Death of a Titan
10 Mar 2024Kasumi Goto
OOC - this entry picks up right after the previous one, so you can consider that the date. I was originally going to place them together in a single one, but... it was just too long, even though I really wanted them to come out together, as I thought they fit together thematically. So, this is how it is now.
"This whole war has just been a mad slaughterhouse. But after seeing what happens to a Titan, it has gotten a hundred times worse, despite me thinking we were better than this now. I hope you're proud of yourself for what you've done, Aegis - because I'm not."
"I don't care how quickly you need to 'secure the ship', I want to get it moving now! And make sure you have that ship ready once we've jumped."
The carrier's first officer decided it better to not argue back with me and left. I was already frustrated enough that I was stuck here, waiting for the stupid thing to jump, forced to just wait without being able to do anything, while I was very clearly aware of something being wrong with the Titan. And I had to be there, now, not in a few hours, not tomorrow. This pointless delay because of "cargo operations" when nothing at all was being moved in or out of the carrier, or needed to be, just made me feel pissed off.
I got my fifteen minute preparation window. That was as good as it was going to get, and still faster than manually jumping with a ship entirely dedicated to Titan exploration.
It still wasn't quick enough, for me, pacing up and down in the captain's quarters on the bridge. I already had a terrible gut feeling, which was just getting worse and worse every second. The 'noise' around Taranis, weaker but still "there", around three to four-hundred light years away, had shifted completely, away from an... aggressive, 'defensive' song to...
Evacuating. They were evacuating the Titan. But I could still feel it, too, and that... that just couldn't mean anything good.
'Why can't this damn thing jump any faster?', I let out in my thoughts, but it did not help my frustration at all. It only made it worse. To the point where it made my vital sign monitor flash up an alert.
"Kira, you are stressing yourself too much.", EDI said, clearly able to see that. "Please, calm down before your implant reacts negatively to it and makes you pass out. It has happened before."
"How am I supposed to calm down in this? Those... those fucking idiots are destroying a Titan, I'm just sitting or walking around here, I can't do anything... rraah!" I held my hands upward and clawed together for a short moment before making an 'exploding' gesture outward with them, after giving off that badly annoyed sound. I was feeling ready to bash my right hand into something, even if I made a dent into a wall.
"I understand, but you cannot do anything from here, as you said. And it will at this point be faster for you to wait until the jump completes to reach Taranis."
"I - " A grumbling, annoyed and resigned sigh escaped my lips. "Fine."
I moved over to one of the - custom-size - seats, and wanted to drop myself in it. Only to remain floating completely when I relaxed my muscles and tried to move them to the right position.
"Stupid ..."
I grabbed both arm rests and forcefully inserted myself into it, mag lock from the suit keeping me on it despite my body really wanting to bounce back upward. And I had a look at the galaxy map from there, that position. The Titan status readout clearly said "Titan in distress. Awaiting information". As if that was something good to want.
I still felt completely restless, and couldn't stay seated, doing... nothing that had a purpose. The Titan's state and my own feelings were driving me to be rather erratic, unable to keep my thoughts from forming and flowing coherently, except for one, singular focus. Going to Taranis, or whatever name the Thargoids had for it, if they did. Most likely.
The imminent jump alert pulled me out of this, but I still didn't feel bothered to leave this cabin. Instead, I turned one of the seats to face the window and watched the jump from there, the 'sensations' I received from the hivemind already just becoming clearer. And none of it was good.
I wasted no time getting up once the carrier was at a standstill, practically shooting out of the chair. Without mag boots... I'd probably have hit the ceiling at an uncomfortable speed. But I didn't, and walked out of the room at a quick pace. Storming out was not quite an adequate description - that speed was difficult to manage.
The crew stayed out of my way, knowing not to be in it when I was in a mood, especially this one. They were also only starting to get used to my new appearance, and the looks I got were divided half between the lower and upper halves, and then for the upper half divided between chest and face. The additional mass I carried made it even more interesting for anyone to not be in my way if they didn't want to end up knocked over. And given that I still bumped into people occasionally while learning to be around places with more than just a few people... that was another additional reason.
They'd managed to get the Krait MKII with the Titan equipment pulled out of its storage unit just before the jump, and it was now waiting in the hangar for me. I was tempted to slip through the elevator doors before they were fully open, but I knew I couldn't, so I had to exert patience for another two seconds. And again when the elevator arrived.
