Duty, 11: Thunder and Echo
19 Aug 2022Meowers
Oh, hello, it's me again. And the stuff is... happening. I doubt it's for good as every time the stuff is happening and the Thargoids are involved things are getting grim and bloody. Anyway. Long time no hear, isn't it? Hah. So, let me explain this. And why I started posting this log again.
A while ago we were dispatched to HIP 29991, a system on the edge of the inhabited area, right between us and them, where the unpopulated buffer zone begins. It was me, my wing, some other AXDF wings, transports, all that little army, and we're here to help locals with improving their defences and organising everything. Without any specific goal, just some hanging around here and there, flying patrols and shooting Thargoids from time to time, you know, making sure the locals and their 'AX militia' are doing well. Quite a routine job for a calm stretch of time. It was a bit of a spike of Thargoid activity a few months ago, when I was still a trainee, but nothing too serious, and there in the Pleiades, with experienced AX pilots around to help us out, we were dealing with them just fine and, hey, I even had a chance to shine a little and that's why I'm a wing leader now. No boasting, plain facts! Hah. A rookie wing leader of a wing of rookies. Short-handed. Still three of us, me, Christine and David. But that thing about the fourth pilot... So. There's where we start.
Now... The GalNet and other media are littered with news and speculations about that shady Salvation-Salivation-whatever-guy, or what's left of him, hah, and his glorious attempt to get rid of the Thargoids 'owce awd fow aww'. Arrogant deranged freak with a power fetish I say. What happened? Giant fart happened. There's no reason to tell you about that again and again and again, every channel is full of that greenish crap right from HIP 22460 where he spent months on building some kind of 'superweapon', and now we're... Where we are now. With angry Thargoids having some kind of countermeasure against all kinds of Guardian devices, thankfully it's still local, in 22460, maybe it's placed planetside... Otherwise, we're in a deep arse of a deep trouble... And, well, with nobody except ourselves to stop that mess. Again. Ugh.
I refrained from talking about that prick in my previous entries, just thought... Hey, is that for sure? Do you really going to buy all this? But now, uh, I have to speak out my take on so-called 'Salvation'. Ah, an opinion of an ordinary pilot, a line in the AXDF flight roster, who chopped dozens of those abominations by pulling the triggers with her own hands, about a guy who've gotten a reputation of a 'Thargoid exterminator' without even firing a single shot at one. Love the irony!
See, that crap started when Aegis got scapegoated, framed, disbanded, by those bloated oily sweaty arse politicians and businessfolks who'd seen Thargoids only on GalNet news and funny videos. And thought it was a kind of a show. As a scientific and military organisation, Aegis required funding, assistance, some freedoms for operations... They were researching unknown, weird, ancient, dangerous stuff, the proper way, and the proper way means much of time spent and extensive use of trial and error approach. Experimenting with experiments, of sorts. Quite a hole in the big fancy pockets. And big fancy pockets didn't like it. And then that 'Salvation' happened, with his mouth and wallet bigger than his honesty, humanity and common sense. Alexandria crew was murdered, whole organisation got framed, and Taurus Mining started to mutate into something else, something that we know as Azimuth now. And what about the politicians? Greedy, short-sighted, power-hungry bastards who just can't stop craving for more. Same kind as this 'Salvation', except he was an unhinged pseudo-science maniac on top of that. Running experiments on living human beings. So, they get along just fine. Salvation got lucky in playing with fire, diverting a pair of Thargoid attacks... Or were it the Thargoids who wanted to be seen as 'retreating'? To strike back when it's more convenient? Can't tell about that exactly, I guess it will remain a mystery forever. I wasn't an AX pilot those days anyway. And... Also that Taurus Mining company, his own little kingdom of docile wage-slaves, so he wasn't asking for any extra funding. Feds, Imps and Allies got their jaws dropped on the floor, their pants wet from excitement, and you know what happened next.
Shit. And I'm here to protect those idiots as well.
