Log 16: Aftermath
09 Aug 2022Tala Wren
Xenocide has been averted, although not by Wych Hunt directly. I don't know what Salvation was thinking, trying to use thargoid tech against them; even our best experts barely understand this stuff, we're all ignorant babies compared to the thargoids, who created the sites and the tech in them.While the loss of life is upsetting, in the end, HIP 22460 was the site of a failed human offensive and nothing more. There are no civilians there to defend or mourn, no lost homes. Only soldiers, sent to die by leaders who put all of their eggs in one basket and didn't even deign to grace the idea that Salvation might fail with more than a passing glance.
The debris fields and the dead are the price paid for that mistake, for trusting Wycherly implicitly. He thought of the thargoids as nothing more than animals that could be tricked and manipulated, instead of the sapient beings they are, capable of strategy and adaptation.
As I fly around the system, searching for survivors among the wreckage and evading the thargoid patrols, I can't stop thinking about how preventable this loss of life was. We didn't need to be here, we didn't need to try to go on the offense against the thargoids; the only reason they were in the Bubble in the first place was because Wycherly lured them there with tons of Guardian artifacts. He was using the Proteus Wave to solve a problem he himself caused.
I'm also struck by just how asymmetric this conflict really is, if we can even call it a conflict now. The thargoids have capabilities beyond our understanding; we've seen what they can do even without the use of one of their motherships, how could any rational person believe that we stand a chance in an all-out war against them? And now we've seen they know how to disable and disrupt the Guardian-hybrid modules and technology that we have relied on to fight them; even if that power is limited to their surface sites, that fully prevents us from attacking them effectively.
We are nothing more than ignorant baby monkeys messing with technology we don't fully understand. How can anyone look at all of this and conclude that we are superior to anything?
I also worry that Wycherly has gotten away; in my time bounty hunting, one thing has proven true. If you don't confirm the kill, then the target isn't dead. And what of Azimuth? We have yet to see how the superpowers are going to react, but they will no doubt feel vulnerable and defenseless and angry and hurt, and that's when tempers and emotions flair, and people get desperate. And that is dangerous.
To the end, I will defend humanity, and I will oppose xenocide and Azimuth. My carrier crew are working to repair ships that made it out of HIP 22460 alive, and to support investigations into the system, but it's a grim sight. I'm comforted only by the knowledge that there were no innocents or civilians, only combatants.