EDI said nothing when I entered the ship, observing me before that already. I didn't waste any time on detours to the cockpit. Still had my pistol with me for self-defense reasons, attaching it to the side of the pilot's seat, then I took off, already wanting those stupid hangar doors to be open and let me out. I manually overrode the protocols and just took off from the pad before its elevator began to lift it to the top deck. Because I really didn't need to and didn't want to wait for that when it was just going straight upward.
I was not hyperdicted on the way into the system, nor interdicted going to the Titan itself. And immediately after the drop, even if I hadn't felt it through the hivemind, I could already tell something was just off. The sounds... it was in pain.
I headed into the caustic cloud. It was still intact, as were the caustic generators, but almost meaningless when caustic sinks were freely available to purchase now. As was the pulse neutralizer. But no repulsion wave came my way when I reached the point where I would have expected it to trigger, as the bright red cloud at the center came into view. As if I needed more reasons for the knots inside my body to further intensify.
Then the Titan came into view. Green explosions frequently occurring across various, random points of its hull, knocking loose pieces of it, yet it still was... there. Remaining intact, for the moment. And the exit points scattered across the midsection of the Thargoid ship were near-constantly active.
I moved closer, a grim feeling and expression within and on me. Vision highly focused on the core. It was badly damaged, darkened, sparking, unable to vent off heat any further. Slowly causing the internal heat level to rise to completely devastating levels.
The Thargoids around Taranis were frenzied - amidst the chaos of dozens of them streaming out of the Titan every few seconds, a large swarm consisting of various ships attacked anything human that it spotted, or dared to attack it. And a Cyclops started firing at me, seemingly not caring or just not realizing what it was firing at.
I easily lost it once I headed around to the back of the Titan. Even its large maw was active almost the entire time - desperate last acts, to... get as many Thargoids, or ships, out of the Titan as possible before the inevitable occurred.
And it was inevitable at this point. Even... even the ship itself seemed to know. It was dying. Yet, despite that and the way keeping its exit points open at almost all time would just worsen the extreme heat buildup on the inside... it kept doing it, ensuring as many Thargoids as could would get off it.
And the humans were still not done being idiots around it. I returned to the front of the Titan, sitting a dozen kilometers away, roughly, right by the inner edge of the asteroid field. I could still see them buzzing around the already dying Titan, picking fights with the extremely aggressive swarm - usually ending in quick demise of the human ship, within seconds - or still firing at the defunct thermal core, unable to fulfil its function without the self-repair mechanism of the hearts still active to keep it working through the pounding. Those were all destroyed too, thanks to our own idiocy. And it upset me, to see that they just couldn't stop, even when they had already done too much. As if the "kill" had only furthered their bloodlust.
"Haven't you done enough yet? It is already dying. You don't need to keep humiliating it."
That callout over open comms, filled with spite at the self-professed "bug hunters" and "Thargoid exterminators", was met with the expected nonsense, ranging from "Death to the bugs" to "Glory to mankind" and whatever other slogans were spouted out by those brainless people, who only understood propaganda or how to pull the trigger in the direction of something not human in appearance. One of them called me a bug hugger, even.
"I'd rather be a bug hugger than responsible for that." I held an arm stretched out at the Titan, looking directly at it, despite the gesture being unnecessary and invisible to other pilots.
Detonations across and within its hull still frequently shook it. There was one person questioning if I was rescuing humans from the doomed Thargoid mothership, to which I replied no. I saw the storage chambers still get picked up by the pulse scanner on my first pass around the 'back' of the Titan. Butwas there to observe our own mistakes not getting respected and learned from, instead used as a justification for further death and destruction. Things that we were entirely willing to sacrifice these human lives for, just to "end the war" faster. And forgo all other considerations, including figuring out what it was that the Thargoids actually wanted.
I turned off comms entirely. I no longer wanted to hear this stupidity being spouted about how this was "humanity's finest hour" and "greatest victory". This was not a "victory", it was a complete failure to learn any of our past lessons, or most definitely the result of this lack of learning, and torturing a living being with a horribly dirty weapon. Suddenly, I felt pain jolt through my head from the implant, and... I was pulled into a vision. Inside the asteroid belt, facing the side of the Titan at a flat angle, all of it in view. As if viewed through the perspective of a Thargoid ship located there.
Suddenly, there was an outcry I couldn't describe from Taranis, as its last heart failed, and numerous explosions occurred across its surface, marking the onset of its destruction. Then I was back in 'reality', with a hand held to my head, and a shiver running down my spine. Shaking off the confusion, I looked directly at the Titan again, all of its hearts now clearly visible to me, them and the entire superstructure persistently lit up in bright red, flickering, all eight of them surrounding the core of the ship. This wasn't just bad, it was outright disgusting.
