(SIPERNET) Nothing But Questions
03 Nov 2018Gatimũ Kamau
ENCRYPTION PROTOCOLS ENACTEDCMDR’s Log, 3304.11.3, Sol Calendar; LOCATION CLASSIFIED; Well, I’ve NO IDEA what to make of the sadness that comprised the culmination of this mission.
As I stated in my previous log, I didn’t think we were ready for this. And if I’m being totally honest, we very nearly weren’t. I also can’t even say with complete certainty that we found what we intended to find. But, I suppose that’s for the brass at Naval HQ to figure. Our task was relegated to the 3 S’s; search, salvage and save. None of these things happened, as was the expectation of my wife and I. But there was still the vain hope that we would find more than more questions.
We surprisingly got special dispensation from the Federal Navy to allow for Na’Kimuli to be excused from training temporarily due to the importance of the search for the FNS Shenzhou. So we loaded up the PoA with the necessary supplies and frame shifted to her last known coordinates only to find trouble almost immediately upon our arrival at the star. We picked up anomalous readings the instant we hit normal space and we dropped out of supercruise right on top of the site of the aftermath of a major fight.
Either the attackers were very brave, very foolhardy or they were xeno. No pilot wort their salt is going to engage a target in a star’s corona unless they are very desperate, they don’t care or they have the tech to withstand the temperatures while fighting. Especially when you’re talking about attacking a military cruiser and its escorts.
That’s not an easy fight by any stretch of the imagination.
We spent the better part of a day sifting through the chard remnants of the ships with my wife doing the flying because, well, she’s better at it, and I scanned for any possible salvageable information. We found some, but it was all encrypted. Far above my security level. And while there was wreckage from a ship that fit the size and make of the Anaconda class Shenzhou, but not nearly enough to suggest that the ship was lost there. So we were forced to look for wake signatures from sudden supercruise jumps. And as luck would have it, there it was.
So we followed the breadcrumb, and we found a fight. Apparently, a small group of outlaws had already stumbled across our target and were prepping to have their way with it just before we could break into atmo. They saw us and the fray began. For our first real fight (three on one nonetheless) I was very happy with the way the Pride of Afrika handled herself. While there are improvements that could defiantly be made, and I’ve made extensive notes on the subject since, the shields held very well, the module reinforcements di their jobs and our Chieftain’s maneuverability served us VERY well.
Once we were done and we made it to the surface, we found her. The paint covering the outer hull was all but destroyed between being ripped apart in the fight, burned off in the heat of the star and being scoured by her impact with the planet. So visual conformation was impossible. But once we had our boots on the ground, we were able to grimly identify the ship via identification of the crew remains which weren’t liquified in the violent crash, decimated by violent decompression during the space battle or burned in the subsequent fires aboard.
The good of the whole mess was that, since the bridges of Anacondas are located towards the ship’s aft, it was easy to access what was left of the navigational logs, scans and mission related files. The bad was that it was all a wreck. And even when we were finally able to pull rip the core files, they too were heavily encrypted. But it didn’t take a mountain of telemetry and data to realize that both I and the Federation were right.
This had been the work of the Thargoids.
Neither of us were keen on staying put at the crash site for too long by ourselves. So, we destroyed all of the sensitive equipment that we couldn’t move, salvaged what we could, placed a beacon at the site so that the Federal Navy could send ships for a proper recovery effort and we got out of there as fast as the PoA could take us; so hurriedly that I frame shifted from within atmo.
Hopefully, the Admiralty will be able to use this information to help us repel the Thargoid threat. If not, then all those people will have died in vein. I’ve already been told by my commander via subspace, once they read over my report of the operation and saw how we handled everything, that after our return we may be utilizing us to engage in more combat related missions. It may be time for us to leave the Pride of Afrika behind. If this is the truth, then we’ll need more than a few simple upgrades to keep up in the near future…