Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

Fine snowflakes pattered against the mask, melting into tiny dewdrops that trickled down the curved mask. When the automatic ambient light masking system detected that the current environment was either too dark or lacked strong light, it automatically lowered the outer ambient light adjustment mask, revealing the transparent inner layer.

A large hand wrapped in high-strength carbon nanofiber fabric raises a handheld scanning device. The interface connected to PNIS displays the current environmental status: "Atmospheric composition is breathable, microbial density is 337/cubic meter, weak dust particles were detected, insufficient information, safety cannot be determined, it is recommended not to remove the airtight protection measures."

“Fragile dust particles—” Xia Lin stretched out her hand, and snowflakes fell into her palm, gradually accumulating into a small puddle. Portable scanning devices have difficulty completing detailed environmental scans; only vehicle-mounted equipment can do this.

However, when it came to the vehicle-mounted equipment, Xia Lin sighed and looked at the airdrop pod behind him. The airdrop pod, as tall as a barn, stood on the snowfield, and the rocket boosters at the bottom had been jettisoned after the final descent combustion.

Therefore, the height is now only about 13 meters, including the communication tower whose top has been cut off.

On the lower platform, a standard tracked vehicle chassis sat quietly, but it was of no use.

Because Xia Lin didn't bring any vehicle scanning kits at all, these things should have been provided by Colony 14. Relying on the workshops and assembly lines previously deployed by the colony, a new all-terrain multi-functional tracked vehicle could be assembled from this chassis—to put it bluntly: a tractor.

Xia Lin stood at the top of the slope at the exit of the drop pod, looking at the vast snowfield and the undulating snow-capped peaks around her. She sighed again. Colony 14 was a standard desert colony, but this was clearly not it. She wondered what the Windrunner was up to and how it had gotten lost.

With the communication lines cut off, based on Xia Lin's basic mechanical and electronic repair skills, it's impossible to repair this super-membrane communication system. This means that even a distress signal can't be sent out.

However, on the other hand, the fact that this planet is actually an ecological planet, and the scan results show that it is quite suitable for human habitation, is good news.

"Anyway, let's deploy the airdrop pod first..." Don't be fooled by how sturdy and robust this barn looks. In reality, its defense in this mode is practically zero. Again, this isn't a military armored airdrop pod; it's civilian industrial equipment, not designed to withstand attacks.

Moreover, if the airdrop capsule is not deployed, there is no space to install and deploy the cargo inside, and if these devices are not deployed, it is basically no different from waiting to die.

The most crucial question is: as an employee of a pioneering company heading to an agricultural colony and carrying agricultural machinery and goods, who would think that food and drinking water would be included in such a shipment?

The proper course of action would be to unfold and dismantle the airdrop pod, build an agricultural workshop, and then use the production equipment to create synthetic soil from the seemingly abundant local biomass resources. That would then be to plant fast-growing wheat and improved potatoes.

Moreover, without developing the supporting agricultural and food processing equipment, he wouldn't even have anything to eat, unless he ate some local species whose edibility was unknown—unfortunately, food safety testing equipment also requires disassembly and installation.

The main crops on the severely desertified colony planet 14 are drought-resistant corn and potatoes.

However, recently, because the polar water conservancy project has been going relatively smoothly, they are preparing to introduce rice and wheat. It is worth mentioning that it is a lifeless planet, which means that the soil has no organic matter, making it impossible to cultivate directly.

This is why Xia Lin's equipment includes devices for creating synthetic soil.

Synthetic soil, which can be grown on alien planets lacking abundant organic matter or biomass, is made by mixing mined inorganic raw materials such as ammonia ice and phosphate rock with local sand in a decomposition tank.

The industrial airdrop capsule was designed as a modular structure that is easy to disassemble. With the help of auxiliary programs and built-in equipment, the circular barn-like structure quickly became shorter again, and the shell that spread out in all directions became the floor. Silver-gray nanofluid flowed between the gaps, filling it into a standard, wide, circular suspended floor.

Goods placed on the freight platform are also transported along the unfolded transport tracks to the five surrounding sectors for stacking.

Subsequently, the nuclear reactor on top began to descend, and the drones unplugged the cables of unnecessary equipment in sequence. The fusion reactor, which was shaped like a boiler, began to enter the settling mode and was lowered onto the original vehicle platform, which had already been dismantled by the drones.

Finally, the remaining detachable frame was quickly disassembled by the drone and transformed into a new support structure, thus completing a standard open-air workshop platform.

