Desiccated

The discovery on … of vast canyons filled with mushrooms provided us with the beginning of an answer. The water is inside the mushrooms. They seem to span a large part of the surface of the world, all connected to the same mycelium, which technically makes it a single organism, and one of the biggest we've ever seen. Some of the members of the team dubbed this humongous fungus the 'Fumongus'.

It looks like the mushrooms have been genetically altered and have completely taken over the ecosystem that once existed here. Their unbridled and accelerated growth was such that they absorbed most of the water that was present here. They subsequently entered a sort of dried-up dormant state in which most of the fungus is still alive, with water spread out across the whole organism.

Deep in the heart of the mycelial forests nestled in the canyons of … we discovered some sort of bunker, long overrun by mushrooms. The team believes that it was built by the same species that genetically altered the mushrooms here.

Large sections of the bunker have collapsed and a lot of the equipment within it is likely broken beyond repair, but we have identified some sealed rooms that might hold exploitable material. Notably, no alien remains have been found here. Maybe they abandoned the place, or else didn't leave behind any body parts that weren't absorbed by the local wildlife.

The bunker on … was used to protect computing equipment, some of which appears to be directly connected to the mycelium. Thankfully, we managed to reactivate several terminals and databanks.

Breaking the encryption and deciphering the language used will take time, and the team has requested that several of our top … be sent here to help.

We have recovered valuable information from the databanks found in the bunker on …. The databanks tell us that this was a sort of listening post. Apparently, the aliens found a way to interpret the signals coursing through the mycelium and convert them into actionable intel.

We do not understand how this might have been possible, but the team will now try to bring water from nearby ice asteroids to 'awaken' the Fumongus again and see what kind data it transmits, if any.

The mushrooms on … are starting to flourish again. With the help of several other ships, we had to tow several icy asteroids into orbit before bringing down chunks of them to various places on the planet to melt. It has been long process, but it is finally beginning to bear fruit.

With this, the computers began to spit out small bits of data that seemed pretty random until we recognized activity from our home. In cooperation with teams on …, a series of experiments has been conducted and the only possible conclusion is that the mushroom has some limited awareness of what happens on other planets. While the data we have retrieved is not exploitable just yet, continued efforts to restore the mushrooms are expected to give us more results.