Don't Go Messing with a Basilisk
03 Jan 2020Space Boomer
I was in the middle of an extended stay at Asterope grinding my final push to combat elite. I had dropped in on countless level 4 NHSSs, and I was getting bored. I decided that I was going to visit a level 6 in order to take a gander at a Basilisk. I'd seen plenty of Cyclops, but except for them scanning me they didn't find me especially interesting. I poked at one once, but I was able to run away from it. I thought that my Krait Mk II could outrun any Thargoid if I ran into trouble.I dropped into the level 6 and immediately saw the green gas cloud. My scanner picked up the Basilisk quickly, so I moved away a bit to get a good photo. He came up and scanned me as expected, and I fumbled for the camera button. But my muscle memory betrayed me. I mashed boost button by mistake. My ship rammed into the topmost petal on the Thargoid.
He wasn't too happy about it.
The swarm caught up to me first. I mashed my throttle all the way forward almost breaking the handle loose. I maxed out my pips to engines, and started boosting away. But, as I later read in the codex, the Basilisk is a tad bit faster than the Cyclops. I did everything that I could: turning, boosting, jousting with it, but I just couldn't escape. The first thing to be knocked out were my thrusters. After that, my ship just shook itself apart. The last thing I thought when my pod enveloped me was that I hope the bug didn't take me for experiments. I was lucky - he didn't. I woke up back on the station and was promptly presented with a bill for a new Krait.
I finished my grind and got that shiny triple elite sticker. I haven't seen a Thargoid since. I'm thinking that I might just revisit Asterope one day. This time I'll take a bigger ship with Guardian tech. I'm going to find that ol' Basilisk again and go for round two. I guess he's my white whale.