Tension Before The Storm | Personal Log 11.23.3308
23 Nov 2022Mark Zero
-//Log Entry Start[Date: 11.23.3308]
[Location: Hurston Ring, Arnais]
I really need to be more on top of logging entries in this thing. A lot's happened, but at the same time, not much has happened.
I've mostly been keeping busy after the Battle of HIP 22460 and the split with Foxworks. Taking on whatever jobs I can find in the local systems, doing some Tritium mining to keep the Legacy maintained, and taking some personal time off. Been a while since I'd spent a significant amount of time out of a cockpit, and there's something to be said for taking time to just walk around for a few days without needing magnetic contact to keep me upright. Life's been mercifully boring, at least for me personally.
Same unfortunately can't be said for the state of the galaxy. After the Proteus Wave went off in HIP 22460, and subsequently blew up in all of our faces, there was a distinct "roar" heard across the system. All of us who managed to drag our damaged, half-functional ships into witchspace and get out of there could confirm it. We didn't have any clue what it meant, at least at first.
According to Galnet, at a recent conference about restoring Aegis, none other than Azimuth's former Subject D-2 crashed the talks with Dr. Tesreau. Seo Jin-ae, to use her actual name, apparently knew what the roar meant. Couple weeks later, Prof. Palin, Dr. Tesreau, and Ram Tah released a joint statement that the roar was Thargoid in origin, and roughly means "We see them, we are coming".
So who's "we"? Well, not long after the Proteus Wave incident, explorers out near Barnard's Loop started reporting getting yanked out of witchspace by hostile Thargoids, nowhere near any active incursions. Then reports started coming in of anomalous flares in deep space. And now, it's being reported that as many as eight "rogue signal sources" are converging towards the core systems.
Eight. Eight hyperspace anomalies that are probably Thargoid and big enough to appear like stars from a hundred or so light years away. Eight.
[expletive deleted]...
Sentiment around the bubble's been... mixed. The Empire's gone full isolationist. The Feds outlawed the Far God Cult. The Alliance has been split between reinstating Aegis and leaning into their deal with Sirius Corp. Talk of a "Grand Armada" has been dead in the water so far according to Galnet. Consipracy theorists like Kit Fowler have been ranting mad about the end of days. Independent systems out on the edge are getting anxious about wanting protection from Thargoid invasion. Most folk, I guess, are doing what I'm doing. Putting their heads down.
And then there's the Xeno Peace movement. Guess it makes sense that after the bulk of humanity threw its support behind a megalomaniac scientist who blew it and crippled the navies of all three superpowers, there'd be a rise in folk who just wanna "give peace a chance" with the Thargoids. I guess there's some up and coming hotshot politician in the Federal Congress who even ran on a platform of peace negotiations with the Thargoids and won, which says something. They're sending out a comms-focused megaship, the Kingfisher, to intercept the closest anomaly and attempt to communicate with it.
I don't know anything about how the Thargoids think. But I know this about our own nature as humans; if you punch me in the mouth as hard as you can, expecting to knock me out, and you don't knock me out, I ain't likely to listen if you then say "hey, how 'bout we calm down and talk this out?" I'm going to punch you right back. And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the Thargoids think the same way, seeing as even the Xeno-Peace people agree on one thing with folk who fight Thargoids...
They retaliate.
-//Log Entry End