The three shuttles flew in formation towards their badly damaged sister ship, the Vailen 1. Felicitas Team took the lead with their shuttle. First, they circled around the spaceship to assess the damage from up close.

A giant hole was all that was left of the engines. The glass roof of the observation deck shattered and the plants underneath frozen to death. Below the Vailen 1, containers floated in space. Many of them cracked open by the explosion and their contents spilled into space. All those materials and supplies, now lost. But they also discovered, that the area around the sleeping chambers seemed to be undamaged.

They flew from underneath into the hangar, or at least, into what was left of it. The gates were only big, deformed metal pieces and the force field, that should protect the hangar in such a case, had failed. Two shuttles stood in the hangar, but they probably wouldn't fly anymore. The others must have been blasted out of the hangar during the explosion.

Niam flew his shuttle carefully through the debris, that drifted around everywhere and landed it gently.

“There we are”, said Niam. With a couple of buttons he activated the magnets in the landing gear and anchored the shuttle tightly with the floor.

“Then into the suits”, said Sarah. They went into the back part of the shuttle, where their spacesuits where hanging inside a locker.

“How long, do you believe, are they already here?”, asked Kleio. “I mean, the colony ships should have arrived all at the same time, but the damage doesn't look like it happened recently.” She took her suit out of the locker and started to put it on. The suits were dark blue and came with some sort of fishbowl, you had to put over your head. Their form was much more flexible than the spacesuits from the early years of space travel. Back then you had to hope for zero gravity to be able to actually move at all. Current suits were barely restricting at all. The only thing, you had to watch out for, was to not hit your fishbowl on the door frame.

“We will hopefully find out soon, what went wrong here”, said Sarah, while she climbed into her suit. “But our priority are the survivors. If they are still in their sleeping chambers, we should get them off the ship as soon as possible. Who knows, how long the Vailen 1 will stay in one piece.”

The others agreed.

“Do you think, they don't even know, what happened to their ship?”, asked Alex, who had trouble trying to maneuver his giant body into the spacesuit. Felicitas, who was first done with her suit, went over to help him.

“That could be possible”, said Sarah.

“Shouldn't the sleeping chambers be ejected from the ship, in such an emergency, to save the crew?”, asked Kleio.

“Normally, yes”, said Niam, “but the ship’s computer can choose to not eject the crew. For example, when the chances of survival on board are higher than on a snowy planet. Especially, when it counts upon two additional ships appearing any moment for backup.”

“Arriving together, well that worked out great”, said Felicitas flatly. She closed the last zipper on Alex' spacesuit and handed him the giant fishbowl for his head. “There’s still no sign of the Vailen 3, right?”

Niam only needed to glance over one of the displays and he shook his head.

“We should concentrate on the task at hand”, said Sarah. “When we solve that one, we can take care of the next problem. One after another.” The others nodded. “So helmets up and let’s see what awaits us.”

The team did as it was ordered. Felicitas picked up the bag with the medical equipment. Niam took a smaller one, that contained tools and a small computer and then pushed the button for the rear hatch.

First it hissed a while, until the pressure equalization was done, then the rear door of the shuttle opened.

Meanwhile the other two shuttles had landed and the teams disembarked too. The gravity boots of their spacesuits prevented them from floating around the hangar, with the rest of the debris.

Before the others reached them, Sarah looked around. The big door, that lead inside the Vailen 1, seemed to be undamaged, and the small green lamp above the door showed, that at least a little energy was left.

Well, that was something to start with.

“Listen up”, said Sarah, as the other two teams arrived. As the leader of team two she had the highest rank, which gave her the lead of this mission too. “With my team, I will look for a way to the sleeping chambers. Team 3, check out the storage units. I want to know, how much of the stuff, the Vailen 1 brought here, we can still use. Team 4, go to the bridge and try to find out, what happened here.

Everything clear?”

Everyone nodded.

“Good, we will stay in radio contact. If you find something, or need help, report. And be careful. We don't know what will await us inside that wreck and I don't want to add team members to the To-Rescue-List.”

They went to the big door, that lead inside the Vailen 1. Sarah pushed the door opener and the door opened without any problems. They went inside and found themselves in a short corridor, that ended at another door. This corridor was built as an airlock in case of a failure of the hangar force field. Inside was just enough room for everyone. Alex closed the first door and the pressure equalization started. A 'bing' announced that it was now safe to open the inner door and enter the space ship.

It was dark inside the space ship. There was only minimal emergency lighting. Felicitas was grateful for the lights, that were attached to her spacesuit. With the exception of the footsteps of their own people and the occasional moaning and groaning from the space ship, there was an eerie silence. To their left and right the corridor disappeared into darkness. In front of them was one of the workshops, where some tools floated around. Apparently the artificial gravity wasn't working inside the space ship as well.

