Stars in the Storm, 1: Nemesis Calling
22 Dec 2023Meowers
I swear once I find a way to do tricks with Thargoid brains, they're going to do stuff so heinous and so nasty with each other that my show will get banned from every possible network and I'll get bloody rich by pushing the recordings on the black market. Ah, I need a long black coat. So, I usually don't want bad things to happen, mostly, but this world just keeps forgetting to ask me.
There was a message from Aegis recently¹, about the escaped Thargoid abduction survivor, whose description totally matched my newly found friend Kasumi, also revealing her official name that she prefers not to use. Thing is, we've been occupied by absolutely insane goofy stuff playing that VR gimmick and having a great time doing it, so the last thing I wanted to know is that something perilous was actually going on in reality. And I had no means to intervene, being physically far away. I asked her once, being in that virtual space, but she told me it's a piece of shitty fake news and someone tries to make Aegis look like idiots. Even if the source looked official. Not such an unrealistic theory frankly. Like, of course I was worried, but she didn't have a single reason to lie to me, however, that whole thing had me thinking. I'm an overthinking person. Sometimes it's for good. Mostly not, but sometimes.
Before heading out for my next patrolling shift, I contacted our Investigation detachment with a request to inspect the message, ask Aegis directly if needed, cross-check and double-check everything, dig out any suspicious shit and send me the results. But damn, that's not fast, that thing floated around my mind for the entire shift bouncing left and right, I was checking the inbox several times an hour but the damn window kept being empty. So I came back, did a debriefing and returned to my place to load the VR again and look for her there. Expectedly, she was offline, with her last activity time matching our latest session ending. That woman we met there, Jana, was offline too, for a couple of hours already. And Kasumi didn't tell me when she's planning to appear next time. She did, however, leave me a note in my private space, and it was something she gave me a hint about previously. Turned out to be a copy of her private journal entry².
Almost at the same time I received a reply from the investigation team. They said the message was official and correct, no shit involved. Bloody damn hells.
Connecting the dots, I realised that, perhaps, she didn't tell me the truth not because she wanted to lie to me, but because she couldn’t overpower that thing yelling at her from inside her head. And, doing hells know what kind of stuff and not being in control of it, she might've effectively played scapegoat for the bugs, on top of ending up being in immediate danger. So later I wasted several days trying to find any clues on her whereabouts, while also having to do my daily camp and patrol stuff. And, well, I'm not a professional in investigations and finding right people in right places and asking right questions in the right tone mumbo-jumbo. That Jana, I saw her online once and sent her a message asking what the heck happened, but she knew no more than I did. Everything appeared to be a dead end. And Kasumi is quite an independent, isolated person, that wasn't making my searches any easier, she's used to hiding, masking her trails and all that, thanks to those Azimuth dipshits looking for her as well. I've no chance against her cyber-security tricks.
And now this³. They found her ship, empty and floating in a system near the Titan Hadad, with an audio log and obvious signs of Thargoid abduction.
Like, what should I do? Other than going to pull her out of this mess, right now?
I was ready to start packing my shit for a two day leave due to 'personal matters' when Mion slammed my door open and told me I should stop playing a hero, that I'd better sit down and do more brain things. All this demanded more planning and by flying alone I'm only going to put myself at risk and waste even more time. She was right, actually, even with recognisable altered bio-signatures my chances to get her out are slim at best, those extraction devices aren't known for their precision, so accuracy by volume is the only hope. And I can't get any kind of 'volume' using only one ship, my Marshmallow, which also has to be armed and swapping weapons for extraction equipment equals suicide. Not to mention that I can't use conventional Guardian-tech weaponry that close to the Titan, it will melt in minutes, it has to be replaced with those silly simplified pea shooters.
So, she wanted to go with me. To help me, and also to show those not exactly always smart local politicians that it isn't a single AXDF officer doing bloody nonsense, this thing is serious and needs attention. And more ships. This should be an organised, large operation that also could result in rescuing hundreds more poor folks on different stages of thargoidisation, hopefully still recoverable. With her rank in the militia being an equivalent of mine and her voice having an equivalent official weight, maybe even more for the locals, we had better chances.
Then, a long talk in the HQ. With representatives from AXDF and locals, both military and civilian, officers from Atlas connected remotely, like, everyone responsible for our cosy little camp. I told them damn everything, every single bit of truth I know. That she's my friend, that Ina she mentioned in her message is actually me, she has some weird tech implanted against her will, I saw her medi-scans with my own eyes in private, Azimuth is going after her too, Aegis interested in her well-being and protection, and her life being important in general, like, everything I know. Because if the bugs or Azimuth get her, we should start preparing for a wave of shit nobody wants to face. Big or not, but we definitely don't want more of it. Noone plans to kill her, every party interested in capturing her alive and exploiting, Thargoids for their Thargoid things, Azimuth for their bloody experiments, and none of this will end well for all of us. Either bugs would use her to power up one of their new fancy bases, or Azimuth dissects her and starts capturing people for more of their mad shit. By all damn rules of logic we should go and get her out of this steaming shithole, and not because it's my personal interest, but because nobody's going to like the repercussions if we don't.
I swear I wanted to sit down on the damn floor after I finished and ask somebody to dump a bucket of water on my head. My own voice deafened me, I could barely hear other people's words, they were like a distant echo. Like, Mion saying that AXDF shouldn't do this alone, we needed help. My superiors from Atlas running theories about best and worst outcomes, this thing wasn't what our bunch has been doing regularly, we're mostly an open-fight defence group and a kind of training camp. Local authority representative complaining that it would weaken the defences, others objecting that the operation shouldn't take more than a couple of days. Then another one, babbling that wherever I'm in the lead, casualties are terrible. Bloody useless gobshite, I drilled their heads for weeks back then, that we should evacuate the whole '91 earlier, before the green shit hit the fan hard, and I had to take the lead because so many people just friggin' died. Mion, saying she has enough skilled pilots to do the thing and the politicians definitely don't want to put a crack into relationships between the settlement and AXDF. At some point, I stood up and said that Azimuth freaks may be already heating up the engines while we squabble, since the information has been made public. And also that the pencil-pushing idiot should be grateful for being alive at all instead of blaming me for the casualties we sustained because they can't pull their heads out of their arses and listen. Aaargh, how do I hate those conferences.
Thing is, we don't have specialised rescue ships in the camp. Regular transports we're using are too slow and their pilots lack the training with the extraction equipment. Anti-Scout ships should also stay in the camp for the same reason of being too slow. And we don't have enough of that fancy new tech to operate near those friggin' Titans and pull people out, it isn't what we do in general. Only a few samples brought by me a few months ago, but we need more, much more. So, at the end of that meeting, we contacted Aegis with a request to provide us with transports, equipment and possible help from any volunteers. Because damn we're going to need everything that can move people or shoot. In return, our pilots will do everything to keep those ships safe during the operation. And I've been told that I'll lead the whole group.
And authorised to take four combat wings, two AXDF, two militia. Mion included, she will be in charge of her folks.
Nobody could stop me from sitting on the ground next to the HQ block after that. No buckets of water on my head, sadly. Only four to six hours of waiting for the reply from Aegis. Mion stood silently next to me for a little while and then said we'd rather go back to my place and sleep all the shit out of that delay.
I think that was another good idea of hers.
* * *
Since I don't like to put hyperlinks into the body of the text for some reason...
1: Aegis broadcast: Missing person
2: Personal logbook entry
3: Aegis broadcast: Ship found
OOC note: due to the little mess happening in timelines of the stories, consider this events taking place on 24.11.3309.