Diving Into The Maelstrom
12 Mar 2024AVERAGECANADIAN
I finally got my Krait Mk. 2, the Fright, prepared to enter the Thargoid maelstrom in the HIP 8884 system. She's been stripped down and refitted for a single purpose: tracking and attacking a Titan. Caustic sinks, modified beam lasers, experimental anti-Thargoid tech, nanite torpedoes, military-grade armor reinforced with the heaviest plating that humanity can manufacture, automated damage control systems, and the biggest, hungriest engines I could strap on. I unbolted and cut off whatever I could to save every spare gram of weight. This thing's gotta be fast to outrun Thargoid interceptors, especially since I'm not packing a shield. It would be dangerous, there's no doubt, but I knew she was about as ready as she could be. As I undocked from the Megaship Bertschinger, which was acting as the forward operating base for the war effort against the Titan Liegong, I went over my plans and double-checked my systems one last time. I did a couple laps around the Megaship to warm up the Fright and saw that ann indicators were showing green, good to go. As I cleared the Bertschinger and headed into open space, I seriously considered that I might not come back. This was the most dangerous mission I'd ever undertaken, the greatest threat I'd ever confronted. The Thargoids are an existential threat. Claiming entire regions of space, they're threatening to eradicate humanity as a whole if we don't stop them. Even though I might not make a difference, I had to try. I thought of Commander Jamieson and his final flight. Sometimes one person is all it takes to tip the scales.
I plotted the course into my navigation computer and hit the Frame Shift Drive. Three jumps between me and the most dangerous thing in the galaxy. At least I hope, because if something exists that's worse than a Thargoid Titan, we're all doomed.
The first jump went off without a hitch, as did the second. During the third jump, I was hyperdicted by not one, but a group of Thargoid interceptors. Time to put the thrusters to the test. I hit the boost and watched on the radar with relief as the Thargoids disappeared into the distance behind me. A few caustic missiles were headed my way, but the Frightruns so cold that they couldn't track me accurately, and a few easy thruster maneuvers was enough to move me out of their way and send them flying harmlessly into the black. I charged up the FSD and executed the final jump, into HIP 8884.
When I arrived in-system, I was bombarded with distant signals indicating that other commanders were fighting for their lives against the Thargoids who were protecting the Titan. My display systems were starting to malfunction from being so close to the creatures. The Titan was well hidden inside the rings of planet A4. I had to hunt around the system performing detailed spectrum scans until I finally located the maelstrom, which was much smaller than I expected, just about the size of a moon. I knew the Titan was somewhere inside, but my scanners couldn't penetrate the maelstrom. As I approached, I was interdicted no less than twelve times by groups of patrolling Thargoid scouts and interceptors, but as before, the Fright was able to outpace them easily. I'd heard horror stories of so called "Glaive Interceptors" that no ship could outrun, but they were thankfully absent.
I dropped out of low-wake at the edge of the maelstrom, took a deep breath, and headed in. Immediately the connection to the Pilot's Federation interspace network was lost, as something within the gas jammed my communicators. I was on my own.
My systems began malfunctioning as the caustic gas pervaded every crack and crevice of my ship, eating away at circuitry and bulkheads alike. I had as many caustic sinks as I could jam into the hull, but they'd only protect me for a short time before they became saturated with the caustic chemicals and were rendered useless.
I also knew I had to fly at a controlled speed, because lurking somewhere in the dense gas were "caustic mines", a name given by pilots who flew too close to one, or too fast to see it coming. The mines appeared out of the fog much closer than I'd have liked. I could only see about a kilometer or so before the gas grew too thick and obscured anything beyond, and traditional laser-based night vision tech did nothing to help. So I proceeded at a measured pace, balancing the need for caution with my limited supply of caustic sinks.
All the time, my scanners were frantically searching for Liegong, the Titan rumoured to be at the centre of the maelstrom. Something about the caustic gas was interfering with the sensors, limiting their range and making it nigh-impossible to find the beast. I flew for what felt like an hour through that deadly gas, although my flight computer logged that only 3 minutes passed until my sensors detected a faint signal. No lock, but at least now I knew vaguely which direction to go.
As I got closer, visibility started improving and I saw what looked like a thunderstorm of red and black clouds ahead of me. It was beautiful, in a menacing, deadly way. Then I heard the sound of electricity crackling and watched as lighting began jumping between the clouds as if they were groups of electrodes. A blue glow began building in the centre of the storm, and I heard a low, rumbling sound like an explosion, but slower and deeper. I watched as the blue glow expanded to the edges of the clouds, seemed to pick up the lightning from the surface, and began coming towards me at a rapid pace.
I knew this was some sort of defensive mechanism of the Titan, a combination of an EMP field and a repulsive wave which would fling me away from it at an incredible speed. I had prepared for this with an experimental device called a "Pulse Neutralizer". To be honest, I still don't really know how it works, but the researcher who sold it to me said that it required very precise timing, as the device only functions for a narrow window of time before it has to shut down and recharge. I had to activate the device just before the field reached me. I held my breath, judged the size and speed of the approaching field wave, and counted out the timing. One...two...three...four...I hit the Pulse Neutralizer and closed my eyes as the wave passed over the Fright. She shuddered, but her systems stayed online and she was still powering forwards toward the Titan. I checked the status readout - all systems functional, barely.
