Two ships drop from FTL speed into the system. One is triangular and turns towards the planet, the other is nearly a rectangle that heads towards the rack of silver cylinders. As it nears, the ship gets taller, its front becoming more of a rectangular box. The box's front opens as it nears, and the rack disappears inside.

     As the doors close, several figures wearing spacesuits descend from the ceiling and begin to inspect the rack.

     "Get it upright," one calls. "Bring the floor up."

     The main doors close and the floor rises to meet the rack. Gravity slowly engages and the suited figures all settle to the floor around the rack.

     One checks a console at the end of the rack. "They're still be alive, not much power though. Get the umbilical connected now."

     A pair of suited figures start connecting cables to the far end, as another wanders around to the end with the mobile array. "Look at all the debris damage this took. I wonder what happened."

     "Worry later Krala. We have a lot to do. Stahlli, get the medical team down here, we need to get these people taken care of."

     The triangular ship approaches the snow-covered surface. Its landing gear extends and presses into the frozen surface with an audible crunch. The gear sinks into snow and the ship comes to rest on it's belly. A pair of fully suited figures emerge from a top hatch and walk down the curved side of the ship and out onto it's wing.

     Nearby, a single wind vane spins and squeaks. seeing it, the pair head to it. One opens the top hatch on the buried structure and drops down inside. The other soon follows.

     Inside, the first enters the escape pod and then he says, "Aime, initiate remote power feed. Let's warm this thing up."

     Lights come on and the communication equipment immediately begins to transmit its distress signal. The man presses a few frost covered buttons, ending the transmission.

     A female voice comes from the interior ceiling. "Heaters engaged. Searching and downloading both pods' databanks."

     The man turns to look as the other comes down the ladder. "Another pod? could there have been two survivors?"

     "This pods records show that it was full of cargo when it landed and was used for a survivor's shelter. The other pod had one passenger. That person perished after landing in a caesium lake."

     "Caesium lake...odd."

     "How could caesium form a lake?" the other suited figure asks. The voice is female.

     "It'd have to be protected from water somehow, but I dunno," he responds.

with the structure warming, the frost begins to melt from the walls. The first removes his helmet. He's human with dark blond hair pulled back into a tail.

     The other follows, removing her helmet. She's an anthro white tail deer. She looks around and sees something through the frost on one of the walls. Wiping at it, she asks, "What's this?"

     "Looks like a map," he answers, helping her clear more of the frost away.

     The doe points to one of the symbols. "This looks like us, so..." her finger traces a line to more frost, which she scrapes off. "Looks like we need to go here."

     "All right. Wanderer, we'll be heading out on foot to a secondary location. Drop us a sled and see if you can find the other pods."

     "Copy that."

     They hear the ship lift off and put their helmets back on. The lights go out as she opens the top hatch and the small room floods with outside light and cold.

     The soul of their boots "grow" into snowshoes and they step off the shelter's roof onto the snow. She surveys the landscape while he collects the sled.

     Pulling it, he walks up next to her and asks, "Have a direction yet?"

     She points. "That way. I can see a few of the features that were visible on the map."

     He nods. "All right, lead on."

     She sets out in the indicated direction and he follows, pulling the sled of equipment behind him. This is normally pulled behind a snow-machine, but those do not work well in this cold environment.

     When the reach the cave, they find an assortment of broken or frozen wind generators outside it. 

     "What were all these for."

     "I would gather that whoever survived needed more power. So they set these up."

     She tries the door and it does not move. "Frozen," she says.

     He grabs the door and forces it open. She steps through and turns on her wrist lights. 

     “What are all the egg pods?" she asks while looking around.  The eggs cover almost every bit of the floor. They vary in size from small bird eggs to the size of small boulders. Without snow, they can see where someone has been stepping through. Leaving the sled at the door, one pulls a large cylinder from the sled and they follow the foot prints and the power cabling. 

     When they reach the small prefab building, the male puts his hands against the door. “Aime, what's it like in there?"

     The female voice comes over both suits intercoms. “I am detecting one large biological mass. I am unable to determine what it is. There is also an AI inside it, but it seems to be in a low power mode, or simply unable to respond to my queries. Temperature is steady and the same as out here in the cave."

