Log #12 : Thargoids smashing up Aegis starports, can't catch a break
17 Dec 2017(Wettoast) Wanda Fersegi
Titan's Daughter rescue : Taygeta 
Rescue operations in the Pleiades nebula are starting to become overwhelming, there is no shortage of panic stricken civilians looking to get out of the now burning coffin that is the Aegis research station Titan's daughter. The docking bay is an absolute oven. The python's core would begin getting hotter the instant it was flown through the slot, a liberal amount of heatsinks keeping heat levels down. I've flown in and around an exploding hangar bay to pick up refuges for the better part of a day and I'm absolutely exhausted. Hours and hours of people cramming into passenger cabins not meant for more than 18 persons in some cases, my living quarters and bridge crowded as well ! I feel like I've had a small child cry in my ear for a period of a few millennia, bridge becoming so crowded that a small child did find a place to curl up behind my pilot's chair. I don't hate kids but... I'm getting there.... Load after load, crowd after crowd, I began to lose composure . Just when I thought the rush of people was over, frantic messages would hit the comms to go back for more.
The Oracle : PLEIADES SECTOR IR-W D1-55
Oh hell there's more!?! I'm slightly consoled in the knowledge that there are others out this way frantically cramming as many people aboard as they can, risking their skin against a potential return of the thargoid bugs that did this place in, but I'mclose to the end of my sanity here. I want to keep grabbing as many souls off of these burning wrecks until there are no more, but I'm just spent. All this being good natured is driving me to exhaustion. I'm scraping the pad on landings now, hopefully no one will mind if I drop the weight for a while.
Encounter with the Medusa class variant
Calling off my rescue efforts for the meantime, I headed back towards the core worlds. I made sure to take an abstract path back home out of paranoia that thargoids were following our vessels home . Taking this route of backtracking took me to a system with a small red dwarf star and an unknown signal origin near the system star. Once facing the source I had a shock over the readout of " NON-HUMAN SIGNAL SOURCE THREAT 7" , shaken by the possibility of a larger more violent thargoid. I will admit, I was thinking of ignoring the possibility of retrieving escape pods due to the new higher level threat. Holding my breath I aimed at the source and prepared for drop, All power to shields and engines. Dropping in on the source treated me to the ugliest and most violent looking thargoid I had seen.
Black petals with spots reminiscent of the leopard from earth in red, similar to the basilisk variant. However this one had additional growths sprawling from its petals, and tendrils that surrounded its "eye" or center. This one behaved similarly to the other variants of thargoid, scanning and forgetting about you. However the size of the contained swarm was larger at a size of 96, this thargoid seemed like the probable culprit variant that could take out an entire station. Racing for a pod caused it to turn around a deploy its swarm, I had no collector limpets ready to claim the pod without getting too close to the bug . I was scared shitless by the size of its drone swarm, I stayed put and felt helpless watching the monster take yet another human to god knows where.
I was able to retrieve a few poor souls, all in their 40's . They were all wearing an empire marked remloks , I have a friendly status with the empire so they shouldn't mind me showing my face saving their pilots on the way back home right? ...Right?
Macmillan terminal : Achenar
Wrong. Requested landing and proceeded to dock, getting ready to contact search and rescue services upon landing . I should have been tipped of by how the flight controller was treating me, long pauses probably indicative of conversing with someone else. Apparently the "FNS" before the ship's name got them more than just slightly bent . I had no clue that 3 Achenar empire league guards had already made their way to the ramp and were waiting for it to lower. I had lowered the ramp for myself getting ready to wheel the first pod down for search and rescue services, walking the trolley backwards to make the pod didn't end up slipping off and killing the survivor by accident. I heard someone running up the ramp behind me, I assumed it was medical staff coming for the escape pod and continued backing the poor bastard down the ramp.
The footsteps stopped, the guard screamed "freeze!" and I did the dumbest thing possible and whirled right around out of fear. His hand was crushing my wrist , a grip that seemed only possible by a high-g world born individual."Where do you think you're going....? ". With a stun gun pointed at my face he said in a clear, threatening semi-imperial accent, " You reach for that antiquated trash of a firearm and you won't walk again. Agreed ? " Being caught off guard and close to needing a change of pants, I tried mumbling yes but ended up nodding my head while shivering . Another guard ran up the ramp and un-holstered my firearm while cuffing me and calling in more security to search the ship. What was happening? Did I do something illegal ? Do they think I'm a pirate, federation defector,or a smuggler? I began to ask them why I was being detained, I wasn't a criminal, had no illegal cargo, and I was considered friendly to the empire while remaining allied with the federation. Eventually they got fed up with my questions and dropped me off at a detention center in a neighboring system, where I spent the next 1-2 days . Well, at least it was a fancy one I'll give them that.
Apparently I was thought to have kidnapped imperial citizens, the federation insignia on the side of the ship being enough to convince them. Questioned for 2 hours, I answered as honestly as I could hoping they would let me go home. I was released on the condition that I be banned from system for a year, I gladly took the deal . Thank you , f*** you, bye. That's what I get for saving people ... ugh. In the span of a few days, my ship gets ransacked by both fleeing passengers and police. Awsome...
Titan city : Sol
I changed the name and paint of the ship, if I ever pass through empire space again I'd rather vent myself rather than put up with that s*** again. I have a vague idea when I'll head back to the Pleiades to resume rescue operations, but I'm just too run down from that incident over the one imperial popsicle I flew back to civilization. Maybe instead of ferrying people off stations, I'll head off and look for escape pod survivors who won't get me intro trouble with the empire for some nebulous reason again. Maybe I'll switch out vessels too to be extra sure the incident doesn't happen twice!
Pleiades region
I had outfitted the diamondback for rescue after a well rewarded visit to Felicity Farseer, bumping up the jump range so I can get out of the Pleiades sector as fast as possible should a more violent variant of thargoid be spotted. They were up to their usual monstrous ways, in some cases I would drop into signal sources and have just enough time to save one pod while another was abducted.
This time I had made sure of utilizing limpets, as risk to self dramatically goes down and you could retrieve more pods in a shorter amount of time. However, sometimes the limpet would end up destroyed in a sort of tug of war between the thargoid and the limpet both trying to claim the human popcicle . This would happen too often, the thargoid seeming adamant about claiming the human within to do something with them.... The urgency of retrieving your fellow spacer feels more apparent once you see their abduction happening before your eyes or pleading for help from a burning space station.
Anyway, at the time of writing this I have a batch of 7 human popsicles that need thawing and I don't plan on stopping rescue efforts until tomorrow .
Wanda, out.