Even the capships. Crapships, I say. There's no way to create a high-calibre capital-class Anti-Thargoid weapon from what we know at the moment. Upscaling the Aegis-made multi-cannon? Might be a solution, but, with all that crap happening around, Aegis stuff is a kind of taboo now. And we can't just upscale the Hybrid-Guardian tech like Gauss and Shard guns, there are too many emissions and interferences that prevent you from building a bigger weapon, and, instead of researching it, people placed all their hopes on that Salvation freak and his pet project. So, the capships are sitting ducks. Tasty Thargoid morning meal. Serving on a capship and being sent to the Thargoid-infested area usually means a death sentence. But that Salvation put some little guns into capital-class turrets, making those giant tin cans somewhat effective against, oh, that's just amazing, against lesser types of Thargoids, Scouts and Cyclopes, pompously christened it 'an experimental capship loadout', and the idiots got the bait falling down their throats at a lightspeed. When he started to tinker on his super-pooper, attracting thousands of Thargoids to the system, authorities gladly 'provided him with cover', sending some ships there, to 22460. I saw footages and reports. Still, independent pilots and other Anti-Xeno formations were dealing most deaths to those freaks, by a margin. And why didn't they just leave him there to rot? Money. He was rich enough to pay trillions. Whilst big dimwits in big chairs had a chance to play with their big toy boats and think that Salvation is the right kind of guy.
So, the thing made a magnificent wet fart. Comms cut off, ships lost or retreated, people died, textbook platinum classic, from the 'what happens when you deal with the Thargoids the wrong way' pages.
And the public networks are none less funny these days. Actually, they're stuffed up to the brim! Those reports from 'brave survivors' who got their arses hit by a Thargoid EMP field and they're managed to 'narrowly escape the inevitable doom'... You know what I do, what we in AXDF usually do when we're being hit by an EMP? Lighting up a cigarette and facepalming at ourselves for being lame enough to trigger that reaction. Green rookies are being EMP'd several times a day, and then they meet in the mess and laugh about that. But, no, listen, we have a hero that survived! Thirty awful seconds of sitting in a cold silent ship that lasted like an eternity, just because someone had forgotten to read about the Thargoids and their behaviour from open-access data sources, before going to see and annoy one in real; and also listening to Thargoid cannon rounds ripping off those artsy-fartsy custom hull panels and paintjobs that were strategically installed instead of those useless AX weapons and reinforcement packages.
Or the escape pod riders. Idiots. Everebody knows that Thargoids do collect escape pods and nobody knows what happens to the poor bastards inside after it. And I guess you don't want to know it. Leave some room for imagination. No, we have those brave adventurers on their cardboard Asps who decided just to take a look at what's happening there.
And some of them survived... But only physically. If you know what I mean. The number of conspiracy theories is exorbitant, and the 'Thargoid worshippers' became more active... Hey, why you weren't that active on your history lessons? Guardians tried to 'negotiate' with the Thargoids, and the Thargoids said 'woo' that meant 'no'. No no no, we have to move away from their territory, we have to make peace, we have to talk, we have to stop interfering, blah blah blah... Just open the Galaxy map, grab the ruler and plot a line between Pleiades or Coalsack and the Guardian sites. Is that quite a distance for peaceful, uninterfered co-existence? Ugh... And see, what's the first thing to consider when you're about to communicate with someone who doesn't speak your language? Of course, goddammit, learning theirs! And, if only I've seen at least one of those dipshit conspiracy lovers with a 'Go Woo: Thargoid language for dummies' pocket book in their hands. I guess next time when I'll have a face-to-face appointment with the doc, I'll just whisper "...salvaaaaation..." in the waiting hall and will have myself a funny show to watch while waiting.
Holy Gauss Cannon, they have beaten even the number of Colonia travel reports...
Ah, goddammit... This one is getting too long for a basic sitrep... Went ranting again. I guess that happens when you're going beyond that '30' line, maybe I should start thinking about the proper walking stick. Maybe even with some Guardian tech inside to poke the Thargoids with it.
Anyway. I'm still here, in HIP 29991, doing my stuff and flying with the locals, one of their wings with one AXDF wing, sometimes we return from a daily patrol through neighbouring systems with a few more simple kills under our belts, like, Cyclopes, Basilisks, all that low-threat rubbish... They're doing fine from what I can see. Yeah, some of them are green and the overall piloting and combat skills are lower than what I saw in AXDF, the discipline isn't exactly 'military', and their loadouts are funny sometimes... But, the most important thing here, they aren't scared of the Thargoids. They're fighters. They put themselves between their homes, families, and the Thargoids, voluntarily, they know what the Thargoids are and what to do with them. And what the Thargoids will do if they won't stop them. And things are slowly, but persistently, getting better. For a 'volunteer AX militia', they are quite good. The Thargoid wreckage scattered around their little town can't lie. Just a few more steps to make everything tick perfectly.
