Nightmare Journal - 10 Aug 3308
11 Aug 2022Ember Lacson
The dream began with me piloting Rokshom, my Cobra III, down to the surface of Synuefe XR-H d11-102 1 B, the location of Guardian Ruin 1. Nicole sat in the co-pilot's seat next to me. The area was lit with daylight, giving us a good view of the site. We landed and deployed a Scorpion so that we could ride together. I had landed near the four clusters of obelisks, and we disembarked to admire the strange technology, and for some reason everything was in a more pristine state than the last time I left it. There were more obelisks, and instead of being half buried in piles of dirt and rock, the Guardian artifacts were hovering above what looked like display pads. Another thing I noticed was the fact that our helmets had not automatically deployed, and the atmosphere was breathable and standard pressure instead of nonexistent.We reached out and touched the artifacts, and they reacted with a bright blue glow from within the cracks and crevices. I saw Nicole remove her glove and touch the surface of the totem, and I did the same. The dark grey, stony material was cold to the touch, as I expected, but the blue light radiated a little heat.
We touched the obelisks as well. Just like the totem, the main stony material was cold to the touch, and the blue interface stripe was warm. I'd say it felt about thirty degrees. Instead of a download, the text flashed out in a holographic display when we touched the interface, and Nicole asked what it said. I told her that I didn't know what specific pattern this was or what each specific pattern said, but that these obelisks were the reason we knew the Thargoids were our enemy.
We got back into the SRV and descended further into the basin, and I drove to one of the hidden towers that contain Guardian Relics. Nicole marveled as it rose out of the ground, and I pulled out my pistol to shoot it down. Nicole jumped up to catch it, but she missed. Another inconsistency with reality was the size of the relic; generally they're over two meters long, but this one was about one meter long. I walked up to it and waited for her to join me, and I bent down and picked up the relic.
A change in color from blue to a yellow-green spread out from where my hands touched the crystal until the entire thing had transformed. I dropped it on the ground and stepped back. My heart was pounding. Nicole mirrored my movements as I stepped backward, and a terrifying Thargoid screech echoed across the landscape. It was the same one I heard right before the frame shift anomaly as we were escaping HIP 22460, the one that didn't match any known vessels. I looked up to see dozens of rifts tear open in the blue sky, and a Thargoid Interceptor emerged from each one. They opened fire immediately. First they destroyed Rokshom in a single volley. Another Interceptor fired over my head, and I whirled around to see our SRV explode in a fireball. Nicole screamed, and I spun back around to see a thin, green beam of light connected to her waist, hoisting her into the air. I reached out to her and shouted her name, but no sound came out. I screamed again. Again, silence. I jumped into the air after her, but the gravity was suddenly 1G. I landed on the artifact and faceplanted in the thin soil. The tractor beam reached out again and took the green relic, and as I scrambled to my feet the Interceptor scanned me. I screamed for it to put her down, that it could have the artifact. But my voice came out in halting spurts as if I had lost it. I kept trying to make my voice heard, but to no avail. Just a couple seconds after the scan was finished, the Interceptor opened fire.
I woke up at that point, screaming, drenched in sweat, thrashing around. It was about 10:00 GMT, which feels like 03:00 for me. I gave the voice command to bring the lights up to 5%, and the room responded. I was there in my quarters on the Morningstar. It took me a few minutes to recall my dream and all the things that made it unnatural, like the atmosphere, the blue sky, the daylight (the site is currently dark and has been for a while), the fact that Rokshom is fitted with a Scarab, not a Scorpion, and so on. I also reassured myself that Thargoids aren't known to attack people on foot or shoot at SRVs—I've even shot one on accident, and it didn't care. Thargoids don't abduct people, either. And as far as we know, green relics don't provoke them.
I took a shower to calm my nerves. I dried off, changed to a dry set of sheets, and tried to get back to sleep. I opened my eyes after a while to see how much time had passed, and it was about 11:45. Even though I had only a couple hours of bad sleep I decided to head out to the mess and get some breakfast. I took a seat next to Avery, one of the tech specialists on the crew, and I had a mouthful of scrambled eggs when I glanced down at his tablet and saw footage of a CMDR on foot and an Interceptor firing at them as they ran. They looked up at it and took a face full of energy blasts before falling to the surface. I choked on my eggs, and Avery had to whack me between the shoulderblades to get the chunk out. He asked me if I was okay, and I asked where that video was taken.
"HIP 22460," he said. "He was investigating a wreck. No Guardian tech, no Thargoid stuff, just minding his own business, and it showed up and killed him. And you know what else they've been doing?" He swiped to another video that showed a Cyclops collecting some sort of canisters from a wrecked Anaconda. "Those are occupied escape pods. They've been doing this all over the system. They attack on sight regardless of your cargo or modules, and if you survive they abduct you."
"I'm reconsidering my recon mission...." I said.
"They're only doing it there, though. I think it's the energy field caused by the second wave."
"Is it spreading?" I asked. "We're only a few light years out."
"We don't know yet," he said.
But I'm not taking any chances. They've told me I can't jump the carrier until Nicole is ambulatory again, but the moment she is, I'm taking us far away from this cursed place. I know I can't take her down to GR1, but that's the easiest place to source relics, so I think that's a good place for now. I'll make sure to check for non-human signal sources before I land, and if I find any, it's back to the Bubble in a real hurry.