Thargoid scouts, Part 7: Triple elite
18 Mar 2020Orodruin
I was stuck in the middle of interstellar space with an empty feeling. The stars in the sky around me provided little to no illumination and my heart was racing and beating heavily. The heart beats caused a vein in my right temple to pulsate and the muscles in my face to twitch from the nervous overload. As I moved my hand to the temple to touch the temple my finger tips noticed the cold beads of sweat that covered my forehead. My brain was still trying to process what had just happened.Just a moment earlier, the Thargoid Basilisk had vanished from the scene and left nothing but an incredulous feeling of surprise at still being alive. My expectation as the alien ship had pulled me out of hyperspace and disabled The Witch King was a rather quick and messy death. Instead, it had approached me at a slow and almost cautious pace before initiating its scan of my ship. Did it know? The countless Thargoid Scouts that I had been taking out in Taygeta over the last few days, numbering among the thousands. The experimental weapon load out of The Witch King that was tailored to take out Scouts as efficiently as possible, including the two Guardian gauss cannons that could quickly decimate a Scout's hull. My head slowly but more and more convincingly formulated a second thought.
- "Why does it bother to scan me at all?"
All of my previous experience of Thargoid ships had been violently hostile from the get go so what was special about this one? The scan completed and the Basilisk let out a screeching roar. Slowly it began to turn away from me before vanishing almost quicker than it had appeared.
The cockpit lights of The Witch king flickered as power came back online. The orange light of the heads-up display reappeared and a few seconds later I regained control of the ship.
- "What in Sagittarius A* was that about?" I found myself mumbling.
- "Distance to Sagittarius A*: 26172 light years." the ship computer answered, not completely catching my query.
It had taken me some time to regain my bearings, but a million thoughts were going through my mind, but the main one was why I had not been blown into pieces. From everything that I had heard about Thargoids they were a hostile and brutally aggressive race intent on destroying humanity. If this were true, then the Thargoid Basilisk had certainly foregone a golden opportunity of having one less human to eliminate. And not any human. A human that in recent days had massacred a non-negligible number of Thargoid Scouts. It just did not add up. The encounter had planted a seed of doubt in my mind that stayed with me even as reengaged the frameshift drive and dropped into the HIP 16813 system.
- "That is not the typical behaviour of an aggressive race."
- "What possible reason could it have to let me live?"
By the time the supercruise velocity dropped below 1c my mind had come to the inevitable conclusion that the Thargoid "threat" might not be everything it was portrayed to be. All of the war propaganda that had spurred me on to fight the alien invasion no longer seemed as real as it once had. I needed time to do some thinking, a lot of time. As I docked at the megaship Vanguard KT89 I felt the need to ask other pilots about their experience with Thargoid behaviour. Most seemed indifferent to the issue and just described how they reacted once fired upon.
- "I am not going to wait around and give them the upper hand, now am I?" an older balding pilot in his mid-50s remarked. "Better shoot first and not ask any questions at all."
Still, a handful had had encounters eerily similar to my own.
When a couple of days had passed since my encounter with the Thargoid Basilisk I had finally come to a decision. I had checked in with the local representative of the Pilots' Federation regarding my combat rank and she had been adamant in convincing me to continue the fight.
- "Look, commander, your aid in the war effort as of late has been of high importance." she said in a matter-of-factly manner. "We have already bestowed upon you the combat rank of Deadly and you are well on your way to promotion to Elite status. It would be a shame if you stopped now, now wouldn't it?"
She was right of course. I had been promoted to Deadly status already some time back and since then I had shot down more Thargoid Scouts than I could count.
I made the last few pre-flight checks of The Witch King. Everything was good to go and ready to enter the anti-xeno conflict zone. As the docking clamps released I engaged the up and reverse thrusters at the same time as I angled the ship downwards towards the conflict zone where man and Thargoid would be locked in a fierce battle. As soon as I was out of mass lock range of Vanguard KT89 I engaged the frameshift drive for the short travel. Regardless, the travel took some time due to the speed being limited by the enormous gravitational well of HIP 16813 A 2. It gave me time for a last thought to reaffirm my decision. I dropped into the conflict zone and deployed my hardpoints.
The fighting was heavy but no more difficult than it had been in the Taygeta system. Numerous Thargoid Scouts had already been torn into pieces by my gauss cannons and another was firmly in my crosshairs, apparently completely unsuspecting. The gauss cannons charged in cacophony with the AX multicannon and beam laser turrets springing into action and moments later all that was left was a small cloud of caustic substance.
- "Incoming message", the ship computer announced without any hint in the voice of the message content as the Thargoid scout was ripped in two parts by the gauss cannon shots. I did not need to look in the inbox, I already knew the message contents. The thrusters of The Witch King roared throughout the ship as I boosted away from the caustic cloud left behind by the disintegrating scout while the frame shift drive started to charge. Enough is enough.
- "Triple Elite."
As The Witch King sped away from the conflict zone I finally read the words out loud to myself. It was the reason I had come in the first place and now that I had achieved the feat, I no longer wanted to take part in the massacre of a race that I was no longer convinced was a real threat. The encounter with the Thargoid Basilisk had shown me that there was more to the Thargoids than blood-thirsty alien killers. I might well be wrong about it all and the Thargoids really are just that, but I am not going to continue the slaughter unwittingly. I engaged the frameshift drive for the jump to HIP 17692, where my Asp Explorer Radagast was docked at Blackmount Habitation. Upon landing, I made sure to have the paint job of The Witch King and Radagast upgraded with the Triple Elite emblem. As soon as the paint had dried I prepared Radagast for the journey back to Jameson Memorial. The Witch King would be left behind at Blackmount Habitation. There may come a time in the future when I am again convinced of the malicious nature of the Thargoids and return to fly it into battle, but today is not that day.
Radagast's engines roared loudly as it was taking off from the relatively high gravity of HIP 17692 A 1. Reaching sufficient altitude I high waked only a few kilometers from the surface. The journey back had begun and I was not to return for quite some time.