Log Book #9 - Black Flight
27 Nov 2022Eimilian
On the 24th of November 3308, the Kingfisher's mission was compromised. I was sitting down at the meeting table that morning with Minister Roland Hyde, whiskey at hand - yeah, I do admit it was a bit early for that but the stress of it all was getting to me. Roland debriefed me about what he knew of the megaship and the system it was supposed to be stationed at. I was chosen to go on this mission to collect as much data on the megaship as possible and if there were any survivors out there, to bring them back to Quimper Gateway.I decided to set out with my exploring ship, the Crimson Monarch. The ship was not entirely equipped for the operation, but it was the best I had at hand at the time. So I left early in the morning, a couple of hours since the distress signal was sent by Kingfisher in Hyades Sector YO-Q b5-1. It took just a couple of jumps to get there, the system was about 300lys from Dalagritu. I arrived to the Kingfisher's location which revealed to me a scene straight from a nightmare.
The megaship was mostly completely torn to shred. I could easily assess that the damage was ultimately caused by the Thargoids. With the worry of the leftover caustic cloud in the area. I flew around using a Taipan, a small fighter stationed in the Crimson Monarch. There was a lot of debris. The megaship's defense system was still online, meaning that the power supply was still up. I tried looking around for any escape pods, any survivors, but none were found. Upon scanning the logs of the ship it was revealed to me that the operation turned sour pretty quickly and that most of those who tried to escape were taken by the Thargoids. I docked the fighter back to the Crimson Monarch and upon doing so, something came to my view.
A black box! Its data would surely be valuable!
And so I brought the black box to HIP 69738, an allied faction by the name of YKE Technologies would analyze it. They came back a few hours later with the results. It seemed like the Thargoids were aggravated by some of the content of the megaship. I looked at the scientist asking how can carrots and celery sticks aggravate the Thargoids!? The scientist shrugged and said that their leader wanted to speak to me. And so, Dylan D, leader of YKE came with a nice pot of hot tea and asked me what else I found around the wreck. As he poured a cup of tea, I told him there was basically a lot of scraps, some weird alien looking parts were also in the debris. His eyebrow raised up asking for more detail on the alien parts. I tried describing things as best as I remembered, but clearly those things were of Thargoid in nature. Dylan D gave me a cup of tea and left without saying a word.
I just sat there looking at the stars, slowly sipping some warm tea. Did I say something wrong? Maybe the news of the Kingfisher's destruction was too much for the commander to take. I mean, it was his dream to be able to communicate with the Thargoid and the refusal of his presence in the Kingfisher might of taken a hit on him. But he eventually came back very agitated. Something about the Kingfisher being sabotaged. I tried asking him who on earth would sabotage the Kingfisher but the second I was almost done with my sentence, he said: " Azimuth!".
I looked away trying to recollect everything I knew of Azimuth, but I couldn't put the pieces together. So I looked back at Dylan and told him: "Maybe?". Boy that made him more agitated than he currently was. I think he was very angry, I honestly don't blame him. "Who else do you think could sabotage the Kingfisher with Thargoid sensors!?" I kept quiet, listening to what he was going to reveal. "Azimuth wants us to be in war with the Thargoids so they can pocket the money from the weapons they create from their research!". It sort of made sense, they could obviously be behind all of this. But I'm afraid without proof, I wouldn't start pointing fingers out like that.
To avoid aggravating the commander more, I decided to awkwardly end the conversation with the excuse of forgetting to turn off my oven back in Quimper Gateway. The rest of the day went quiet for most of it. The day after though was where things became apparent.
I woke up and went around doing my routine. Sitting down in front of my computer, coffee at hand, I had a mail with the subject written in bold letters. "URGENT, READ NOW!" The message was from Dylan D - there was an attached image.
The message in question.
To quickly resume everything. Dylan D informed the public over the possible sabotage by Azimuth shortly after I left the day prior. Early morning after, Dylan D was doing a routine security passes through Uncenii when he found signal source with a very high threat level. When he went to check in, he was greeted with a large debris field containing meta alloys surrounded by black livery Diamondback Scouts with the ship's identity starting with SV. The ship's identity belonged to Black Flight, a covert military unit that is operated under Azimuth Biochemical.
"The man's looking for trouble." I told myself.
Piecing together what I understood from all of this. Black Flight clearly was going to go after YKE for publicly speaking against them and since we were allied with them, Black Flight would surely show their face in Dalagritu. First the Thargoids, then the communists and now Black Flight. Surely another glass of Whiskey wouldn't hurt after thinking about all of this... right?
Ex Governor, now Squadron Leader
-CMDR Eimilian