Private log record
23 Mar 2024Kasumi Goto
Personal logDate created : 14.03.3310
Recording... writing this down, really, for myself. So I have something to go by if I lose my memories again... but in that case, I would... probably, just finally be dead. Originally thought of making this publicly readable, but after the genius move of killing the Titans in the second worst-possible way, I changed my mind. I don't owe it to this world or anyone in it to convince them I'm not controlled by a Thargoid. Not when it does nothing at all in return for me.
So, after I got done running around old, creepy Guardian ruins, which I saved those recordings of if I want them in the future, along with notes for each, I paid a friendly visit to Azimuth's latest try at relevance. Or getting to do something that wasn't... totally being useless. They got beaten, but apparently not enough to just kick them back out of the system. And... all I can still say is, flying a Fer-de-Lance in active combat with how I'm like now, is... interesting. If future me doesn't remember... maybe I'll leave it as a surprise.
When that was out of the way... I asked some people for guidance on where I should look around for a so-called 'Salomé', because I found out about that individual when I came across some mentions of a megaship called the 'Zurara'... somewhere way off, out there. And yet still close, in relative terms, with how big the galaxy is.
My logs - old logs - made little mention of it beyond the name. And I was not bothered to search too much, either, but apparently it is part of some weird conspiracy thing going on throughout human space. So I thought I would look into it... starting out in the Maia system, as it was one of the locations suggested.
Of course, it was (is) in the Pleiades nebula. Full of Thargoids, and I don't really want to see Thargoids right now. Or anything to do with them. But things are at least still quiet over there... oddly. And I got the same, usual 'hyperdicted and scanned, then left alone' treatment. So, nothing... really out of the ordinary. No funny noises from them at me either.
Think I went out there... two days after coming back to the Bubble. So on the 11th. I found nothing in Maia or surrounding space about that 'Salomé'. Did visit the black hole in-system, as close as you can get with that tourist beacon. And it was... trippy, seeing how the light got distorted so much by that absurd gravity. At least... I was not at risk of getting roasted by radiation. If I was that close to a neutron star... I would have been dead immediately.
In place of the conspiracy search, I got sidetracked very badly by listening posts leading to... various things. Sites of old Aegis, Azimuth and Black Flight bullshit... mostly just those two, it seemed. Think I will start with the latter.
One listening post led to... what was it... "Communication Hub Zeta 12" in the Electra system. Some locals working the place had picked up an odd transmission. Not human, apparently... not far to think it was Thargoid. Even if I didn't poke around further than the logs preserved at the installation. The technician, or whoever it was again, making those recordings mentioned people showing up after reporting the find. But they were just automating the place and apparently not really from whichever company operated the installation. Which the last log confirmed, speaking of "private military outfit". And I read enough history to know those Black Flight idiots operated there. Or, my brain wants to call them, "asses". Because they are. The final log says the technician had uploaded the signal or something to a beacon right outside the facility. And that they were taken to hangars with the promise of "letting them go home". I doubt they ever went home. Assholes.
I found an old, dead megaship too. "Survey Vessel Victoria's Song". It was some kind of scouting mission for mining spots... maybe. And the ship found a weird spot on a moon in... I think, Aries Dark Region DB-X d1-63. An anomaly, which the ship of course reported in. And the last log? Some idiot fuck pretending to be "system authority" was shooting out the bridge. More Black Flight idiocy, because it is exactly how they work. Fucks who pretend to be all lawful but actually really are not. Apparently... they also use Diamondback Explorers with a deep black paint a lot. Which makes the letter code of the system even seem like it was supposed to be a hint.
The megaship itself, I found it in HIP 17125. Maybe drifted there after those stupid nutjobs shot it down... I feel so much... hate, for them. Like it burns in my chest, their idiotic and ridiculous attempts at trying to hide Thargoids as much as possible so they could do their shitty, torturous research without anyone watching as long as possible. It makes me want to drop bombs on their places, and see how they like to suffocate or be burned alive by a star's radiation. Interestingly, a Thargoid Scout clearly affected by the mycoid is within that same location. I only looked at it from within my ship, though.
