Titan's End
18 Dec 2024Jana Razeki
Log date - Dec. 18, 3310
They should really name the final resting place of Cocijo that. At least, once it becomes accessible. Because I'm sure we're going to plonk a tourist beacon down in the wreck "for future generations to remember". My experience with us here in this war makes me think it will be more of proning a great human victory than reminding them of what led to the war in the first place, what happened in it, and lessons to be learned from it. Pessimistic, maybe, but you can't say it's exactly wrong either. I don't know why, but humans really don't seem to like learning their lessons even when they get hit in the face with a brick like this. The number of people I see claiming our next move should be to hunt down the Thargoids in their home space instead of just putting down the guns and letting things be quiet... well, it says enough.
So, anyway. The Titan is gone, went up in the - very - early morning. Especially by my standards, I'd describe that as nothing short of a torturous time to be awake. And yet, there I was, abandoning my sleep in favor of rescuing captives before the inevitable, and to witness the whole thing when it ended. Why... I don't know. I guess I just wanted to see the end of, whatever this was.
Yet it doesn't really feel like the end. And I'm there again now, after passing out on docking with the rescue ship to get my last recovered set of captives returned (which is also why you're only getting this now, and not in the immediate hours after).
Looking at this thing, it's just... when the Titan went, I heard those, things. Noises, whatever you'd call them. Things picked up by the sensors, 'translated' into sound. And I'm no Titan expert, but I've been to enough of them going up in a miniature nova to tell you this wasn't 'ordinary'. There was something the Titan did when it was about to explode, which manifested in this really goddamn creepy sound I don't know how to describe. Something I, and I don't think anybody else, had heard at any of the others, before - the kind of sound that sends shivers down your spine and entire body. It lasted until the blast wave stopped spreading through the caustic cloud... and then, not long after, there was another... I don't know what it was. Strange pulses of audio, the first long, the second short, and then a third, different, ending pulse. Hell if I know what it means, but something happened there, in that moment.
Then it was quiet. No more battle, no more Thargoids, the death throes of the Titan silenced with its demise. Only its wreckage left, hidden behind a caustic death cloud. By all rights, this should have felt like a victory, and that message of the Pilot's Fed administration confirming it was destroyed definitely wants you to think that. But looking at the remains glowing like a faint, cooling star, all I can feel is...
Uncertainty.
We all know - or, should have realized - the Thargoids came to Sol with a purpose, not just to cause as much destruction as possible. There was no need for them to use the Titan for this in such a suicidal assault if there wasn't something to gain for them in it. And whatever they came for, I think they got it. I couldn't analyze a Thargoid transmission if this was one, but it sure as hell feels like the Titan sent back everything it gathered in nearly two weeks here in Sol, plus the one where the Thargoids were just searching the system with a scout force. And then there's that weird noise people have been discovering at the already dead Titans...
It should feel like there's an assured future ahead, but instead, it seems more uncertain than it ever has, and the 'victory' is just hollow. No matter how many celebratory statements are made about our "great achievements" or the "unity of humankind" in the face of the "Thargoid threat". Anybody who heard those sounds when the Titan went down, knows, or should. Something else is coming after this, and I think it will be sooner than any of us would like. They have all they need to act on us now, and I doubt they're just going to sit on it.
Hell. All I want is to just have a damn break from all of this madness. Yet here I am already fully aware we're not even close to done with this war. Two years, just to hold off and defeat an invasion force that wasn't even very committed, except for the very end. And everyone, or almost everyone, is celebrating as if we just defeated the worst which the Thargoids could throw at us... even though there are some old, fragmented records suggesting the first war had over two-hundred 'motherships' involved in it. Even if those were smaller than a Titan individually, that's still a hell of a lot worse than what we dealt with now.
... I think I'm just going to head back home with all my things and use what little respite I'll get to move my mind off all this, tend to my personal projects. It seems like the best thing to do in the meantime, but I'm not dumping all of that anti-Thargoid weaponry and gear just yet. I could just ignore it like so many other people, but that's really not how I work. Especially if it puts what I care about at threat, and it might be at least indirectly, if the Thargoids are not done with us as I suspect.
Another thing I can say right now I'll find annoying is that the Feds will probably lock off Sol with a permit again so people like me who don't have that normallly - and won't have it - are going to be prevented from salvaging the Titan. Of course, with those new super-super frame shift drives that got thrown out at everyone willing to satisfy the greed and bloodlust of corporations also out for general access without needing to commit violence, I'd have a selfish reason to get to it... but I'd also support any research project Aegis might be willing to run with this stuff. And I'd prefer to deal with avoiding a couple lost Thargoids roaming a dead Titan, than that idiot pirate scum roaming the freely accessible ones because they're too dumb or lazy to do the proper work themselves.
That dead, caustic star outside the window is really beginning to unnerve me. I think I'll just end this log here and be heading back. I really got born into one of the shittiest times possible.
[Record ends.]
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