Anne Bonny — ship's log

Kari found a library of alien maintenance cartridges while Bob cleared the boring factory's slab jam and connected its diagnostic computer. Experiments exposed two different transport machines and a separate wildlife collector. A cut cable was repaired, and Victor activated a newly reached workshop with Bob present.

• Kari documented about forty cartridges in the geothermal plant's cramped upper room and uncovered spare magnetic fasteners and a matching tool.
• Bob stopped the jammed boring factory, made a reusable webbing harness from vehicle gear and restored slab production.
• The connected maintenance computer showed live controls, although typed commands and translated instructions remained unreliable.
• The crew tested the small carrier; Elias escaped a moving slab at a cost of five Fortune.
• A separate yellow machine collected an animal with a harpoon, winch, lifting arms, conveyor and strap. Its species, condition and destination remained unknown.
• The small carrier's return cut the maintenance cable but left the console intact. Its slab transferred to a larger transport, and Bob repaired the cable.
• Explorers followed a dark passage to a closed door and a workshop containing prefab sections, tools and another portable panel.
• Victor selected the final blue control with Bob at the workshop. Machinery moved and welding began; play stopped there.

Beyond the rootjack pit, the field crew documented Sholow hunting Quintly, recovered sulfur-rich residue from a fire-spitting seal, and found an ancient boring factory. Victor survived an electrical accident; Bob restarted the factory, and the crew traced its supply to a geothermal plant containing a matching maintenance kit.

• Observed a Sholow pair catch and share a Quintly, then withdraw from the survey vehicles.
• Recovered burning seal residue with a singed, probably functional sampler and completed the linked-drone survey of an artificial tunnel.
• Identified the blue hopper powder as a carbon-fiber analogue and the red powder as a conductive alloy.
• Clauydio pulled Victor from the live circuit; Kari restored his heartbeat and monitored recovery overnight.
• Bob safely reconnected power, opened magnetic fasteners, and started the slowly advancing plate factory.
• Traced the buried supply to a vine-covered geothermal power plant and recovered a maintenance computer, matching cable and rivet tool.
• Language guesses remained tentative; the inner steam door stayed closed, the upper level was unvisited, and the device had not been connected when play ended.

With Bob recovering aboard the Anne Bonny, the four-person field team camped in dense forest. At dawn the pale rings beneath their tents rose into grasping animals. They escaped the encounter, observed the animals taking hanging prey, and later backed both survey vehicles away from a collapse that exposed movement beneath the crust.

• Bob chose to remain in the autodoc with Clauydio while Victor, Kari, Elias and Jin continued the survey in Ebb and Flo.
• Kari investigated pale double-ridged ground forms that deflected a stick; prying broke the stick without provoking an attack.
• The intended motion detector had not been packed, so the crew used two-hour watches. Elias watched the rings rise at sunrise.
• Victor's sword cut brought a local retaliation. Later the radial grasper caught his right leg; Jin wounded the column and Elias severed its upper portion.
• The teeth never bit Victor. Kari collected the detached top and yellow fluid, while the crew observed other ground animals pull hanging leaf-eaters underground.
• A later drive stopped at collapsing crust. Kari's attempted physical anchor failed; her improvised tether solution let the loaded vehicle back away. The crew had not reached the distant rocky outcrop.
• Bob's Injured condition cleared during recovery; Wounded recovery still had five progress remaining.
• The session ended above a cavern roughly twenty feet deep, with movement on its floor.

Days twenty-three and twenty-four at Quarry Terrace turned a repair shift into two resource surveys and a fight beneath the Anne Bonny. The crew found useful geothermal water, recovered a sample from an unidentified metallic outcrop, and survived an ambush by an animal their sensors had mistaken for the ship.

• Bob and Clauydio continued landing-gear, antenna, and sensor work while Elias, Victor, Kari, and Jin ranged south in the four-seat survey vehicle.
• The field team found seated scald slabs apparently anchored over geothermal vents. Their hot, mineral-rich, mildly alkaline water is potable after ordinary treatment; their anatomy and wider relationship remain unknown.
• A near-ship shoreline survey revealed small amphibious animals, insects, slug-like grazers, and a crab-sized triangular animal with one large pincer that clung to the probe and was recovered alive.
• A diamond-carbide core rig recovered a sample from an exceptionally hard metallic outcrop. Its composition was still unresolved when the session ended.
• A four-meter clickshade mimicked the underside of the hull, remaining camouflaged during slow motion but becoming detectable through texture and update lag, then pinned and repeatedly hooked Bob while trying to carry him away.
• Victor's charge and disarm stunt threw Bob clear. Clauydio brought the ship's IFF-aware point-defense cannon online, killing the clickshade and leaving its head intact for study.
• A missed armor-piercing shot had left Bob dying. Elias and Kari stabilized him with rounds remaining, and he went to the autodoc conscious but wounded.
• The crew reprogrammed exterior motion analysis so tagged people remain recognized while additional movement produces a separate warning. Preferred launch remained eighteen days away during day-twenty-four planning.

The Anne Bonny made first groundfall at Quarry Terrace. What began as a rain survey became a damaged landing strut, two new species, and proof that Green Reach II's breathable air is something the local ecosystem actively makes.

• Recovered Victor, the crew's commander, from the cryopod First Footing had misfiled as cargo for eighteen days.
• Jin landed cleanly at Quarry Terrace before a violent brackish squall blinded the sensors and threw the survey drone into the hull.
• Kari confirmed filterable rain, ammonia-bearing air, edible water-cleaning moss, microscopic evidence of animal life, and an artificial terrace beneath the mineral scale.
• Bob built Clauydio a gravity-assist frame while the crew discovered shovel-faced mineral grazers feeding on the ship's landing gear.
• A panicked herd struck the outriggers and tilted the ship. The crew answered with a non-harmful descaling perimeter instead of treating feeding animals as attackers.
• The smaller kindler—Donatello—proved able to consume ammonia-bearing crust and vent oxygen-rich gas. Green Reach II is not simply habitable; its life is helping keep it that way.

First gate transit of the contract. Traffic Control released the aperture, the Anne Bonny went through, and the crew spent the far side running a full system scan before committing to anything.

• Cleared Medina Traffic Control and transited gate-1356 — the first ring the crew has taken under the First Footing contract.
• Came out at Green Reach: a single stable primary, the star Reach, and seven worlds strung from 0.36 out to 4.06 AU.
• Ran the system scan world by world. Six of the seven are sealed — toxic, barren, a gas giant, and a belt with nothing to stand on.
• Green Reach II is the only world worth footing: terran, 1.13 AU, liquid water, breathable air, and an open habitability rating.
• The system reads as claimed and inhabited, with no contact made. Nobody answered.