START: audiolog13/clarke3/autogeneratedtranscript

  rutland: Where’s the station?

  (pause)

  rutland: Where’s the goddamn station?

  jackson: Lieutenant—stand down.

  (pause)

  jackson: All stations, report. VJ?

  kumar: Captain... we're off course. No nav beacons detected. We're not in Proxima space. Passive gravimetric scan shows a planetary mass nearby—we're falling into a gravity well. Rapid deceleration suggests atmospheric density increasing.

  jackson: Confirm the jump coordinates. Was this a mis-jump?

  kumar: I already checked. Three times. The astrometric signatures don’t match any known system. We didn’t just miss the colony—we’re nowhere on the charts.

  jackson: Shit. All right. Emergency protocols. Bring ALISA online. Priority one.

  kumar: Negative. Warp drive surge cascaded through the core systems. ALISA's neural lattice is scrambled. Core coolant loop failed during the exit vector—half the ship’s processors are in failover mode. We're running blind.

  jackson: Get me anything you can. Nick, thruster status?

  rutland: Reaction control’s barely holding attitude. We’re in a lateral spin—starboard roll and negative pitch. Hull heating’s spiking. We’re skipping the upper atmosphere, but it’s not going to hold.

  dixon: Hull temps just passed 2,800 Kelvin. Structural stress in sections three and four. Thermal expansion already deforming the lower frame. We're outside the ship’s rated tolerance for reentry.

  kumar: Surface scans updating. Topography suggests a rocky world with atmosphere—O2-nitrogen dominant. Tidal locking confirmed—one side is in full daylight, the other in deep cold. We're descending near the terminator zone.

  jackson: What about the star?

  kumar: Can't figure it out, but local solar output is minimal. No data match in any star catalogs. Captain… I don’t think this system exists in any shared frame of reference.

  jackson: So we jumped… somewhere. Unknown space. No navigation, no AI, and a bad descent angle. Wonderful.

  dixon: We’re dropping too fast. If we don’t get attitude under control, we’ll burn or break apart before we touch down.

  jackson: VJ—override interlocks, initiate manual vector control. Feed me what control authority we still have. Tesh, damage control—give me numbers.

  dixon: Sections three and four still intact, but heat stress is rising. Integrity’s down to 80% and falling.

  ALERT: Hull breach detected. Pressurization failing in compartments aft.

  jackson: Nick, status on cargo modules?

  rutland: Modules D through F are loaded and sealed. That’s the cryo-pod block, captain.

  jackson: They’re aft-heavy. We need to shift the center of mass forward or we’ll tumble straight into the ground. VJ—jettison D through F.

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  dixon: There're people in there, Gerry!

  jackson: I know exactly what’s in those modules, Tesh. But if we don’t dump the weight, nobody lives through this. VJ—execute.

  kumar: Confirmed. Modules D, E, and F jettisoned. Mass redistribution complete. Pitch angle stabilizing slightly.

  ALERT: Hull integrity at 70%. Life support offline in aft sections.

  jackson: Still not enough. Jettison C.

  kumar: Gerry...

  jackson: Now!

  kumar: C is away.

  ALERT: Hull integrity 60%. Terminal descent profile confirmed.

  kumar: Lidar mapping just came back. Terrain below is sloped—a broad valley near the terminator line. That’s our best shot. Minimal elevation delta. Low impact vector if we catch the angle right.

  jackson: All remaining thrusters—burn now. Slow us down, flatten the descent.

  kumar: Burn initiated. It’s helping—but we’re still coming in hot.

  WARNING: Catastrophic systems failure. Impact imminent. Estimated time to impact: 10 seconds.

  rutland: God...

  jackson: Brace for impact!

  rutland: (unintelligible)

  END: audiolog13/clarke3/autogeneratedtranscript

  The Clarke streaked through the atmosphere, its outer skin glowing white-hot as ablative shielding boiled away. Within the control cabin, restraints strained against brutal G-forces as internal dampers failed to keep up. Overhead, a panel tore loose, revealing a glimpse of sky—red-tinged, alien, and completely unfamiliar.

  The Clarke didn’t crash. It didn't explode. It skidded—metal shrieking, momentum unchecked, grazing the alien terrain. Angled by its unstable spin, the ship struck the ground at a shallow angle—scraping across a long valley nestled between jagged ridges, running almost parallel to its descent path. The bioluminescent moss, crushed beneath the ship's weight, released a strange glow, illuminating the chaotic descent.

  The hull screamed as it carved a trail through the alien soil, plowing over bioluminescent moss that lit up like cold fire beneath its path. The friction slowed the descent, inch by inch.

  Struts bent. Plating buckled. Emergency landing supports deployed late, punching into the ground and tearing free. The Clarke bounced once, then again, before finally grinding to a halt in a broad depression, its bulk half-buried in crushed vegetation that glowed with eerie blue-green pulses.

  Inside, the four-man crew lay unconscious, along with the remainder of the cryostasis units. Alarms blinked, flickered, then dimmed.

  Outside, the valley lay silent beneath a twilight sky. To one side, the sun hung frozen over a scorched horizon. On the other, the dark deepened into eternal night. They had come down at the edge of a world split in two.