Log 5: Basilisk
21 Oct 2020Tala Wren
My wing was out on patrol in Onoros; we were searching for more Interceptors and Scouts to fight, in order to continue to protect the people living here. We were some 12,000 light-seconds from the star when we got a signal source. We dropped on it, and encountered the expected Interceptor.Once I was out of low-wake, I got the usual warnings and alerts that there was something weird nearby, something the computer couldn't identify on its own; things that I had gotten very used to while fighting the Thargoids. The wing leader got eyes on the Thargoid ship, and we all turned to face the Cyclops and prepare for a fight while he went in for the scan with his xeno-scanner.
But when I got around for a look, something felt really off; the Interceptor had the right shape to be a Cyclops, for sure, but the coloration seemed much darker, and I thought I saw some kind of red scarring on its hull. (Is it a hull? I'm still not sure what to call it, Thargoid ships are so odd...) When I voiced my concern to my wing, my wingmates agreed it was just the distance from the star making the coloration look different; I tried to reassure myself that everything was fine, and we were going to be fine, but my "imminent danger" sense was starting to go crazy.
And then I found out why.
When the wingleader finished his scan, he quickly announced that this was not a Cyclops, but a Basilisk; I could hear the cocktail of excitement, dread, fear, and awe in his voice, emotions that I too was experiencing all of.
But I never got the chance to get over them, because in the same moment that he finished his information relay, one of my wingmates carelessly bumped into the Basilisk, angering it, and we had no choice but to try to fight it out. It was just as fast as a Cyclops, but it could take more hits, and I knew it had more hearts to repair itself. Its swarm was also larger, and it felt much faster, but I don't know if it actually was, or if that was the stress of the moment getting to me.
We fought very hard; we managed to destroy one of its hearts, and had damaged another, by the time our leader called a retreat, but we paid for it; in the fighting, one wingmate's ship was destroyed entirely, and another's was severely damaged to the point of minimal functioning. My own ship was also heavily damaged, with many modules malfunctioning, some of which I had to shut off to prevent them from shorting out my entire electrical system. The mechanics later told me it was a miracle I even managed to land without the thing falling apart.
Fortunately, none of my wingmates had been killed; the one whose ship was destroyed had managed to eject in an escape pod, which was recovered later by a rescue team after the Interceptor had moved on, and the same team managed to get the disabled ship up and running enough to limp back to a fleet carrier for repairs.
I think we're going to be a bit more careful about what we fight in the future.