SALVATION
02 May 2023Jav Marlo
SALVATION20 JAN 3309, System HIP 23716.
The Hyades Sector is burning. It has been less than two months since the arrival of Taranis, and now the Thargoids firmly control 44 human systems, claiming more systems every day and destroying every human structures in their path.
A human settlement burning in the Hyades Sector
The millions of victims have become billions. And the stream of refugees has created the greatest humanitarian crisis of all times. Thousands of warships from the Alliance, the Empire and the Federation plus legions of independent pilots are trying to form a vanguard against the Thargoids. But, without Aegis, every coordination attempts have failed. We are fighting a guerrilla war, world by world, settlement by settlement, and we are losing. And I cannot avoid thinking that all these could have been avoided if Salvation had not fired his secret weapon, the Proteus Wave.
Commander Jav Marlo observing a burning settlement
Ayumi and I joined the combats at the beginning. (Sighs) She is still mad at me because of my trip to the core of Taranis, but the intel I got is invaluable and the current situation is ominous enough to set any personal grudges aside. The Thargoids seem unstoppable and I see no point in continue fighting them, not until we develop new weapons or find a way to discover what is within those Maelstroms. So we have partnered up to rescue civilians from the systems under attack.
Ayumi observing a burning settlement
We do the rescue missions that nobody takes. Those on the surface settlements that are being sieged by the Thargoids. Its buildings blazing and the survivors left behind since no commander would be crazy enough to set foot or land.
Ayumi walking by a settlement under Thargoid attack
It is risky, but we have developed a tactic. We choose settlements with skirmishes still being fought over; that tells us that there might be still survivors trapped down. Then I join the fight in the Xenophon to buy time for the people below.
The Xenophon joining an skirmish over a sieged settlement
When I see a window for landing, Ayumi comes flying the Soteria, a Python we have acquired and modify for high-risk rescue missions. She lands on the settlement while I provide cover from above.
The Soteria landed on a sieged settlement
Then it comes the worst part. Finding out when to depart. Many settlers are usually trapped in the burning buildings and they beg you through the comms not to depart without them as they try to traverse the flames to reach the landing pad. Ayumi always waits as much as she can, gravely observing the battle above while listening their screams, taking any minute that we can provide her to rescue more people. But sometimes there is not enough time before the Thargoid forces overwhelm us and she must depart leaving people behind.
Ayumi observing a skirmish over a burning settlement
She brings the survivors to any of the several Rescue Megaships spread along the front that are already overcrowded by the constant stream of refugees.
The Soteria arriving to a Rescue Megaship
Ayumi despairs for all the lives she cannot save, taking more risks every rescue. And the days pass by as we lose more systems, we rescue hundreds, we leave behind millions, and the front grows wider and closer to the Core Systems. The Proteus Wave might have become the deadliest mistake in human history. (Deep breath) If we do not turn the tides soon it could mean the demise of mankind. And its perpetrator did not live to witness his deeds. But who was Salvation?
Ayumi during a rescue on a burning settlement
Salvation made his public appearance one year and a half ago, when he orchestrated the search for the Hesperus, the sister ship of the Adamastor, the ghost ship that entered the Chukchan system two years ago. Both ships were commissioned 200 years ago by a corporation called Azimuth Biochemicals to conduct a secret long range exploration mission, but they were sabotaged by a rival company called Pharmasapien and were lost in space. The Hesperus might have suffered and ill fate, but it had an auxiliary vessel, an Anaconda by the name Proteus, that managed to fulfil the true mission of the expedition: finding alien technology, weapons more specifically. And I know this because I saw the Proteus camp site and downloaded its logs. Commander Jordanna Frost took me to its derelict, it was on a dark moon in the Trapezium Sector, close to the remnants of a battle between the Thargoids and the Guardians. I saw the Guardian ruins and walked among the Thargoid corpses. The proof that those two civilisations fought millions of years ago. A xenoarcheological find of the upmost importance. And Azimuth Biochemicals knew perfectly were to dig... 200 years ago... 12 years before the First Thargoid War commenced... when Thargoids were just a legend only spoken of as myths or conspiracy theories, and the Guardian civilization had not been discovered yet. How so?
Jav Marlo and Jordanna Frost finding the Proteus camp site
But the true identity of Salvation remained concealed. Later that year he claimed that he had developed a secret anti-xeno superweapon and managed to successfully repel the Thargoids from several systems. That, and the vanishing of the Alexandria, caused the ultimate fall of Aegis. And it was then when professor Alba Tesreau, Aegis former Head of Research, claimed that Salvation’s real identity might be Dr Caleb Wycherley, a dark self-proclaimed man on science and leader of Azimuth Biochemicals, the controversial corporation that had continued operating nowadays disguised under the name of Taurus Mining Ventures.
Jav Marlo on a burning settlement
It was known later that Dr Wycherley might also have been involved in the sabotaging of the Alexandria megaship in June 3307; and in the monstrous Project Seraph, that experimented with Thargoid technology in humans. But that was not the most intriguing about him. Professor Tesreau also claimed that Dr Wycherley directed the Azimuth Biochemicals team that developed the mycoid bioweapon deployed by INRA during the First Thargoid War. She said that he was more than 200 years old and that he was known as the Witch back then. If that is true, he might have been the oldest human being in history when he died. How possibly he managed to...? (Scoff) Truth be told, we never even saw his face, even when all mankind and the superpowers rallied around him like a new messiah to support his Proteus Wave plan, nobody questioned the man,... nobody saw the monster.
Jav Marlo watching the burning ruins of a human settlement
Soon after Aegis was shut down, professor Tesreau sent a message to her supporters sharing the coordinates of an unknown INRA base called Iraxon Lane in the DG Canum Venaticorum system. She pled to any commander that ever flown for Aegis to dig in the ruins and help her find data to expose Dr Wycherley deeds. She had the hope that the superpowers might reconsider their trust in Salvation. (Scoff) Well... it was in vain.
Jav Marlo over the Electra watching the burning ruins of a human settlement
If professor Tesreau was right about Salvation, he might have spent the last two centuries studying the Thargoids and preparing for this war, while mankind was kept in the dark about the threat ahead. I guess that the advent of the Frame Shit Drive ten years ago precipitated the second collision of mankind with the Thargoids, and finally gave Salvation the war he was waiting for. And he was reckless enough to use some alien technology that we do not understand to try to wipe out an entire civilization that is millions of years old, triggering instead mankind extermination. It has been reported that Salvation perished on the Bright Sentinel in HIP 22460, taking with him all the knowledge he had accumulated over the years. We are doomed.
The Bright Sentinel being destroyed
Last time mankind had to face the Thargoids on a full scale war was more than 150 years ago. INRA and commander John Jameson put an end to that by launching a mycoid bioweapon to a Thargoid hive ship. Could that be what those impregnable caustic clouds are protecting?
I am convinced that, if there is any chance for us to survive this attack... this extermination, it will be by reaching the core of the Maelstroms and finding out what is lurking there. And I think that there might still be some useful data to salvage from the abandoned INRA bases of the last war. So there is where I am going, to try to find some clue about what are we facing, before it is too late, in a quest for salvation.
Jav Marlo observing a human settlement in flames