Thargoids, friends, and... dead Titans, I guess
02 Apr 2024Jana Razeki
Personal log recordCreated: March 26, 3310
Published: April 2, 3310
Visible to : All
Yay. Another of my logs. Where I'm writing it without a real structure in mind so it's probably going to be all over the place while I'm writing thoughts out. Why am I making these readable for everyone, anyway?
No idea. Maybe it's just a 'thing' which people do. Or pilots. And it's just a button push - not like I'm really sharing any really deep personal details in here, anyway.
So... where to start?
I met a friend... must be a few weeks ago now. Not too long after Taranis turned into a big nuke. Can't say too much about it, except... well, quite simply, I had no expectations that after doing some stupid VR nonsense for the fun of it, I'd be faced with that same person actually being... just as insane in the actual world that our minds reside in. Not in the bad way. But, hell, sure does leave an impression when your first meeting with someone almost needs you to put your neck into a really uncomfortable angle to see their face. Or not have your look stuck somewhere inappropriate, at least. And it was just a personal chat. Nothing more to be said about it.
After that - well, one of the subjects was "I want to throw together a Fer-de-Lance" for shooting Thargoids in the face when they decide the local neighborhood in the Bubble has too many humans. I guess I was convinced to give it a go, because that was pretty much what I did after that meeting. And...
Yeah, I'd say I'm impressed. More than I expected to be. If I had to put it into a few words, it's a murder machine that has no business being as good at its job as it is. Contrary to some claims that some anti-xeno pilots throw out, that thing does actually work quite well... although, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone just starting out unless they're feeling particularly adventurous. Especially not without Guardian weapons.
The longer version of that opinion?
Pros - the convergence on those medium hardpoints actually works pretty damn well. Way better than that awful layout on the Challenger with three at the top, and one where you can reasonably throw a Guardian weapon into at the bottom. And it's got some speed too. The only thing that'll really catch it is a Glaive, and those barely even show up now. They're also not really tough enough that local defense forces can't handle 'em so, yeah. If you need to you can just wait it out for those little angry bastards to get cleared up. Mostly just an issue because of their Guardian melter nonsense, though.
Weapons - well, you guess. Four modified shard cannons, and a beam laser for those planetary engagements. Might not bother with this ship in places those annoying swarms are around. If there was a package to define 'Hell and Fury', this ship is probably it. If you carry four heatsink launchers, on top of a shutdown neutralizer and xeno scanner or caustic sink - also little point in worrying about the shield. If you haven't stripped it from afar yet, just blast through it with the cannons... don't recommend on Hydras unless they're down a few hearts already.
And speaking of those, yeah, my first outing was basically going in and slaughtering a lot of Cyclops - plus one Basilisk - then, because I don't know any better, helping local defenses clear out the Hydras too. Must've picked a bad time then since it was, again, only them and me around the attacked surface port, against a lot of angry Thargoids. I said to myself I wouldn't do it again, but, well... I was caught up in the swing, I guess, and kept going with it. Just as well, since they were dead at the end, and I wasn't. Only managed to lose the canopy once, too. Not that I'm particularly proud to admit it.
Having six utility points on the thing is great, too. That friend of mine - recent friend, to clarify - seems to think having a xeno scanner's not a terrible idea. Me, I decided to go without one and have four heatsinks instead. Plus a caustic sink and the mandatory field neutralizer. Not having to worry about caustic missiles unless they're from a Hydra or you get five of them launched at you at once is great, and also very important when you have to skip on some hull reinforcement in order to carry self-repair stuff if you ever need it. Not that you should, with a station nearby, but... yeah, better to have it and not need it. Maybe I'll drop one of the heat absorbers for a xeno scanner. Do see a point in being able to target hearts through that annoying distortion Thargoid thrusters leave behind. Or whatever they use as an engine to move the ship in normal space.