And I'm getting used to living in that outpost-town. At least the 'most military' outskirts part of it, near the landing and hangars. You know, I'm not the one to aimlessly walk around and look at random things, so, hah, went out on a casual little walk only a couple of times, and each time I was invited by Mion to do it. And she was talking, talking, talking... She's quite smart and funny, actually, and I must, gladly, admit that we share the same points of view on many pivotal things. So, I was interested more in conversating with her rather than in memorising what I saw on the streets, hah. And other AXDF pilots, my wing included, are feeling themselves pretty comfortable; we're planetside, rotational period of 12 hours isn't that awful, the long-range sensors are clean, local food is definitely better than field rations, we have separate rooms with beds, bathrooms, kitchens, computer terminals, all that stuff, and some free time to spend. Hey, this place even has a little park! Flying over and giving it a quick look, I thought it was just a bunch of randomly growing trees, but no, it's a park and locals love it. Maybe I'll visit it one day as well. Dropping my anchor in a town and having no idea about what can be found here even after several months of living? Hah, that's my style.
Yeah. Too long for a basic sitrep, hah. So. Drifted way too far... Again. The fourth pilot dilemma. When sending my reports to AXDF command, I was mentioning it from time to time, like, hey, I still don't have a full wing, do something with that please, and they told me to wait a bit until they 'find someone'. Is it that difficult to find someone who can fly and shoot? We can give them a proper training here anyway. And now, finally, I received an order to... ask a local command about assigning one of their pilots to me, and that I should treat them as AXDF recruit. Hm. Okay.
See, in any other circumstances I'd rather disregard other factors by thinking, like, 'why they should send us a pilot, with a ship, when there are dozens of them around me already, and we have almost nothing to do?', but, in the light of the recent events... Ah, don't say I'm too anxious and overthinking, I know that already, hah. Maybe that's why I'm still alive! So. I'm slowly starting to think that they already know something, and that's far, far beyond my security clearance level, and they need those pilots elsewhere, also, perfectly explains why AXDF command didn't send anyone to that HIP 22460 showdown. Something tells me that things may get a bit more intense...
Put 'intense' and 'Thargoids' into one sentence. Doesn't sound so good.
* * *
Views of HIP 29991 5
* * *
Yeah, sorry for the long, long wait. The 21st Century stuff became pretty intense too, especially in the early summer, and it effectively put me off writing for several weeks. And then, when I had a quiet stretch to catch a breath and grab my bearings, I realised that... Well, the game can't provide me with enough fuel for imagination anymore. See, I don't want to write things just for the sake of writing, every episode should unfold a little sub-story, carry some little idea, mood, atmosphere that I want to convey, apart from following the main line of the story that I've already plotted a long ago. And even the 'setting the scene' parts, or re-setting, as it's in that case, should set everything up properly, creating a solid ground for what will happen next. And I can't create a ground for what I can't imagine well.
Looks like the game itself is far less interesting for me at the moment, even less than I thought earlier. Right now, I'm using it as a 'tool' for creative sparks, like a poem video that was made by J-Dog162 and me recently, and the poem itself, and the visions and concepts were hers, while I was doing the art and tech stuff to make them become reality. So, suddenly I realised that Duty is the first, and only, and much likely the last 'story about the game universe' that I'm writing. My very first one, Unguided, wasn't and isn't a story exactly, it is a usual 'pilot's logbook', and, eventually, I ran out of imagination to write it as good as it should be done. It was received unexpectedly, amazingly well, and I'm saying a big thanks for this, so, I was writing it while my imagination was helping me with wrapping the words around in-game events, and stopped when it became clearly visible that I can't keep it up anymore without repeating the same. My other stories are more standalone and game didn't contribute anything to them except the basic 'game universe' setting.
Figuratively speaking, I have a set of milestones for this story, but no fuel to cover the distance between them. Hopefully, that occassion will help me to re-start and continue writing, as everything that's happening here is happening far away from the main 'points of interest' and could be easily detached from the game events again. I like this story, I want to write it, to connect it with the ending that I have written already, to put everything I want to put in it, every little sub-plot and detail, but I don't want to do it half-arsed.
Anyway, thank you for your support. I will try to keep the things going smooth from now on. My pinky promise!