For Those We Leave Behind
17 Dec 2024Oxforth
Commander Oxforth - Monday, December 17, 3310Location: Titan Cocijo, Earth, Sol
Vessel: Krait Mk.2 - Solar Valkyrie
Fleet Carrier: [Q2K-37G] GalVik - INNHERRED
Mission Overview: Extract Human Survivors from within Cocijo
Commander's Log:
The hum of the engines drones on, a hollow dirge reverberating through the cockpit. Outside, the limpets scatter like insects across the Titan's broken skin, dragging life back from the edge. Cocijo—no, Cocky-Joe—is done for, its monstrous carcass drifting, burning, dying. I stare out across its scorched surface, this grotesque monument to a war that scars everything it touches.
It feels hollow. Victory often does.
I think back to where it started: Alpha Centauri, Al-Din Station. The klaxons howling. The tremors shaking the decks as the Thargoids tore into us. I remember fire streaking through black, the void alive with wreckage and flame. Every civilian ship I guided clear was a small miracle, but for every one saved, there were others—spiraling, shattering, disappearing in flashes of orange and white.
We held the line, but we paid for it.
And then; Cocijo. Its looming form blotting out the stars like some impossible leviathan. I remember the dives. The pulse neutralizers flaring as we punched through wave after wave. The torpedoes streaking toward their mark. The glowing heatsinks rupturing and boiling like wounds we carved into a god. I won’t lie—it felt good. It felt like retribution for Alpha Centauri, Barnard's Star, for each of the eighteen invaded systems, for every fallen pilot and every family torn apart.
But vengeance fades fast out here. The echoes of this fight are quieter now, just empty void and the faint sound of hull plates creaking. The truth sinks in with every breath: the war hasn’t ended. It’s just entered another grim chapter.
We’re onto the final rescues now—the desperate scramble to claw people back from Thargoid captivity. It's harrowing work. We mine them free like salvage, limpets ferrying cargo pods that hold people. Souls. And sometimes... sometimes we fail. The pods eject too fast, spiraling out of reach before the limpets can latch. I watch them drift into the abyss, vanishing like smoke. They’re right there—so close—and yet impossibly gone. Others are ripped from our grasp by Thargoid limpets. I wonder if they work on auto-pilot. There is no reason for them to ferry these poor souls back into the wretched embrace of the dying Titan. Or do they do it out of spite?
And for those we do save... I wonder.
Will they make it?
Are they mothers torn from their kids? Fathers taken mid-shift, ripped from the quiet hum of a freighter's engine room? Were families together when it happened, or did the Thargoids pluck them apart, one by one? A child in my hold whose parents are already ash. A husband who’ll wake alone. How many lives are we saving, and how many are we just breaking further, pulling them into a world where no one waits to hold them?
I don’t know.
I don’t know what they endured in those dark corners of Thargoid captivity—if they were conscious, if they were aware. I shudder at the thought: the terror, the nightmares, the silence. How much of it will they carry back with them? We saved their lives, but what of their hearts? Their minds?
Every pod we pull in feels like both a triumph and a failure.
For the ones we save, there are those we can’t. I see it every time I close my eyes—bodies tumbling into darkness, unreachable. Ghosts of people who will never see their homes again. People whose stories ended not with fanfare, but in cold, quiet nothing.
And tomorrow, this Titan will burn.
Its husk will tear itself apart in a final, fiery death throe. Every dark chamber where the abducted were stored will be turned to ash. I hope—Gods, I hope—that wherever the lost are now, they’ve found some kind of peace. Drifting, alive, or remembered. They'd be most welcome in Valhalla.
As for me, I fly on.
For those we saved. For those we lost.
And for those we’ll never reach.
CMDR Oxforth, Logging Off