The Eight Petalled Flower
14 Jan 2017Jellicoe
OOC This story does not follow on from Operation Prism Part 2 but when the 'alien' encounters started frankly I couldn't resist it. This story also contains some spoilers for the official Elite Dangerous novel 'Out of the Darkness' by T James (highly recommended by the way) which is set about twenty five years in E:D's 'past' so if you are reading it, plan to read it or might read it in the future you might want to leave my ramblings until you have finished it.Pandemonium!
The whole galaxy appeared to be in uproar as news flashed across the bubble of an apparent encounter between a human ship and a craft like nothing anyone had seen before. The lack of comment from any of the superpowers only served to feed the frenzy as Commander DP Sayre was catapulted overnight from relative obscurity into one of the most famous men in the galaxy and an atmosphere bordering on panic rapidly grew with every news broadcast repeating the grainy footage of what appeared to be the first undeniable contact with an alien species.
That morning I was having breakfast with Claude, Vik and Mira in my favourite brasserie on Finney Ring, Jitabos while we discussed the same topic as every other human currently drawing breath.
"Thargoids?" I asked.
"Seems the most likely bet to me." Vik said to general agreement.
"Alright, Claude you're the information man what do we know about them?" I asked my first officer.
"In terms of hard information almost nothing, it's never even been officially admitted that they exist at all. We know that about two hundred years ago there was a large spike in ships vanishing from hyperspace, too many to be explained by the unreliability of the old jump tech, around the same time there were claims from a few pilots, most of them half mad with fear , that their ships had been ripped out of witch space and attacked by unknown vessels of roughly octagonal shape. It was around this time that the popular media started using the term 'Thargoids' and it stuck, then as suddenly as they began the disappearances stopped. In terms of facts that's about all there is."
"But?" I asked knowing there was more.
"The rest is rumour, leaks and semi educated guesswork, I did a lot of digging into this years back. I was a net runner, conspiracies and secrets are what you do." He responded to Mira's questioning look. "The most plausible are these, all officially denied of course."
"Probably true then." Mira put in.
"You might well think that." Claude continued. "Anyway it seems we may well have been the villains, the whole thing kicked off when some jumpy colonists opened fire on some unknown ships only what followed wasn't just a few ships being attacked in hyperspace but a real threat to our existence as a species. This was in the old GalCop days and their fleet was engaged in a number of vast battle zones just outside what was then the bubble.
"So we drove them off?" Vik asked proudly, he had family who had served in the GalCop military.
"Possibly not. About fifty years ago leaked material claimed it was a man made virus that saved us, one that attacked the organic structure of the hyperdrives they used and possibly the Thargoids themselves, a virus engineered by a joint Federation/Empire task force."
"Genocide?" I asked shocked.
"With the survival of the entire human race at stake scruples like that had to be put to one side, if even half of what I've seen is reliable it was a damned close run thing. Other than that it's all guesswork, and increasingly wild guesswork at that"
"Such as?" I asked.
"Take your pick." Claude said with a smirk. "The Thargoids are creatures from another galaxy or they're trans dimensional beings that live in witch space. My favourite is that the Thargoids were artificially created by mankind ourselves by genetically engineering the Praying Mantis, they rebelled against us and escaped through the Raxxla portal which they then used to erase almost all trace of their existence."
"Thargoids and Raxxla together?" I asked with a chuckle. "Whoever came up with that one should try a career in fiction."
"It's a good one isn't it? Anyway those are the kind of things we're talking about."
"Nothing more that might be genuine?" sensed Claude was holding something back.
Claude exhaled slowly. "Possibly. There's one other story that might" he stressed the word 'might' "have something in it, this is put together from various places and snippets and I don't have sources, the files were on my old system that I had to destroy when I left Mabe. Ever heard of a Carl Linnaeus?" I shook my head. "There's no reason why you should have he's hardly a household name, he was a scientist, biologist, a brilliant one specialising in boosting human performance. His work was scary stuff, radically advanced but very ethically dubious, anyway he vanished without trace in, I think, the 60's but there's reason to believe he was in contact with, even working for the Thargoids and that he'd developed a protein that boosted a humans aptitude as a pilot beyond all measure."
"But why would the Thargoids be interested in that?" Vik asked.
