Jess blinked in near-disbelief as she looked over what Light had uncovered. “Yeah, that’s...traces of tritium, deuterium, a bit of helium. That’s a reactor leak, alright.” She had helped him pour through the sensor data, but even she had to admit it had been mostly him. Even though they had the flight path of their target to narrow their search, it had still been a lot of empty space for them to cover. Jess clearly had not expected results nearly this quickly. “Damn, Light, just snatch the needle right out of that haystack, why don’t ya?” 

Jess leaned back from the console she was at and just looked out of the window into the void. Without any spectrum filters to show light outside the visible spectrum, the neutron star was hardly even visible at this distance. With no significant sources of light to drown them out, their view of the stars was spectacular. “I think you’re right, and I think we’ve got the story of what happened here. The freighter pilot’s course brought them just a bit too close to the pulsar at just the wrong time. Something hit the star, asteroid maybe. And with a neutron star, an impact on that superdense degenerate matter causes some violent backlash. They pass through a huge burst of high-energy radiation that pulls them out of FTL and overloads some of their systems. Uncontrolled deceleration from FTL can be accompanied by unpredictable spacetime warping that can cause internal and external hull damage, so...probably more than a few, really. At minimum, they get a reactor leak. Might have even been operating purely on backup power, with the amounts I’m seeing here. They headed for that planet, which might suggest their radiation shielding was compromised. I think you’re right; they probably headed for the far side of the planet to shield them from the cosmic rays.”

There was a moment of pause from Jess, accompanied by a look of concern. “Honestly, I expected the freighter to be dead in space. That’s usually what happens when you’re ripped out of a warp bubble. They got lucky to be able to go [i]anywhere[/i] after that. Or maybe [i]unlucky[/i] depending on your perspective. It would make their deaths take longer. Their only sanctuary here is still a dead rock in space, I...doubt they could have survived this long.”

There was worry in Jess’ voice, but one could not say if she was afraid that the freighter crew might have had long, painful deaths, or if she was actually [i]worried[/i] they may be alive.