I came across an old shipwreck on a planet out there, too, in HIP 17746. A long-dead Diamondback Explorer... completely unsurprisingly. Bunch of idiots. Monitored for Thargoid presence, especially at, what I think is one of those old, crashed motherships, from the corrupted final log. That ship, "Recon 6" - or maybe the pilot was "Recon 6" - managed to make a Thargoid angry and got chased by it, then shot down. Deserved it, if you ask me. If there was anyone's grave I wouldn't have hesitated to smear disgusting stuff over, this would have been it. With the exception of the idiot Salvation's. But not one of those people deserves any kind of respect. All they've done is disgusting experiments and cause genocidal wars because they're idiotic xenophobes that should be left orbiting a black hole. In a degrading orbit and with no way off the station. Maybe then they can experience what it's like to get vented out of an airlock themselves.
Ignoring the legacy of total stupidity and nonsense Azimuth have left us with, I also did poke around those old Aegis sites. You know, of the original version of it. Apparently, I found some of those in the past already, looking at my gathered data. But most of them, it seems I hadn't been to, and it led me to find... quite a few things. Well, not... really, but still gave me material to think. Some of those places, they were military in nature and, maybe, got attacked because of that. Or because a patrol of numbskulls thought it was a good idea to pull the trigger on a Thargoid ship not yet showing any sign of hostility. Unsurprisingly, that didn't work so well for them, and in at least one case, lured the attacked ship right back to where that patrol had launched from.
Other sites... it is a lot less obvious. A prison facility which was attacked, or rather 'visited' and had its life support shut down, as if to drive the occupants out to be captured by Thargoids. Or an agricultural facility testing a "pesticide" based off of nanomachines, where it seemed like they were observing the site for a while before outright attacking... without it being entirely clear why. Maybe because of the mycoid, or it reminded them too closely of Guardian technology.
One that stood out in particular was a small settlement which is named "Betterton Outpost", in HIP 19792. Looked completely civilian in nature, no association to the military. And, of course, the total idiots which were the authorities to refer to... just left the local governor completely in the dark. Didn't tell him a thing about what was going on with the Thargoids, even though it was apparent... if communications weren't being blocked completely at least. Unsurprisingly, the place was attacked, while evacuation was ongoing. What was surprising about that, the governor... the logs refer to him as 'superintendent', not that I know what the word really means, took survivors into a ship and when they took off... they weren't attacked. Instead, it sounds as though the Thargoid ship, probably an Interceptor, just scanned theirs and went on about its thing.
Whatever happened afterward, I can't know. Maybe they returned to the Bubble, but the log makes it evident that this 'superintendent' didn't much care for whoever his employers were. Not after that point.
I also made my return to the Bubble not long after getting to that outpost, even though it seemed there was yet more left to be covered. But I'd lost the interest in the failures of the superpowers and old Aegis in this nebula which had ultimately led to eight big Thargoid ships parking at the edges of the Bubble(and all that resulted in is more death and violence to the most unnecessary degree), at that point. But as I was already searching, my attention went to two locations I'd obtained from a visit to a prior, old INRA facility. The one where Salvation's identity and "Witch" moniker had been unveiled.
Carmichael Point, in HIP 16824, and Taylor Keep, in 12 Trianguli. Visited the former first - really, not a whole lot to say. The Iraxon Lane logs mentioned a Thargoid mothership had attacked it, and... well, the logs from Carmichael Point - weird name, honestly - just added a little detail to that. An experiment with anti-xeno weaponry, making the outpost look like it was an important military facility. Maybe a little too important, considering that it had drawn one of those things... and it was basically right in the Bubble, too, not just at its edges. Makes me wonder how much worse that first war was, compared to what we have to deal with now ...
