The Titan Dilemma
07 Mar 2024Jana Razeki
Public log entryMarch 7, 3310
Audio playback available
Yeah, it’s me again. Jana. That weird, stubborn idiot who knows when to quit as little as Salvation, and I’m probably still alive because of that. Mostly. And not insane in the actual clinical definition.
So, Taranis is gone. Probably. Hopefully?
Even if it isn’t completely dead because Thargoid ships are tougher than they have any right to be and I wouldn’t be surprised if one of those big things could survive the biggest nuke anyone’s ever seen… if you don’t count stars in there, that is… I had nothing to do with it anyway. Also nearly a week late for it, but well...
I haven’t really done anything for… at least the last week. Both to give my brain a break from the mind-dulling fighting, and to see how this whole Titan madness would turn out. And, well… I guess it’s safe to say it works. But I’m not going to be using it.
“But why? Don’t you want Titan Oya out of your home?”
Maybe. I’m not sure I want it sitting there in the backyard as a half-functional thing that was literally roasted and then nuked alive, yet still capable of sending out Thargoids occasionally, when it comes back to life every now and then - worst outcome for it, and for us. I’d rather it left while it’s still in one piece and returned to wherever it came from. This war’s seen enough death and destruction on both sides.
Yeah, I don’t know if Titans can survive that kind of giant boom, and I honestly don’t expect them to, but at the same time - I wouldn’t be surprised. Taranis’ status panel in the galaxy map says there’s a debris field left, however scanners managed to determine that through the caustic hellscape around it, and the miniature star it became for a few seconds. Seems like it’s still hot enough to glow bright orange or yellow, maybe even white right at the center. Could be the slagged remains of its core.
Either way - no point in trying to go in there yet. You’d either get your ship melted around you really thoroughly, or burnt to a crisp by the residual heat of the blast. Neither are particularly pleasant ways to go. Sure not how I want to be going out, even if I won’t be one to charge into the belly of the alien mothership, with a nuke or something strapped to the underside of my ship, like in some of those really old movies.
So, anyway. Why did I call this ‘The Titan Dilemma’?
Not too difficult, from… my perspective, at least. Although it’s not really simple either. See, like I (probably) said in one of my previous logs, I was a bit hesitant, because it had a good chance of just making the Thargoids really cranky. With their aversion to Guardian tech and all, while they’re probably still pissed because of the Proteus Wave. Not that I blame them for that, really.
The proof that they work - for now - is there, and maybe it’d be right to “seize that opportunity”, but I’m not convinced this is the kind of weapon I’d like to be using.
Yeah, it only targets the Titans, so it’s not something super destructive like that shitty mycoid thing – did I ever mention I visited the Jameson wreck and the nearby base where they experimented on and tortured a living Thargoid? some really fucked up stuff – or the Proteus Wave. Which was an even bigger, shittier idiocy.
Anyway, the nanite torpedo. Clogs up a Titan’s heat venting mechanism really good, but not much else beyond that. Hopefully. Would rather not deal with those Guardian nanites completely messing up my own ship’s vents, or someone else’s. Initially, I was a little concerned about it cooking the Titan and everyone alive on there, including the human captives. Of course, I should’ve imagined they have an emergency mechanism in place for that, instead of the ship getting cooked if a simple malfunction occurred.
Or maybe I expected it to take a different form than what people have started calling the ‘corn cob’. Or ‘glowing corn cob’, and that parts of the outer shell would open up a little to reveal weaker internal armor that mostly just acts as vacuum protection but can radiate heat more effectively.
Guess the end result is the same. Shoot the corn cob, otherwise known as a thermal core, often enough, and stuff starts to break on the Titan. “Hearts”, but just the size of I don’t even know, ten, twenty Interceptors placed next to each other? Now I’m imagining a space the volume of that mechanism squeezed full of Cyclops and the other types. Or fill it with Hydras. Keeping those out of the fight would be quite nice. I still see most people run from them unless they have the luxury of fighting them without a swarm around… in, rather, planetary port conflicts.
When all hearts break, apparently that screws up a Titan’s self-regulation mechanisms to the point where they send its fusion core into a… I guess it’s not really a meltdown when it explodes like that. Or so I’ve seen said, but I’m not really a science person. But the whole thing keeps getting hotter and hotter until the reaction gets out of control completely, and just rips itself apart in the biggest fucking explosion you’re probably gonna see in your life. Only saw it in newsfeeds myself. Figure it went up on everything worth caring about slightly, and then some.
That’s… kind of also where my problem starts. See, there’s those people or articles saying the Thargoid ships are kinda alive, in some way, and I can’t say I’m one of those crazy bloodlusting maniacs who need to get their fix of killing Thargoids every day, or it seems like they can’t talk about anything else. Some of them literally have it in their eyes, too. Creeps. Learned to stay away from their type pretty fast.
So, yeah, I naturally don’t like to kill stuff, especially when it’s Thargoids we kinda provoked into finally slapping us in the face a few times. And then we had the audacity to bitch at them when their patience finally wore out, which made them send the Titans. But I’m getting sidetracked again.
