Devastation | Personal Log 08.12.3308
12 Aug 2022Mark Zero
-//Log Entry Start[Date: 08.12.3308]
[Location: Musashi, Pleiades Sector CW-U b3-2]
It's a mess.
It's been a couple days since the disaster with the Proteus Wave. I don't think I've slept more than 2-3 hours in the last 48. Everything, everything went wrong. So much more wrong than I worried it might.
By now, people have seen what happened. I was mid-sortie when the Proteus Wave went off. Salvation came over everyone's comms and gave some arrogant rant about his "last gift" to humanity and the "next great age" beginning. Then Commodore Halloran and her crew on the Bright Sentinel fired the weapon. Every Thargoid in the sky went dead for all of about a minute. Stupidly, I thought it might actually be over. Then the weapon fired again.
Every system on the Firebrand went dead in the few seconds when the wave hit. I was circling around the INV Audacious Dream, and then suddenly the thrusters shut down and I just drifted off in the direction of my momentum. I think that drift, and being close enough to a bigger target, were the only things that saved me. My short range comms came back online after about 60 seconds, which was a cruel joke of fate. On top of the panic of not being able to control my ship, I got to listen to the last terrified moments of the Audacious Dream's crew as the Thargoids tore it apart. Then they started methodically picking everyone else off.
I managed to somehow get enough power to fire the thrusters intermittently, and charge up the Frame Shift Drive. The moment I jumped to Supercruise, I started getting comms warnings from other Commanders not to drop back down to normal space under any circumstances. The Thargoids were absolutely everywhere, hunting down and destroying every human ship in HIP 22460, everywhere in the system at once.
It had felt like they'd been pulling their punches the whole time. Now they were throwing haymakers.
As soon as long range comms came up, I picked up the Legacy trying to hail me. I ordered them to get the hell out of the area and head back home to Nedos immediately. I hope they listened, I couldn't handle it if my crew died for this disaster.
My Guardian-based weapons are totally shot. Something about the Proteus Wave is actively damaging all Guardian-based tech in the system, instead of just disabling it. I'm lucky that my ship was mostly normal human tech aside from the weapons. Commanders whose ships were running guardian hybrid power systems weren't so lucky, I've heard.
A bunch of us went back into HIP 22460 to try to evac any survivors, but it's pointless now. The Thargoids have complete control of the system, and all that was left to recover in the wrecks and debris fields were recorded logs, black boxes, and salvage. The last words of people who died for somebody else's ruthless ambition. A few people have even claimed they've found a personal audio log from the old bastard himself, but I don't think I want to hear anything Caleb Wycherly has to say after what we've all just been through.
Survivors have been gathering at the megaships in the neighboring system, Pleiades Sector CW-U b3-2, after the evac order went out. The mood on the Musashi has been tense; the command staff is all Azimuth Biotech, but a lot of the rank and file ship engineering crew were former Aegis personnel who had opted to just stay with the ship when it changed hands. The Azimuth people are now running around in a panic, frantic to get any sort of word from on high about what to do next. Meanwhile, the crew is carrying on with a grim determination to keep the ship going while their superiors fall to pieces. I guess the ex-Aegis folks never bought into Salvation's savior rhetoric, and that's probably the only thing keeping the Musashi going right now.
I'm going to get about as far as the Firebrand's limited range will safely let me go without running out of fuel, and bring the Legacy back in to pick me up. I need to get out of here. I need eight hours of sleep and enough time to think about what to do next. The Thargoids aren't going to stay in that system, mark my words. Thanks to Azimuth, they're angry, they have a foothold, and they might've been given a new weapon against us.
This is going to get worse.
-//Log Entry End