Felicitas checked the readings on the little screen on her arm. “The air seems to be fine. A little thin, but we should be able to breathe it”, she said.

“That's good, but we'll keep the helmets on”, said Sarah. “We don't know what it looks like behind the next door. We'd better not take any chances.” Sarah looked left and right. “Well, this is already where we part ways. As I've said, don't do anything stupid and remain cautious, then we will make it out of here in one piece”, said Sarah and lead her group to the right, while the other two teams disappeared in the corridor to the left.

After only a few steps you couldn’t hear the other teams anymore and Sarah, Felicitas, Niam, Kleio and Alex were alone.

On their way, towards the front part of the ship, they came across a lot of empty laboratories and workshops. On their own ship, there were now probably a lot of people busy preparing everything to be ready for operation. Here, only stray items drifted through dark, empty rooms.

“A little creepy here”, said Felicitas, as she looked nervously from one empty room to the next.

“Yes”, said Alex, “what a difference a little light and some people can make.” He felt uneasy as well.

They made good progress until they had to stop in front of a locked door. Sarah tried to push the door opener, but nothing happened.

“Should I open the door?”, offered Alex. It wouldn't be the first door, that he pried open with his bare hands.

Sarah looked through the small window in the door. “No, I think, we are better off looking for another way. There is a chunk missing, in that corridor.”

“There is a maintenance shaft nearby, that should get us upwards”, said Niam.

“A maintenance shaft?”, asked Alex, “Can I not rather try the door? Those shafts were not exactly build with my size in mind.”

“Don't worry, big guy, we will get you through there”, answered Kleio smiling and gave him a friendly pat on his giant back. Alex sighed and followed the others towards the maintenance shaft.

The shaft was at most a meter wide and half as thick. And it shared that space with a long ladder, that connected the levels above and below them. The entrance was only a rectangular hole in the wall.

“I'll go first”, said Sarah and climbed into the shaft. “You're next Alex. I'll help from in here, when the others help from outside, we will get you inside. It will be a tight fit, but it should work.”

Unwillingly he went to the hole in the wall. It wasn't easy, but with a little pushing and pulling they got the big Alex into the maintenance shaft, even though now there wasn't any room left for anything else.

“If we switch off our gravity boots we can just float upwards”, said Sarah. She turned her boots off, pushed herself off the ladder and glided away. “It's looking good up here”, reported Sarah shortly after over radio. “Alex, you can come up.”

Alex was barely able to move inside of the tight shaft. Kleio had to give him a push, to get him floating upwards. That looked a little less elegant, than Sarah looked like before. Alex notched against the wall every couple of meters until he reached Sarah. She caught him and pulled him out of the shaft. Because of the missing gravity it was only the size of Alex, that was a little problematic. But she managed and soon after, Alex was able to reactivate his boots and was standing on solid ground again.

“And later, we have to get down there again?” asked Alex, panting.

“Well, it wasn't that bad”, said Felicitas smiling, as she floated elegantly out of the shaft. “But we should look for a different way to get back to the shuttle. We can't evacuate the survivors through this maintenance shaft.”

“Yes, that could become difficult”, said Sarah.

After the team was reunited, they moved on. Shortly before they reached the sleeping chambers, one of the other teams radioed in: “Here team 4. We can't find a way to the bridge. We tried different things, but nothing worked so far. The corridors are all either blocked or in a vacuum. Without a spacewalk we will probably not be able reach the bridge.”

“Hm, that's a bummer. We will find another way, to get the information we are looking for. Make your way back to us, we are close to the sleeping chambers. A spacewalk is, at the moment, not worth the risk”, answered Sarah.

“Team 3, how are you doing?”

“One storage area is undamaged, another is nonexistent. It was probably ripped off by the explosion. We are currently on our way to the third area, but the containers we saw on our flight here, have to be out of that one.”

Sarah nodded. “Good work, then not all of the supplies are lost yet. You can skip the third storage area. Better you get on the way towards our position as well.”

The door to the sleeping chambers was undamaged. Sarah touched the door opener and the door cleared the way. The room was dark and long. On both sides of the corridor were long rows of sleeping chambers, one per person. And that was only one of multiple corridors.

“Do the chambers still work?” asked Kleio. The sleeping chambers lay in the dark, but there had to be some light to indicate, that they were still working.

Niam went to a turned off maintenance console, that came to life after a button press. He flipped through several data pages, before he answered: “Most of the sleeping chambers are still working. Life support works in here as well. The artificial gravity could be turned on again, it was just turned off. But the power generator worries me a little. It still works, but it doesn't look good. We shouldn't stress it more.”