     The male opens this door easily, and they step inside.  With it dark, he steps over and hooks the cylinder up to the power system of the shelter. 

     The lights come on and he turns to see the doe staring at the biological mass. The top section is semi-humanoid, but the bottom section looks like a large grub, and the upper part is hugging it with all its arms and legs. It's all covered with a shell, making it look more like a carved statue than a living creature.

     “The AI inside that is giving me data. One moment please." Aime states though the overhead speakers. 

     “The human survivor should be inside Avy's tail, the larger portion under her main body."

     The male slowly approaches the humanoid portion of the mass. “This is Avy? What's this other part then? The part the human's in?"

     “It is technically part of her tail, but also a reproductive organ."

     The male stoops down and puts his hand on the grub like portion so his AI, Aime, can scan the insides.

     “This is very fascinating," Aime states. 

     Medical personnel scramble around the numerous silver cylinders. Each one contains a person in cryo stasis. Rather then just checking their conditions and “storing" them, the medical staff is waking them up. They'll need the extra help when it comes to rescuing this rogue planets population.

     To the medical staff's surprise, all the cryo pods were completely intact, and all the sleepers as healthy as when they entered cryo. 

     Three more ships enter the rogue plants orbit. One is just like the first rectangular, the other is similar, but nearly twice as wide and twice as long. The last is shaped like an isopod, and is as long as the larger rectangular ship. 

     The triangular ships soon flies back up from the planet's surface and into the box-like structure of the expanded ship.  

     Once is lands, the male steps out from the ship, his spacesuit helmet retracts into a collar around his suit's neck.  He walks over to where many of the cryo patients sit, recovering from their time in stasis. 

     “Ladies and gentlemen. I'm glad to see you're all healthy.  I know you have many questions, I'll try to answer what I can.  Let me tell you what I know of your journey to Merrin.

     “When you were still a couple weeks from the planet, your ship was struck with an unknown object, it removed much of the ships central structure. A few of the crew survived, and managed to eject your cryo racks prior to the ships destruction. They also managed to eject in escape pods.

     “They managed to make it to the planet, a few of them managed to survive. Your cryo racks somehow managed to enter the planets orbit. The communications array vehicle managed to arrange a stable orbit for you.  You've been in orbit for some three hundred years. 

     “We're not sure why, but the planet has gone rogue.  We know that the research probe indicated three moons, but when you arrived, there were only two. 

     Now, there's none. We haven't invested any time in that puzzle yet."

An elder man near the speaker raises his hand. His gaze is blank, giving indication that he can't yet see due to cryo blindness. 

     “Do you have a question, sir?" the speaker asks while approaching, touching the olders hand so he knows he's being addressed.

     “Who are you? What government. I'm not sure, but either your people are using fur covered gloves or…"

     “My name is Kyle Andolina.  I am the sovereign of a planet called Arkania.  There was once a research station there called Arkanon.  The scientists there bio engineered several mammalian species into humanoids.  That's why the hands you have felt have fur, because most of my people have fur."

     There's silence for a while, then another hand is raised. Kyle points over to the person. “Yes ma'am, you also have a question?" The medical assistant standing by that female researcher touches her hand, so she knows she's being addressed. 

     “The planet's rouge? Is it still habitable?"  

     “Yes and no. There's places that have trapped enough geothermal heat to keep some of it's ecosystem intact, in other places, the native creatures seem to have made egg repositories together."

     “How long till it dies?"

     “Current calculations show a year or two. One of the survivors has indicated sentient life has been found. We don't know their numbers. What we'd like to do is try to save all these eggs and any other life we can find, hopefully find, or make, them a new home."

     “Make a planet? You can do that?"

     “I was thinking to terra-form one, or just make an orbital platform"

From somewhere in the middle, a uniformed man stands. “What's to become of us?"

     “Earth has dispatched a ship to my planet, to pick up any survivors and research data that we have. It'll take them a month to reach Arkania.  We're only a week from there."

     He tugs at and smoothes his uniform top. “Then let us learn all we can of the planet while we rescue what life we can."

     Kyle smiles and says, “Aime, tell the fleet to begin prepping for research, excavations and rescue.