The Pilgrim that wasn't supposed to be there

[Coliz]

Inside the Serendipity AKA the E.V. Morgenstern

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Bridge 1, command deck: "Those who reach the stars get burned"

After draining the bottle—through a series of increasingly incoherent toasts to the crew, and retellings of youthful misadventures that time had kindly buried and alcohol had enthusiastically exhumed—the trio returned to the task at hand: finding out what, if anything, had happened next aboard the Morgenstern.

Von Tanner, after briefly allowing himself to be something resembling human, had reverted to the stiff formality of his early mission logs.
“Maybe it’s being so close to home again,” Neer offered. Nobody answered.

What Hans had recovered from the remaining files was, in short, thrilling only to a very specific category of engineer with a passion for wear diagnostics.

Reports. System updates. Logistical debates about engine tolerances. Small talk between Von Tanner and his technicians as the ship cruised slowly toward the jump hole to Cambridge at a speed so reduced it might as well have been nostalgia-powered.

“Try this last one, Hans,” Schmidt said, with the sigh of a man who had run out of both patience and snacks.
Hans, who by now was typing by instinct more than intention, brought up the file.
A wall of numbers, graphs, and some rather optimistic spectrometry appeared.

“You’re kidding,” he muttered. “They managed to analyze one of the asteroids on the way.”
“Of course they did,” Neer said, standing up and mock-saluting. “Survive a year of cosmic horror, lose your convoy, end up God-knows-where… but no—duty comes first.”
They looked at each other and Schmidt said: “Remember! Rheinland needed valuable rocks. They went out to find valuable rocks!”
They laughed. It wasn’t a long laugh though. It was one of those laughs you do when crying would take too much energy.

“Well, that’s that, then,” Neer said.

“No, it isn’t,” Hans replied. “It’s probably like earlier. Hidden somewhere dumb by the ship’s emergency protocols.”
He leaned in again. “There’s always a forgotten subserver. Look—this one’s labelled ‘Dental Room Medical Inventory.’”
He opened it. Antibiotics. Surgical tools. One very dusty file on molar extractions.
“Fine. Give me a minute. We found them once. We’ll find them again.”
The others nodded. As Schmidt helpfully put it, “Hope dies last.”

Hope, however, was clearly not having a good day.

Three hours later—filled with silence, keyboard clacking, and the occasional insult Hans muttered at the server architecture—Albert stood up.

“Right. Does anyone actually know what time it is? It’s three in the morning, Baden Baden time. We’ve been here half a day. We’ve eaten nothing. We’ve only drunk.”
He picked up his bag with great finality. “I’m out.”

“You’re kidding,” Hans said. “I’m this close.”
“Hans, you’ve been ‘this close’ for longer than the ship’s been in orbit. Best case, you’re overtired. Worst case, they all got spaced and no one wrote a damn thing afterward. Either way, we’ll look tomorrow. Let’s go.”

Schmidt, who had been holding out for a miracle or at least a mildly interesting file name, finally gave in.
“As much as I hate to say it, he’s not wrong. The ship’s been floating here for a century. It’ll still be here after breakfast. Let’s go get a shower and something that isn't liquid courage. We'll come back here tomorrow. Fresh."
“No,” Hans said, eyes glued to the screen. “I swear it’s here, I can feel it. Just a bit more.”

“Hans. Reason.”
Nothing.
“Hans, we’re heading to the shuttle,” Schmidt called. “You’ve got ten minutes.”

They left. The walk down to the service hatch was quiet. The kind of quiet reserved for long farewells and stories without endings. At the bottom, Albert booted up the shuttle while Schmidt stood by the hatch, looking via a porthole at the blackened exterior of the Morgenstern. It was a stubborn ship. Ending the story like this felt wrong.

Fifteen minutes later, Albert shouted from inside:
“Hermann, either get in or you’re staying here with the ghosts, or alone with Hans. Don't know which option is worse”
“All right, all right. Let me try Hans one last time.”

He reached for the radio—just as it crackled to life on its own.

Hans’s voice came through, low, shaky, and with something fragile caught in his throat.
“I found something. Come back. Now.”