Cons... not a lot of armor, comparatively. And the main reason why I wouldn't recommend this ship to anyone starting out in Thargoid defense duties. Or whatever you can call it when you're acting independently. You don't have a lot of room for error and even getting stuck in a Basilisk's visor - or sights, if you prefer - for too long, can spell a quick return to the port. Or to the insurance company interface, depending on just how much you screwed up. Best to just not to with a Medusa or Hydra. Or make sure you can blast a heart out before it stops zapping you with lightning. And don't get caught like me where the heart goes back to its normal state just before you manage to destroy it.
Aside from killing Thargoids... I've done a little bit of good. I caught wind of some initiative from some guys who - officially or unofficially - gave their support to Aegis and apparently worked hard to help get it back around, to rescue as many pods from a Titan as can be before it goes poof. A very big poof, it has to be said. So I wound up paying Leigong a few visits and, thanks to the local Thargoids being more busy not getting annihilated in a nuclear explosion, could pull out a whole bunch basically unopposed. The swarm of rescue ships following me and other pilots doing the same around probably also collected a lot. Think I personally ended up at around a thousand, maybe a thousand and two hundred. Being there in my Krait there was only so much I could pick up between runs, and I could only dedicate an hour or two to it, thanks to biological necessities while the Titan was busy exploding. But I tried to do as much as I could. The total of the accounted rescues by the group, mine included, somewhere around 27,000. Unaccounted... probably a good bit more.
I watched it go after picking up another 192 of the pods in the final hour. Made sure to be outside the caustic field before the big bang, even knowing I didn't need to be. Also wasn't quite out of range of the last repulsion wave, but I'd probably have been fine without that. Would like to think the people I saved from an explosive end are also glad, even if they're likely to never know that it was me who rescued them. And were not conscious at the time of said rescue. Probably also better to just not tell them that, if I'd been some thirty or forty minutes later, they'd have exploded right along with that big ship.
Still not a fan of what's being done - even rightfully - to get rid of those Titans. Maybe we don't know if the Thargoid ships are alive, but it sure as hell sounds like they are. So I think I'll still not be part of those pilots who do those direct attacks, but just continue doing my stuff of supporting the fighting around local affected systems. Or recovery efforts if my brain stops getting bored at doing something that isn't shooting something in the face. Maybe I should check to see if I have unresolved anger issues.
And, being on the subject of Titans - the 'drive' to push the Thargoids around Oya back is fairly well underway. As I'm recording this, well, probably the more important part for me is being set up. Which is, kicking the Thargoids out of my home. Self-chosen home, but it's got to matter for something, since I lived there for a few years already. And I'm definitely planning to kick a few Thargoids in that system myself... while, apparently, others at one of those two fancy spires they planted elsewhere are giving the majority a good reason to be elsewhere. With that lesser resistance, should be a lot easier to give those idiots the boot, even with the distance of less than ten light years to the Titan itself.
The plan's worked for the last two weeks and even elsewhere around the Titans, so... yeah, pretty confident in its chances. Hoping that dealing with the Titan itself won't take so long that it would get the chance to try re-invading. I really don't need to say why, or why I don't want that to happen again. Don't know how many people made it out of the system out of the... six or so billion, I think it was, but they don't need to go through that another time. Neither the 'being invaded' part, nor the 'losing their home' part. Once it's free, I'll be supporting recovery efforts. Going to take a while to get everything back to the state it was in before the big angry space flower decided to park there. And I don't just mean the few weeks which it takes to get the basic infrastructure running again - that's just some bullshit in the map interface which really doesn't tell the whole story at all.
Related to this - I finally got a chance to speak to Kasumi again. Eight days ago, maybe. She decided to reach out, we had a bit of a chat, and... well, it was nice. It wasn't really near the Titan, though, but somewhere else at the edge of the Bubble. Seemed like she was setting out to leave again, and a little longer this time. Probably is out there right now, at the moment. Can't say I know what it is about - she didn't tell me - but didn't seem like your everyday exploration run with a fleet carrier in tow. Or scouting ahead. So I didn't really want to ask much either.
