The Hrkar Report

This is Admiral Stanley Stevenson of the USS Nixon, I am writing the results of the investigation my team had gathered from the crash site on Hrkar.

Nova Occasian students were sent on a practical exam and a bomb resulted in two ships being knocked to the surface of the planet, the two teams that crashed were named Ovis and Serpens, 20 people, 18 young students, and 2 instructors.

My team landed on the cold desert with great difficulty, the beige desert, strong winds, generally cold temperature of 10 degrees Celsius during the day, and a punishingly strong gravity were very unpleasant to my team. Thankfully they were able to conclude their investigation before the unforgiving minus 100 degrees at nightfall.

They saw the two crashed ships, both in relatively close proximity to each other, an easy walking distance, and began piecing together what happened to the students of Ovis and Serpens.

I suppose I should start from the beginning and go chronologically.

Once the ships crashed, all of the survivors banded together, the 2 instructors did not survive, but 11 kids did, 6 from Ovis and 5 from Serpens. During the first day, they resolutely worked together, trying their best to survive the situation, hopeful that help was on the way soon.

The first priority was to secure food and water, luckily they had covered. Serpens had cooked an extensive meal for dinner on their way to their exam on NB011 and they could stretch out that food and ration it to last them. Ovis decided to cook their meal on NB011 which saved them from dying of thirst, they hadn't spent their water tank on cooking. The water tank had a low amount of water inside as part of their exam but they had at least something.

The tank was also somehow fully intact from the crash and they had drinking water, a small amount but better than nothing. One challenge that provided serious difficulty was the punishing gravity, 4 times that of Earth and the space colony standard.

Their young muscles were unprepared for this environment and felt constant pressure on their bodies, one couldn't simply rest, they were feeling constant strain which was making everyone tired and agitated. A genuine unpleasant feeling.

Ovis and Serpens had no time to spare as they saw the sun starting, the temperature dropped dramatically as the hours of dusk came upon the planet. They all got on their winter outfits for NB011 but they were made for minus 40 degrees, not minus 100 as Hrkar was known to reach during the night. They needed a fast solution or they would all freeze to death.

The students started exploring the wreckage of the ships for potential salvation.

The survivors discovered two, still functioning, escape pods. While they were meant for space, the escape pods had hibernation functions, whoever entered could without worry wait for help. In the state of hibernation, one could survive for 2 months without water, food and in any environment. It was decided to leave these pods as a last resort.

Upon investigation they found out the ship's propulsion had still worked, and the combustion from the exhaust was 3000 degrees Celsius, if they permanently turned it on to go on for the night and gather around it, they could survive the minus 100 that awaited them for the night. They had to set it low enough so the wreckage wouldn't fly off, high enough to warm their bodies, and sit close enough to feel the heat but not so close that they got incinerated or burned.

Ovis and Serpens had managed to succeed with this makeshift heating and were able to set it up so they could survive the unforgiving night. The kids gathered around the propulsion and felt the warmth of the fire. They weren't able to get any sleep though, all of them were on edge, one of the extremely dangerous, gigantic Kortonians could strike at any second. Their closeness to the propulsion had caused them to get a heat stroke but nobody wanted to move away in fear of momentarily freezing. The night lasted 15 hours.

Sadly two kids who sat the farthest from the combustion died during the night. As morning came, only nine were left alive and the temperature was around 8 degrees Celsius. Nobody had time to mourn the dead, the only thing on their mind was to give it their all and wait for help which they still believed would come. They had hoped for the other schoolmates, Lupus who weren't marooned on the planet, to come for them or contact the authorities on Nova Occasio.

As the morning came, their second day on Hrkar, the kids had decided to finally sleep, they had gone with almost 25 hours without sleep and they rested within the ruins of the ship, huddled up to warm up and overcome the constant wind and the low temperature. Many of them couldn't sleep at all, they could only keep their eyes closed. The anxiety, stress as well as the constant pressure from the planet's punishing gravity. Adrenaline was keeping them awake.

After their sleep, they had officially drained their water supply. They had calculated that the water would last them longer but their constant sweating from the gravity straining their muscles, and the heat of the combustion had made them require more liquid so they ran out.

The second night came with far less hope but they weathered it the same as the first, with no sleep and holding on to dear life no one died that night. When morning came, the same routine was repeated, they would finally sleep but they felt a lot worse, and dehydration had started to set in.

The third day was when all of their luck had run out. A gigantic Kortonian's walk had woke them from their 2-hour sleep. Every step it took, felt like a miniature Earthquake, it was a 3-story tall, ugly bug.

The students woke up in a panic, they had no strength to fight it and they hoped that the killer bug would just go away. The bug had given them a fate, almost worse than death. It started running towards the wreckage of the ships and slammed into the propulsion engine cutting through it. The Kortonian tried to bite it but once it saw the harshness of the metal it walked away.

With the propulsion destroyed, now the kids were left without any means of surviving the night, the minus 100 degrees would surely kill them, and they had to find an alternative means of heating themselves. Most of the day was spent aimlessly digging in the wreckage but no luck. At a point some of the students gave up and started to pray, to pray for anyone to come, they asked for divine intervention, for god to step in and save them.

God apparently had other business and he was nowhere to be found in this forsaken part of the cosmos, nobody came.

The sun had begun to set and their doom was nearing. At this moment, the students remembered that they had the two escape pods, but there were 9 of them, and only 2 could survive. A fierce argument broke out, they were dehydrated, sleep deprived and all of their muscles in constant, sharp pain. Some of them began to lose reason.

As they continued their arguing and yelling, the sun wasn't setting any slower and the temperature started falling. Soon it dawned on them, it was every man for himself, the students ran and drew their weapons. Their ship's armories were filled with pistols and riffles.

A bloodbath ensued, and the students engaged in a fight to the death, the strongest and most capable were going to be the ones to keep their lives after this.

After a brief and brutal skirmish, two girls came out on top, one from Ovis and the other from Serpens. Once they realized it was just the two of them left, they went to their respective pods and entered hibernation. The two survived the night and the subsequent days with their classmates left dead outside.

My team had arrived on day 8 of their crash and they pulled the girls out of their pods. The girls told them the story I wrote you in this report and my team's investigation confirmed the story. All of the wreckage had signs that corroborated their stories. We also performed autopsies on all of the corpses and their deaths matched what the girls described.

The girls are now aboard the USS Nixon with me and after sending this to you, I will contact the government on Nova Occasio to send them home.

The two girls are highly unstable, emotionally and physically wrecked, it is strongly advised they receive immediate and intense psychiatric care.