The Discovery
05 Sep 2016Harry The Hatchet
Rough Landing3302-08-14, 16:48
PRE Laboratories, Plaeides
The conflict in Plaiedes came to an end with a fizzle on the Federation side. The Imperials fought their hearts out, no doubt, but in the end the numbers just were not with them. I had contributed my ship to the conflict for what it was worth. I was taken out of the war after only a few days. By a rather vicious battery of multi-cannon shells. They tore the front of my ship clean off after my shields fell. I had to jump through witch-space back to PRE Laboratories. A witch-space jump without a canopy is a strange feeling, indeed. I'll refer to the previous log rather re-describe it here.
I limped to the outpost on the red, dusty moon and soon my recovery was in a gentle swing. I spent the first week just sitting around the mess-hall and living quarters. The flickering, white lights cast hard shadows on the grey metal dinner tables. Red dust had made into the interior of the outpost. Small piles of it sat in the corner of most large rooms that saw lots of foot traffic. I know this, because I sat watching people running to and fro. They kicked moon dust around like it was the warm ocean. The quarters that used to house research staff had been repurposed as settlements for engineers, re-armorers and commanders.
Often, I found little rest in my bunk. Ammo-trollies scraped by the doorway, towards the hangers. An occasional low boom shook the structure, making the lights swing. They were large ships, Corvettes probably, smashing into the landing pads, having little left of the flight control system. Various CMDRs made their temporary home in the bunk above me and left shortly after. Off to re-join the fighting I figured. I figured wrong. They were searching.
The Discovery
3302-09-01, 16:48
PRE Laboratories, Plaeides
September 1st. A date that will no doubt be said with epic reverence forever after by human kind. I felt that I should leave the moon on September 1st. After all, I had collected my measly earnings from the fighting. The energy had died away and a frustrated boredom had taken it's place. Roach had, by now, been fixed up by the engineers of PRE Labs. I had no more reason to remain there. Therefore I lazily gathered my equipment and walked out.
My stroll to the hanger was cut short by a gang of outpost denizens shoving their way passed me. They were followed by my expletives. One of them stopped, spun around and shouted to me "They found one. It's down, but they found it. It's unmistakable!"
"What are you talking about?" I replied, equally as loud.
"A Thargoid!" she shouted, then ran on, catching up to forming crowd. It took me a moment.
Before my mind clicked into just what that word meant, I had already started running. Wheezing down the corridor and around the corner. I spotted the girl charge through a door at the end and I gunned it towards them. As I drew closer others joined the run. Civilians and CMDRs alike sprinted head-first to station services. We shoved through into a foyer and someone at the front activated the console. Up sprung the screen for station services then it swiped sidewards to the news section.
Hundreds of reports! Words like contact, others, war, peace, research, destroy, new era, certain destruction, negotiation, new life, ancient beings and thousands of other contradictory phrases. A crash site on PLEIADES SECTOR AAB-W B2-4. A strange construct. With shutter-like vents, sharp wings covered in a kind of chitin, organic looking surfaces and a great eye staring, stoney and still, up into the black sky. Almost in shock, like it unearthed from a million years of sleep. It was a dusty golden-grey in colour and it was crumpled into the moon, as if it was shoved by some great, cosmic toddler. All of us stood agape, swaying with shock. In the hall reading reports and staring at the same four shots of the wreckage. There was a whisper somewhere at the back of the room, then another elsewhere. But otherwise the hall was silent. The orange light from the massive holographic screen cast us as waxen statues, standing rank on rank, absorbing all the info it offered.
The station anttenae ate up the latest stream and regurgitated it for us. It was a serious, emergency enterview with someone who dressed important but was creased with stress. It was as if he was tipped out of his bed, wrung through some semi professional clothes and shoved on-screen before he knew what hit him. He was helplessly "the guy" on everything crash-site related. Whether he wanted to be or not. Nevertheless he was the only live source of answers currently and therefore we clung to him.
The Interview
3302-09-01, 17:02
At a turning point...
