Distant Thunder on a calm cool day
04 Nov 2016Tristan Pacheco
The Black Angels are now officially done with our lengthy debrief, and for some reason I decided we utilize this time to stay on Navy Central and watch their war games without first inquiring where they would be held. Naturally, they're holding said games in very high latitudes. The place we're in is a tundra. For those raised aboard space stations, tundras are basically nothing but grass and shrubs, but the ground is permanently frozen. The planet has very low gravity for an Earth-like world, at a mere .4 G's. That's a good thing, because much more than that and you wouldn't be able to move very far because there's a very low partial pressure of oxygen. About the same as my homeworld, but I've actually grown accustomed to Earth's atmosphere already, having spent quite a bit of time there this year. We're camped out in a bunker atop a hill, watching distant simulated ground combat. The largest aircraft involved are F-63's. Even more distant is the sound of live fire exercises. The vibration pervades this planet. Despite the calm weather, it always sounds like it's storming. The cold is bitter, and we've spent the last few hours complaining about it, somewhat jokingly. Just a few minutes ago we got word of the attack on Patreus' flagship. I asked if it was us and fortunately got a resounding "negative". The Children of Raxxla, a cult of immense idiots, are claiming responsibility. To clarify their stupidity, I'll use an analogy. What if two or three people wrote a short text several hundred years ago where a few sentences within said text alluded to the vague possibility that a common fruit was the key to eternal life, and then, in the present, a cult of people for some reason believed said text, and without any real evidence for believing so, they decided to militarize, killing in the name of said fruit. It's the worst kind of cult. The real history is a myth about some distant Earth like with a portal to another dimension and...well, it's dumb. Take my word for it. Anyway, we're gonna stay here for the weekend and maybe even participate in one of their survival training programs. We may indeed need it, one day. It'll be cold and miserable, but again, possibly necessary. Until next time,
RADM Tristan Pacheco