I thought I was prepared. I was wrong
04 Oct 2020Storm Grezal
I thought I was prepared. I thought I was ready. I had just about read every book on the subject from the Library of Artemis twice. I talked to other pilots who had made their living performing such a dangerous task. I spent a large chunk of my savings carefully preparing my ship. All that preparation though, will never prepare you for the real thing...I had spent a lot of time in the Pleiades Sector recently doing Thargoid research, and after my near-death experience with a Basilisk, I was not too keen to stick around longer. However, there are a lot of salvage missions and people requesting search and rescue service, and after seeing so many ships destroyed by the Thargoids, so many broken escape pods that were left floating in space, I felt I had to do something. The Thargoids could not get away with this. I had to do my part. For the defense of humanity. Xeno hunters are always milling around Artemis Lodge, my Pleiades Sector home away from home. These guys were heroes and known xeno hunters always commanded respect. I talked to a number of them, trying to learn their secrets and how to fight the Thargoids to do my part. After many months of research and outfitting, my specialized ship, the AXH Xenophobe Alliance Chieftain arrived, ready for combat. Steeling myself, I boarded, and departed Artemis Lodge and jumped to the Asterope System in search of non-human signal sources.
I had fought plenty of scouts before, but my target was bigger than those. I wanted to take down an interceptor. Those were the real threat. I scanned around with the FSS in Asterope and found a threat level 5 and started making my way over. The closer I got, the more tense I felt. I had never fought a bug proper, but I knew what to do. Make it expose a heart, blast the heart with my gauss cannons, rinse, and repeat. I popped out of super cruise and was greeted with an all too familiar sight. An imperial clipper floating dead. Except this time, the cyclops was still around. The familiar growl echoed through the cabin as it turned to face me. It approached and began its scan. I deployed my hard points to get my own scan in preparation for the fight and confirm my target. Our respective scans finished, and the cyclops floated in front of me, slowly getting closer, as if processing the data. I took a deep breath and pulled the trigger on the gauss cannons.
The Cyclops looked up at me with frightening speed and growled in anger, almost surprised that this small human ship had the gall to shoot it. It backed off a bit and deployed its swarm of Thargons. The fight was on. I quickly switched targets to the Thargon swarm and fired my flak cannon. It took a few bursts for me to get used to the timing, but I had to learn quick. This cyclops was not messing around. It took a few bursts, but I eventually killed off the swarm and turned to face the cyclops itself. It was right on top of me. I didn't realize how fast these bugs were. I tried to back away and put some distance between it and me. I turned off flight assist and attempted to "reverski" it. I flipped the ship around and to my horror, it was still right on top of me, within 2 km. I tried lining up the gauss cannons, but the lack of flight assist was making aim difficult. I missed several shots. The cyclops was not missing. The impact of its cannon caused the ship to shudder under the impact of each shot. Then I heard the last sound any pilot wants to hear. Cracking. I look up watched in horror as my canopy began cracking. I could only watch as the cracking spread more and more with every shot the ship took, until the canopy broke open.
I let out a gasp that was briefly cut short as the ship lost its atmosphere and my flight suit quickly activated the flight helmet to provide me with oxygen. The Thargoid kept attacking with blatant indifference, and I knew I was horribly outmatched. I turned the opposite direction, engaged my boosters, and hit the FSD. The charging began, but my ship alerted me I was mass locked by a factor of 30. I would not survive that long. I continued to dogfight the best I could, watching with increasing nervousness as my ship’s computer ticked down the 5 minutes my life support offered. Eventually, the Thargoid turned away to gain some distance, and I took the opportunity and boosted the opposite way and punched the FSD and got out of there. I had survived with 17% hull integrity left. I didn't even make it expose one heart. A humiliating defeat.
I was not safe though. I was in a race against time before my ship's life support ran out and I would die before making it back to home base. I punched in the coordinates for Celaeno and hit the hyperdrive and prayed I would not get hyperdicted on the way. I arrived safely however and turned in the direction of Artemis Lodge with 2 minutes left on the life support. The air was getting thinner. It was getting hard to breath. My own panting echoed in my helmet. I watched the left indicator to match my speed to dropping out of super cruise. Less than one 1Mm away. I was going to make it. I dropped out of super cruise. But something must have gone wrong though. I dropped into real space 800km away from the station. I looked desperately at my life support. I had 45 seconds of oxygen left. I was not going to make it. I also did not want the Thargoid that I fought to follow me back to Artemis Lodge and mount an attack. I turned to my panel and set my ship to self-destruct and stood up to make my way to the escape pod. My vision was starting to blacken. I could see the black ring around my vision. I stumbled through my ship, hardly aware of the blaring red alarms and lights. I collapsed into the seat of the escape pod and punched the launch button and proceeded to immediately pass out. I woke up to a bright light. After a moment of regaining my senses, I quickly sat up, fist raised and ready to fight, expecting to have been taken onboard a Thargoid ship. Instead, I was greeted by an older man dressed in white, a doctor. He quickly calmed me down and reassured me I was safe back at Artemis Lodge. I was apparently picked up by a passing ship that found my distress beacon. I leaned back and relaxed again. I had survived. However, I knew my fight wasn't over. I knew I had to pay that Thargoid back. My fight was not over yet. But I had a lot of training to do.