The interview transpired, mostly, as so:
"This is undoubtably a major discovery." He began.
"It seems, though this is an early theory and should be taken as fact, that it a crash site of some description."
The professional something-or-other put undue emphasis on the term 'crash site' as if it was a difficult concept to communicate. I felt as though he was just trying to disguise the time it took to choose his words carefully. He deflected questions with answers professionally crafted to be as general, yet loosely satisfactory, as possible. As professionals that dabble in media often are trained to do.
Presently he was asked "Is this the crash site of a vessel and, therefore, a crew? Or is it perhaps a large piece of a more larger whole." His brow knitted together.
His answer was surprisingly direct:"There appears to be an engine, at the very least." The intervewer nodded patiently.
"And somewhat comparable shapes on what's left of it's hull that tells us that the creator of this vessel also had to contend with the same problems our engineers tackled when designing ships." The interviewee folded his legs with fervor and went on.
"Aerodynamic concerns when in atmospheres, the thickness of it's hull that best deflects space debris. The critical balance of mass versus thrust. Among many other considerations that come with building spaceships. That is to say, if this was not a vessel or ship of a kind, we wouldn't have anything else to compare it to."
Next he was asked: "If this is the wreckage of a non-human space-farring entity, what are the chances that we should live harmoniously with them should we meet, as it were, face to face?"
He scoffed at the question. Either he knew it was coming or, in his lofty academic mind, the question seemed impractical and a waste of discussion. So the Intervewer played his last card.
"Over a thousand years ago a thinker-of-the-time once said 'should the cosmic phone ring, it would be imperative that we do not answer'. He referred to a time before even him, when one race of humans met another, more primative, race and enslaved them immediately. He also went on to make examples of many conflicts that started in much the same way, where a more advanced kind met a more crude kind and subjugated them. He made the argument that this practice was a natural result of such a situation.
"Given our leaps in civilisation now all the way in 3302, could this be the case should we meet the occupants of the crashed ship?"
He opened a hand and gestured the question, carefully, to the Xeno professional. The question came with the just the right flavour of pretentious academia that tickled out an answer. He joined his hands in a pyramid below his chin and breathed out through his nose slowly, thinking.
Then he said "The uh, cosmic phone, as you put it, as not so much as rang as it has been shoved through man-kind's mailbox. We need not answer it, it is impossible to ignore!"
Rushing To Leave
Several minutes later
The hall immediately emptied. Commanders ran for the hangers, to their ships and on, I assume, to their families, to the crash site, to their ranking officers and anyone else who had seen the streams. Such was the need. Explorers sprang, salivating for the unknown. Traders, who were calmer with their departure, studied maps and market read-outs for opportunities and spikes but soon made their way this way and that, to systems which presented lucrative chaos. Mercenaries began loading their ships with munitions and mission slips for systems towards the Discovery. But us smugglers, the rats of the galaxy, had little to rush for.
Unless the Thargoid civilisation was in desperate need of cigarettes.
I spent the day testing systems in my ship. My hands sweating in my suit and my brain vibrating in my skull, shooting hundreds of thoughts a second. Crash site, war, my ex-wife, the farm she how tended without me, the urge to go back, the urge to go on. I noticed, through the vague panic in me, that the engineers not only replaced the canopy of my ship but replaced the shabby seats with new, less shabbier ones. The squeaks that came from various points in the panels had gone, the throttle glided pleasantly up and down it's plate in the console. The flight stick had no crunch now matter how hard I pulled and pushed on it. The cockpit was tight and rattle free. I couldn't quite believe it, not one cable hung from the struts and not one door hung from a maintenance hatch. Against the unbelievable news of the Thargoid crash site, suddenly the small things felt insanely impressive. That I were alive during this very day (especially after taking part in a conflict that claimed around a thousand lives just two weeks before). It felt like a mystical mishap of order in the great chaos that drove the universe as a whole. I sat for around half an hour, belted into my flight chair decided what should be next, not only right now but in the near future, then far future.
I hadn't decided the answer to any of those questions by the time I hit the Launch button.