My name is Seth. I was born here on the S.S. Maverick. I am an engineer that works on the escape pods, life of the party I know, but once I calibrate them I have a lot of free time so it has a plus side. I guess I should explain a little more about my situation though.
The ship I'm on is a space cruiser that left Earth about 600 years ago. We are currently traveling just under the speed of light and looking for a planet to call home.
I, along with the rest of the ship, have only known this ship as home. I don't know if I actually even want to find a planet we can survive on. The captain seems to think the same thing since he turned the scanner off decades ago.
This story however wouldn't have been told unless a comet came by undetected and crashed into our bridge.
The impact woke me up instantly and the computer was issuing the evacuate alarm. I quickly grabbed a couple of my tools and set off for the escape pods. Since I was an engineer on this deck I had to make sure every escape pod in my section worked. That totaled up to fifty.
I then set about my work still groggy from my rude awakening but the sound of nearby explosions kept me working.
When I finally finished I joined the last escape pod. The escape pods weren't much of an escape pod, but rather a smaller cargo ship. There were about 20 or 30 of us in mine when the door sealed and we were ejected.
Once we were far enough away from the main ship I could see the damage fully. There was large ice shards scattered throughout the wreckage and the ship almost completely collapsed like an accordion.
We were all too fascinated with our home being destroyed to brace for the impact of us hitting an ice shard. It shook the cabin violently and sent sparks flying. I recovered from the blast and quickly unstrapped myself and tried to get our communications running. Unfortunately, the ice shard destroyed our communications upon impact. I then checked our dark energy fuel tanks. They were hit too and were draining fast.
The only way I could save the population of this ship was to engage NLS (near light speed) immediately, otherwise we wouldn't be going anywhere.
After we achieved our top speed I explained our situation to the others. "We have lost all communication, our engine has no fuel left, but luckily we keep going in space. We won't be able to be rescued by any other people because our beacon was attached to our communications. We have two choices. Either we end it here and now, or we look for a planet that we can make repairs to the ship on."
The occupants murmured amongst themselves for a few moments and then agreed on the consensus to look for a planet. I then walked over and turned on our long range scanner. We were coming up on a solar system in the next day or two, but that was eternity with the rations that were in the escape pod. We dud however arrive and I checked the scanner.
I saw quite a few gas giants along the outer side, but there was one semi-large rock planet with three moons closer to the sun. I then did a specified search of that planet and found something rather interesting.
It had life on it.
I stepped back from the scanner and looked around the cabin. For the first time since I've been in here I figured out exactly who else was in here. There were three families, the first one had a mom with a 6 year old boy and an 11 year old girl. The second was a dad and his 18 year old son. The third had both parents and 13 and 17 year old boys and a 14 year old girl. There were 6 soldiers, most had an assault rifle and a sidearm, but 2 had shotguns and one had 3 rockets. There were 2 scientists, 1 other engineer, 1 cook and 3 civilians.
They all looked at me realizing that the scan was complete. I then told them my findings.
"The only planet we can land on is the planet we've been looking for since we started this voyage. It has fully developed rain forests, swamps and oceans. The next solar system is 4 years away. This is our only shot and it's the best chance we could hope for. With our current trajectory we could aim for an ocean, but with no fuel left we'll have to improvise."
Everyone looked around in shock but managed to nod in response. I then thought that we could bend the hull to angle our descent. Just one problem though, The computer in the escape pod is almost out of power, using it for the descent would drain it completely. I decided to not share this information with anyone. It would cause too many issues.
So I waited until we approached the planet, and then I began.
It was all a blur when I woke up. I know the damage from the ice shard caused it to rip in half before we landed and that I was thrown onto the beach instead of the water we were aiming for. The last image I had of the crash was me falling and the escape pod crash into the water while burning.
