Of Old Gods and Salvation's Doom
02 Aug 2022PhoenixBlue0
God knows what experiments Farrell was running, but... now there's three... three dead races on this moon.
We shouldn't... be here. Humans... don't belong. If Azimuth finds us...
Please... don't find us...
– Final Log of the Proteus, 26 Sep 3113
Trapezium Sector YU-X c1-2, Planet 1a
The Proteus is a tomb. Has been for nearly two centuries. It should have stayed that way, along with everything else on the otherwise nondescript planet in the Trapezium that served as a battleground for the Guardians and the Thargoids millions of years ago.
One of the xenoarchaeologists describes in Lt. Hugo Kelemen's logs describes "the ruined temples of forgotten gods," and listening to the description of arches and monoliths, I know they're referring to an abandoned Guardian site. Diagrams embedded in the logs match sites I've visited counterspinward of the core systems, about 700 light-years from Earth in the direction of Carina. The logs also mention "stranger things ... more like starfish than starships," and of course these I recognize as Thargoid interceptors.
The xenoarchaeologists also found a weapon: something horrible; a device that could, in a flash, burn away flesh and soul. Kelemen's logs describe it as "some kind of high-energy particle accelerator." One of the team members triggered the device – whether by accident or on purpose isn't clear, but regardless, the effect was the same. It killed everyone on the planet's surface. In all of my travels, I've never encountered anything matching its description.
Salvation had asked independent pilots to find the Proteus, claiming we would help him in his "great work – preventing humanity's extinction." We now know far more about Salvation's motives, and even his identity. He is Caleb Wycherly, a former Azimuth executive who has conducted inhuman experiments on unwilling test subjects, murdered thousands of Aegis crewmembers, and suckered the Alliance, Empire, and Federation into supporting his human supremacist plans to wipe out another sentient species.
And right now, he's building a device based on the Guardian technology that the Proteus crew uncovered, the technology that killed them. Worse yet, he's constructing his device atop a Thargoid surface site in HIP 22460, Planet 10b. I've visited several of these sites, including the very site that Salvation is now using for his weapon development, and while I can't begin to guess at their true purpose, I know that they are awe-inspiring, eerie, and beautiful, monuments of a species that I believe we should strive to understand, not destroy.
The old god Proteus could foretell the future. And while Salvation says his Proteus Wave will destroy the Thargoids, how poetic would it be if this device destroyed Salvation, instead?