Miskatonic University Galactic Expedition 3304-3305 Day 1
17 Dec 2018LCU No Fool Like One
How Celaeno has changed since I first jumped into the system a year ago in search of fragments of the Great Library. Since then the system has gained a graceful coriolis starport nestling in the rings, its lofty statues and leafy gardens hold no joy for me now. The entire system is encircled by a grotesque armada of thargoids poised to tear everything down. As I walk through the green space and look up at the statues reaching aspirationally upwards I have a vision of a hot hellish nightmare, the starport shattered, the statues, no longer reaching for the stars but imploring for help, as the flames engulf them. Then I blink and normality is resumed. But what is normality these days?
I have been working feverishly to prepare for the trip, collecting the gelatinous thargoid sensors and probes that we will need to unlock the secrets of the surface sites. Then at the last minute I am called back to the sanitorium. My ailing daughter has had another episode. Her night wanderings have claimed more victims. The doctors want to performs some tests, more invasive tests and they need my consent. I visit her in the lab, she is confused and frightened. She holds onto me tight, pleading with me. "Daddy, don't let them tie me down." with tears in my eyes I tell her "I won't let them" as I gently but firmly press her to to the table and strap her arms down. I kiss her one last time and turn away as the technicians briskly attach all the devices and electrodes. Her screams are drowned out by the pounding in my head as I walk alone back to my ship where the thargoid devices wait for me, chittering things that neither alive nor dead, as am I.
I jump to HIP 17862 and am ambushed by a pirate. He tells me "I want what's in your hold" I laugh ruefully. "You really don't." I tell him. "You really don't".
Though I craved the oblivion of death something in me cracked and I fought like the possessed. Though my ship was armed for anti thargoid combat, his Vulture was no match. As his crippled ship disintegrated around him he begged for mercy, but devoid of compassion, like a machine, I kept my finger on the trigger until there was too little left to target.
I dropped to the surface of planet 11 E and began gathering data mechanically at the dead thargoids site ignoring the students working alongside me. This thargoid site is dead and everything may as well be.
Miskatonic University Galactic Expedition 3304-3305
