48
Chapter Two: The Founding
Here you are now, deep beneath the ice of Europa. Your time in transit has ended and now the colony begins.
"Do you want the bad news or the worse news first?" asks Evgeniy Cardoso, cryo-engineer and miserabilist.
"The—"
"Our comms antenna is stuck, useless, in about two meters of ice below the surface," Evgeniy continues. "It was trailing behind like the plan, but got buried on arrival."
"Is that the bad news or—"
"And the fabricator to print a new antenna needs the workshop to be built!"
"So—"
"We can't use the tunneling drills unsupported because it's straight up above the ship."
"In that case—"
"Unless we want to commit the resources to digging out and laying the supports for an observatory before we even have dormitories."
"Then—"
"But we can send a hot bullet drone." The tiny bullet-shaped robots are used to burrow through ice. They're designed to be sent ahead of major tunneling to check for cracks.
"Well—"
"But the estúpido thing needs fine guidance. They don't have much battery power and so, knowing our luck, we'll get it stuck in the ice too."
You did the bullet drone training a few years back in the run-up to the mission, but you were never that great at it. Evgeniy isn't going to risk doing it himself, and no one else around has any confidence in recovering the antenna this way.