The central area, which houses the power supply, monitoring, and communication core, is cylindrical in shape. Surrounding it is an open-air work area for deploying various work equipment. Users must find their own way to enclose the exterior walls and ceiling.

In any case, the five radial structural frames have extended to the edge of the platform, dividing the platform into five sectors.

The original personnel drop zone was moved to one side of the workshop. It was a non-removable hemispherical structure containing airdrop suitcases, individual batteries, and a necessary protective gear maintenance tool table.

Xia Lin brought a limited variety of equipment and goods. The largest item was a composite production line that, once deployed, occupied nearly 400 square meters. The main manufacturing structure consisted of four nanoprinters and two hummingbird drone nests, along with an assembly line.

This equipment, named "Architect II Composite Foundation Production Line," is, as the name suggests, for producing infrastructure equipment and materials. It can manufacture polymer sheets, cables, generators, photovoltaic panels, greenhouse glass panels, lighting, and other infrastructure materials needed to build an agricultural greenhouse and a small colony.

However, if you expect it to manufacture weapons or large-scale colonial industrial facilities for you, you're really dreaming.

Secondly, there is an electronic furnace, which is an obsolete product with a maximum daily output of less than 50 tons. It can melt various commonly used metal and ceramic materials to provide some necessary furnace materials for the infrastructure system. These two sets of equipment can be easily assembled using modular design, which avoids the trouble of the pioneers having to build a hot metal conveyor line.

Then there's the agricultural machinery assembly station, which can be installed directly on the ground in a sector marked "Garage". This is where agricultural machinery is quickly assembled and installed.

However, since Xia Lin lacks any system industrial capabilities, this function is basically unusable in the short term.

Secondly, there's the Tree of Life Seed Synthesis Library, which Xia Lin installed immediately.

Once it stops working, he was in for a real disaster. After connecting the Tree of Life to the core reactor power supply module and seeing the giant device, which was more than two people tall and looked like a vending machine, finally installed, he breathed a slight sigh of relief.

The next step is to install machine tools in the work area. These machine tools, which include multiple sets of fully automatic multi-axis robotic arms and small forging tables, can maintain and produce various small handheld tools. Together with a civilian nano-honeycomb production machine, it becomes the standard configuration for a typical farmer's home workshop.

Xia Lin had systematically studied machine tool installation, and since it was a home-use machine tool, she couldn't expect it to have a high level of technology. With the help of the laser measuring device, the drone successfully completed the machine tool installation and debugging.

After all the remaining miscellaneous equipment was installed, it was almost completely dark. The ambient and industrial lights along the edge of the platform automatically turned on, illuminating the platform and its surroundings. You could see some creatures, possibly local wild animals, wandering around in the woods.

However, before Xia Lin lowered the ramp, the support structure, which was nearly 3 meters above the ground, would make it difficult for ordinary wild animals to jump up and damage the equipment, not to mention that there was a 2.5-meter-high mesh railing around the edge to block it.

"Click—" He manually closed the battery cover, and the streamlined rifle in his hand lit up with a faint light pattern to indicate that he was ready, and also to remind the civilians around him that this was a real weapon and that it was loaded.

The Falcon assault rifle is specially designed for use by militia, police, and armed security personnel. It uses 8.7mm iron-lead bullets as ammunition and is effective against most targets. Due to its high lethality, its licenses are generally not issued in the inner ring area.

Although there is no life on Planet 14, Xia Lin is not a permanent resident there. He is just an agricultural technician on assignment. For self-defense and safety, he successfully obtained an S-1 weapons license through company connections, which allows him to use military-grade weapons such as the Falcon assault rifle.

However, the firearms he used were also quite different in design from standard equipment.

For example, it may have light pattern prompts, or it may have an electronic lock that automatically locks the activation function except in specific areas.

The lightweight armor over the mask had been closed, and the mask, switched to camera projection mode, made Xia Lin feel no different from being in daylight. Those canines that thought themselves clever and were crawling in the shadows and grass, resembling wolves, were clearly visible.

However, he had no interest in targeting these guys. After checking that there were no problems with the weapons, he continued to focus on the relevant debugging work. At the very least, he had to seal off the workshop today, dismantle the unnecessary equipment in the personnel cabin on the ground, and throw it into the decomposition and recycling pool for harmless treatment by nanomechanical decomposition.

"Luckily, I had some food in my luggage..." The moon was already high in the sky. It was truly amazing that this planet actually had a moon, and the moon was just the right size, with only one moon.

Xia Lin sat down against the fence. His somewhat bulky extreme environmental protection suit made him look like a panda sitting on the ground, struggling with a metal sealed cylinder in his hands.

