Documentation — Steele's Notebook

It took quite a while for everyone in charge to settle on a good spot to build our base of operations. Gotta have fairly flat land, solid ground, not to mention the IA stressing that we have as little of a destructive impact on the environment as possible. One helluva tall order when we’re being stationed on an untouched planet. There were a handful of good options, and they eventually agreed upon a nice spot near a coastline. Here I was thinking I was being thrust into some new line of work, a location like that sounds more like a vacation spot to me!

There’s probably gonna be a good few months of having to rough it sometimes once construction starts. So far away from everywhere else... man, even after this place is built, getting supplies sent out here on a regular basis will be annoying. For a long time, all we’ll have is whatever we can keep stored on our ships, and anything we harvest. Whatever we gather, we’re ordered to only do it by hand and with traditional tools. Good thing I like seafood, I guess. I’m sure a place like this has at least a few tasty morsels swimming around out there. Hopefully I don’t have so much work piled on me that it keeps me from going out and doing some of that fishing myself.

I hope being the head honcho of this new Headquarters helps distract Grenia from the Grandship getting destroyed. Four years and it’s still eating away at her. I mean, I still get a little angry when I think about it, but I think I’m mostly over it. Maybe my age makes it easier for me to shrug even catastrophic stuff like that off after a good while.

The nearby beach is really interesting. It’s got black sand, that’s not something I see everyday! I’ve managed to go out fishing with a group of fieldies a few times now, but this last fishing trip was much different than the others. Before we would catch the odd glimpse of these... finned dragon-looking things. They would always keep a healthy distance, not bothering us, instead just observing us as we fished. Someone said they think they’re not quite like the other animals roaming around here. The more I see these scaly guys, the more I’m inclined to agree.

I guess we let ourselves get too comfortable around these things, because today a pair of them somehow snuck up behind us and ran off with one of our coolers! Now, I may not be as fast as I used to be, but all the young and spry among our group were easily capable of taking care of a couple of troublemakers like that. Or so I thought. It was only a few seconds after they snatched some of our stuff that we all learned how they approached us undetected... they opened up some purple portal-looking thing and disappeared right in front of our eyes!

Seeing one up close, even if only for a brief moment, was still really something. From far away you can tell they have really bright markings, but they’re a lot more stunning when they’re right in front of you. I’ll never forget the faces of those two bastards that stole some of our catches that day. Hours later and they’re still burned into my brain.

Our construction area is really ideal. Too ideal. Sure, you can find the odd tiny flying critter, a bug crawling through the grass, but not much else bigger than that. Go to the beach or the forest, and they’re both teeming with all kinds of stuff. Why was there pretty much nothing around this place? I think I finally figured out why today.

I got assigned the job of looking after all of our fieldies and making sure they’re actually doing their job of patrolling around the construction area. They’re keeping both us and any curious wildlife safe. A fieldie called me up saying that there was a robot attacking an animal. At first I thought he meant that one of our robots was going haywire, but no, apparently this robot wasn’t ours at all! So whose was it? At that moment I had no clue, and was honestly really worried that some bad actors somehow found this planet already.

What do I find when I get there? The weirdest looking robot I’ve ever seen. Whatever it was attacking had ran off by the time I arrived, but the robot was still there, now interested in me and the fieldies instead. It wasn’t mad at us, though, which let me get a really good look at it. Scratches here and there, several small dents, and just the way it looks... it’s more curious than it is suspicious. One brave fieldie decided to get up close and look it over, and she said she thinks it’s actually a cyborg. That’d make it more like those glass-winged birds at the beach, and not something that someone planted here to try and disrupt us.

It doesn’t seem aggressive towards us. It was decided to leave it be for now, but a close eye will be kept on it if it reappears. Something tells me that if there’s more of these things, they may be the reason why larger animals are so sparsely seen around the area we chose.

Today we learned that there’s all kinds of fruit growing in the nearby forest. We also learned that there’s a carnivorous plant that mimics these same fruits to lure in prey. Now we have a fieldie that’s torn up worse than a scratching post and has a six inch long thorn stuck in one of his legs. Think I’ll stick to fishing.

Our mysterious little loiterer from the other week has been watching our construction. I knew it had reappeared a few times, but I didn’t know how close all the fieldies were apparently letting it get. They think it’s cute. One of them said they even got it to play fetch with a rock. I learned all of this by overhearing a couple of fieldies who were on break. Those guys are lucky that it isn’t Grenia herself watching them directly, or they would’ve been kicked off of this wet rock without a second thought.

Before turning in for the evening, I decided to pay the thing a visit. After watching it for a while, I see what they mean. It is cute, in a weird kinda way. Felt less like I was observing some wild animal and more like I was keeping a lonely puppy company. It looked a little upset when I left after sundown.

I got told that managing the fieldies will be my full-time gig here now. Now, I can handle managing people just fine, but I also have to make all of this work with all of this research that’s being planned. I’m not a scientist... I’m an officer from a Grandship that doesn’t even exist anymore. Doesn’t help that I’m basically on my own to come up with a plan... a lot of people have even more on their plate than I do.

No idea who started the trend, but people have been calling our little wandering friend Ironshell lately. Apparently it’ll eat almost any food you offer it. Far as I can tell the thing seems to be completely on its own. No fieldie has managed to find another one like it around here. We weren’t supposed to be keeping animals around until construction is finished, only stuff like plants, water, dirt, and whatever else. Things that don’t squirm around a lot. Or try to kill you if they get mad. At this point I think a lot of people would be upset if they were told they can’t play around with Ironshell anymore, so I guess it’s staying around.

I wish I had the time to go out fishing with the fieldies again, but now I’m too busy and too drained by the end of the day.

After a week of struggling to try and to get my brain to come up with some actually good ideas, I think I’m finally getting somewhere. The building that my new office is in is going to be finished in a few weeks. After looking over the blueprint and figuring out which way it’s facing, it seems like I lucked out and might actually have a nice view! I ordered a coffee machine in anticipation, but who knows when it’ll actually arrive. There’s no two day cross-galaxy delivery guarantee in these parts.

Someone built a little house out of cardboard boxes for Ironshell, and the little guy seemed to really enjoy it. Every morning you could see it peering out of there as people walk by. Unfortunately, it rained today, and by the evening the boxes basically turned into mush. I saw Ironshell return to its now destroyed home earlier, and it was just poking and prodding at the remains.

I decided to pick him up and take him back to my quarters. He weighs a lot less than it seems like he would. I guess he probably isn’t actually made of iron, but other people can argue about semantics like that. If I’m going to keep him in here, I should probably keep a close eye on him. Not that I have much in here, but what I do have in here I’d like to keep. At least he seems fine with sleeping on the little rug I have in here. His eyes turn off like a light when he’s asleep... I hope that doesn’t mean they’re really bright in the dark. It’d be like having a cat all over again.