Camila Winona stood in the center of the airlock as the room around her slowly drained. Once the water level was down to her knees, she removed the helmet of her atmospheric diving suit with both gloved hands and transferred it to a loose hold against her side; nestled safely in the crook of her left arm. She adjusted her hold as she went to remove the rest of the bulky uniform with her free hand, moving to stow said articles in a repository concealed inside the wall, leaving her as good as naked in a regulation wear skintight white jumpsuit. Often working maintenance duty alone, at the beginning of every month she routinely volunteered to evaluate and preserve the structural integrity of the modified submersible platform that shielded their fledgling colony from the crushing icy depths of the ocean ever since their expedition's arrival two months ago. Besides the obvious protection the electrified armored hull of the vessel offered as a presently non-lethal deterrent to the occasional overly curious native, it also served to dampen seismic disturbances and provide appreciable insulation as well as allowing their ever expanding community to tap into an inexhaustible source of water and most importantly, oxygen. Not long after only her ankles remained fully immersed, a stinging antibacterial aerosol suddenly shot over her body to the floor, cleansing herself and the enclosed module alike of foreign contaminants as it propelled excess moisture down the drains in a great rush of air that made her ears pop.

Dr. Baxter greeted her the very moment the inner doors to the outpost proper opened up before her. "I trust your swim was uneventful?" She inquired, tilting her head at a curious angle. 

Winona took a moment to regard her before answering. It never ceased to amaze her how the woman could manage to look so composed after her long supervisory shifts in the factory, fluttering between work stations for hours on end as she did. She casually shrugged her shoulders, attempting to come across as noncommittal. "Nothing much happened," she began to sign, "locals usually keep a respectable distance, and the external systems have held together pretty well as of yet."

"A shame for the former," Baxter replied. "I've been running myself ragged cataloging all the scrap we pulled from those six United Nations wrecks that sank from the battle at the gate. If we could just initiate diplomatic relations with the natives we wouldn't have to resort to such lowly scavenging." She grimaced. "At least we've hit the three hundred mark today for the robots. We're only at eighty percent efficiency on the assembly line for now I'm afraid, but I took a trip to the mines to set up some charging stations so they don't have to make a trek to the nearest industrial electrical outlet every time they're low on power, and I have to say, they've made quite some progress down there since I last checked. Soon we won't have to rely on what salvage we can dredge up and  what's left of our three dismantled submarines for resources."

"Maybe some of the automatons that need to come back for repairs can start fashioning building materials and simple tools out of the rubble we discard before returning to their duties so that we have something to trade for the day we do open ourselves up to first contact." Winona excitedly signed. 

Baxter nodded at the sentiment, allowing herself a rare smile. "We need to start making a good impression somewhere. I can't fathom a better place to begin than quality exports."