"EDI. Recording. Internal and external."
I remained brief in my 'order' because I was not in the right mindset to open my mouth, and went into external camera mode first. Capturing the top down view of the Titan first, moving closer to the core, letting sounds and sights do the talking for me. The awful, pained 'screams' of the Titan, the explosions across its hull, the way its emergency venting core sparked, which the system 'picked up' on from a few kilometers away...
I returned the camera drone to its position on the ship and moved closer, after checking a few sensors contacts and setting up a heatsink synth. Toggling silent running on, I flew over the superstructure, toward the core, stopping... less than two-hundred meters short of it, letting it be the center of the view, the way it smoked, steamed and sparked, pieces of it flying off. The approach looking slow because of the sheer size of the Titan, while the radar was full of several dozen Thargoid ships, making it almost impossible to see anything else on it.
A Glaive made itself a pest and interrupted me in my recording by hitting the ship with lightning, but I ignored it, though turned toward the closest spot of the Titan toward its underside, losing the Glaive in the process. I flew directly over the active maw, from which a number of Scouts emerged, pointing into it myself. As if I needed further proof that this was long past 'normal operation'. Then I stopped near one of the heat vents. It glowed and flickered in the same 'emergency red' lighting, looking cracked, emitting steam and charred particles - and I realized, they were directly connected to the hearts, which were now all dead. Charred particles, coming from within the Titan. It was literally burning up from the inside, because with the vents in this destroyed, or barely functional state, there was nowhere left for the heat to go. They didn't even emit enough of it to make the ship heat up outside its normal rates, and the sound interpretation system made it sound like something within the vent was burning up.
I began to fly away and spotted four Scouts heading away directly, following them. They were on their way out, and paid no attention to me whatsoever, or didn't see me as a threat worth paying attention to. After passing their rifts, I began to slow down again, turning toward a contact directly to my right, and very close. A Glaive, but it was not attacking, and heading directly back toward the Titan, the side of which I was now facing. Fully intact, too, as opposed to the one which had already attacked me. As if on cue, I noticed another staring directly and heading toward me, only for it to turn back around. I kept the first Glaive targeted, it turning back around and coming in my direction again.
I couldn't make out the intent, not in... this. With the Titan's overwhelming presence, yet at the same time muted, in pain, only just holding on, and the general aggressive 'song' of the Thargoids here. Just like the spires, this was not a place for humans to be. So I began to reverse away, and the Glaive turned back a second time. There were three of them in that area which I had just passed, along with a Cyclops. Not all of the ships roaming were intact, whether as a result of the mess within the Titan, or obliterating any humans within the area.
I stopped the ship again, and threw out the external camera another time. This time, catching the 'side view' of the Titan, with a slight angle from the top. I left it there, zoomed in on the Titan from my position right in the middle of the asteroids, for longer, only realizing that the ship was overheating when it was getting to around a hundred and twenty. I then flew back to the top, near my previous position, and let the recorder run for a little longer. I needed this not for disaster tourism, but because I was not happy. Not happy at all.
I'd trusted Aegis to be responsible about the way they'd handled the war, unlike Azimuth, until now. But this, this was a step too far, "need" to prevent further human casualties or not. This was just torturing the Titan, sentencing it to overheating and burning up alive, from the inside, instead of just killing it already right after the last heart's destruction. It was almost no better than the mycoid or the Proteus Wave to me, like this.
This was the kind of destruction and death I expected the morons who had caused this war in the first place to create, not the person who expressly exclaimed a desire to establish communication with the Thargoids, and was behind the organization which sought to differentiate itself from Azimuth by doing things the right way, not through any means or sacrifice necessary.
And I'd let her hear about it. But not today. I stayed for a while longer until I could no longer tolerate the Titan's agony, and left, jumping back to my carrier. At which I received a message telling me about the Titan entering its "meltdown" phase, how this was "our finest hour" and to "witness history". I deleted it immediately. The only thing this was, was madness. A war gone too far, on both sides, and the only history it would be making was the bad kind.
This was not solving a problem. It was hammering out a dent with brute force and hoping nothing worse came of it. And I could not see anything remotely good originating from any of this.
----------
March 2, 3310
Hyades Sector FB-N b7-6
Ten minutes until core detonation
"Kira, please go to a minimum safe distance."
