In all the chaos, the crew did find some nodules of refined-ish silicon
on the ground - the guys from Dan Hurd Prospecting made like hoboes on
ham sandwiches on said nodules.

Curly managed to DRIVE BOOT GOOD over to nearest canyon and managed to
sort-of-set-down (still under power) on surface water to help REFUEL
BOOT GOOD.

Jim Ladone got discharged from sickbay and on to helping Joe with the
fuel tank fixes - Nikki wasn't overly worried, they still had two
undamaged collapsible tanks, either of which (thanks to her plumbing
refit) they could use directly when jumping.  Jim Ladone (poor sod) was
spinning out enough to give a great generator impression.

In the time it took Joe + Jim to fix the fuel tank (3 hours), Nikki
amused herself soloing the hull crit, consuming a dton of spares between
them.

Curly proceeded to DRIVE BOOT GOOD again...

"Why's this feeling like a twilight zone?" - Easy Frag

... with a criminally-smooth reinsertion into the ball-of-twine orbit.

"Is Annie OK, though?' - Wombat

_ game derailed for a few minutes by lulz _

Once back in orbit, Trinh, Priss and two gunners join Das Geezer on EVA
to take a shufti at the mangled landing gear.  The gunners having
wrestled one of the mining laser drills out with them were a little
surprised when Trinh showed everyone on the hull exactly how to use such
a bit of kit in a surgical fashion.  With Priss having spotted the
easiest places to sever the damaged landing gear (and, collaring both
gunners, getting the far ends tethered to Das Boot), it took another
three hours to surgically remove, and stow, the mangled landing gear -
without Joe's cargo-fu, would have been much longer and more annoying. 
Applying some HAMMERTIME (tm), Priss also convinced the landing gear
doors to close while Trinh and her lot dragged the severed gear parts
into the main hold, taking up a little over a quarter-dton.

As the mapping continued, more information about the atmosphere flowed in.

Base atmosphere seemed to be the result of vulcanism, which then flowed
downhill from the essentially-airless uplands.

The canyon they refuelled in wasn't at all unusual in having bacteria at
its lip that filtered/metabolised the raw atmosphere and turned it into
something directly breathable.

Some more radio concentrations turned up - Joe wasn't at all surprised
when Beverely asked if they could skip the onsite investigation, in
light of what had happened earlier.

Also turning up were some ill-defined mass anomalies, mainly in the
southern hemisphere uplands.  Nothing that excited the prospectors.

Nikki decided to commit to a full-sky survey - and put her foot in it on
the Leadership roll, dishing out disadvantages shipwide.

Curly, despite "help" from both Nikki and Jim Ladone rocks out with a
total of 12 on the signal collection.

Again, despite Nikki's "help", Curly assembled that into a full-system
map - an asteroid belt, and Galilean-style moons for all three gas giants.

Nikki's supply of "help" had, thankfully, been exhausted when the time
came to bugger off.

Curly scraped by the astroguessing back to Kushuggi 2528, then crit
failed (but caught) the insertion and succeeded on second try, while
Ladone rocked out with boxcars on the J-drive.  2 and a half hours was a
small price to pay, in Nikki's opinion, for a smooth jump.

One redline later, Das Boot emerged in 2528, and contacted the convoy,
sending survey data, incident paperwork, reports, etc.

"Hmmph.  Guess _Butcher's Paradise_ under new management, nyet?" - Nikov

The support-boat crews had been busy, laying down a very basic E class
port - Nikov handed them off to Hudugurusinha who was masterminding repairs.

6 hours later, the _Stacey Thomson_ meets Das Boot in orbit and Guru
directs them to follow him in.  Descent was smooth, touchdown was a
little dicier - they landed cocked on the scaffolding that had been set
up for them as the _Stacey Thomson_ put down beside them to provide
shore power during repairs.

--