Cascade
09 Aug 2022Valanga
I woke up onboard the Asp Explorer "London Affairs" in a panic, unable to breathe. The moment I moved my head away from my pillow, my Remlok survival mask slammed over my face, giving me a limited supply of O2 to assess the situation. I paced my breathing accordingly and tried not to panic.All power to my ship had been knocked offline, as it seemed. Remembering that I had laid down to rest within HIP 22460, I assumed I would wake up to SOMETHING of import. Having only around 70 seconds of emergency oxygen should have severely clouded my judgement, but fortunately I was able to think fast. I tore open the life support maintenance panel in my ship's secondary core internals bay, yanked the main oxygen line, and tethered it to my helmet.
25 minutes of backup O2. Much better.
With time to properly assess the situation and make repairs, I got to work in the ship's fuse array and power facilities. Looks as though a lot of stuff was fried by whatever the hell Salvation's little toy did. I dug through my piles of salvaged electrical components and started picking out appropriate ersatz components to get the ship back up and running. Eventually, after about 15 minutes of poking around, I heard my COVAS feebly croak back to life, as my ship's components - well, some of them - regained power. My Heads-Up Display was terribly garbled.
With the ship running and producing heat once more, the thick layer of ice which had formed over the canopy started to melt, revealing a grisly view of a shredded Bright Sentinel swirling with sickly green clouds. Thargoids attacked.
Come to think of it, wasn't I docked on the Bright Sentinel? And now I'm all the way out here?
I had one unread message in my Comms inbox. A bulletin from the Pilots' Federation advising all CMDRs to immediately evacuate HIP 22460 if able. The Proteus Wave actually knocked all of OUR systems offline instead. The system had fallen under Thargoid control.
Before I could finish reading, my radar - still suffering heavy visual distortion - registered a hostile contact. And another. And another. And another. I was in tremendous danger. Shield breach attack. I boosted away from whatever it was without even so much as checking my contacts for any info on the nature of the threat. I assumed the worst. I hastily punched in as far of a jump as I could make to a system about 65 lightyears away.
Jump exceeds drive fuel use limit of 5.00 tons.What?
Systems check reveals that the FSD range extender on my ship - powered by Guardian technology, natch - is cooked. Shit.
I quickly replotted a shorter jump, barely escaping with my shields at 7% and my hull shredded by corrosive weapons fire.
~ = ~ = ~ = ~ = ~
That's how my morning went. How about you?
I had sought a brief asylum in Maia to perform a comprehensive systems check and repair, and to catch a breather. An agent of Operation Wych Hunt was there with me, and we had a brief chat about what we both had just witnessed. They were less inclined to rub it in the face of Azimuth's supporters than I am, but to each their own. I, for one, take a great and cosmically ironic pleasure in witnessing such a monumental folly of humanity as entrusting the future of our species to Mr. Mycoid himself. The writing on the wall was all there. Truly, truly I want to know how the galactic superpowers could have been swayed to this lunatic's side.
Aegis should never have been shut down.
I'm still assessing my situation and determining where to go next, but I just had to log this all as soon as I could, while the whole event was fresh on my memory. Not to say that I would have ever forgotten this experience anyway.
But I was there. I was there when the gun pointed at the head of the galaxy was cocked and fired.
Wew... we REALLY fucked up this time, huh?
- CMDR Valanga