Taranis is dead
02 Mar 2024CMDR CajunFox
Now that things at the titan site have calmed down and been cleared for the most part, I thought I would take a quick look at Taranis before the fusion core fully melts down. I thought I would drop in, maybe pick off a few of the ships as they try to defend the now damaged Titan hulk.My mind changed as I approached the massive Titan.
Normally entering into the Titan cloud meant having to fight a push back field, but with the titan dying, I was able to fly right in. As the clouds cleared, the titan came into view and honestly I wasn't ready for what I saw.
Normally this massive ship was bristling with life, turrets firing barrages of fire, ships exiting the maw and side ports to intercept us as well as the angry, booming sounds of Taranis itself as it calls and communicates with the ships around it.
But no more.
Instead I was greeted by a weak, almost sick sounding call. We don't understand them in any way, but if I had to guess, the sounds it made were of pain and fear, like it was screaming into the void. Scouts and even Glaives were evacuating the ship as fast as possible, I stayed cold to avoid them at first but soon realised they were more interested in fleeing. Orthuses were pulsing as they excited, trying to give the smaller ships a chance to escape. In that moment, I actually felt.. sadness. Here was this massive entity, comprising of both organic and inorganic parts, an entity that had traveled countless light years to get here, an entity that caused so much destruction and pain, now just drifting and screaming in feat and pain, seeing it's own death approaching as it's core melts down within it.
I couldn't bring myself to shoot at any of the vessels surrounding it, they left me alone so I left them be. At this point those were likely evacuation ships, crammed with Goids just trying to escape. Even the glaives, who have caused countless deaths from hyperdictions weren't engaging. Some would say that they wouldn't give us the same mercy and as someone who's flown evacuation missions I can attest this is true, Goids wouldn't hesitate for a moment to attempt to destroy my Python or T10 as I flee with war victims. However I'm not a Goid, we can't be like them, we have to be better than that.
As I drifted past this marvel of technology, this great beast, screaming for help with it's last breath, watching some crews desperately attempting to evacuate any remaining thargoid pods from the ship. All I could think of was how much death this war has cost and how much more is still to come. We didn't even hesitate to stop and try to evacuate the Human survivors as soon as we collectively armed ourselves with the Nanite Pylons. The constant attack runs made rescue almost impossible with the Torus field popping off ever 5 minutes or so. We were so hyper-focused on death that we killed hundreds of our own people to end this battle. I know that Diplomacy was out of the question.. but how hard did we really try?
Taranis was the first Titan to arrive, coming in response to the "Proteus wave" super weapon, though the wave didn't work, it showed the Thargoids what our true intention was, to wipe them from the Galaxy. More came soon after, causing mass destruction, abductions and death. But what was their purpose? Retaliation? Domination? or simply Survival?
Jameson himself, who was considered a hero for ending the first Thargoid war, was a pawn in a bigger game. He didn't know his mission was to infect a goid megaship with a genocidal virus that killed millions of them, maybe more. He thought he was keeping them at bay, keeping humanity safe and was murdered for the effort. In this, I feel some of his remorse, the difference being we knew damn well what we were doing, we don't have the veil of ignorance that he had covering his eyes from the truth. We are out to kill them and I fear we always will be until one of us is dead.
The galaxy's is a massive place. We have to this day only mapped .05% of all the stars out there, is there no place for us both to live?