Xenologist's Reveille
12 Aug 2022Valanga
At the present moment, I am docked at a planetary port in the Arque system which houses the laboratories of one Dr. Ishmael Palin. I'm still pretty stunned that I survived my second trip to the Thargoid installation on HIP 24007. I'm not sure how I did, really.I managed to locate not one, but three Thargoid Sensors at a rather dramatic crash site I located on HIP 17403 A 4 A. Whatever happened during this encounter must not have been pretty. Half-buried in the sands of that moon along with a demolished Thargoid Interceptor ship were the tattered hulls of an Anaconda, a Type-9 Heavy, and another ship so badly mangled that I couldn't even identify it. After surveying the location and picking up any potentially useful scraps I could find, I collected the three Sensors and moved them to the anti-corrosive cargo hold of my ship, the Ancient Scapes.
All three of the Sensors had sequentially issued scans on my vessel as I approached the site, so I knew what was surely to come as I began heading out to HIP 24007 once again.
Two jumps into my route, those fourth-dimensional ceiling fans stuck their grubby little noses into my hyperspace conduit and yanked me only a few lightyears into the jump. Since I now had some successful experience with hyperdiction from the past few days, I knew what I had to do to stand a good chance of getting out of this alive. I spun my ship away from the aggressor, boosted away at full speed, and pulled the trigger on my flight control stick which was set to charge a counterpulse that would neutralize the "shutdown field" created by the surge of the Thargoid ship's probe.
Except, it wasn't set to activate the field neutralizer. As I pulled the trigger, I heard the charging of my Discovery Scanner, and my heart sank deep into my chest in an instant. I frantically tried to toggle firegroups, but in such a panicked state I wasn't coordinated enough to do so. The energy pulse slammed my ship's systems, and my Krait Mk.II lost all power, leaving me floating away at a decelerating velocity. All I could hear was the sound of my own labored breathing as I inhaled the O2 from my emergency life support. All I could see out of my canopy was blackness. Eventually my ship came to a complete rest, facing away from the imminent threat.
The next few moments felt like an eternity. I don't know how long my ship was offline, but every inch of my being was soaked in cortisol and terror. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t do anything. I felt powerless, and my nervous system was in some sort of shock.
"This is it. I'm dead. I am dead now. This is over," I thought to myself. Not the most insightful musings, sure, but that's about where I was mentally at the time.
Suddenly, I heard my COVAS's voice croak out something completely unintelligible, followed by the glow of my Heads-Up Display as my ship's systems started to reboot. My eyes were glued to the radar as I prepared for the worst - however, once they came back up, all I saw was a dim white contact. A hyperspace wake.
My only theory is that the Thargoid saw me outrunning them, couldn't get in range for a scan, and just gave up on the chase before I slowed down to nothing? I don't know what exactly happened behind me, and I don't even want to think about it too much. I'm getting chills just recollecting the whole thing. But I'm alive, against all odds. Had my ship been scanned, that thing would have seen a pile of Guardian and Thargoid technology and artifacts on my ship, and knowing how they react to that sort of thing, they probably would have just killed me on the spot.
I sat in supercruise for a good half-hour before finally calming down enough to continue my journey to HIP 24007. Two jumps later, I arrived in the system, locked onto the structure scan signature on body 1 B, and made my descent. This time, I knew much better what I was doing.
Aware that the red-eyed drones, which I now know to be called "Scavengers", are generally non-hostile unless threatened, I took some time after landing to experiment.
In order to access the central structure, I knew I had to bypass the outer doors, which would only open in the presence of a Thargoid Sensor. It occurred to me that, perhaps I don't actually need to carry it with me and let it eat away at my Scarab SRV. Perhaps these doors operate on a sort of hardware IFF system, where the sensor module is what it looks for to identify a friendly? I wondered if the SRV was even part of the picture here. As it turns out, my theory held water - I won't pretend to understand the actual inner workings here, but I was able to leave the Sensor at the door, and that's all that matters.
After placing the three Guardian relics I brought with me into the receptacles of the device at the core of the structure, I prepared for things to get hot and heavy. This time, I studied the topology of the room and worked out how best to scoop up the unclassified relics once they were processed. Then, after putting together a little route, I pulled the trigger.
Much quicker than last time, I was able to collect the three sickly-green prisms and make my escape, using my parked ship's signature to guide me to the right door. As I neared the exit, my right front tire clipped the edge of the tunnel's ribbed walls and sent me careening face-first into a hostile Scavenger, knocking it into the wall and prompting it to block my path. I had no choice but to shoot my way through it to get out safely.
As I made it out the door, I grabbed the Sensor off the ground and made a beeline for the ship so I could deposit the goods before they tore my ship apart. The interesting thing is, my hull didn't really incur too much damage at all this time... yesterday, it seemed as though the URs had melted my SRV from the inside out or something, but now I'm having second thoughts on that. I wonder if the URs are sensitive to extreme temperatures, and if scooping them out of the blazing-hot core of the building too slowly may have rendered them dangerous to my vehicle...
Even though I didn't encounter that effect, I still did face an odd anomaly while outside. My SRV violently jerked around with no apparent external force acting on it, almost as if the inertial disturbance was coming from the relics themselves. It seemed to be roughly in the same rhythm as the pulses generated by the core which blew me back on activation. Fortunately, my ship was far too heavy to be affected by this phenomenon, but it got me pondering if these relics now have a sort of hardline connection to this structure, or possibly the Thargoid network at large. If so, could these be even more of a threat than the UAs were many years ago?
I waited for the machine inside to power down and cool off, then repeated this process with another three Guardian relics, giving me 6 URs in total. The second run went without incident, very similarly to the first. Thankfully, despite my very volatile cargo, my return trip to the Bubble went entirely smoothly. I was able to deliver three URs to Mr. Ram Tah in Meene, and the other three URs to Dr. Palin in Arque, where I find myself now. I was paid quite handsomely by both scientists, but it was my ability to contribute to their ongoing research which I took to be the real reward for my efforts.
I'm going to find buyers for the remaining Guardian artifacts, the three Thargoid Sensors, and the canisters of stolen Thargoid tech in my cargo hold, and then I'm going to take the rest of this day to myself. I think I've earned a little rest for a job well done.
Another round of elections against the Sirius Corporation start up soon in Almagest, so I have no doubt that my hands will be quite full with that very shortly. Never a dull moment, huh?
This is CMDR Valanga, signing off for now.