Passing by the houses, Ridge saw the group of ten waiting for him by the gate, and he quickly made his way over to join them.
"Okay, sorry about being late; had some stuff pop up. This time, the objective is to scout south of the base, past the large mining outpost we set up. The things we are looking for are more ore deposit spots, undiscovered plants or animals, and finally, to be even more specific, a silvery-blue metallic ore called veltrite." Ridge said.
"Understood, sir," one of the men replied. The others hummed in acknowledgment, and so Ridge set off immediately; no point in loitering around the gate.
He didn't plan out a specific route for this mission; just like their previous expedition, he was going to choose a direction to travel in and hope they find something interesting.
When leaving, they first followed the road to the outpost, where Ridge wanted to check up on the few people stationed there. It was mostly just guards on makeshift wooden watchtowers, with the sole exception of an engineer who was pretty much permanently stationed here till he was able to teach a regular crew member a thing or two about overseeing the automated mine and refineries.
While inspecting the base and seeing how cobbled together everything was, he quickly sent out yet another message to Caroline, who had at this point become more than just a lead engineer and instead was a director of sorts who managed all construction projects for the crew.
'Caroline,
I just finished my inspection of the large mining outpost. Although I know you're busy with what I asked of you before leaving, I would like you to have some engineers re-shift their focus to designing and building a metal wall with defences for the outpost. This luckily shouldn't be too hard to complete since it will be a miniaturized version of what we built for the home base.
Ridge out.'
Making sure everything seemed just right, Ridge made one last inspection before leaving, this time going off-road into unexplored wilderness.
The surroundings in this area looked quite familiar to the eyes; however, there were two notable differences in how the west or north looked as compared to the south. The first was the ground. To be more specific, instead of the typical foliage that they constantly saw all over the planet, this time they were walking on more rocky surfaces. At some point, the trees had also thinned out considerably, only having a few growing here and there on the patches of visible dirt.
This area was also quite hilly, but not as steep, luckily, as the mountains in the north. Before they could get even further in, Ridge had finally received Caroline's reply.
'Sure,
it's not a problem; the technical work, as you mentioned, just needs to be scaled down pretty much. I'll go ahead and organize some of the crew with Yayha to work on that now. We're still in the design phase for our other project regarding the crystal, so we should be able to dedicate a good amount of the labor force there.
Caroline out.'
She was probably very busy, Ridge thought to himself; usually she sends out longer messages and is also quicker in replying. It's good to stay busy though; it means progress is being made and the group also has a purpose rather than just lazing around doing nothing, but waiting to die.
Moving on, he led the scouts further and further south, entering even more rocky terrain. At some point the trees no longer grew, and the only thing within eyesight was the color grey and brown; occasionally, an orangish color had sprung out.
The two suns seemed to shine much more intensely here without the protection of the tree tops providing shade and natural cover. Ridge had noticed at some point that the average temperature reading on his suit went from the usual sixty-eight degrees farenheight to seventy-six degrees. Not hot enough for his suit to automatically begin regulating his temperature, but a jump nonetheless that he could kind of feel when taking off his helmet.
Walking further into this unknown terrain, he noticed that it was quite expansive. When looking to the left, besides the tree line technically still behind them, he noticed only a stretch of grey and dark brown rocks going over the horizon, and that same view was seen when looking to the right and also in front of them. Of course, it wasn't all completely flat and the same everywhere. Large and small cliffs popped up here and there, as well as boulders of all shapes and sizes.
It was around midday by the time they left home base, and when they made it out of the forest, only a few hours had passed, so the group still had some light, meaning Ridge wanted to travel as much as possible. Hours passed, and the sky turned darker and darker. No substantial discovery had been made by the time previously invisible stars began to show themselves, and the group eventually resolved to set up camp just below one of the larger jagged cliffs on top of some gravel that was likely going to be uncomfortable to sleep on.
They did bring more supplies this time, and among those supplies were tents and sleeping bags. A luxury they didn't forget to bring this time around. The gravel, while certainly troublesome, was fortunately able to be swept away quite easily, leaving only a smooth surface they could lay on. Much more comfortable than getting poked in the back by small rocks.
Ridge had also used some of the larger rocks that had presumably fallen from the jagged cliff as anchors for his tent as he set it up. Some within the group of scouts used the loose gravel as anchors and simply buried the corners of their tents into it like dirt, and others followed Ridge's method of simply using larger rocks as anchors.
Since there was no fire, Ridge had one lookout stay awake for a period of time and rotate accordingly to keep watch. This time he took first watch.
The others didn't complain and quickly climbed into their tents to sleep. He stayed awake for a couple of hours and noticed nothing, while the surroundings got darker and darker until eventually a soft alarm rang out from his panel. Looking down, he shut it off and went to wake up the second person for watch.
Once everything was arranged, he then exhaustedly climbed into his tent and passed out quickly. He slept rather soundly and eventually woke up at his usual time naturally. Climbing out of his tent he stood up to stretch and noticed that the others woke up one by one feeling just as refreshed as him.
No incident had occurred while he was sleeping, which was very good.
"Let's pack up and get moving again. You can eat your rations while on the move," He said while climbing back into his tent to wrap up his sleeping bag.
The others said nothing, merely doing the same thing as him. Dismantling their tents and grabbing some rations to eat while travelling.
The day was pretty much a repeat of yesterday. More rocks, gravel, and jagged cliffs. While travelling down one of said cliffs, one of the scouts in the back shouted out, "Stop, I think I see something."
Turning around, Ridge raised his brow and quickly made his way over; the others followed. The scout who shouted out had crouched down and wiped away some gravel. Grabbing hold of what looked like ore, he showed the group as they approached.
Raising his brow, Ridge was interested. Crouching down, he continued wiping more of the gravel away and noticed chunks of color within the usual grey rocks. It looked quite similar to the metals they mined at the outpost. Likely the same type.
"Mark it down on your maps," he said, smiling. "Nice work, scout," he praised while patting his shoulder.
Getting up from the ground, he also marked the location on his own map and directed the group to continue. They would have to send a more technical team here to determine the size of the deposit, but he was already quite satisfied with what they found. The unfortunate part was that it was quite far, and the ground was going to be quite hard to cut through with the trailblazers to make a good enough road for transportation.
All things to plan out and discuss when I return, I suppose, he thought.
Unluckily, it wasn't the exact ore they were looking for either; nonetheless, it will be a boon for the base. Instead of continuing straight ahead from this ore deposit, he had decided at some point to move to the west. If they were going to look for veltrite, it would probably be a good idea to scour every bit of land they could find, including backtracking slightly. It wouldn't help if they found it even further out.
Just imagining the logistics of trying to build something even further away from the ore deposit they found gave him a headache. Hopefully all their luck wasn't spent on just that.