I ignored EDI, and kept my gaze laser-focused on the Titan. Taranis was about to end. Whether itself or because its fusion core was about to pass a complete point of no return and turn into a miniature sun, I couldn't tell. At all. The Pilot's Federation had sent a message out several hours ago encouraging anyone available to rescue anyone they still could before the Titan ripped itself apart. I would have felt relieved about it, if it couldn't have been sent the last day, when it became obvious what was going to happen, and I'd deleted it immediately after reading.
A timer appeared on the top right info panel, stating "Catastrophic failure expected in: 10:00". And it began to tick down. I'd been observing for the last hour, or hour and a half now, the explosions getting ever more frequent in that time since my most recent arrival at Taranis. A message titled "Titan Taranis Status Critical" arrived as well, encouraging people to come by and play war tourist. Humans were such terrible idiots, like this was a show to be put on.
I didn't want to be here, at all. But I had to be. Something was driving me to witness this, even though hearing the Titan's cries of pain was causing me equal amounts of mental pain, not to speak of what I felt coming through the connection I held to the Thargoids. And ships were still leaving it as quickly as was possible, despite the fact that the Titan was about to die.
As if I needed a reminder why I struggled to want to hold an allegiance to humankind, even though it was the species I had been born into. This kind of violence seemed like all they were capable of, always just fighting against everything they could find, including themselves, over a piece of rock that would have been considered absolutely worthless by even the Thargoids, certainly to live on. And yet they placed tourism sites, of all the forsaken things, on them. And whatever remained of Taranis would likely be turned into a damned tourist spot to show "how great we were". Not a reminder of the war and terrible decisions, as well as complete ignorance, that had led to it. To avoid having to hear the incessant chattering of the anti-xeno crowd, I'd shut off comms entirely.
The timer reached five minutes.
"Kira, I am detecting a large heat increase in the Titan's fusion core. Please, you will not survive a detonation of that magnitude this close to it."
I knew the AI had a point, but I couldn't just leave.
"No. I am staying."
If I was going to die here, I wouldn't care in the slightest, or barely at all. It would spare me having to witness this idiotic nonsense another seven times.
"If you insist on watching the Titan's death from up close, you should deploy a probe and remotely connect to its external camera. But you will die if you stay here."
It didn't understand. "I need to be here, in person. There is no other way. I will not accept any other way."
EDI seemed to give up, at my irrational stubbornness, but didn't take over the ship's controls either. Four minutes left. A sensor readout displayed as a hologram showed the continually rising internal heat level of Titan and fusion core, making me surprised anything was still alive in there. And there were still human captives onboard.
There was a building sense of tension... everywhere. Idiots had still been picking fights with the evacuating Thargoids for this last hour, largely to no success other than their quick destruction at the hands of a dozen Thargoid ships, usually at least a few Glaives among them. And it made me begin to feel nervous.
Three minutes left.
This still felt wrong, somehow. I couldn't understand why Aegis had rushed to get these torpedoes out of the door and into pilot's hands, as if there as an extremely urgent and imminent need to destroy the Titans, like they were actively marching through the Bubble and laying total waste to any human structures, forcing us further and further inward, instead of... arriving and focusing on holding territory for an unknown purpose, beyond retaliation for the Proteus Wave. Either it was because of something related to Nemesis, which Seo had actually told them about, but the public couldn't know to avoid panic, or the situation at the front was getting falsely portrayed as being desperate and urgent, to where everything except anti-Titan weapon research needed to be paused and put into these disgusting torpedoes, which on top of that, used unknown nanomachinery.
Two minutes left.
My right hand hovered over the 'record' button. The grotesque, green flowers on the Titan continued to increase in number every second, it felt like.
One minute and thirty.
I started a recording. And began to think of how the Titan was acting erratically, according to the earlier message. The extreme heat built up inside it on top of the fusion reactor overloading itself... had to be driving it crazy, causing it unthinkable pain. If what I felt from it was even just a fraction of the actual sensation, I didn't even want to imagine. I pulled off my glove, for just a moment, the glyph on the back of my hand glowing red. Showing just how much I disapproved of and hated this.
One minute until detonation.
Radar looked empty. Most Thargoids had completely abandoned the Titan's surroundings, but its exit points were still lighting up, and a few continued to roam. I'd moved my ship clear of the thermal core - if it got shot clean out of the Titan, I didn't want to be directly above it, as I was before. None of the human pilots around had come to or discovered my position - I couldn't be certain who would and wouldn't pull a trigger, thanks to my nature. I put the glove back on.
