Humble Beginnings
We made landfall on a mountain range. One of several options the pod ai had designated as a safe landing site. This was called point Alpha, we decided to name our little settlements Addison. I didn’t care much for the name but Beasley insisted. We made a rudimentary log cabin for the three of us, it was hell. Neither Walz nor Beasley could be bothered to pick up after themselves which left me on cleaning duty, and the. They had the gal to complain about the cleanliness of the place. I guess I couldn’t really complain though, Walz saving grace is that he had a green thumb. We were able to get a couple of seeds planted for the season.
It was a grim realisation that we wouldn’t really have time to stock up on food for the winter. Much less with food going bad left and right. That many of our plants died off around fall did not make things easier. One cold snap and there went a third of the harvest, I cursed that damned ship computer. We barely subsisted on whatever game reared its head in the mountain. Nothing will ever make me like the taste of rat meat, which is in no way in Beasley’s cooking, she did the best she could.
With temperatures dropping and a bitter winter on the horizon we had to find ways to keep warm. The summer storms gave us hope that we could have reliable wind power year round, so me and Beasley got to work. She was a quick study with a set of tools, we soon had a rudimentary wind turbine. Power came in slow bursts in the morning. We had to be diligent with our power saving strategies at first, at least until we had our first battery installed. It was good fortune that the unique geography of the mountain gave us strong winds at night, our batteries were always topped up by the time the sun was up. We briefly considered building a steam engine as a backup, but with only wood to burn it wouldn’t have done us any good, we barely had enough materials for shelter.
It was around this time that Walz came onto me, bastard. We came in all sweet like, talking about how this was such an amazing opportunity for a new beginning, a new life. At my age, I should know better, but I’ve always had this thing for nerdy naive scientists. He kept talking to me as we chipped away at the mountain looking for iron. He was a lot less chatty when I asked about his ring, bastard. It was going to be a long winter
— Memoirs of Leita Knight