The End Approaches
28 Feb 2017Tristan Pacheco
I know I haven't written in a while. Things have been hectic. Hell, that's an understatement. Things have been apocalyptic. Long story short, we did end up encountering an alien craft. We were, however, unable to test combat ability of the craft. Despite the Federation's best efforts to defend my electronics by placing experimental buffers in my ship's programming, and jamming in small shield generators around my power plant, the alien craft still managed to disable all onboard systems for several seconds. It performed the same scan on my ship that it had on the first ship we saw in the video, then left. I was unable to activate my distress beacon and summon my squadmates until the thing was practically gone. I tried firing at it but beyond 2.5 km my experimental weaponry isn't very effective. The thing was just too damn fast. A long journey back to Sol, followed by tense weeks of consolidating reports and validating suspicions, did nothing to quell our fear. Of course, by this point, most of the galactic population had cooled. The media blackout was lifted and fortunately, the Pilot's Federation only let a few stories few on the aliens. Once more, our squadron was brought in for experimental refit, dumping our apparently ineffective shielded modules for some fancy new lead armor and ultra-reinforced military grade bulkheads. While the civilian population was soundly asleep, reassured that our momentary contact with the Thargoids (HICOM keeps telling us not to say Thargoids, but we're all pretty certain that's what they are at this point) was nothing more than that, temporary, we were restless. The bright side is that our relationship with the Empire is improving rapidly. Though very little information has made it into the public eye, diplomatic vessels from both sides have been flying back and forth between Achenar and Sol at figurative light-speed (obviously much faster, but you get the point).
Two days ago the 103rd Experimental Foray Squadron was sent on a top secret intelligence gathering mission in Imperial Space. Apparently the Navy had heard whispers of an idle Thargoid ship in orbit of some non-descript planet. Idle=harmless, right? Well, that's what all of us thought. The 50th FS was aboard Mars High with our CO patiently awaiting word from their mission. We received an update that they had arrived in system. We received a second update that they had found the planet in question. A third update confirmed that they had indeed found a strange signal emanating from the far side of the planet.
Investigating...
Then...nothing. No report. 6 Black Ops Federal Corvettes with experimental weaponry, disappeared without a trace, against one Thargoid warship. And now we were calling them warships. We sent an emergency clean-up squad to the location at fastest possible speed, but by the time they had arrived, the black boxes of every single vessel had been removed. Someone or something must have stolen them. Best case scenario: it was the warship. Worst case: some civilian is now in possession of top secret material that could throw civilized space into chaos. People can't know how far behind we are militarily. We have to get those ELT's back somehow.
Until next time, if there is a next time,
RADM Tristan Pacheco