Sarah nodded. “Most of the sleeping chambers?”

“Yes, ten of them have been turned off. Not because of a malfunction, but because there is no one in there.”

“What?”, Sarah went over to Niam to see it with her own eyes. There weren't any surplus sleeping chambers on that voyage. Everything had a purpose on this ship. The people from the chambers had to be somewhere. With a glance at the screen she saw, that Niam was right. There were ten sleeping chambers, across the whole complex, that seemed to be empty. “One of the empty sleeping chambers is at the end of this row.”

Felicitas and Kleio went down the corridor to have a look.

“Yes, here's the empty one. It belonged to someone named Lekan”, said Kleio.

“No last name?”, asked Sarah.

“No, it only says Lekan.”

Sarah thought about it for a moment. “Well then, find me the captain, we need some answers.”

“Do you think, we can easily wake him up in here?”, asked Alex.

“Felicitas?”

Felicitas checked some values on the little screen, on her arm. “Hm, the air is looking good so far. I can take care of him, when he awakes. But it would be helpful if we could have some gravity in here.”

“We can't risk to turn on the gravity generator”, said Sarah.

“Then it could get unpleasant”, said Felicitas. “You probably do remember. It was hard enough to get out of the sleeping chambers with the gravity on. Without gravity ...”, she shrugged.

“We'll try”, said Sarah. “Niam, where is he?”

“Section 4, chamber 14. This way.”

He lead them through two additional corridors, filled with sleeping chambers, before he stopped in front of one.

“Caitlin Nevan”, read Kleio the little sign on the sleeping chamber. “She looks quite young for that kind of position. Are you sure?” Caitlin was maybe thirty years old. She wore her hair in a long braid, that made her a little bit older, but it still wasn't an age you would get the command over such a large ship.

Niam shrugged. “She is the captain of this ship. That's what the files say.”

Sarah looked at Caitlin in her sleeping chamber. Most of the captains she knew of and that flew that size of a ship, were mostly seasoned man or women with gray hair. There had to be a reason she got a command like that, that early. “Can you wake her up?”, she addressed Felicitas.

Felicitas went to the control console of this sleeping chamber and pushed some buttons. Then she stopped and looked over to the rest of her team, that stood around the sleeping chamber in their spacesuits.

“What is it?”, wanted Sarah to know.

“We should at least take our helmets off, so we don't scare her too much. And leave her a little more room”, said Felicitas. The team did as it was told, and they went a step back.

As everyone had their fishbowl under their arm, Felicitas pushed the last buttons and the thawing process began. It took a moment until the sleeping chamber opened with a sizzle and steam escaped into the room.

Caitlin floated a little in her sleeping chamber, before she arduously opened her eyes.

“Take a deep breath. Sadly we weren't able to restore the artificial gravity, that's probably why this feels unused to you. Take all the time you need”, said Felicitas.

“What? ...” Caitlin had trouble to get her bearings. She needed a little, until she was able to see the humans in front of her sharply. The signs on the spacesuits were not from her ship. “You are … from one of the other ships?”

“Yes, we are from the Vailen 2”, Sarah took over the talking. “As we dropped out of hyperspace, we found the Vailen 1 drifting badly damaged in space. What happened?”

“Then we are saved”, said Caitlin and started sobbing. She clasped her knees and cried. “It's all my fault!” Like that she floated in front of them, only wearing her underwear. Sarah didn't know what to do, that was totally not what she had expected.

Felicitas took Catilin’s hand and pulled her down towards the ground, where she hugged her and tried to comfort her. “Everything is all right. Your crew is fine, as far as we can tell, and we will find a way to get them off the ship. We will sort this out!”

“Everything ... went wrong”, cried Catilin.

“Take a deep breath. It is not as bad as it looks”, said Felicitas.

Caitlin took a deep breath, swallowed and seemed to recover a little.

“See, already a little better”, said Felicitas encouragingly.

“I'm sorry …”, said Caitlin with a shaking voice, “... a captain shouldn't behave like that.” She wiped off a tear with the back of her hand and tried to get a little more composure.

“Who said, that a captain is not allowed to cry?”, said Alex in a way, that threatened everyone, who thought differently, with problems.

“Come, you should put something on, it’s cold in here”, said Felicitas and lead Caitlin to the box, that contained her wake up clothes, pulled them out, they were a light brown, and helped her put them on in zero gravity.

“Even though it's hard, can you tell us, what happened?”, Sarah tried again as gently as she could.

