The Ghost of Innitu
28 Sep 2021Iridium Nova
Whatever the colonists of Grebegus found all those years ago, it's long gone by now. But not without a trace. They definitely did find something, and it wasn't just some old ruins. Curiously, the answer I was looking for was a side line in one of those Imperial surveillance logs. It wasn't of direct relevance to the mission; the Imperials were trying to determine if some other faction was getting too close to removing the Spice Smugglers from their position of power. Turns out, they don't want that to happen, but they DO like the threat of it happening - probably because it gives them leverage. While that's interesting enough on it's own, it has nothing to do with my investigation.With the recent resurgence of the Thargoids and the Canonn's own research into their artifacts, it's easy for people to think all of this is a pretty new development. But the fact is, this sort of thing has been going on a lot longer than the last 4 years, or even the last 7. Thargoid Barnacles are nothing new, in fact some of them are older than humanity's first steps into the stars. And that goes for their other artifacts; probes, sensors, and everything else. There are records of trade in "alien artefacts" from the Grebegus system during its early colonial period, though details are missing from the reports. This doesn't seem to be due to any nefarious activity - they just didn't have the same system of standardization for manifests back then, and the records weren't as detailed as they are now. This doesn't predate the Thargoid war, but rather happened during it.
There's no direct evidence that the artifacts that were found were Thargoid, but the Imperial agents who wrote this report did their research and it seems most of the colonists were of the opinion that these were Thargoid artifacts. The report is mostly about a freelancer wing working for United Grebegus Free who had managed to acquire some kind of "prototype hybrid Human-Thargoid Shield Generator" and were threatening to release it if the Spice Smugglers didn't comply with their demands. This, of course, would draw a lot of attention and shine a light on Aisling Duval, specifically with regard to the Prismatic Shield Generator. Now, the report doesn't actually have any evidence that this group actually possesses the controversial blackmail they claim to, but it seems the Spice Smugglers took it seriously and gave in to the demands. This is interesting in itself, because the Spice Smugglers aren't the kind of group that would normally be susceptible to blackmail. Anarchists in general don't respond in a collective way to anything, unless it's something that speaks to whatever singular shared belief brought them together in the first place.
With this information, I combed through all the collected data from my stay in the system, including a lot of old news archives. After sifting through the common threads, I was able to procure a set of coordinates. Grebegus A 11 a -45,-48. Supposedly this was the location recorded by the colonist who found the first of the alien artefacts in the system. It wasn't much to go on, but it couldn't hurt to check. So off I went. When I got to the location, sure enough, there was nothing there but dusty rocks as far as the eye could see, at least on the surface. While searching the coordinate, I noticed an unusually large number of other ships flying around. Most would simply make fly-overs but one instead decided to check me out. It got real close, much closer than necessary for any kind of scan. It was the Morpheus, a Krait Phantom, registration XX-000. Interestingly, though it appeared to have a Pilot's Federation transponder, the Ident code was invalid. Then, it flew off and high-waked out.
Shortly afterward I received the following message from someone calling themselves The Ghost of Innitu:
Greetings Commander.
I see we have a shared interest.
You are too late, but we can still work together.
In the 34th Century, the Ghosts of the Past do not always rest.
Come and find me at Tamura Chemical Base.
There lie the answers we both seek.Wonderful. In this line of work, you're bound to run into people like this from time to time, but thankfully it's still pretty rare. With not much else to go on, I decided I might as well see what this guy is about. Whoever they are, they're at least good at spoofing their ident, which means they know their shit. I can't even screw with the PFed's database like that and get away with it. Time to play a game...
Tamura Chemical Base was a mess. Whatever happened there, it wasn't pretty. Very little of any value was left, either having been taken or destroyed in the attack. And whatever happened, it was recent - very recent. Some of the corpses were still warm. The only thing of value I found was a detailed design document regarding a Project Prism, describing a high-tech defense system which could be mounted on a ship and interface directly with its shield systems to increase the strength by roughly 200 MJ. The project made use of strange bio-chemical substances brought to the facility by an unnamed INRA representative. Several sections of the document following this are encrypted. Decrypting that will take time, if even possible. The rest of the unencrypted document does definitely indicate that alien artefacts from Grebegus A 11 a were a large part of the design of the shield booster.
I then attempted to ID some of the bodies to get an idea of who might have been running the place before it was ransacked. Unfortunately, during the process I got a little too close to one of those damn red barrels (and didn't see the fire burning behind the barricade next to it), and it blew. The blast threw me for a loop. The next thing I saw was this:
The Ghost of Innitu
A distorted voice, similar to the voicemod I use myself, spoke to me: "Careful, Commander. This universe is dangerous for people who let their guard down."
My suit's sensors were still scrambled from the blast, or perhaps it was part of the guy's ID spoofer, but either way I didn't get a read on them. I suspect this was that Ghost of Innitu person from before, though. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut.
"Who are you? What's your angle?", I called out to them.
But they didn't respond. They just turned and walked right through the fire behind them. And then disappeared? Pretty neat trick - probably making use of the thermal air distortion from the fire. Weird thing though - I didn't see the telltale blue flare of their suit's shields. That must have hurt. But hey, sometimes you gotta sacrifice to make a cool exit - or a hot one in this case.
In retrospect, I suppose this person wanted me to get ahold of that data. It's why they directed me there. Maybe they caused all that destruction. I don't know. If we're both investigating the same thing here, it's likely they are using me as a redundancy. That's not behavior you see very often from freelancers - or directed toward freelancers. The idea with a redundancy is that if you meet a bad end, you want someone else you trust to be able to carry on your investigation so that the truth gets out. Now, I don't trust this person, and I have no idea why they'd trust me, but I'm not sure why else they're including me in this. And there's that familiar uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach - that feeling I always get when I'm dealing with people who know more than I do about something that could be really f-ing dangerous for me...