Among the Stars

Among the Stars is a Fallout 3 main quest and achievement in the Mothership Zeta add-on.

Destroy the generators
This quest is activated upon reaching the engineering core with the objective to destroy three of the ship's generators located in the hangar, Cryo Lab, and robot assembly areas, in order to gain access to the decompression chamber to proceed further.
 * The option is available to bring Somah along, or one of the three abductees revived in the engineering core's southern portion to each of these three locations. See below for who will accompany the Lone Wanderer to which location; if the wrong companion is selected, they will tell you they are leaving once you enter.
 * The generators are destroyed such as with the one blown up when freeing Sally in the holding cells area, i.e. using the control to bring the core up from the floor and then disabling the three cooling devices surrounding it.
 * An overheating generator will be surrounded by more and more visible heat radiation which results in the generator blowing up in roughly 30 seconds.
 * Apart from the above locations, there are three other new locations initially reachable from the engineering core: the cargo hold, engine room, and maintenance level are optional and unconnected to the quest, with the latter containing one of the alien captive recorded logs. These will become inaccessible once the Lone Wanderer enters the space walk area from the decompression chamber; opened after shutting down the last generator.

Cryo Lab
Elliott Tercorien will assist in the Cryo Lab area if asked. He will not rejoin the party if asked to leave after having already visited the area. Having Elliot in this area unlocks the unique ability to create cryo mines and cryo grenades.

Upon entering the labs, hostile aliens will attack from the right. The left room is accessible by passing over the glass floor. On the wall next to the door is a switch which will unlock the room below, containing alien and wasteland items.

Proceed back upstairs and turn to the right. Face north and proceed through the open door, and there will be aliens as well as drones in the room.

On both sides of the room there are switches activating one alien captive recorded log or thawing a ghoul and a raider. Upon leaving that room there is a similar room with the same cryo-storage pods. Activating them will release another ghoul and raider.

Entering the next room, the Lone Wanderer will, through a window and an open door, observe an examination room with some aliens conducting experiments. If Elliott is accompanying them, he will shout out that the aliens were experimenting on the members of his former squad, and will then proceed to hit a control under the window. This will seal the doors and release freezing gases into the room, killing all aliens inside who will be seen banging on the window pleading.

The room itself contains two pods with Elliott's former comrades: Private Beckett and Sergeant Daniels. With Elliot present, the options are available to leave, euthanize, or try and revive them. If they are revived before Elliott has checked on their status, they will both become instantly hostile and fight each other to the death before then attacking the party. Complete research to restore his squad members' memories, until he tells the Lone Wanderer that it is safe to trigger the release switch. The two soldiers will then join their party within the cryo-lab and storage, until they inevitably die due to damage-over-time by the poisonous substances administered to them by the aliens in their experiments, provided that they survive the ensuing battle.

Afterwards, the main cryo-storage bay will be entered, in which there are several aliens and one automated turret, each on the two upper level strips as well as on the area below. There are switches to release ghouls and raiders in cryo-pods on the upper level. On the lower level, there are two areas with two pods each containing super mutants (leveled right up to super mutant overlords). They can be released by switches on the upper level, just above them.

After all the enemies are dealt with, face north and head down one of the corridors on the upper level. At the end of the corridor will be the generator to destroy.

There are four alien captive recorded logs located in the Cryo Lab and two in the cryo storage.

Robot Assembly
Somah will assist in the robot assembly area, if asked in the engineering core.

If Somah is brought into this area, she will disappear through a teleporter, telling them that she will try and fiddle with the teleporter controls. Head downstairs and to the right. Straight ahead is a corner shelf in an area abundant with alien epoxy. On one of those shelves and on the floor, one can find five units of alien power cells (2 x 12, 1 x 20, 2 x 50). Back down the main hall, there is a healing archway to the right.

Upon entering the second room, turn right. Behind the pillars and against the back wall, there are several (4) biogels.

