The Soul of Our Homeland, 2: Liminality
04 Dec 2024Meowers
( 04.12.3310 )
( Sol, Galileo Station )
Every hour, more and more panic. As the realisation finally sunk in, that it's impossible to evacuate everyone in time, or maybe evacuate at all. It wasn't a secret from the very beginning but perhaps there were hopes. Which now are gone. Lost in the chaotic display of primal instincts taking over the rational, the civilised. Evac lines turned into masses. The masses are roiling, suffocating, they whelm the transports, they cry, swear and scream in an unceasing human cacophony, and only the police riot shields can make them retreat for a little while. Every take-off there are trampled, smothered, crushed. Distant gunshots are heard now and again. Every station looks the same.
I saw reports of people sneaking onboard or tying themselves to combat AX ships, and demanding a flight out of the system. My pilots remain in their cockpits during the resupply stops and that wasn't even an order.
So the last Thargoid Titan, Cocijo, is moving towards Sol. Arriving. Expected tomorrow. Not a secret either, and some say it wasn't a secret for a few days already, as soon as we got the first readings on speed and trajectory... But there were changes in them along the way and maybe people just refused to believe in the worst. All and all, we don't know shit about Titans, we can't predict their actions, we can't figure out their intentions. We don't fully know what the Titans are.
We don't even know what it wants. Just like that, this thing took off its place and launched itself into our core worlds almost a week ago. We've been clearing the nearby systems one by one when, in a blink, it was gone. Accelerating hard, too fast for anyone to get close. And the lesser ships were gone too. Like, sure, it's not coming to talk and make friends, but what does it really aim to achieve?
Our only way of gathering insider intel is unconventional at best. As expected, when dealing with aliens, frankly. Seo Jin-Ae, I mean, call her a medium, or a psychic, or whatever, her mental connection to the Thargoid hivemind so far has been the only way to catch a glimpse of what's brewing among their ranks. And she sent a warning broadcast recently, before Cocijo took flight. About them turning her mind inside out and scraping every bit she knows, after which something in their mental pattern had... changed.
There was a private message from a friend who knows her, a bit later. That I should take it seriously... Hells. I may goof around those logs now and then but I do take everything seriously because I know the price you might pay if you don't. And the price other people might pay if I don't.
But what does it really want from Sol? We don't know and we have no way of knowing until it's too late.
Speculations. They always fill the vacuum of ignorance and uncertainty.
Some say it's going to open some kind of a wormhole, of a portal, into the Thargoid home systems, and invite its friends to the party. Or maybe it's a suicide Titan and it wants to ram the Earth to oblivion, it's already bigger than the dino asteroid and it can move faster. Maybe it can somehow screw up the Earth's atmosphere and turn it into a Thargoid paradise. Or any other planet in Sol. Or, who knows, maybe it's aiming for the Sun, hoping to destabilise and detonate it. We've no idea what those Titans are capable of.
Maybe they really are no more than mobile bases, incapable of serious fighting on their own, relying on swarms of Interceptors, so that the previous seven sat there like sitting ducks all that time. Or, perhaps, they have to grow, to evolve something inside them, and whoever commands those fleets knows it, sending a bunch of them because some certainly will get destroyed while waiting. Or not, and we're up for the same few days of bombing until it melts down and blows up to bits, in the underwhelming type of grand finale, phah.
Or it's another terror attack, but of a larger scale now. And Thargoids are aware that a lone Titan will be picked apart over a few days once it stops, so they just want to sow more chaos and panic among the civilians, throwing Cocijo into a kamikaze charge. Since they should already know that a coordinated military force is capable of folding them like pancakes, but only a small fraction of humans are military.
Even that goofy conspiracy stuff that makes me giggle... That Hudson is secretly a Thargoid. A few years ago he ran campaigns against the Far God cultists to consume them, and now he rides a Titan back to the place of his former glory, to Sol. Literally rides, like a horse, in a saddle, playing cowboy music in the background, to save his Federation from Winters and that political muppet Archer. Yeee-haw!
Aaaah shit... Whatever, just not that doom and gloom. Only a few hours left...
Shit. Shitshitshit.
Okay, I'll be honest. Why do I record all that, all these babblings already said countless times, while the station crews rearm my guns?
To say something else, other than "it's bad and it's only going to get worse". Because it has all the signs of it. Again, we can't know for sure, but everyone agrees that it may overshadow the recent attack on Shinrarta. Damn Shinrarta. Damn Hydras. Those green, armoured, multi-layered monstrosities. Locate, isolate, terminate, my count of them killed during that invasion soared to double digits only over the first evening. Not to mention lesser bugs. And this... This may be even worse.
I'm no Earther and I have no attachments to the place, except the obvious human ancestry. However, the loss of it would be soul-crushing for humankind in its entirety. If that happens, we may get mad, we may start smacking them even harder, but... We would never truly recover.
And I can't friggin remember a single time when I received an order to mobilise my entire group, including the reserves. Counting from the very days when we became a separate unit, not a bunch of battered leftovers from another evac.
Because it's bad and it's only going to get worse. The day of reckoning. For us, or for them? I'll do my best to make it the latter option. Us or them. Phah. That really does make some things look more simple...
Only a few hours left...