S.L.S. Crew Log, 1/25/3303 - Looking for clues
25 Jan 2017Ardos Hammur
Begin Entry1/25/3303 - 14:40
D.S.S. Sword of Damocles - Private Terminal C-A1
Usr: Cmdr Ardos
After some time off to enjoy holidays and the pay we earned after countless flights, the crew and I met back up at Magnus last week to discuss what was next for the Damocles. While the time off has been nice, the recent buzz about discoveries of ruins and fungal lifeforms has us itching to get back into the black. Ray was also excited to show off the modifications he had made to the ship having added new spoilers, wings, and cowls for better in-atmosphere performance, along with a long overdue repaint of the ship from the factory navy blue. It took me a couple of walks around to love it but he assures me that while it isn't aesthetically the most pleasing I'll love it in glides and surface maneuvers.
Boy, was he right. We immediately left Magnus on a few Sentinel trade assignments to get the ship warmed back up and get back in the swing of things. A few entries into atmosphere and I knew what we had been missing. Extra control, a smoother ride, and better maneuverability. Ray has made it very clear I owe him a few rounds when we return back home. Trouble is, we don't know when that will be. After dropping off the last shipment in EZ-A we plotted a course for the ruins at Synuefe XR-H D11-102 1B. We got a tip from a friend of ours that an engineer named Ram Tah was paying top dollar for information on the alien ruins and couldn't pass up an opportunity to make some money and witness history firsthand.
This has quickly become less about the money though. Sure, we've made easy money but the more we scan and learn about these 'guardians' the more we see a bigger picture here that money can't buy. This was a highly advanced alien race that achieved fantastic things, possibly before humanity or during our infancy and here we are reading over their version of a golden disc at what was likely a data hub. The prospect of there being more of these sites is exciting, something that we've talked about at length between trips out in The Hare. We each took turns driving around and scanning the obelisks at great length, hoping to unlock more data to send to Ram. Unfortunately, we hit a wall on the 19th and were forced to make the trip back to Meene to discuss next steps with the engineer. After a few days on station he announced to the galaxy that he had narrowed the search to four more systems and the race is on.
The Damocles is presently parked on the edge of a large network or canyons on a rock in the Synuefe XO-P c22-17 system. This will be the second planet in this system we will be sweeping and it is grueling work. We've been dropping The Hare in at random locations to drive and survey while the Damocles flies ahead or scouts elsewhere. Unfortunately, nothing interesting has been found yet. About an hour ago we had a crew meeting and discussed the coming days, shift rotations and contingencies before deciding we needed a better plan. We all knew that this would be long and arduous work but Myra brought up some great points how this single-ship effort was not going to yield results blindly. Everson has been suggesting we link up with members of the Canonn in a coordinated search but even a wing of ships can't clear a planet in a realistic timeframe. Myra is convinced the clues are in the data we have scanned and provided to Ram.
So here I sit, rereading the logs and going over the data he sent back, looking for something between the lines. So far, I've been able to determine that Myra has to be on the right track. The guardians had a love for space travel and geometry, the latter of which was the center of some of their art. The ruins were geometric, looking at the scans we did on descent there are some very clear shapes there. Taking a step back in scale, the craters nearby were very geometric as well - one large with two smaller on top. It would seem to me that these sites may not be entirely random and may have been chosen due to their geographic layout. Perhaps we need to focus our effort on locating planets only with symmetrical or geometric anomalies?
I've also been thinking about their eventual demise and the tech and AI they left behind. Surely is it still out there somewhere, perhaps that is what eventually happened to them? Killed by their own creations? What if the creatures they designed in battle became the fabled Thargoids? I'm getting ahead of myself.
I can't help but feel like a ghost hunter now, reading into this data of dead civilizations, trying to piece together a mystery that we were never a part of. I'm going to hit the rack and sleep on these ponderings, maybe present them later and get off this rock to look for more promising targets.
Log Transcription Terminated
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