Follow the stream of partly assembled robots down to the end of the room. If present, Somah will suggest blowing a hole in the assembly line's casing to proceed to the next room. While shooting at the glass is ineffective, there is an access panel where the assembly line exits into a wall, which can be activated to cause an overload. The resulting explosion is rather large and forceful, so back up.

Entering a new area through the resulting hole causes a confrontation with several guardian drones and support drones, as well as a small number of aliens. One of the aliens is enormously strong and has the useful drone control device, which can be looted from their corpse. A healing archway will be under the second level, and from there, proceed forward down the stairs and on to the generator.

Hangar Bay
Paulson will assist in the hangar bay area, if asked in the engineering core.

The generator is located at the top balcony, in the hangar. Kill all of the aliens in the hangar area (balcony across from where you walk into the hangar, hangar floor and uppermost balcony). When going to the balcony across from the one on which they first entered, push the switch to open up the sealed door and this will take the party to the top balcony.

Unactivated drones can be activated with drone control device if you've been to the Robot Assembly and gotten it, or you may just destroy them for loot.

Walk all the way through the corridors and up the stairs until an encounter with two drones appears, if they have been activated. Go left after dealing with them, and follow the wall around and there is another blocked door. Pushing the switch to open it sets off an alarm which will begin an alien retaliation.

At this point, a stream of aliens and drones will come from the five formerly blocked doors on the lower level, three of which can be seen from your vantage point. Activating the five pylon controls will send nearby hostiles flying, damaging or obliterating them. However, they also make a large area unsuitable for your mines. Some enemies will run to you through the two corridors, and two will come from the door with the switch of alarm, whom you can ambush with mines. Once this encounter has been dealt with, the door leading to the area's generator will become unblocked.

Conveniently, there are two healing archways forming a path between the generator room door and the balcony overlooking the hangar. Also of note: by the end of the battle, a hatch raises into place below the levitating alien craft (the recon craft Theta), completing the floor beneath.

Gain access to the upper level
Once all three generators have been destroyed, the decompression chamber becomes available.

Enter the chamber and put on the spacesuit looted from Colonel Hartigan. Press the room's single control switch, which decompresses the airlock, allowing the Lone Wanderer through several doors to a new area, the space walk. Along the way, several dead aliens and an optional side room with two containers and several (4) alien biogels can be discovered.

While in space, the Pip-Boy 3000 cannot be accessed, weapons cannot be drawn, and the rest option cannot be utilized. While there are aliens that can be seen running below the glass, they cannot be interacted with and can be safely ignored.

During the space walk, three exposed panels are needed to activate the large teleporter in the middle. The first is just to the right from where the Lone Wanderer first emerged from the airlock. The second is all the way across the ship, almost opposite the first. The third is very close to the central teleporter itself.

Once all three panels are activated, (make sure to save at this point, you'll need it for the buggy next quest...) step into the now-active transporter to end this quest and begin This Galaxy Ain't Big Enough...

Reward

 * 300 XP

Bugs

 * Upon entering the room with the two soldiers in the Cryo Lab, the entrance doors may become locked and the teleporter is inoperative. This results in being stuck in this level. This only happens when the player character activates the revival process before Elliott is ready, thus resulting in the death of his squad mates. When this happens Elliott will have a speech option asking him why the doors have locked. If one chooses this option, Elliott tells the player character that "we probably just have to wait for the decontamination cycle to end." despite the fact that no matter how long one waits, the doors will not open. There are two solutions.
 * Save, then power down the console/exit the game on the PC. Load that save and the teleporter should be operational again. If this occurs on the PS3 version, restarting the console has no effect.
 * Killing Elliott Tercorien or the revived soldiers fixes the problem. This results in no negative Karma.
 * After the loading screen at the end of the space walk, it says the player character is gaining rads for a split second, long enough to gain a single rad. The oxygen meter flashes on-screen as well.
 * The initial airlock is right at the edge of the artificial gravity border. The Pip-Boy direction marker incorrectly points to this airlock during the space walk. Returning to this airlock may count as crossing the border and the cinematic of your floating death will play.
 * During the space walk, the player character may randomly lose karma.