Still just can't get over... oh, yeah, right. Maybe that's not something I should mention openly. But, uh, yeah... she gets looked at a lot. Or I should say stared at. And I can't help myself either. It's just so ...
Right, I think I'll just leave it at not having details. But it was good to see her, and, yeah, we kinda just avoided the Thargoid subject. Doubt it's something she's too interested in, right now. Can kind of see it on her that the whole Titan mess is wearing on her a bit. Maybe that's why she decided to leave the Bubble again after that excursion to the Guardian sites. Not that I know for sure. She also mentioned someone else who appeared interested in whatever she's up to out there - wonder who. Remained a little sparse on the details, so I don't know what to think. Could be that someone paid her, or just asked to learn of it by noticing her going out there... somehow. Have my bets on the latter - Kas doesn't really seem like the type do just do stuff for money. I doubt she really needs it either when she is running a private capital ship with no worry about its costs.
I guess I might learn in time. If I ever do. I did ask her if she wanted to come along with me when I returned home - or, rather, I wanted her to come along - and she seemed fine with it. We'll see if that remains the same once we get to my apartment on the station orbiting the lone water world in Lhou Mans that is getting terraformed. It was already pretty small for one person, though cozy, and on the hab ring, so it's got decent gravity from the rotation. Assuming it isn't a mess of melted steel and caustic gunk now, or scattered among the vacuum, but I can have my hopes. But yeah, two people in there can feel a bit cramped. As I've made the experience with having some of my older friends over, in there. Usually one at a time, for those spatial reasons.
And, yeah, thinking of friends... I'm definitely gonna try to pick the Titan as clean of pods as I can before the whole thing turns into a giant mess, once it goes into that so-called "meltdown" stage. Even if some of them survive the blast, there will be a lot more that don't. And at the very least, I know that I'll have made someone happy that they, a friend or one of their relatives weren't turned into chunks or vapor by a giant fusion reactor going totally out of control. Maybe I'll finally find that one of my friends is in there. Assuming I don't suddenly get messages from them being in Colonia, over a year after the fact. In which case I might just facepalm at their lack of telling me, but I'd take it. Would at least be a hell of a lot less cliché than "I rescued my friend(s) from certain death at the very last minute". Even if the latter makes for better story material.
When am I going to make another log? Probably, once the Titan is done for, or some time after. Not too sure yet. I'll be fairly busy just picking up the pieces of where I left off before Thargoids decided to impolitely interrupt things, courtesy of Azimuth.
Also know I'm probably going to keep poking the Thargoid forces of the Raijin Titan. Seeing how it, kind of, is the closest one, with Leigong already reduced to a bunch of mostly defunct rubble.
Oh, and I was at the Taranis debris field. It's creepy, nothing more to say. What else would you expect from a Titan graveyard? Though I'm not a fan of the fact that there are mostly intact Cyclops wrecks floating around. I know who'd love to get their hands on those all too much. And for all the wrong reasons.
Leigong? Yeah, also took a look the week after it went. But it was still a giant caustic hellstorm with a ball of plasma busy cooling and dissipating at the center. Wouldn't have seen much there even if I'd gotten through, pretty sure it's just going to look the same as the Taranis wreck. Full of caustic vomit - it really does just look like that - which you can barely see anything through, and a bunch of wreckage at the center. I might get more interested in the Oya wreckage to poke it for stuff. Assuming Aegis get around to announcing an official collection drive, anyway - rather give it to them than see it go to Azimuth and their nonsensical "research projects". Or if it is less destroyed than the other two Titans so far, I'll at least want to know about it first hand.
Anyhow, that's all I have, for now. Have to get back to it, anyway - the Thargoids aren't going to leave by themselves.
Jana out.
Damn it, I forgot to take a picture of the Leigong aftermath to add to this log. But I'm no war tourist anyway, so I guess it's fine.
[Record ends.]