The Soul of Our Homeland, 4: Resilience
06 Dec 2024Meowers
( 06.12.3310 / 16:00 GMT )
( Sol - Duamta, Orunmilla )
Damn of course the fat bugger chose Earth. As if there were any other options.
Okay, let's put it directly. Yes, we retreated. We left Sol, we left Earth. But, unlike those fearmongers, freaking doom cultists and alien lovers like to say, we didn't run for our dear lives. At least, well, not the handful I'm responsible for.
Thargoids may be bugs, but they aren't complete idiots, they didn't just plop the Titan onto Earth orbit unprotected, the actual invasion fleet was massive and by that I mean real massive. So their problem here is that we aren't complete idiots either. Nobody wanted to admit that, but containing them in Sol and pocketing the Titan was impossible, given their sheer numbers, the risk was too great. They keep reproducing, portalling, jumping, or whatever they do to seem endless, and we... We aren't. We're getting exhausted. We're getting killed. Throwing all we've got to stop one wave only to fall before the second is a sub-optimal strategy, no matter the self-sacrifice and heroics.
The death toll is already staggering. It is painful, no doubt, but it is a sharp pain. It strikes you hard and then fades off, lingering. It still hurts, you still bleed, yet you can get back on your feet to keep fighting.
In other words, we have to thin them down first. Make them stuck in the same limbo of spreading out, invading systems trying to get more breathing room, only to meet our defences there, regrouped and ready to retaliate.
Though... Okay, it's old, arid me. And I'm doing my job.
Don't get me wrong, it was bad. It was just that bad. The Titan arrived in a blinding flash, which drowned in dark, creeping hyperspace ripples. Distorting the space, tearing the very fabric of the Universe, black clouds spanned across the skies as far as eyes could see and then even further. Countless ships were caught in the following crossfire, burning like matches, one after another, combat and transport alike. Over a few hours, humankind lost all stations in Sol, and several rescue megaships in surrounding systems, not the Cornwallis thankfully, the most crowded one, full of Sol refugees. It would've been too bitter.
I was halfway from Saturn to Jupiter when it started happening, with my first wing, returning from Titan City where we kept the bugs off the departing transports. We had a little temporary platform on Europa, a staging ground for resupplies, away from the sticky, unceasing panic of evacuated stations, mostly automated, with only a few maintenance workers. We knew we had to abandon it, and do so quickly, at some point.
A few hours before, I ordered everyone to remain in their cockpits all the time while in Sol. An official order this time.
I had a video feed from the place. Ancient ice buckled, cracking and melting under the sudden alien barrage, the water from beneath started filling the platform, freezing and evaporating in the almost non-existent atmosphere, jamming the mechanisms. Fourth and sixth wings, which were there at the moment, scrambled at once and opened fire, punching through the wall of Thargoids, creating a passage for the transport with the ground crew onboard. A couple of smoking, torn alien corpses fell off the sky, smashing against the platform, destroying the equipment. Fuel lines, already damaged and ruptured by the ships on their rapid take-off, caught fire, and a second after the feed disappeared in static.
There was a thing which could make some of you dislike me, but, hey, it saved some lives. Some lives of those fighting for you right now as I record that.
All that time, a couple of recon pilots kept their spectrum scanners pointed at the approaching Titan, giving me readings of its distance, approximate speed and ETAs, updating every minute. So I wasn't unprepared. On the last flights in Sol, I commanded people to back down, to spare ammo and fuel as much as possible. A few bugs left alive weren't really going to make any difference, not when thousands were ready to swarm upon us. Beam lasers, rare Shard and Gauss shots when it's bad, powered down secondary equipment, keeping them away but not all-out attacking.
And it worked. I'm in Duamta now. Megaship Orunmilla, the last remaining bastion of humankind over here. But we fight, and we fight well. Jumping in with our fuel and ammo mostly intact, we evaporated the Thargoids around, clearing the way. We held the line until the wave of survivors from Sol thinned down and fresh forces arrived from the megaship. The bugs wanted to hit us, exhausted, shocked, disheartened, in the backs, but got their own faces bloodied instead.
Yes, we had to leave Sol. But we retreated, not fled. We retreated, leaving dead Thargoids in our wake.
Duamta... I just have to be here. No hesitations. I have to give my all protecting this place. The home of Aegis. The place where I emerged from the cold nothingness, back to the world of living, reborn, stronger than ever. Some of my superiors, Mr. Douglas and a few other people aware of my true story, had already marked Duamta as the first waypoint for me if we have to fall back. One friend of mine, no matter our disagreements, should've also been here somewhere. Twisting pathways of fate, of my life, led me here once again. Maybe because, in our dire times, this place needs me. As I needed it during my own days of darkness. And I'm not planning to take any more steps back.
At this moment, the most intensive and massive fighting takes place in Procyon and Sirius, and, according to the reports, the bugs over there are already losing their juice. Here, we have a comparatively small force, small but very strong. We're fighting, we're holding on, it's difficult, but it's looking stable. A day more or two maybe and we may expect reinforcements.
Until then, we have an order to hold our ground. To fight. And fight we do.