Green Hell
02 Dec 2022Iridium Nova
The last couple of days were a real ordeal. I'm still not entirely sure why I decided to stake out the planet I knew the Stargoid was heading to. I mean, it's like standing on a monorail track. Just why. I guess a lot of people have been doing strange things lately. Maybe there's some kind of shared madness going around. Maybe it's space madness, but my experience with space madness is that it's more to do with long periods of isolation and boredom, and things have been anything but boring lately. In any case, I know I wasn't the only one there when the-- thing arrived.I still don't know exactly what it is. I suppose nobody really knows. Once it arrived, massive clouds of corrosive gas began spilling out of it - this thing that looked like a giant blister immersed in glowing radioactive sewage. Pretty soon, the acid cloud had completely enveloped the thing. Curiosity compelled me to investigate closer but that was when I noticed my guardian modules beginning to melt. It was as if space itself had become corrosive. Indeed, the caustic material oozing off the alien object had begun contaminating the entire system. The field spread at a phenomenal rate. Finally, survival instincts overrode my suicidal curiosity and I tried to get as far away from the thing as possible. If I could get out of the corrosive field, I could repair my booster and get out of the system.
Unfortunately, I didn't get far before I was ripped out of supercruise in a way I never even knew was possible before. It was as if a giant invisible hand grabbed hold of my ship in supercruise and began throwing it around like a ragdoll. There was no way to evade it, and I was dumped into normal space faster than I've ever been before. And before me was a giant death flower, spewing it's horde of killer green hornets at me. Systems struggled and my HUD flickered, I figured I was done for, but then, miraculously my ship refused to shut down and I used the opportunity to run. Again, my shields held up remarkably well during the onslaught, and despite a couple of failed supercruise spoolings, I was eventually able to escape certain doom. Five seconds later, I was yanked out of sc again. This flower wasted no time in opening up on me, it may well have been the same one in fact. But again, by some miracle, I slipped away under a relentless torrent of alien death rain with little actual damage. This time, I decided to high wake out, despite the booster which I am sure was probably now a puddle oozing through the bowels of my ship.
The nav computer displayed dozens of Thargoid controlled systems all around me, but as luck would have it, they had seemingly ignored a few systems within range. Playing it safe, I jumped to one of them. A hyperdiction attempted to once again stop me but my luck had not yet run out and I evaded that as well, my ship proving remarkably capable of withstanding Thargoid assault.
Eventually I was back in "safe" space. Stopping at a station to refuel and repair, I realized that I had used another one of those personally modified prismatic shields in this ship as well, in fact I had done these modifications on several of the units I had received from that operation, and had used most of the Grebegus mystery parts in the process as well.
I decided to head back to my previous base of operations near Chukchan and recall my fleet. Once that was done, I proceeded to spend some time in my lab, reviewing my inventory, and reorganizing the Grebegus parts into a separate category, the few of them I had left anyway. It occurs to me that this would all be much easier if I had my own fleet carrier. I could consolidate all of my labs and workshops into one location and greatly expand my storage capacity while I was at it. Of course, I'd have to deal with the upkeep, but I make enough money that it shouldn't be a problem.
I suppose I'll resume my Chukchan investigation, but I do so now in a galaxy that is very different from the one I started this investigation in. The Thargoids aren't playing around anymore. What I saw at that ammonia world was something out of nightmares. I still can't quite fathom what it was, but the power coming off it was terrifying. And I felt something - it's hard to describe in objective terms. It felt like it was alive, and very angry. It also felt very powerful. I don't think we've ever faced anything like this as a race.
Now I like to think I know when the risk isn't worth the reward. That's not fear, that's being smart. These days it seems I fear no man. But that thing...
It scares me.