had come.
Commander Anna Wilson took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and let go of the ladder. Her boots hit the dust with a soft thud, and she opened her eyes again to take in the rusty wasteland of Mars as her crew touched ground behind her.
"We're finally out of the cradle," she said, with quiet reverence. "Of the hundred billion humans who ever lived, we're the first to stand beneath an alien sky."