May 27th, 8252

You, Midhipman Engel, and a familiar boarding party of two eggheads and twenty crew automatons stand in the back of the shuttle and look out the open cargo hatch. The ventral surfaces of the SES Robert Harbird loom large in your sight, dominated by the raking collision damage. You want to frown in frustration but Midshipman Engel is working a tablet, glancing back and forth between the screen and the view, clearly comparing something.

“I think we can write off any attempt at landing in her 'belly' holds Sir. Same for the ventral docking ports. There's simply too much damage to do so safely. And even if we did manage to do so the internal passages in the area won't be in much better shape.”

“We still need to get aboard her. Do you have an alternate docking location in mind Midshipman?”

“Aff. Starboard aft landing bay Sir. Scans show it as open and vacant. It is also close to the prime spinal passageway. The crew couldn't have gotten much if anything out the ventral cargo hatches. Not with that damage and debris blocking the way. All cargo would have had to come up to the spinal passageways, fore or aft to the shuttle bays, and then flown off from there. Slow, tedious, and labor intensive, but it could be done.”

“And if the crew only had a short orbital window to launch or land in...”

“Depends on the orbital period Sir. Short and they'd be launching half-full to make the window, or skipping windows to launch full. Long, kind of like she has now, and there would be plenty of time for even a small crew to full load all the shuttles before launching.”

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“Makes sense. Seal the hatch back up and I'll lay the course in.”

An hour later you settle the shuttle to the dark deck of the SES Robert Harbird. The airless shuttle bay is empty of other craft, loading equipment, and all of the other detritus you would expect to see in a landing bay. You engage the magnetic clamps to lock the shuttle in place before re-sealing your helmet and preparing to disembark.

“Seal check Midshipman Engel.”

“Aye aye Sir. Good suit seal.”

“Turn about so I can check yours.... good seals. No atmosphere aboard this derelict, so hit the reclamation gear and let it run before you crack the hatch.”

“Aff. Already running. Time to run cycle completion is fifty seconds.”

Six hours later you reconvene with Midshipman Engel in the primary spinal passageway of the SES Robert Harbird. You have both been surveying the cargo holds and trying to estimate just how much stuff the crew had managed to get off in the time that they had.

“It's not looking good sir. Pretty much every container of food and survival equipment is empty, but all of the larger stuff such as construction equipment, atmospheric modification plants, habitation domes, air purification systems got left behind. I wasn't able to find anything like a cargo manifest, but I'd estimate no more then twenty percent of the starboard cargo holds are empty.”

“It's a bit better on the port side, perhaps thirty percent empty and marks of at least some large equipment being disassembled and moved. I'd call it twenty five percent of the total cargo load at most.”

“And there are no shuttles left aboard Sir. It looks like they took everything that they had the capability to take for one reason or another.”

“No reactor mass or propellant left for the shuttles would be my guess. Or no one left to fly them.”

“What now Sir?”

“We leave the automatons here to keep up the inventory and survey work and return to the Night Horse. We'll need to do a scan of Zures 1. Probably need to land on it to investigate any colony or ruins we find too.”

“Full system scan first sir, or do we dive for the planet?”

“An active colony would have some sort of electronic emissions. If we don't pick any of them up on our way in system then we'll do the full system scan first.”

“Aff Sir.”