Three weeks after landing, Naomi studies the Seismic Monitor Station under cold module lights. The colony hums around her, stable, temporary, and very small compared to the ground beneath it.
The radar layers bloom across the display, and the seismic overlays line up with them. Below the crust, something vast and geometric waits in metallic knots and corridors.
Lead Engineer
This is not natural rock. Look at the symmetry, the repeat spacing. It is structure.
He points at the deepest return, where the scan resolves into impossible angles, too clean to be erosion and too old to be recent work.
The Ship AI
Unverified subsurface mass detected. Recommend restricted access and preservation of system order.
Naomi Katsuragi
The alloy signature is consistent across every scan.
Lead Engineer
If we want answers about this moon, Naomi, we start there. I can get us closer, but only if we move before the data gets buried under routine reports.
His hand lingers over the map a beat too long. On the screen, one buried corridor flickers, then reasserts itself, as if something below is listening back.
✓ Quest Accepted
Investigate the buried structure beneath the moon
✓ Quest Accepted
Confirm whether the buried ruins are a threat or a resource
“assemble a team to go on-site and unearth the buried structure”
SUCCESS (Poor Command, rolled +1)
Naomi cuts the scan feed to a tighter loop, and the buried shape resolves into a continuous shell, not loose rock. The room goes still around the monitor's blue wash.
Naomi Katsuragi
It is huge, and it is built.
Lead Engineer
That alignment is enough for a field call. We assemble a team, we go in person, and we stop guessing.
The Ship AI
Surface access is granted under monitored conditions. Subsurface contact remains unverified.
The Lead Engineer keys a dispatch panel, and two colony survey techs answer almost at once, their icons snapping onto the station board. Naomi's request has already become a work order.
Lead Engineer
We have a crew. If the scan holds, we are not looking at a cave. We are looking at something made to be entered.
On the main display, one corridor-like return flickers again, as if the buried structure is reacting to the assembled team before they even leave the room.
“I go with the survey team to the buried structure”
SUCCESS (Great Agility, rolled +0)