"That's the question, but a man called Isao Kishino, he was an Elite pilot back in the days when it still meant something," He winked at me. "claimed to have been kidnapped and held for several months in a base he described as like 'nothing built by man' and that while he was there he was forced to fight pilots being given this protein. After a few months he could barely live with them."
"Where in hell do you get this stuff?" Mira asked incredulously.
"Intercepted transmissions, hacked files and the like, not by me in this case but once someone's done it the data is out there if you know where to look, all I did was put the pieces together."
"But again, why would the Thargoids be interested in boosting human performance?" I asked.
"Because they're no more united than we are, two Thargoid nations at war, maybe that was how Linnaeus' saw mankind surviving? Allying with one against the other even hiring ourselves out as mercenaries because if what I've seen is right we're hopelessly outclassed and if they're back and they've found an antidote to the Mycoid virus we could be lucky to survive."
"I suppose we should go and take a look." I said with a smile, Mira and Vik both nodded.
"I had a horrible feeling that was where this was heading." Claude replied.
"System scanned, no anomalies, no ships of any kind detected." Claude announced wearily. "Again."
"Roger that, prepping for jump .....jumping now." I replied. The computer counted down and with a familiar surge we were hurled into hyperspace, the void between the void with its vivid colours, strange patterns and ghostly shadows. It is easy to see why the superstitious say it is haunted. We hurtled through the artificially wormhole until.
"Warning. Hyperspace conduit unstable." the computer announced and a warning klaxon sounded.
"What the? We're dropping out of Frameshift!" I shouted over the noise. We were back in normal space, the ship was in a flat spin and not responding to my urgent efforts to regain control then my console blinked once, brightened and went dead.
"Scanners offline." Claude's voice was thick with fear.
"My console's dead." Vik said. "Weapons offline."
"Engine room have we got power? Engine room respond please?" I barked to no response. "Internal coms are out and she's not responding to controls." I told the others, probably unnecessarily.
"We must have some power." Vik said. "The Remloks haven't deployed and the temperature's still stable."
"Claude get to the engine room and see if you can help Jock get this sorted, Vik..."
"You might want to rethink that skipper." Claude said his voice a mixture of wonder and sheer terror. "Look." I followed his gaze to where, off our port beam a shape the like of which I had never seen before emerged from a blue/black cloud of nothing, my view of it distorting even as it fully emerged. The craft moved across our bows before turning to face us, resembling a great flower with eight gigantic petals though the impression was sinister rather than beautiful.
"Have we got shields?" I demanded.
"I don't know." Vik replied.
"We're a sitting duck." Claude breathed, his voice a terrified whisper. "What happens if it fires?"
"Depends what kind of life you've led I suppose." I joked trying to mask my own fear. The unknown ship hung there for several long moments then the petals began to flare with a yellow light that grew quickly brighter until we had to shield our eyes, tendrils of light snaked out across space towards us.
"Sorry chaps, looks like this is it." I said and I thought of Kira and my son, would they even know I was dead or would they just assume I had vanished again? But there was no searing beam and scream of tortured metal as a weapon gouged its way into our hull, after a few moments the light began to dim, then faded, then stopped and the ship turned and began moving away from us at speed.
"We're alive!" Claude said with relief, even Vik always so stoical gave a long exhale of relief.
"Auto stabilisation." the computer announced.
"Systems online, shields at full." Vik almost shouted with relief.
"Scanners too." Claude said, "Engines online you should have control."
"Roger that, she's responding to stick and throttle. Vik lock onto that thing and lets get after it, full pips to engines."
"Please tell me your not going to attack it?" Claude asked in disbelief as I deployed hard points.
"No but I want it scanned, we need to get as much as we can for the boffins to rake through."
"Fighter online Commander." Mira came through on the coms. "Do you want me to launch?"
"Negative Rogue Leader, do not launch." I replied.
"Locked on, detecting shields of unknown type and strength." Vik said, then without any warning at all the ship vanished into another cloud.
"Is there a wake?" I asked.
"There's something." Claude said. "Locking on and scanning." Claude feverishly worked his console. "Unknown wake data, we've got something but the computer doesn't recognise it."
"Let's hope the egg heads can make something of it." I said. "Now I suspect we should probably get out of here as quickly as possible."