Orbital Jumpstart - 58807.17, 08h30

Shirik tried to focus on her task, but as she saw Idris settle in with his obvious nervousness, she couldn't help but think back to her own very first away mission and what a disaster it had been. It had almost been her last. She hoped this one went better, for all their sakes. 

Colin says,   "Roger that,  Commander"  as he takes his station.   He looks everything over to make sure it's as it should be, making a start on a pre-flight checklist.

Greggory nodded at his team and took his seat at the forward station.  He looked over the readings as the ship powered up. "Commander Lektar, request launch clearance. After that, you may take us out, Lt. Murray."

Following directions without making any changes,  Colin brings the vessel squarely along the ventral side,  taking it slow and easy.    He lines up with the port and makes a solid connection.

Pulling up the sensor data Commander Lektar was gathering on her console, Raikon took a closer look himself.

“I'd have to agree with Commander Lektar. The Kepler is bone dry. We'll have to use the Maverick to provide power to some rudimentary systems, but it won't last long.”

He frowned as he looked over some of the other readings coming in.

“Looks like she's been without power for quite some time. No atmosphere either, so we'll need to suit up before going aboard.”

Greggory sat there, running some calculations on his console.  "As long as the hull's intact, we'll power life-support and the computer core. That should tell us what happened while making the most of the Maverick's fuel. We can leave just enough to get us back to the Vanguard. If we've figured out what happened by then, we can set up an umbilical between the two ships and transfer enough matter and antimatter to start her core and get her back to the nearest starbase."

"I agree," said Shirik, even though she wasn't all that comfortable in an EV suit. 

"Alright. Yessen, keep trying to piece together what you can about the planet. If you can't scan through the clouds, gather information on the upper atmosphere. Use passive sensors if you have to: light absorption patterns, spectrographic analysis, even tracking atmospheric flows through storm movements.  Every bit of information is something that could protect an eventual away team if we send one down there."

"Raikon and Wryn, as soon as we're docked, integrate our power systems with the Kepler. You'll need the ship's command codes to access critical systems, so Shirik, I'll need you to find and transmit those. Once life-support is online, divert most of the resources into Engineering and the Bridge, minimal comfort conditions. Let's try to get what we need access to into a usable condition as soon as possible, then try and figure out what happened to the ship's fuel reserves."

"Shirik and Colin, you'll be heading to the Bridge. Try and access the logs and sensor records. We need to know what happened and where the crew went."