Adapt and Survive
09 Dec 2022Iridium Nova
After my last close call with the Thargoids, I was feeling rather ill and paid a visit to the doctors on Klein Survey. While their main expertise is in dealing with injuries related to mining, recently a Thargoid expert has been on site, helping with and studying the nearby warzone. So I was lucky there. Turns out a tiny amount of the caustic Thargoid "gas" had managed to contaminate my oxygen supply after my ship was disabled. If I'd been exposed to it any longer, it would have had dire consequences. So I owe those brave AX pilots my life for pulling me out of there in time. Understandably, I was eager to get back out there and repay their kindness by contributing to the war effort and rescuing more people, but the docs said no. Apparently I need to take it easy for a bit longer to let the meds finish repairing the damage and building up my immunity again. After some discussion, I convinced them to at least let me go on a relaxing expedition and collect some bio samples. Part of the compromise was allowing them to program the autodoc on my dolphin with a treatment regimen I'll have to maintain until the schedule is complete in about a week. No problem, just as long as I didn't have to spend any more time in the hospital.
But as soon as I left the station, I saw that another war had begun in Pathamon. With a quick and minimally invasive crawl through local news, private comms, and military coordination beacons, I discovered that in the couple of days I was out of action, the situation in Pathamon had deteriorated quite significantly. Terrified civilians were openly demonstrating, having lost faith in their leaders to protect them. Military operations were paralyzed by heated and frequently violent internal conflict. Corporations who initially tried to profit from the situation were now busy moving their most valuable assets out of the system. Allies were turning on each other, scrambling to beat their former friends in a race to secure transport to safer regions.
And what is happening in Pathamon is happening in many other systems as well. Today I started receiving reports from the front lines of staggering morale drops in the wake of an unprecedented avalanche of losses on all fronts. AX pilots across the bubble have begun doomsaying after failing to make a dent in the seemingly unstoppable tide of alien aggression. Needless to say, I was surprised.
Honestly, I can understand the fleeing civilians, the corporations trying to relocate their assets, and the uncertainty of those with no or little power to avoid destruction. But the doom and gloom response from the anti xeno community is alarming. These are people who fight Thargoids for a living. Before the maelstroms, they fought what were the equivalent of Thargoid miners and farmers and reveled in the power fantasy of human supremacy. And now that they're on the front lines of a real war, they're soiling their Remloks after roughly a week of fighting? Almost makes me wonder if any of them have seen real war before. Maybe they needed a bloody nose. Now's not the time to run crying, or mindlessly bang your head against the enemy's walls, now is the time to think, fight smart, and do what humans have always done best: adapt and survive. We won't win this by acting like children.
The cooler heads in the bubble are already working on new solutions to these new challenges. The increased payouts offered by Vista Genomics aren't an arbitrary thing. I think they're looking for the next mycoid. So, until my recovery is complete, I'm going to do my part in searching the galaxy for elusive, potentially weaponizable life forms. You don't win a tough fight by ignoring your talents and relying on dumb force, you win by understanding yourself and your enemy, and bringing to bear the full measure of the unique skills and abilities that make you strong.
If we can all do that, the Thargoids won't know what hit them.