This extreme environmental protection suit has almost no exoskeleton enhancement capabilities.

Therefore, Xia Lin spent a lot of effort to open the cylinder in her hand, revealing the milky white honeycomb-shaped surface inside.

"Shake it—" A hexagonal strip about the thickness of a thumb slides out of the cylinder. The mask has inlets for eating and drinking, so it does not affect eating. However, the diameter of the food can only be this large at most.

Milk-flavored nutrition bars are a type of space snack similar to energy bars. Their advantage is that they don't produce a lot of crumbs and have a very rich milk flavor. They are made from black algae starch and other flavorings, and they are perfectly fine as a snack to satisfy hunger.

"Crunch... crunch—" After eating two nutrition bars with a can of purified water, Xia Lin clapped her hands, stood up, closed the cylinder in her hand, and returned to the production line.

Since there are no more metal materials available, and the detached outer shell plates are still soaking in the decomposition tank, it will be difficult to complete the separation in a short time to obtain precipitated multicolored alloys or similar substances. Therefore, the main material can only be polymers.

Polymers are not very strong defensively, but a double-layered polymer shell can at least provide insulation and provide a roof and walls.

Aside from the central core area, the workshop is divided into five sectors. The framework has pre-designated entrances and exits, and there are also directional markings on the ground. If we take the entrance garage as 12 o'clock, the sectors arranged clockwise are:

The "production area" is equipped with an electronic furnace and a basic composite production line;

The processing area has three food processing bays: one for meat, one for grains, and one for fruits and vegetables. The fruit and vegetable bay also includes a fermentation tank for brewing and fermentation. In addition, there are two manual processing tables for manual processing.

The "tool room" houses various agricultural implements and a machine tool, and also provides space for placing modular cabinets and adding other tool maintenance equipment;

The "Warehouse" houses the Tree of Life seed synthesis warehouse and the cold storage, and is equipped with a miniature lifting device. Of course, the warehouse is only for initial cold storage use, and the space is not very large.

Since the entire system was designed for colonists or pioneers to build a base or work site in a short period of time, drones began high-speed assembly work after the first batch of polymer curved panels were successfully manufactured on the production line.

As the first rays of dawn appeared on the horizon, the original open-air platform had already transformed into a short, stout building. Since there was enough fusion fuel, Xia Lin did not need to build a photovoltaic farm for the time being.

This is something that must be considered. Without industrial facilities and colonial infrastructure, and without the ability to order equipment remotely, it is impossible to reproduce the manufacturing process of "deuterium fuel rods" with the equipment at hand.

Furthermore, obtaining the necessary helium-3 on Earth is likely difficult. Therefore, fusion reactors are not an infinite energy source, and eventually, a shutdown necessitating a switch to solar energy or other power sources is unavoidable.

After confirming the airtightness of the "clean room" filtration system started working and released the liquid compressed air stored in the core cabin, the room quickly returned to the normal Earth environment mode. Xia Lin then took off his helmet and put his protective suit in order into the equipment cabinet on the side of the garage.

Since the workshop itself does not include a residential area, the residential area refers to the personnel storage area or the colonists can simply build a spherical colony themselves.

Therefore, Xia Lin could only print out a polymer bed to make do in the garage. After staying up all night, even with the help of the enhancer and the symbiote, she was still a little sleepy.

Chapter Two: On the Importance of Handicrafts

Chapter two

After sleeping for several hours, Xia Lin finally woke up. It was already bright outside, but thick, dark clouds still covered the sky like an iron-gray lid. Fine, continuous snowflakes fell from the sky, and a thick layer of snow had accumulated on the completely sealed hemispherical workshop.

Today's work is simple: to divide the workshop into layers and reinforce the exterior walls, which means creating a second floor to serve as a living area and storage area.

Because the production line and garage occupied a considerable amount of ceiling height, only three sectors could actually be partitioned off: storage, tools, and processing areas.

With the help of PNIS, Xia Lin walked around the workshop with a laser rangefinder, leaving virtual electronic markings on the walls.

Generally speaking, it can partition off a space with a height of about 2.4 to 2.5 meters as a living and work space. Due to its proximity to the top, a sealed skylight can also be installed to obtain better natural lighting.

If conditions permit later, a circular balcony or corridor could be built outside the hemispherical top cabin.

Of course, that can only be done if it is confirmed that the local atmospheric particulate matter is harmless to the human body, and it can be turned into an open facility without complicated airtight facilities.

