Director of INRA, FireBat01, Private log. May 12th, 3305
13 May 2019Firebat01
I was acknowledge as Director of INRA. Took 20 years of hell to get here but I know what's out there, and it'll all be worth the throats I had to cut to get here, alien or otherwise.The rest of our damnable species have no idea what's coming. Our association, and then complete consolidation of the Dark Wheel into our ranks was key to preventing what's coming, they, like I, know the importance of unity at this crucial moment in our history. Though they still operate under their moniker, they are a valued branch of our little family now.
We set up a faction in Shinrarta Dezhra with the same name, just to rattle chains when we need them to, and take the blame when we need them to. The real Dark Wheel is secure in knowing that and thanks to us can operate with impunity, as long as it goes through me first.
The Federation and their brick heads. No wonder they design their ships the way they do. Bunch of flying bricks!
The Empire and their arrogance and vanity. All the Feds or Alliance have to do is put a giant mirror in a combat zone and the Imperials would stop fighting just to "Bask" at themselves, and completely forget they were fighting at all.
The Alliance of "Independents", puh. Some Alliance. So much in fighting, and like every power, infiltrated, manipulated, and controlled without dominating them.
The Club. A nice experiment, though an unsuccessful one. Too many Chefs, not enough cooks on that operation. Ol' Patty and his lapdog loyalty, he'd be with us if he wasn't such an indoctrinated Imperial stooge. We found the leak, and plugged it, and gave a bogus story about the real plan, called it "Project Dynasty". Pretty simple explanation for such a "Huge" conspiracy. HA! But the ignorant eat it up as usual, and the "heroes" all got commendations and promotions. All the loose ends tied up nicely.
The Thargoids...Everyone is worried about the Thargoids. I wouldn't worry too much about them. They're a nice and needed distraction for the major governments while we complete our work. If we wanted to get rid of them, we can. We did once, albeit we almost genocided them, but at the time we didn't see any other course of action, they had us outgunned. Now, we can take them on ship to ship. They are getting desperate though, moving further into the core systems. People say no one knows what they want, but we do.
The Guardians. The Guardians are a bunch of assholes! Great tech but it didn't save them in the end. We have one, a Guardian. Seems when their AI decided to take them out, a few hundred thousand tried to escape, they were trying to make their way to Andromeda. This ones FSD, or version of it, was damaged while trying to escape an AI drone ship. Went into witch space but got lost, when it came out, the interior was exposed to vacuum. We found it. The body was well preserved. Took a long time to decode its ships logs. When we did, we panicked.
The Guardians AI was actively hunting the Guardians, it followed them to Andromeda. Its goal was to destroy them utterly, and completely into extinction. It seems the AI must have succeeded, because now they are on their way back!
Discovering the Guardian sites also let the AI know about Humanity, and the return of the Thargoids. The AI is returning with Guardian drone ships. Very large, and very well armed ships. Our capital ships, Imperial and Federal alike, are no match for their flying weapons platforms, their world killers. These AI have been building and evolving for decades upon decades in Andromeda, they, themselves, wiped out the Guardians. A species that would have brought we humans, now, to the brink!
"Project Dynasty", wasn't about the Thargoids. It was meant to set up early warning military outposts for the return of the Guardian AI drone fleets.
INRA scouts have already encountered probes on the edge of the galaxy. The ASP Explorer "Centuries Drift" piloted by Field Agent Deloris Makewell and its ASP scout escort "Gone With The Wind" Piloted by Cam Smith came across one. The probe infiltrated the ASP Explorer's systems with its SELF, the AI took control of the ASP Explorer's systems and once it was done gathering what intel it could, it initiated the ASP Explorer's self destruct. Deloris got to her escape pod in time, and with quick piloting and thinking was picked up by Cam and FSD'd the hell out of the system. Deloris convinced her counterpart to jump back into system, after a while, to try and recover the black box from the Explorer. After a month of travel, INRA received one hell of a revelation.
What struck our analysts is that the AI transmitted its self BACK to the probe immediately after it set the self destruct timer. It seems it also wanted time to vacate the ship. The ASP Explorers sensor logs show a slight power decrease in the probe when the AI transmitted its self to the Explorer. This was great news. It means the AI has evolved to the point of individuality. It means its ships need a mind behind the controls, so to speak. It also means the AI has a fear of death. It means the INRA can exploit that fear, when the time comes. We've been preparing. And we used our past experience with the Thargoids as a learning experience. Biologicals die by viruses...so can computer programs. Intelligent or not. With Ram Tah and other reliable engineers who deal with Guardian tech and decryption, we're designing a countermeasure to the AI threat. The entire project decompartmentalized of course.
Other analysis of the black box showed that the AI was looking for something specific, a myth to most, a reality to few, and a damn panic attack for me.
If the AI are going for Raxxla, that means they know that WE know.
God help us all.