Canti plots our course and we start off to the drifts. The trip takes 5 days and we see the ship on an asteroid as we arrive. The asteroid itself is about the size of North America, and is actually a binary dwarf planet. Canti deploys drones down to the asteroid to search for life signs. There is a thin methane atmosphere. The drone comes in closer and sees a man-made structure, in front of which is a metal statue of a bird that is half-finished. We decide to land the ship and take a look around, gearing up for the conditions and Canti brings his drones.

While searching the area we do find what appear to be ATV treads all around the area. We also notice a small surveillance drone by the other ship, which Canti hacks into and sees that they’ve been using it to survey areas around the planet. The ship’s entries are locked but Canti is able to hack in and get us inside. It looks like the occupants hastily grabbed items from inside the ship and took off. The ship’s sensor logs show videos of two women putting up the bird sculpture.

We start searching the outlying areas with the ship’s sensors and notice that there are cave entrances nearby. We trek into one along with Man-Bot and eventually we come to a blast door. Canti tries to hack in but finds that the protocols are quite old; the protocols are over 200 years old. We use a maglock sequencer to open the door, which opens to a warehouse hallway. We see three robots on tank treads ahead of us, which trundle up and stop about 15 feet from the entrance. We notice that they are staring blankly ahead at us. They are making a radio transmission which Cam realizes is analog. It is a synthesized voice that says “Are you here to see the foreman. Are you replacement crew?” We answer yes and they take us into the mine.

It seems that part of the building is used to build the robots that we have seen. The robots take us to a separate area with a teleconference screen and tell us that the foreman will be with us shortly. We see the symbols on the walls that say “Automated Mining Systems” in Chinese characters. Eve searches the company name in one of her databases and sees that it has been out of business for more than 100 years.

A moment later the door closes and a computer generated avatar comes onto the screen and explains that we are the new replacement crew and we must start work immediately. It is able to respond to questions and verifies that the two women are currently working in the mine. We decide to play along for the time being and allow ourselves to be taken in to personal quarters.

We manage to get a communique open to one of the girls and she explains that they’ve been here several months and can’t get out. There was another crew that tried to take them out by force and were cut down by the robots. Cam asks her why they came here and why they decided to build the bird sculpture. She says that it was just a fanciful trip to come here and that the sculpture was just art that they created before they were pressed into service. Cam doesn’t believe her and says that after the group gets them out they need to answer truthfully.

Stitch gets called to repair the video feed to one of the monitors. Meanwhile Canti sends his drones throughout the facility to scope everything out. A short while later, an alert goes out throughout the system that says the facility is being hacked and security is being deployed to take care of the problem. However, Canti is not seeing any activity coming to stop him. Soon he is able to get root control and deactivates the high alert status. However, it seems that the Architect likeness controls many of the main functions. He sets it to Eve’s likeness so she can be in charge of the system. Eve makes all of us admins in the system and lets the AI know that the facility is due to be changed for new products, therefore production quotas are now zero.

We tour the facility and see how incredibly large it is…every time they run out of warehouse space they build a new one (there are 35 warehouses as of now) to house the obsolete fuel cells that the factory creates.

After a while the system notifies us that there is a visitor. We see a visual of him and he seems to be heavily armored. Eve commands that security be put on high alert and we go to see who it is.