“There was ... a malfunction in the hyperspace engines”, Caitlin slowly began. “I should have checked the working reports more carefully. I must have overlooked something. I should have gone through everything one more time, before the start. Because of my sloppiness I nearly killed everyone. It wouldn't have happened to another captain.” Anger, disappointment with her self and most of all exhaustion in her shaky voice.

“No one killed anybody here”, said Alex.

“As the failure appeared in the engines”, Caitlin slowly continued, “we still had nearly a third of the way ahead of us.” Again and again Caitlin had to take short breaks to not lose her composure, but she fought and was determined to deliver this report. “The computer woke me and my officers”, she continued. “According to the data, we got from the computer, the engine kept accelerating and that it would explode, should we try to shut it off.

My chief engineer calculated, that we could reach our destination regardless. I decided to continue the voyage. An explosion at our destination was better then getting stuck in the middle of nowhere.

As we knew, what would await us, we tried to protect as much from the coming explosion as possible. Especially the area around the sleeping chambers, where most of my crew still slept.

But it wasn't enough.

I woke up, with my officers, in a nearly destroyed ship. It was close to a miracle, that the sleeping chambers still worked and that we had reached our destination.

Because of the bad condition the spaceship was in and because we couldn't certainly tell, how long it would take for the other ships to arrive, we had to find a way, to get the crew off board. It was winter on the planet. Half of the crew would probably have died, if we had just ejected them within their chambers.

We managed to repair one of the shuttles in the hangar, picked ten persons, that had the best chances of survival, filled the shuttle with tools and supplies, that we could find, and sent them probably to die.”

She took a short break. Then she asked very cautiously, as if she actually didn't want to hear the answer: “What date do we have?”

“Its 29.9.2142, earth time”, said Kleio.

“Then I have sent them to die for certain” and again, tears built up in Caitlins eyes. She needed a moment, then she continued: “It is almost a year now. They should have taken care of shelter and then, slowly gotten the rest of the crew down to the surface.” She let her head hang.

Felicitas hugged her again. “I will step down from my command, if it is wished for” Caitlin added quietly and exhausted.

“What? Er, no”, said Sarah. “I see no reason for that.”

“Yes, a warm bed and a cup of hot chocolate and the world looks a lot better again”, said Alex.

“As far as I can tell, you have done nothing wrong”, said Sarah. “Your crew reached the destination safely. The failure in the hyperspace engines has probably not happened because of you. It could be a flaw in the construction. We are still missing the Vailen 3. They could have encountered something similar.

Apart from that, I can only recommend what Alex said. You need some rest.”

Sarah took a deep breath, to digest everything that she had just learned, and thought about, what to do next.

“You're welcome to use my bed”, offered Alex. Kleio boxed him.

“What?”, he asked. Kleio gave him a reproachful look. “I er … just mean … I, er, don't need it any time soon. There is still a lot to do around here.” Alex blushed. Of course Kleio knew as well, that Alex' offer was meant honestly.

Caitlin smiled a little. “Thanks, but I will probably not find any rest, until my crew is safe.”

“So, hot chocolate it is!”, said Felicitas with a smirk.

Sarah was finished with her planning as well. “Felicitas and Kleio, can you find a spacesuit for Caitlin? We will take her, with the shuttle, back to our ship.” Felicitas nodded. Both left the corridor with Caitlin in the middle, so she won't float away.

“Niam”, said Sarah. “Is the drop off system for the sleeping chambers still working?”

“Yes”, said Niam. “But it is still winter on the planet.”

Sarah waved it aside. “We will not throw them onto the planet. Can you alter the system in a way, that it will push only one chamber at a time into space? We will then collect them with the shuttles and bring them over to the Vailen 2.”

“That should be doable,” said Niam, “but I could use some help.”

“Alex, help him”, said Sarah. “Team 3 and 4 where are you?”, she asked over the radio.

“We will reach the sleeping chambers shortly”, reported Team 3.

“We are close to the hangar”, said Team 4.

“Good, Team 3, you will help Niam with altering the drop off system of the sleeping chambers. Team 4, we will need you in your shuttle. We will eject the chambers, one by one. You will catch them and take them to the Vailen 2. I will tell the captain, that he should send more shuttles to help you.”

“Alright”, confirmed Team 3.

“Understood”, Team 4.

Then she reported back to the Captain of the Vailen 2, Erik Lorran, what she had learned from Caitlin, what the situation was, and what they wanted to do next. “... and let someone thoroughly check the hyperspace engines, not that we are overlooking anything there.”

“I've already arranged that”, said Captain Lorran over radio. “I'll send you the other shuttles. Good work.”

“Thanks, sir!”, said Sarah. After a short break she added: “Are there any signs of the Vailen 3 by now?”

“Sadly not”, said the Captain. “I hope they are just late.”

“I hope so too”, said Sarah.