Sword and Lash
16 Dec 2022D. James Totendost
Login:// Totendost, Daniel J., Commander, Unit 242Date:// 16 December, 3308
Context:// Personal
Criminals used to be the majority of my outside interactions before this thing with the Thargoids predictably kicked off. Now, because of that, it seems like cowards take up the bulk of my time. Criminals and cowards are definitely company befitting the "Sword of Menguru".
Alright, story time. So, there I was, trying to make a delivery to HIP 96880 when I ran into three separate pirates from a faction in Menguru. None of them knew each other, each waylaid me in one go, and I sacrificed all of their memories to entropy. When I got to Lyulka I met up with my contact and mentioned off-hand my troubles with this delivery. Apparently, there was enough of a problem to make some decent money. A opportunity like this could fill Unit 242 coffers and provide me with decent spending money. So off to work I went.
The Acrimonious Chorus and I spent months snuffing the light of 1000's of pirates in the icy rings of Menguru. Each run we'd collect the survivors we could to spread the word that I was coming. They'd get turned in to Lyulka and I'd go out again. Then, prior to this salvation business, something shifted in imperial positioning. I helped fight a couple wars in HIP 96880 that were referred to as "Training Exercises" by the Imperial forces and my main contact asked if I could, "hold on to any pirates you recover, just, you know, like a blacksite, or something, don't crack their pods". The 242 is used to these sort of things so we quietly shuffled any recovered pirates to our research carrier and held fast. Then shit with the bugs went sideways.
Our operators dove headlong into 42 n Persei and Chun Pindit. We lost a couple but posted a fairly impressive set of battle statistics. Those drills I'd been making them do since HR 1183 definitely paid off. As the "stargoid" anomalies started popping up I got message from my contact. He'd gotten a job working with the Independent Rescue Coalition on a little side project. [REDACTED] asked me to loop my "guests" in and make sure they sat tight until they were needed. I'm not gonna lie the near 300 pirates I had in their escape pods, on the Sothis' Tenet, was starting to make me a little antsy and knowing they were gonna leave at some point was a relief. I was starting to think about doing a bulk ejection into a star.
All hell broke loose in a day. The aforementioned cowards in my midst looked at the fight, looked at the 242, and decided that being a fresh recruit in a small operation meant that they should run. One of them had to be neutralized because they'd run off with some sensitive property but we let the rest leave. About 14 hours into our mobilization to HIP 23716 I got a ping from REDACTED telling me to bring my "guests" to Bertschinger. The scheme was to cycle them into the rescues of Imperial pilots and conscript them into service as fighters or slaves -their choice. I'm honestly not really sure what happened to them after that. I guess some scum gets a second chance.
Our recruits were largely replaced in the fray that followed. One's a rescuer whom I shielded with the Pinpoint Retribution as they flew into Wakata. They were in and out in record time and I offered to buy them a drink on the Sothis' Tenet back in Tarach Tor. We met up and they've been running refugees and the wounded with us ever since. The other synced up with me in combat and kept the swarm and scouts off my back as I knocked down interceptors at Wakata. I made sure to cut them in on my contracts and offer them free drinks for life at my bar. They agreed and have been adding numbers to our T-kill-count (TKC) ever since. They both need some tutelage but that's what I'm here for.
Hopefully, they'll be on board if we have to execute our final misson.