What a friendly catfolk. She wraps her wings* around herself. "I'm from Lei, the town bon-sharr-ili, if that means anything to you. It's nothing special."

*Winged humanoids on Ansaf generally have four limbs, not six.

"Are you going to defect when we get back to Kef?"

"Um. No.

Do you want to defect to Lei?"

"No! Okay, fair. Why, should I? I mean, I'm not leaving my family - my wife is a clerk for the Kef magistrate and my son is one of the surveyors up ahead - but, hypothetically, what's your pitch?"

"Let me think about that... I'm Chime, by the way. Actually, Ciolha, but if you don't speak Elvish don't worry about it - they call me Chime in Lei too.

...yeah, I've got nothing you haven't heard before. Lei is nice? It seems nice here too?"

"Very wise you are, Chime. Yeah, I read Elvish with Sotalese pronunciation, I don't know anyone who actually speaks it here."

"Oh, you mean you read High Elvish? Elvish, common Elvish, is written phonetically in Lei..."

"...Yes. That's what I mean. What, like, is common Elvish? Isn't the whole point of El- High Elvish that it doesn't change?"

"Oh, no, they both change! High Elvish is what elves speak, and people who work at shrines. But people don't learn to speak from elves, they learn from their family, and common Elvish changes ... hmm... half as much as most languages? I don't know, -" Chime flips the fingertips on one wing forward and wraps herself up again. "And it mostly changes by slang, and... the meanings of words slide around, but the words themselves don't change, if that makes sense? And High Elvish - it's a very big language. I guess it grows a bit, or shrinks, but what I really mean is more that people use different parts of it at different times, to make it clear that they're speaking High Elvish. Like, the word for 'kite' used to be a combination of the words for 'star' and 'cloth', or just 'star', or sometimes 'little bird'. Now, in common Elvish, we call a kite with the word for 'pool', as in 'mirror pool'. And now elves, when they're being fancy, they always say 'star cloth' for a kite, and they call a mirror a 'pool'."

"Wow. Oh no, are you cold?" She steps closer and flares up. "I've been in the drydark, or the dark side of the mountains, my whole life, so I forgot for a moment about mirror kites. I wonder what they call them in Nitatlel - the country bright of the mountains."

"Nitalhel - Nitatlel - is so pretty! I only got to see it for a minute, since I came here by equartier the whole way, even through the Argo aqueduct."

Is the catfolk hitting on her? Ew.

"Hey, mom, we found something with writing on in! Alien writing! Where's the linguist?"

Tomas is not, actually, a linguist. He's a liar, there's a difference.

"The writing is so crisp. Could it have been done with a casting?"

Merta kneels by the metal object. "I think so, yes. It looks more scratched, though."

"A pity. I was hoping the aliens might have had a species like werewolves but for metal."

"You think they might still be alive?"

According to his last briefing before departing the Freedom Democracy, the aliens survived the crash. But that information comes from a species that the rest of the world doesn't yet know exists.

Mofil places his block and silently turns back into the tube to get his next one.

They're having a lot of trouble with the ice. There's not much powder, but ice and rough ground still makes it hard to get a grip and move at speed. The planet Avalon (which this place obviously isn't) did have snow from the probe's data, so they do have snow chains designed for the rover's wheels installed, but you still want to go kind of cautiously.

All four scout teams are in contact with each other and Home Base, checking in regularly. The digital data links even work, so their tablet screens are filling in with map data as they go, and it's really easy to mark down landmarks. With the one rover assigned to looking for a way towards the sun, they spend the first couple of hours putting nav beacons on whatever can pass for a high point nearby. They'll help the computers triangulate everything, the further apart the better. They even have little wind turbines, miniature ones.

Then they drive up and down the glacier, looking for paths in the correct direction that aren't too covered in crevasses or steep slopes or loose pieces. It'll probably take several days, but as they map out safe 'roads' they'll be able to get to more distant areas faster in the future.

He also trained on the surveying equipment, doing all sorts of scanner-things he doesn't really understand in order to identify rich ore veins of useful materials, mostly iron. Magnets or something. They're not bothering with those yet, focusing rather on getting used to the terrain and navigating safely in near-total darkness. Maybe some adjustments to the headlights...

The salvage mapping teams found another transport vehicle in what looks like good order. Tomorrow, maybe they'll go fetch it and have that much more to work with. They also found a sheet of solar panels- Useless to them now, and several emergency supply lockers. The chemical power cells in those will at least stretch their electricity a little further, while she tries to organize a hundred fifty people to build wind turbines out of various bits of rubble and scrap.

Mary has a quiet word in person, not over the radio, with Lucy Carver. She saw where the ship's Small-Arms Armory landed and can guide a scout team to it, tomorrow. It's for the best if they recover those arms and ammunition soonest, just to make sure none of it disappears. There should be ten rifles, twenty shotguns, and thirty-nine pistols- Less the one she has on her person already.

...They'll deal with that tomorrow, on one of the rovers. Mary and three of her security staff can go personally with the salvage team to secure it, if they haven't found one of the reactors by then. The reactor would be higher priority.

For now, they have a LOT of waggling tongues and idle hands to throw at the Hydroponics Module that was dragged into base just now. Get to it if you want to eat something other than rehydrated rations!

We'll have enough electricity for this kind of high activity for... One more day at this pace. Two if we limit use of the vehicles more. And even with Nina's in-progress wind turbines we can't run the habitat, hydroponics, and vehicles all at once.

That's a problem for tomorrow. Keep moving forward.

One more thing. We need crate #65 from one of the hospital modules, or 18 people are at risk of death due to radiation poisoning.