Miraculously there was little loss of life. The buffer absorbed most of the impact. Created years ago in order to make spaceflight easier on the crew, the buffer was a composite wormhole connecting the cabin to the hull.

The buffer effectively divorced the inside from the outside. It rendered all sorts of strange things possible. The cabin was generally not inside the ship, to start with. A stable spot was located and a cabin was built into the ground. The hull of the ship was then constructed elsewhere and a wormhole was created between the exit points of the hull and the exit points of the cabin. This arrangement allowed crew to enter and exit the cabin as if it were inside the ship, while insulating them from most of the forces applied to the outside. It also allowed crew members to walk around normally, as gravity inside remained stable, regardless of the position of the ship. Best of all, in the old days, before Nibiru’s orbit decayed fatally and the planet died, it made rescue missions really easy.