I am become Space

Let's imagine the period of time passed between the failure of the Sun Station and the arrival of the comet was extended by a year or so. During that time, attention was split between multiple tasks and projects.

Spire went to upgrade the locator at the Southern Observatory to expand their range of what can be spotted as a last ditch effort to find the Eye the old way, since the project wasn't going to be activated any time soon. Poke, Clary, and Root devise a new probe that hosts warp retrieval capabilities and a newer technology that repurposes their metal holograms to broadcast a live video feed in the form of sonar (launching it with Brittle Hollow's gravity cannon); this would be utilized to explore Dark Bramble without the need to actually send a Nomai inside, and hopefully they would be able to locate the Vessel. Yarrow would negotiate with Idaea and Pye to continue their work on the Sun Station, now recruiting Cassava and Daz to work alongside them.

The probing of Dark Bramble enabled further study of its unique ecosystem from a safe distance, and the remote crew were able to ascertain the warped nature of its dimensions, but they were no closer to finding the Vessel. During this probing project, Spire was able to successfully upgrade the Southern Observatory locator and make it even more sensitive than it already was, with a larger range than before. It could now seek energy spikes and unique signals against the radio background of deep space, and Spire hoped to fine tune it to seek the Eye in more precise measures this way.

Amidst the busyness of the ponderous Nomai, Spire detected a foreign energy spike approximately several hundred astronomical units away. A long scan deduced that it was a form of space rock composed of an exotic matter not found in the solar system, and that it was highly volatile and unstable, but most importantly, it was headed their way.

Spire sent an alert Yarrow's way, and he in turn urgently informed the rest of the clan of the imminent danger. Evidently, they were now operating on a timer beyond their control. They had two options: hope and pray they can finish their work here before the comet arrives so they could warp away, or devise an evacuation plan whilst leaving behind all of their hard work and progress to ensure their survival. The choice was simple, but frustrating. They had no time to build a Vessel, nor build a new warp core, and they certainly couldn't remove the core from the ATP either without disabling their safety net. It seemed nowhere was safe from what would be the biggest disaster they had ever seen, nowhere except the dastardly Dark Bramble, at least based on the studies they did with the probes.

So the clan gathered all the resources they could and set off for Dark Bramble, hoping that the plant's inherent discombobulation would save them from the apocalypse, against all odds. They would send members of the clan off by shuttle, operating them from the outside until the last Nomai were accounted for. The Nomai now had to call Dark Bramble home for the foreseeable future, and did their best to combat against the zero gravity and airless environment for as long as they could.

The clan occasionally sent out probes from Dark Bramble after the comet arrived, and as long as the probe came back covered in crystals, they knew it wasn't safe to leave. After thousands of years, only few outcomes remained. The Nomai either died or adapted, with taming the Bramble to their liking, or evolving with the environment.