The Sprague Diaries

[jammi]

05/06/819 - PERSONAL ENTRY

Well, the plant life isn't much to write home about. Only seen the one sort - grass. Stretching for miles and miles and miles. It's a yellowy/brown colour. Not exactly the sort of thing to inspire high spirits and notions of adventure. It's all terribly dull and anaemic looking. I doubt even the green lobby on Cambridge could get excited about defending this lot when BMM's quarrying ships move in on the ore lodes. On the plus side, we found the water we were looking for. A geoscan sweep showed a confined aquifer running underneath the plains.

Of course, when I say 'confined', I mean 'sat under a shelf of granite several strata layers down'. That's not going to be fun to get to. The Doc reckons the grasses here probably have root systems that drill all the way down and tap into it. Impressive for a bit of zombie-shrubbery.

Oh, before I forget, first bit of excitement. Big spike on the ther/mag probes at around 1330. At first we thought it was just another iron heap, but the shapes were reading as geometric - artificial. Looks like we just found our first ruin. Shame it was about half a mile underground. No way we're getting to it. We flagged the finding with ExSec HQ and carried on our way. Hopefully we'll find one on the surface soon - they say these things are hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of years old.

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06/06/819 - PERSONAL ENTRY

Well, there goes the settlement bonus. Received the report on the wideband this afternoon. Platforms A10/SH and A41/NH have found ideal colony sites - HQ is evaluating their findings to see which one is most suitable. There goes the finders fee that I signed up for. Damn shame. Now we're down to standard wages, unless we find something unexpectedly useful.

I hear they're going to start shipping in from next month - investment money's been rolling in from the private sector, seeing as the government's all tied up keeping Leeds in one piece. The legislation all flew through the Commons a couple of months ago. Knew I was going to end up getting sucked into it the moment I saw the report. Who'd have thought being a pioneer was so dull?

Lost 30 credits on the evening poker game, which isn't helping my mood. Probably going to sit it out for a little while. Lauran's tanning the lot of us - I'm starting to think those crocodile tears a few days ago were just a ruse so she could hustle us good. Bitch. Never liked her anyway.

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