PRIORITY ALERT: Commander Elandil's Log: January the 5th, 3303.
06 Jan 2017Ryomir Elandil
I've heard the rumors, they're kind of hard to miss..We started out in our respective Anaconda-class vessels, another Commander and I, and headed towards the last known location of the rumors: The Aries Dark Region XU-O B6-3. From what we've heard, ships were getting pulled out of hyperspace, or Witchspace, and being scanned by some sort of "flowery-looking", alien ship.
I was skeptical at first...
My wingman landed on a planet in another system near ADR XU-O B6-3 after finding an Unknown Artifact orbiting that planet. While he did so, I was recalled to Okinura by the Earth Defense Fleet. Something was going down and they needed to brief all hands.
We were shown extensive video evidence of the ship, and I remained skeptical. I was taught to gather facts before blindly believing something so absurd. However, it was hard to deny the videos when there were multiple sightings.
After the briefing, to cut this log short, they needed volunteers to undertake a scouting mission to gather data on the vessel. Any data would prove valuable. I volunteered and placed the Dauntless in dry dock with my first officer Zayla Eder commanding. I took my AspX-class, The Amaterasu, out for this mission. She was agile and had all the tools available for high data exploration. Her jump range was kind of shit but I could always upgrade her later.
I volunteered my other crew member, a backup fighter pilot, Tracy Wyatt to accompany me. He was hesitant but he needed the experience. The Amaterasu isn't capable of having fighters on board so his job wouldn't be that difficult, just scan when I say.
I noticed that in the videos we were shown, most of the pilots had one of those Unknown Artifacts in their holds. This got me thinking: maybe that was the trick to getting "pulled over". Considering we didn't have any luck before in the Dauntless without one...I decided to give it a try. We went to the alien crash site and picked up a UA and flew around the Pleiades nebula for a bit.
When we didn't have any luck we decided to head to the nearest station and give it a rest for the night. Then it happened...
We were jumping to the Maia system since we were on good terms with the Obsidian Orbital controlling faction when we were interdicted right out of Witchspace. Our systems shut down almost instantly once we exited. We were spinning out of control and then we stopped and saw it. A giant flower-like vessel was coming at us around our port. It lined up with us head on and I thought that was it: we were dead. However, all it did was scan us, or what we perceive to have been a scan, with a giant yellow beam. We saw the..wingtips..of the flower petals turn reddish-orange also at that time. Then it veered off around our starboard side and our ship was pushed around like we were a feather in the wind.
Once our systems came to I pointed us at the vessel and pushed the engines harder than they've ever been pushed before. They roared and cried out as we chased it down, somewhat angrily as I didn't like feeling that helpless. We saw it open some sort of Witchspace portal, kind of like the ones the Cap Ships of the Federation and Empire open when they hyper-jump. We backed off hoping we could get some FSD wake data and after scanning the "wake" we found our scanner was unable to identify what the hell it was scanning. This was frustrating but also still valuable data. Anything was valuable to learn about what we were dealing with.
After noticing how bad the Amaterasu's modules were corroding due to the UA, I dumped it and destroyed it hoping it would provoke a response and make the ship return. It didn't; so we headed for Obsidian Orbital to rest and make whatever repairs we could while the station was under UA influence.
Tomorrow I will head back to Okinura and hand in my data to the EDF and Federation and hopefully have some well deserved shore leave on the beautiful Okinura 6.
Attached are visual data files for the encounter.
-Commander Ryomir Elandil
Warrant Officer, Federal Navy
Ship Commander, Earth Defense Force