About this time I exited of the caustic gas. It turned out that it was only an outer shell layer surrounding the core, not a cloud that permeated the entirety of the maelstrom. The inner area was instead filled with a dark red-orange gas with significantly better visibility, and no more caustic mines. I saw the silhouette of Liegong looming out of the clouds in the distance, and its size shocked me. I'd heard they were big, but this...this one was bigger than any ship I'd ever seen. It was bigger than most stations. It could pass for a (very) small moon. It emerged from the clouds in the distance, and I took a moment to appreciate the sheer scale of it. A single creature, larger than anything humanity has ever constructed, functioning as both an individual creature which was the source of the maelstrom, but also as a mothership which itself housed many smaller creatures in its own self-contained ecosystem.
I reminded myself of why I was here, and I proceeded forward. It was eerily quiet. There were Thargoid interceptors and scouts flying around it like sentries, but Thargoid vision is largely based on heat, and my ship runs so cold that they didn't notice me. The Titan didn't react at all to my approach, like an ant crawling up the boot of a human. I was so small that it probably wasn't even aware of my existence.
I reviewed my hastily-scrawled notes that I had made while discussing with commanders who'd been here before. All I had to do was wait for Liegong to open its thermal vents, like a ship releasing a heat sink. There were eight of them, and my job was to jam a nanite torpedo into as many as I could before it realized what I was doing. The nanites would react with the surface of the thermal vents, blocking them and containing the heat. Liegong would then expose its heart in an emergency heat-venting procedure, and I would have a few seconds to fire as many experimental torpedoes into the heart as I could, before the Titan retracted its heart and focused its attention on the threat.
The first step went off without a hitch. After a few minutes of silently waiting and hiding, the surface vents opened and I was able to fire torpedoes into five of the eight, all the while firing my modified beam laser. I had rerouted the ship's coolant systems into the laser's crystal refraction chamber, which effectively vented heat from the ship into whatever I was firing at, allowing me to run so cold that my ship would be near-indistinguishable from the vacuum of space. It worked like a charm, and Liegong wasn't able to pin down exactly what was interfering with its thermal vents.
The vents closed and I hit the boost, heading to the centre of the underside of the massive Titan. I watched as the centre of the beast opened up and a strange biological component was exposed to the cold vacuum of space, venting heat into the gas cloud. I fired as many missiles as I could, while also continuing to fire my beam laser. After ten to fifteen seconds, the heart was retracted and Liegong dispatched interceptors to hunt the intruder: me. Caustic missiles were fired from nearby bio-turrets, and I heard a massive, deep hum which was growing in pitch and volume. Time to go!
I slammed the throttle to the maximum setting and pushed the engines into emergency overdrive, throwing caution and stealth to the wind, instantly overheating my ship. The heat caused the caustic material from the missiles to cook off, and I rocketed away from the titan at a blistering speed. Once I'd reached maximum velocity, I turned my ship to face the monster and watched as the humming noise reached a crescendo, and Liegong unleashed its ultimate weapon - a torus-shaped (donut) magnetic field, powerful enough to fry my ship's systems in an instant and turn my brain to mush. It was so strong that you could see the magnetic field lines in the gas clouds. Thankfully, the Fright's engines held together, and I was able to put enough distance between myself and the Titan to escape the magnetic attack.
I realized I was holding my breath. I took a few deep breaths and activated the Fright's internal repair systems. The Thargoid interceptors weren't fast enough to keep up with me, and the distance between myself and the Titan was increasing every second. I watched as it faded back into the fuzzy red and black clouds of the maelstrom, slightly less alive than it was a few minutes ago.
My journey away from the Titan was less eventful than the trip there, but I was glad for the relative lack of excitement. After carefully exiting the caustic gas field, my systems re-established their uplink with the Pilot's Federation, and I saw that I had received a message: "2,000,000 CR combat bond awarded: damage to Titan Liegong." I hadn't killed the beast, but that's at least enough to pay for repairs with some left over for a room on the Bertschinger for a few more weeks.
As I docked at the Bertschinger, I saw that the Fright had held up fairly well, all things considered. The paint had been completely stripped down to bare metal by the caustic gas, and there were large pockmarks in the armor where a few stray caustic missiles had landed. I'd had a few close calls, but all in all, I felt that the mission went relatively well. I had the repair crews add a tally mark to my ship, engraved in the armor so the caustic gas wouldn't wear it off. One sortie down, many more to go.
I left the maintenance crews to their work and headed to my favourite water hole on the Bertschinger: The Captain's Head, where I could find a warm plate of organic food waiting for me with a stiff glass of Lavian Brandy. I spent the night regaling the other commanders with my tale. There will be time in the coming days to plan my next mission to face down Liegong, but as I write this log entry, tonight I celebrate a job well done.