Thirty seconds.
The Titan had been getting... darker. I began to feel doubtful about my decision to stay.
Fifteen seconds.
No turning back around now...
Ten.
The explosions on the hull quieted down for a moment.
Five.
They sped up again.
Four.
Even more explosions. The creaking of the Titan's hull became even more unsettling.
Three.
Last chance...
Two.
Something began charging.
One.
The charging became louder.
TITAN DESTRUCTION IMMINENT.
Blue flickers appeared on each of the pylons, twelve of them surrounding the core. As if the Titan was charging a Torus pulse. The energy congregated and focused around the defunct thermal core, but much more slowly than I expected, and no pulse was fired when the charging sound stopped. I'd diverted pips to systems and begun to reverse the ship, feeling unsure, instinctively hitting the pulse when the sound stopped, but... nothing happened. The energy kept building. I put the throttle back to zero for just a moment... until I saw the energy field begin to form in a distinct, threatening red color and orange, beginning to expand outward in a strange energy field that affected local lighting, to. And my nerves chose that precise instant to snap.
"Okay, that's it. I'm getting us out of here!"
I pushed throttle back even further, then just hit the flight assist toggle and hit pitch as hard as I could, while combining the movement with a boost. I didn't know exactly what was happening behind me, but it didn't look good and I had no intention of being near it any longer. Then I heard the sound of a pulse getting fired and triggered the neutralizer... only for it to have no effect and for my ship to be sent spinning and away from the Titan at high enough speed for my vision to go dark. I barely registered the reboot sound and fingered for the toggle I'd just hit a few seconds earlier, struggling to reach it with the forces exerted on my arm, only just about noticing a strange brightness coming from the core of the Titan's protective cloud through the darkness, and strange, unsettling bubbling noises, which were a lot more apparent now, despite being there before, too. I 'felt' some kind of energy wave passing over me, too, following that pulse. Or maybe it was it.
I regained my vision and turned the ship back around to the Titan's location, the interference of the anti-Guardian field suddenly gone, making it easy to pinpoint. Letting the thrusters work to slow me down from the obscenely fast speed of over five kilometers per second, which had kicked me right out of the caustic cloud. I heard a noise from the Titan while getting it re-oriented, pointed back in the direction I'd come from. The caustic sink also took off what little substance got on the hull while systems rebooted.
"What the hell?", I threw out, indirectly directing it as a question at EDI.
"I don't know. It appears to - "
Sensor readings showed a large detonation. And I could see it, too, through the extremely dense caustic cloud, making both of us shut up. I and her both knew what was about to happen.
"You don't have to witness this, Kira."
It was already too late for that. I began to hear more explosions begin to chain together, still visible through the cloud, building and building, until I heard a sad, desperate final outcry, the explosions almost lighting up the entire core cloud as the Titan finished its last cry. Things went quiet, for a second... then a bright light appeared, collapsed in on itself and sent out a massive explosion when a miniature star came to life where Taranis once was, shining in a bright white color, the ship getting shaken by a strangely visible shockwave, despite being nearly two-hundred kilometers away in a full vacuum.
I watched with a grim expression, betraying the internal torment within me, unable to do much more than do that, or know what I was supposed to feel, as what looked like a giant caustic residue cloud spread around the newly formed, and short-lived, star. Material quickly and visibly collapsed back in on itself, just as rapidly cooling back down, leaving behind strange white particles. The caustic residue stopped spreading, and the white 'particles' disappeared, possibly dissipating. The bright core emitted what almost looked like jet cones, despite being too small for such a thing, and quickly went from a white-yellow glow to a yellow, then more of a reddish-orange. An eerie quiet settled in.
Slowly breaking out of the hold of... not knowing what to do, I checked the nav indicator. I'd stopped at a 195 kilometers away. I wanted to... go closer again. And pushed the throttle to full, checking the system map's Titan indicator. "Titan destroyed. Debris field detected."
I audibly sighed, and composed my voice, keeping it low.
"... E-EDI?"
The AI's hologram popped up. "This was needlessly reckless of you."
"I know. Please, run a scan on ..." I looked at the bright glowing thing ahead. "... whatever's left."
It only took a second.
"I can confirm the existence of something within the core, but it is still too hot to distinguish anything precise, or determine whether it remains functional."
I shook my head, and just... let the ship move closer without further input from me. I briefly stopped at 154 kilometers, always keeping the 'thing' in view, not moving directly toward, just as a slight angle. Once I got below 144, I slowed down to about a hundred meters per second, just to be sure I was not hitting anything unintentionally, or an extreme heat zone. But nothing stopped me from going further, down to 130...