Xia Lin decided to divide the partitioned areas into a bedroom, a kitchen, and a space whose purpose was yet to be determined. The stairs leading up and down the building were located on the side of the garage and on the side of the production area, and were made of polymer.

The bedroom area is about 40 square meters, and a washroom is partitioned off. One end of the washroom is close to the production area, and the pipes can be laid directly down to connect to the decomposition tank in the production area.

Although the decomposition tank is called a "tank," it is actually a completely sealed device in which domestic wastewater, waste, and excrement can be put in for decomposition. Some of the wastewater is reprocessed into compressed biomass, while the rest is sent to the recycling system in the core area for further treatment.

The kitchen, including the dining area, is about 30 square meters. It's near the garage, making it easy to access various supplies from the warehouse and vehicles. Connecting the kitchen and bedroom is a long, curved empty room. Xia Lin hasn't decided what to do with it yet. Perhaps she could replace the polymer shell with sealed windows to partition off a living room or even a gym.

The beacon is damaged now, and rescue is uncertain when it will arrive. Trying to build a warp rocket here is pointless. Therefore, creating a reasonably comfortable base, or rather, a safe haven, is absolutely essential.

The basic composite production line has been shut down without receiving any further production orders or raw materials. The materials needed to produce polymer sheets are not complicated. The so-called polymer is basically interstellar engineering plastic, made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and a small amount of metal elements. The materials obtained from the previously decomposed and detached protective shell are sufficient for use.

The installation process doesn't require Xia Lin to carry tools and install the equipment herself. Assembling drones can handle the job perfectly well. The only problem is that they are disposable and only used to assist the colonists in completing the initial installation work, and their function is very limited.

While the drone was working, Xia Lin opened the hatch, left the workshop, and went to the ejected personnel compartment next to it. Disassembly of this thing had to be done entirely manually.

He also plans to use this small, hemispherical cabin as an outdoor storage room.

Most of the items inside are useless. For example, the damping protection device during landing has no purpose other than being thrown into the recycling equipment to dismantle electronic materials.

However, the wall-mounted medical diagnostic kit and the colonist survival kit inside had to be moved back into the workshop.

This task took up his entire morning, and possibly even his afternoon. He didn't have any data on the planet, so he couldn't adjust the clock and had to rely on the skylight to judge the time.

Now for the main event: the industrial drone was still assembling its compartment, and he himself couldn't be idle. As the saying goes, "To get rich, first cut down trees," and the surrounding trees could provide a large amount of material for synthesizing polymers. However, first, he needed a reliable logging tool.

“It’s time to show what I’ve learned at the Pioneer Training Camp!” Xia Lin rolled up his sleeves and pulled a metal plate from a nearby storage box. It was left behind by some debris that had crashed earlier, whether it was a spaceship or something else. After being processed by the recovery equipment, only this irregular metal plate remained.

Xia Lin used a simple testing device to measure the strength of this thing, and it was not bad. She then took out a laser pointer and started to draw on the grid marked by the PNIS built-in auxiliary plugin.

It wasn't that he didn't want to use the finished design blueprints and automated processing modules, but rather, these things required connection to the colony network. The blueprint library was in Colony 14, where he was originally supposed to go, and these related blueprints were all paid—after all, the tool company also needed to make a living and couldn't just give them away for free.

However, if you're just making an axe, you don't necessarily need a blueprint; you can make it by hand.

Moreover, with the visual dynamic assistance mode of the PNIS neural plugin, combined with an intelligent tool arm, you can still make an axe by hand.

The laser cutting arm cuts out a roughly axe-shaped section on a homogeneous metal sheet. Under manual operation, the fixed arm tilts to cut two bevels into the standard thickness metal sheet.

Of course, this is all there is to civilian and home-use machine tools. In industrial applications, Star Alliance's machining process includes an etching process. Simply put, after other mechanical equipment processes the rough blank, millions of sets of high-precision robotic arms with diameters of a few millimeters use nanoscale decomposition particles to complete the remaining finishing process.

However, it's not quite as bad as using a machine tool to carve an axe. Although using a machine tool to carve an axe is already ridiculous, the correct way is to forge or cast it on a forging machine.

However, due to the lack of metal ore, the outdated electronic furnace was probably unable to handle this material, so a cutting process had to be used.

However, if a series of strange industrial equipment, including etching beds and pitting presses, were actually brought over, Xia Lin's technical skills would not be sufficient to operate them.

For example, the point press or point ballast chamber that uses gravitons to process the core of matter is not something that ordinary people can operate.