DATA LED BRAVO TEAM through the dark canopy of storm clouds. He fell like a missile, his arms tight against his torso, his legs pressed together and feet extended. He checked the holographic display projected on his suit’s faceplate. Obrecht and Heaton were ninety-three-point-six meters behind him and gaining at a rate of point-two meters per minute, well within safety parameters. The android second officer calculated that he could safely withstand a landing at more than twice the planned velocity, but he knew that his human compatriots could not.

The telemetry indicated that they were nearing chute-deployment altitude, but there was no sign of a break in the cloud cover. The wind resistance was sharply rising and the temperature was steadily dropping to well below freezing. The numbers added up to a grim result: He and his team were descending into a blizzard.

He signaled his team to deploy their parachutes as they pierced the upper level of precipitation. He keyed his chute release. The carbon-nanofiber canopy erupted above him, unfurled with a roar, and slowed his descent with a violent snap.

Wild flurries of snow and sleet swirled around him, driven forward by a relentless wind. He couldn’t see the rest of his team, but based on the information he was receiving from their transponder signals, he knew that they had all activated their parachutes and were maintaining formation within fifty meters of him. From inside the heart of this winter storm, the view in every direction was identical. He focused his attention on the readouts from the suit’s built-in sensors, and on reacting to the brutal wind that was forcing him into an accelerating spiral as he neared the ground.

The altimeter rapidly dwindled toward zero. Data accessed his skills database and set himself in the textbook-perfect posture for a high-speed landing on a possibly hard and uneven surface. His feet broke through a top layer of icy crust and sank into deep, soft snow. Adjusting his stance in less than two-tenths of a second, he used the natural cushion to his advantage and came to a stop standing upright, buried up to his waist. He unclasped the breakaway harness for his parachute, which fluttered to the ground behind him.

He turned and pulled his chute toward him, hand over hand, rolling it into a tight coil. When it was reduced to a compact bundle, he stuffed it beneath the snow cover. Using the control pad on the arm of his suit, he activated its camouflage circuit and selected the adaptive gray-and-white arctic pattern.

He keyed his suit’s secure internal com. “Data to Bravo Team,” he said. “Sound off, please.”

“Obrecht, here.”

“Heaton, here.”

“Parminder, here.”

“Lock on to my signal and regroup,” Data said.

Data waited for the rest of his team to rejoin him. One by one they emerged from the white curtain of the storm, vague shadows at first, then crisp outlines. Heaton reached him first, followed by Parminder and Obrecht. As they closed to within arm’s reach, he noticed that part of what made them so difficult to see was that they had also engaged their camouflage.

“Status,” Data said.

“Good to go,” Parminder said.

He made a twirling gesture with his finger to Obrecht, who turned his back to him. Data opened a side pocket of the engineer’s backpack and removed a tricorder. He scanned in the general direction of the firebase and adjusted the device’s settings until he had a solid fix on the target’s location. He turned toward the target, noted the topography of the terrain ahead, and judged it passable. He started the hard trudge forward through the knee-deep snow. “Follow me,” he said.