"Be advised. I am detecting an extremely dense caustic residue around the Titan's remains.", EDI warned me.
"I... I thought there would be. Distance?"
"Five kilometers from here."
I slowed down to almost a halt once I reached that distance. And sure enough, once I got to 125 kilometers, I felt the ship really get kicked around, and the caustic sink which was at best ten percent full was already used up entirely, by the time I managed to reverse back out. I turned the ship away from it after that, at a ninety degree angle
"That is... too strong. I cannot get through there."
Right as I said that, another message from the Pilot's Federation arrived. Of course, it was about Taranis getting destroyed. And how it was a "significant victory for humankind". I shook my head at it, then looked at the remains of Taranis, eerily sitting there, emitting... something. Some kind of white particle which lingered for a few seconds, from the central, brightest point of... whatever was left behind there.
'This was not a victory. What did we really gain here?', I thought to myself, and looked back at my inbox.
The only thing that was good about the message was that it gave a timeframe to the cloud dissipating. But a few weeks... that seemed too long. Even for a Thargoid capital ship that was who knows how big. I'd seen estimates of eight kilometers... maybe the violent nature of its destruction had caused such an intense corrosive cloud to appear. And even if it hadn't formed, the remains looked far too hot at the moment to even think of really approaching it. Shielding or not, less than a dozen kilometers from a heat source that glowed bright orange sounded... less than ideal for exploration purposes.
This is what our great leaders have brought us to.', Kira bitterly remarked in my head. A war that got completely out of control, on both sides, all for some resources and planets. I'm not sure if humans or Thargoids are the bigger idiots here.
I don't know., I answered. But this is what Aegis now stands for. And I am going to let them know about it.
No further response, but I could, deep down, feel that she'd have had the same idea. I opened my comms panel and selected Alba as the recipient of a message, recording it as a voice log. She needed to hear exactly how I felt, and recovering some of those deeper memories had brought back more of my fluent speech.
Hello, Alba.
I've seen it. What your great torpedoes did to Taranis. I watched what Aegis' actions did to it, how you let it suffer for an entire day instead of just killing it outright. As if it hadn't suffered enough to constantly be attacked and have all of its vital internal mechanisms destroyed. I recorded exactly what you did to it., so you can see it for yourself. No propaganda bullshit about "humanity's great victory".
I trusted you to be better than Azimuth, in this war, but I'm not sure how that is an improvement to mycoid or the Proteus Wave. Saving human lives does not excuse torturing other living beings in that manner.
I'm going to remember this.
Attachments:
I selected the system in which my carrier was located and jumped out. There was nothing left for me here, for now. But I would be back, and find out exactly what was left for myself.
----------
Meanwhile, in Duamta
Alba listened to the message again, Seo and Tanner in the same room. She looked at Seo, both some pain and a question on her face.
"Have we made a mistake?", she asked, sounding tired. While not specifying, it was evidently about the decision to let me leave again.
Seo kept a blank expression, hiding whatever she felt on the subject of the message. "Kira needs to decide for herself who and what she wants to support. And she hasn't turned off her locator beacon. I think she just needs time to work through her emotions."
Alba leaned back in the chair. "I suppose you're right, Seo. It's not as if she will just accept to return unless it is to express herself on the subject. And trying to bring her in by force will just break her trust entirely."
"She has just as many reasons to stay away from the Thargoids, after what they did to her. And they are no less at fault in this war. When she feels the time is right, I think we're going to hear from her again."
"I hope your intuition is right, Seo. But leave us, for now. I'd like to review more of what happened at Taranis to see if we can in any way improve our attack plans for the remaining Titans."
Seo nodded, and left the room.
"You're aware that she might become a threat again.", Tanner remarked, a few seconds after the door closed.
"I am, Aden.", Alba replied, sighing. "But I'm hoping we won't have to capture or eliminate her. She deserves better than that."
"Even if she voluntarily joins forces with the Thargoids?"
"I'd rather assume it won't come to that. She knows what the consequences of that would be. And I have to believe she still sees the Thargoids as equally destructive. For now, I think we should focus on what we can learn from the destruction of Taranis."
Alba quietly addressed a thought at me anyway. She knew I was upset and wouldn't come back from that easily... but still hoped that my adherence to my humanity, in spirit, would keep me on the right track. And knew what would need to be done if it didn't.