Taylor Keep - by all looks, it was a staging point for the deployment of mycoid. Or... at least, of the ship which was responsible for delivering it. "Commander Jameson", of course. A name that was spouted by many in ignorance, seeing him as a "great savior" because he ended the first war with the Thargoids. Not realizing he regretted what he did... and then INRA killed him for it. I know, because I have visited that old Cobra wreck in the past. Maybe after the stupid mess with the Proteus Wave, but I can't recall. And it annoys me to hear his name dropped in those Titan assaults when he would just hate seeing us do that. But apparently people prefer to remain ignorant. Or there is too much propaganda. I don't know.
I began to follow the rabbit hole and visited the Alnath system after that, from the log mentioning the system name. Another of those horribly bright B-type stars. 'Klatt Enterprises' was the local INRA site, and it painted an equally unfavorable picture of the nutjobs responsible for that stupid project. Just like the site where Salvation worked, this one ran mycoid experiments on living Thargoids and their ships. And I found a similar gross pit with those bits and pieces just laying in it.
Part of me wishes that crazy idiot who worked here was still alive. The logs have statements such as "Several of my colleagues have left the project in protest over our treatment of the creature. If it were up to me, I would have them executed as traitors." in them, but also open admissions of sadistic enjoyment of watching Thargoids die in pain to the mycoid, and "a moral obligation to use it". The only obligation that moron should've had was to get a bullet through the head. After letting some Thargoids pull away at his body, maybe. Self-defense does not excuse looking to inflict genocide on a species, or to exterminate it entirely. But apparently it was for these idiots. And to think, it was an entirely accidental discovery which had led to all this, as alleged by the starting log of the set I'd found there.
My next stop was Hollis Gateway in the Hermitage system, completely unremarkable save for being a named brown dwarf of Y or T class... can't quite remember which of the two it was. And I was surprised to find that it was not even completely related to mycoid. At least... not initially, it seemed. The outpost was just there to study the Thargoid technology and attempt to reverse-engineer it. It did not, however, surprise me to find those brown stains which seemed to be everywhere around these sites, mostly near what looks like mycoid storage tanks.
And, of course, this was where the whole thing had started going wrong. The INRA's leading idiots decided a research project of someone looking to "wipe out famine or something" was worthy to pursue... as a weapons project, not what it was meant to be, and despite the lead researcher's insistence it was pointless to look into further. If I had the opportunity to get a 'meeting' with those idiots now, I would be taking it. With no guarantees there would be anyone but me to leave the building later.
HIP 59382 also held an INRA facility, apparently - "Mayes Chemical Plant", it's called. Just as defunct and corroded by mycoid and solar radiation as the rest of them. Seems to just be a mycoid production site, nothing more... as insignificant as any location associated to this dumb madness can get. The first log is a site supervisor pointing out issues with the demanded production schedule and how it is not compatible with neither the site's specifications, nor the personnel working there. They also asked about the purpose of what they were making. And, big surprise, the second log basically says the first supervisor got replaced. Obviously, had too many questions and refused to just blindly follow unreasonable demands.
Even here, corporate "culture" had infested things. The third log was a complaint from management about a tainted batch. And guess how the new supervisor responded. I doubt it would be a surprise to hear that it was "Your deadlines are completely unrealistic and we had to take shortcuts"... even if no one but me is probably going to read this. Or maybe this will show up as my historical records at some point.
The final log of that particular site pointed me at HIP 7158, to a site called "Hogan Depot" on body A 2 D. As the name would suggest, it is a storage depot, lots of mycoid storage around. Or it was over a century ago, anyway. The logs of the local worker who recorded them indicate that they weren't really too inclined to "not ask questions" despite being told not to, thinking it was a pesticide. Or, at least, the log makes mentions of rumors that it was.
