Day 1 - of many.
30 Nov 2022Serza
This is the war diary of CMDR Sarah Fisher.I'm committing some of these things to record. I simply want something to be left after me in case I don't make it.
30th November, 3308
I spent years drifting system to system, mostly hunting bounties and doing some dirty work for the Federation, but that really changed a few months ago.
The Anti-Xeno Initiative was always looking for recruits, and I saw the writing on the wall after Salvation's plan blew up. Sooner than most, but still later than many. I took the Raider - one of DeLacy's Krait Mk.II's - down to Asterope and rearmed it with Guardian hardpoints.
My drifter days were finally done. The AXI provided what others couldn't, a sense of belonging. A true home on the frontier, the edges of human space. With more Thargoids than you can count to boot, which suited my preferences as a combat pilot. Of course, the companionship of like-minded people never hurt, especially after being in such a short supply in the years prior. In retrospect, it's funny how few people understand the mentality of a true combat pilot.
Around the same time as me, this somewhat older guy joined. Commander Matthews. Fine pilot, great guy, and some sort of Pilot's Fed big wig. We'd always rib each other and compare successful hunts. When Taranis was finally given it's name, and I don't mean what Canonn called it before it came close, we'd try to drop in on the beast out of supercruise. Matthews, I and a couple other pilots with more bravado than brains. Of course we never succeeded, but we made those attempts down by the Pleiades.
That was weeks ago. Weeks that feel like years. Taranis has arrived, and we're now done with the first day of an all-out interstellar conflict. The first hit was hard and heavy. They came out of nowhere and targeted civilian infrastructure and starports. Personally, I spent some time fighting on the flank before orders came down to help evacuations. Knight Enterprise, in one of the HIPs. 25679, I think. By the time I got there, the station was burning and barely holding together, Thargoids all over the structure. I was one of the last evac ships off that station, and maybe the last one. A few hundred people made it, but we still left too damn many on that burning wreck. There's no way off for those people.
And we had losses, too. Matthews? Missing in Action. No one knows where his ship went. It reminds me of the story of CMDR Jameson about two centuries ago. No one really knows what happened to him, either, and there is no signs of a body on that site. I saw it. That's when I started carrying my pistol in the cockpit. I'm not going to suffocate on a barren rock in the middle of nowhere like that. I hope my buddy didn't have to, either.
I'm sitting on the concourse of one of the rescue ships accepting refugees. Tomorrow is another day full of death, despair and Thargoids.
Glory to Mankind...