Touchdown

The Founders spent many weeks seemingly idle in orbit. Far from idling, however, they painstakingly crunched numbers while taking further measurements from the planet for analysis. With these analyses came conclusions, and from those, a plan. NSI Sienna, like all NSI fleets, was preemptively trained on the possible planetary scenarios they could encounter given everything known from the Earth System. The Founders, the undoubted geniuses of the mission, were tasked with the imposing job of devising a resource cycle of materials and chemicals for the machines to use. This cycle of collecting, refining, and making products from native resources, then recycling them over and over, had not only to cover the planet in machines in short notice, but also change its conditions to be more Earthlike, knocking out two problems at once. Based on the frameworks of example resource cycles given from home, they finally designed one tailored to what they knew from up here. With the time come, the always-thinking Founders chose landing spots and optimal time windows for the planetary Founders to make their move, starting the next stage of the Initiative.

The planetary Founders, still in their highly eccentric orbits, took some time to approach the planet again. In the meantime, the Founders in close orbit ejected their cargo, each of which unfolded into a Quartic Orbiter. Under the Orbiters' guidance, each of the other Founders shot out a final rocket jet to aim for the lower atmosphere, producing two pods as they approached Sienna. As the planet loomed over them, the remains of each Founder fell straight into it, their funeral pyre. The pods instead produced a ballute from their hind sides, dropping them toward their assigned targets. As they traveled slower and fell faster, the void around them began to fill with a vanishingly fine mist of light gaseous atoms. They fell faster, the mist of atoms becoming a light soup, pushing back ever harder against their ballutes. Soon it was a thick fog of gases shoving with utmost force, pressing the ballutes dangerously close to breaking while striking the surface of the pod a dull red, dazzling yellow, then brilliant white. The pods, so small yet with surfaces so blazing hot, began to overheat on the inside, the heat forcing its way through their insulation. The cargo within, once frozen solid in a special hydrocarbon for transport, now bathed in partially frozen slush, the melting hydrocarbon keeping the temperature stable. But the scalding heat kept coming, and soon the hydrocarbon was liquid, causing the temperature to go up higher. Soon this liquid became hot enough to boil, consuming ever more of the screaming heat as the pressure burst a valve on the back of each pod, venting hydrocarbon steam as a last attempt to keep the temperature from rising more. Some pods could not take the heat; one moment, they appeared just like the others, and the next, they had suddenly detonated in vicious fire.

From high in the sky the burning hot objects fell, the ground below becoming a highly detailed landscape. The air, now thick, had sapped so much momentum from the crafts that they began to cool. Their hurtling descent slowed into one more relaxed, now hanging by their ballutes as they slowed to a gentle descent. They lowered slowly to the surface, a critical moment watched by no eyes other than the unfeeling ones of machines. A couple of loud pops, and now the frontmost pods bore a pad of balloons on their lower surfaces. At last, the first pod sank gently to the ground, tenderly cushioned, as the spent ballute draped behind it. As the next approached the ground, a passing Quartic Orbiter relayed the news to the Earth system: Success! NSI Sienna has landed!