I watched some of that footage of Taranis in its ‘meltdown’ stage and, honestly? I’m not about to inflict that kind of death on a living thing, not after it’s had to suffer through days or weeks of pain prior to that point already. Damn thing sounded like it was in agony while literally cooking from the inside, and that… that’s just… say what you will about me, but it’s disgusting. Its death... whatever, sound, wasn't something I much enjoyed either.
So, yeah. There’s my talk on why I won’t directly be attacking a Titan. Maybe I’m just not good enough of a fighter to ignore that and “fight the enemy” regardless of my feelings about it, but I guess there’s a good reason I never bothered signing up for any military. Don’t need to be told to do something fucked up and then be slammed into a cell because I “refused to obey an order”, even if that order was completely idiotic and would’ve gotten people killed without a good reason.
Probably why the Imperials hated me so much. And I hated them that much… or even more. I used my brain to think instead of just ‘accepting’ their “obviously superior culture” to everyone else, even though it’s actually just cultural regression. Much like the Feds and their hyper-corporate culture for idiots where if you’re just unlucky, you get dumped on the streets for no fault of your own. And the idiots who support that bullshit spit at your feet and tell you it’s your fault, instead of seeing something wrong with profit-whoring corporations ruling society. Or basically doing so, at least.
But, I digress. Won’t attack a Titan… can’t attack it. I already get enough shit in my head by hearing those awful death wails of an Interceptor. Why do those damn things have to make those noises? I shouldn’t have to feel shitty about defending… well, at least the space around my home. But it’s like those stupid Thargoids want to make you feel shitty about having to kill them even when you do it ‘legitimately’, under the right circumstances… with a good reason, whatever. You get it. I can limitedly tolerate those Interceptors, for some time, then take a break from the fighting like I am right now so I keep whatever shreds of sanity I’ve got left. Or at least try to.
Leigong is currently under the hammer. Seems like it’s not going down as easily as Taranis, but people are working on that as well, it looks like. Something to do with Thargoids recovering resources from systems which they hold and bringing them back to the Titan, but I’m not involved in any kind of planning enough to need to know or care about the details that much.
Oya looks like it’s the next target after this Titan, so maybe I’ll be back in a good enough spot to help with that – even if I don’t attack the Titan itself, the systems around it still need looking at. I’ll mostly be fighting the invasions but I guess I could go and play support pilot for those fighting in the controlled ones as well, so I can support it in that way. I’ll be missing out on some kind of fancy decal awarded to pilots who contribute to a Titan’s destruction, but I don’t really care. I’m no Jameson, and definitely am not interested in getting showered with medals or anything like that for doing a good job of killing our space neighbors. He also never returned from delivering the mycoid, and hated what he did at that. Don’t need that in my life.
I’d really just like this war to be over, so we don’t have to keep killing each other. But I don’t think the Thargoids are just gonna sit around and wait for their fleet ships to be dealt with. Or fleet carrying ships, whichever. And I’m not sure I’m too convinced this’ll help us figure out why the Thargoids came here to begin with. Other than being pissed off at the Proteus Wave. Another reason why I might want to be ready to do whatever around Oya’s invasion front. Probably going to be another week or two until then, at least, though.
Wonder what Kira… Kasumi, makes of all this. I get the feeling she’s probably pretty pissed at it, but I haven’t dared to ask. Also makes me think what that Seo, the Azimuth experiment victim, is getting through her own link. I’d be… really surprised to hear if the Thargoids just… didn’t care. Even if they see the Titans as expendable for whatever their goal is, they’ve got to be thinking about doing something to avoid getting them all blown up. I doubt those things are easy to replace. Or repair when their fusion reactor turns into a sun for a few seconds. Guess we’ll have to wait and find out…
Speaking of Kasumi, she asked me to recover some Thargoid stuff for her. A probe, tissue samples from a Cyclops, Basilisk and Medusa… no idea what for, since she hasn’t said, but I doubt it’s to roll in them, or breathe ammonia fumes. Guess she doesn’t want to screw with their stuff, so I ‘borrowed’ it from the invasion fleet. No harm done here, if you ask me. And the Orthrus from which I snagged the probe before it arrived looked quite confused, until it left again a few seconds later. Turns out, she also has a fleet carrier, and called it 'Kasumi's Abode'. Name fits how I think of her, that's for sure.
I think she might use that Thargoid stuff for something to do with Guardian… whatever it is again. I vaguely have it in my memory that she mentioned wanting to look into it in a public log, not that long ago. And I heard those weird Guardian machines ask for those objects, for one reason or another. Maybe because they’re used in some way to access data relevant to the Guardian-Thargoid war.
Now if only we had access to their understanding of the Thargoid language. Maybe that would convince more people - Aegis included - to keep digging for what the Titans are here for. Doubt they’d go through this effort and send eight of those motherships just for some annoying humans which can’t do anything to those things without resorting to cheap, dirty tricks.
Then again, I guess you don’t win wars by ‘fighting fair’.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. Or that my brain is willing to cooperate on remembering, right now. Still need to ask about that Fer-de-Lance I wanted to set up for Thargoid fighting. Assuming that they found a way to make the person that I wanted ask it about not die, by now. And maybe I'd have some other questions for her, too.
[End of log]