Samantha was working on the water recycler again. It seemed every day the damn thing spat out a new yellow error message to the bridge terminal. It was like the recycler was a dog begging for constant attention.

It had been 71 days adrift in space. They had managed to align the ship with a habitable system and best guess from the crew was another 87 days to reach the outer edge of the system since long range sensors were gone. They had pooled their efforts and the escape pod, that she was sure the engineer had left on purpose, was ready for use.

She wasn’t sure if she hated him. He could of at least left them an engineering bot or two. Well he actually did leave two cleaning bots, she guessed that must have been his sense of humor at work. Not that funny really.

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The crew had been at each other’s throats for most of their drift. If no ship responded when they got in system they had two weeks longer before they could use the escape pod to land on the farming colony world.

Someone screamed over the bridge comms breaking her focus. The voice said she had gotten long range communications working! That had been an exercise in futility everyone had thought but hope rekindled in Samantha’s gut.

Everyone was one the bridge and the comm was tested and message after message sent. The colony world should be able to respond on the emergency frequency but nothing came back. Hope was temporarily dashed. Over the next four days they kept trying the comms and kept repairing the ship. The will to live was still strong and there was always the escape pod. Then it finally happened. A ship returned their hail and intercepted them on their course. They docked and the women were elated until the man who ushered them on board the other ship said welcome to the pirate ship Indomitable.