The worker wasn't just an average grunt who didn't care to think and just worked there for a living. Their second log remarks on the visit of an INRA leader and how it was made out as a "talk about investment", but they didn't buy into it. And probably also stayed quiet about it aside from their private logs because the facility was effectively run by them. Log 3 was what had told me they weren't stupid or deliberately ignorant, since it mentions a talk with one of the haulers, who were bringing some of the mycoid to a supposed 'med-research facility', and that this hauler had a suspicion it wasn't just isolated to one site, but scattered all over the Bubble. The worker's conclusion was that it couldn't be some kind of ordinary pesticide then, and... they were right. Unfortunately.
I did of course decide to follow the trail to that supposed med-research facility, in LP 389-95, body 7. "Velasquez Medical Research Center"... I didn't really believe that it was. And got quite a surprise when it actually did turn out to be. There are still those same brown mycoid stains which I don't know how to describe my feelings about, other than an aversion to it... and a lack of willingness to touch the stuff, even knowing Thargoids are supposedly immune to it. If it can leak out of a steel storage tank, I don't want to test if the suits we wear now are in any way corrosion-resistant. I don't think exposure to vacuum would be healthy for me even now.
On the note of immunity - apparently, that facility did research on a mycoid vaccine. Nothing says whether it was ever even used, only that the medical officer in charge of the facility refused to see it used for developing a biological weapon. Her inquiries were met with silence, beyond that they were working on a way to counter "an unnamed biological weapon". Which I, of course, know to be mycoid... but they weren't as aware of it. The officer did wonder if it was made to target humans after receiving materials on which to run tests.
The research was successful, too. Even if it wouldn't undo damage, it seemed this vaccine could stop any further carnage being wrought by the mycoid. I still got annoyed in that moment when I found out... that it'd all been moved to somewhere else for no apparent reason. The senior medical officer had attempted to inquire, but got nothing, other than "on a need-to-know basis". Even if mycoid was supposedly harmless to Thargoids now, I would have preferred to have some of this vaccine for myself, just in case. I don't want to find out that someone developed some kind of variant of it and wants to run a test with it on someone. And, comparatively, I'd be easier to get than a Thargoid.
The INRA trail was over there. Or, at least, I didn't bother looking any further. Which left me free to continue that Salomé business - starting in Prism. Her home system, supposedly. Nothing interesting there though, other than two tourist beacons talking of some kind of trial and condemnation which resulted in the stripping of the rank of Senator... or whatever. Boring, useless Imperial political business that was not at all helpful to my search.
I went on to investigate a system called 46 Eridani, but there was nothing in there, despite some kind of connection. No beacons, no hidden facilities... or at least nothing obvious enough that I could investigate there and then without any excessive hoop jumping. Which I probably wouldn't be very good at now... for very different reasons than being unfit. Or maybe I wouldn't fit through them.
Two other locations of note after that were Anumclaw and Teorge... nothing in the former either. But there was (and still is) something in the Teorge system. A whole bunch of listening posts... seven in total. Some kind of "Ragazza" logs. Seems like a person's pseudonym. But, after reading the contents which they provide, I'm really not sure I have the necessary information to fully understand what they try to tell anyone that comes across them. It seems like they are related to this Bubble-wide conspiracy, but I don't know exactly how.
Maybe I'm going to go over them again when I'm done looking into... whatever there is to with the Zurara. I found a little bit of info that suggests there are other sites related to it, found scattered in locations several thousand light years from the Bubble. And they've probably been found by now, so hopefully, I won't need to waste a lot of time trying to locate where they are.
[Editing paused - 10:00]
[Draft saved.]
[Editing resumed - 10:05]
I need to do that later. There are reports of the Taranis debris becoming accessible.
It's too soon. I didn't want for it to be yet... I don't know if I'm ready.
But I have to go there. I need to see it for myself. What we have caused. What we have done. Not someone else's pictures or impressions.
And yet, I already know I am going to hate it.
[Log saved.]