"Well, in most towns there would be plenty of mouselings, just not Kef."

"Sure, there are mouselings in Archer's Tabbard, you wouldn't have to go all the way to Argolake -"

"No I mean, in most towns, he'd just go into a mouseling family from the start."

"Okay, sure. How's that relevant to travel, then? Would you take a child away from everyone they know, for a third time?"

"No!" She sighs. "Maybe I'm just used to life following a plan more than you are."

Ohh, probably someone involved in recommending him for the job is also an FD spy... Who is it? Who's the last person anyone would suspect? ...One of the emperors?!

"What goes on a door? Anyone? I have a list, but what have you all seen on doors?"

- "Exit"

- "Drakebreath!"

- "Granary #3"

- "You are now entering the jurisdiction of Argolake"

- "Jailers Only"

- "I'm at the dock, back before the end of the blood shift"

- "Knock twice for a good time"

- "Office of the Gnomunk Don"

- "Nafolia's Room"

- "Go away, I'm sleeping"

"Good! And I'll add 'catmother, watch over this family'. Assuming the text is permanent, we can rule out some of those. I also think that, given the small size of the text, it's not a warning or urgent advisory. What does leave us? Identification of something, but it's assumed that most people will already know it. Or, maybe, the value was in the act of writing, and it was not really meant to be read at all."

"A religious sign might be indistinguishable from a name, without more information. Like, maybe the small part with the dot is a vocative particle and the rest is a name. If we find more such markings and they all start with the cross and dot, that would be evidence in favor..."

blink-blink-blink... Nefanie is able to teleport right up to the bridge now, so the expedition is probably all the way past it. See everyone soon, back to work now!

Time to get reports from each team!

The assembly is now averaging 22 parts per minute at all four points, but constructing the parts is slower than before since the werewolves are also smoothing the path, down to only 74 parts per minute. The wind is still getting stronger. Morale is good - the gnomunks handed out fresh fruit. A flock of harpies arrived an hour ago. Fuzzer is trying to figure out a safe way to launch a ship in the cold, so a goatseer can take a look at the path ahead, without diverting too many catfolk from assembly.

Aha, two of these problems solve each other! Fuzzer can have 16 catfolk from assembly.

Fuzzer grits his teeth and thanks the wise Abilanedi for his excellent observation.

And how's the diplomacy going, my good man?

"So far, sir, all I can say is that the writing appears to be in an alphabet of some sort, and it's either a person's name or a religious message."

It's been a couple of days, and they're pretty sure they have an accurate count of all the... Survivors, now. So it's time to publish the casualty reports in the general hall.

She's really not looking forward to it. A lead weight in her stomach. Her child is okay. Arnold is with all the other children in an improvised schoolhouse, learning a hastily revised curriculum of technological and practical skills, like how the hydroponic systems work. Most of the children are okay, actually, but not all of them.

Three hundred ninety seven deaths. Twenty six out of a hundred. One in four. And maybe more in the coming days.

There's a steadily building pall of muttering and discontent behind her when she pins up the list. Travis Cooper - Confirmed Dead. Caroline Mathers - Confirmed Dead. Miguel Ortiz - Missing, Presumed Dead. Xiao Lee - Confirmed Dead.

Four reasons to grieve. Ninety nine times more, unread by her eyes.

7384: What a stone-cold bitch. She just pasted them up and left.

Reddeker: What was she supposed to do, give a speech?

7384: Yes.

Orangeanade: She's probably taking it hard too, just not in public. Would it be BETTER if she had a breakdown in the middle of the hall? I for one am glad stone-cold corpo lady is still sharp. It'll keep us alive.

7384: Who invited the boot licker?

Potato_Clock: The whole situation is fucked. This isn't even the right PLANET. They're not telling us something.

Reddeker: My wife is dead. It could just have easily been me. I want answers too. But we have to not die in the meantime.

Orangeanade: I'm sorry about your wife.

7384 has kicked Oranganade.

Reddeker: Dude

Reddeker has kicked 7384.

"The wind is actually really consistent - mostly in the same direction and around the same speed. Which is surprisingly convenient for designing these windmills. We can make the blades just big enough to max out likely production most of the time. I've got the fabrication workshop going, making the blades out of salvaged aluminum, stainless for the hubs and bearings. But the biggest limiter on how many wind turbines we can make will be the number of large electric motors. I bet we could build more, but not quick. So if you see any wrecked vehicles or damaged equipment with big pumps or fans in them while out salvaging, make those a priority."

"Sure thing, Nina. Another place we can salvage them is the landing engines and bay doors for the cargo pods. Might be quite a bit of work to extract them, admittedly- Maybe we can set up a few of the prefab houses closer to the debris field and base salvage work there? I'll bring it up. Though... I've still got boss's orders to sniff around for a reactor module. They actually scattered pretty far, there's three more big module landers we're checking today and the rest are in more inconvenient areas, past crevasses or up high slopes. There's still a lot of smoke and steam in the area too, I think the Brigman Cores are still burning."

"Maybe we could salvage one of those and use a regular old steam turbine."

"You think that's safer than nuclear?"

"If the other nuclear modules had as nasty a landing as the first one, yeah. I saw a camera feed from someone piloting a quadcopter in there. The fuel was literally leaking out of the core and pooling on the ground in a big yellow pile. That shit's incredibly toxic. The brigman cores are fusion- A lot more difficult to make and keep working, but less radioactive, less nuclear waste. They, uh, are probably pretty unstable from the crash though. Forget about it."

"A steam turbine isn't that bad of an idea, though. Someone mentioned geothermal a while ago, and we could always just - burn things. Hell of a waste and unsustainable, but in emergencies..."