Personal Log, 14 October 3303
14 Oct 2017User78245
The other day I overheard something interesting at the Pilot's Lounge in Lave Station. A couple of drinks and some credits slipped under the table, and I was in possession of the location for the abandoned INRA base of Hollis Gateway in the Hermitage system.I took the Tanis Richards out for the journey there, she needed a shakedown anyway. Felicity had helped me with tuning the drives and calibrating the instruments earlier; I'm quite satisfied with the jump range but the smaller thrusters make the ship handle like a mining tug.
Hollis Gateway is on Hermitage 4 A, an icy moon orbiting a ringed class I gas giant. Finding the base was easy enough with the information I paid for. When I rolled in, I was hit with the overpowering stench of hypocrisy. INRA is widely lauded as flawed heroes, who helped humanity win the last war with the Thargoids by an action that could technically be considered a war crime in some circles. It's also an open secret that they're somehow complicit in the disappearance of Mic Turner, and no citizen of the Alliance forgives them for that. For my part, I consider Aegis just a reconfigured version of INRA crawling back from under its rock. I've accepted their dirty money twice already, I think I'd have to be desperate to do it again.
It's obvious the Mycoid Virus was either developed or at least stored here in the past. INRA's logo is all over the place, and the storage tanks carry warnings of "mycohazards". I hacked into a leftover transmitter and pulled some audio logs from the lead researcher at this base. Listening to such clinical callousness made my skin crawl.
I've put Hermitage behind me now, and aim to head for the California Nebula. I'd copied some of the intel on Thargoid points of interest before the ADF canceled my Pleiades contract, it made for some light bedtime reading. Without a doubt some of it is out of date, but there's some barnacles out there and in the Witch Head Nebula, and I'd like to satisfy my Thargoid curiosity on my own terms.