I absolutely loved it. Your detail outclasses my own when writing and your characters are pretty well rounded. That drop scene was probably the coolest thing I’ve read in the Haloverse as of late.
I feel it went by a little quickly, but that’s just me. The distancing method, the gradual descent and detail per line was a nice, simple approach. Not saying you should redo it, but consider expanding on the details (i.e. Fin’s perception) and seeing how it looks afterward. Otherwise, great work.
One nitpick I have to make, and it’s a common one I see in writing: the confusion of the theres. “There” describes a direction, location, or prelude to a statement (“there is,” “there are”). “Their” is the possessive form.
Also, I noticed you like to use commas a lot. I too am trying to get into making the most of that grammatical marvel, but they can sometimes make a sentence read differently when sounded out. Try looking back at some sentences of dialogue and speaking them aloud just to gauge if that’s how you want it to sound to the reader. For example, when Cooper says “It’s bad soil now, Moby -Yoink!- took care of that,” I can hear his angered tone of voice as his words are delivered at a slightly faster tempo thanks to the comma.
However in other cases, when Fin was inspecting his equipment, for example, you had a few run-on sentences. No big deal, just looks better to a possible future editor. Note possible alterations.
“The helmet was something he had never seen before<mark>;</mark> it was more rounded off than a trooper helmet<mark>, and</mark> its visor, which began right above the nose, was a narrow slit bent slightly, not unlike a flaccid crescent moon turned on its side, and polarized jet black”
Just a few things to consider. But overall, nice work.