First We Take Back Hutton
12 Dec 2024Carbucketty
The Hutton Run is a trader's rite of passage, but the long slog out there is a different matter when the entirety of Alpha Centauri system space is full of Thargoids. No hope of getting up for a snack or to stretch aching limbs when you're getting dragged out of supercruise every couple of minutes to be shot at. But I could tell from the weary, harried voice of Flight Control when I arrived that they needed every pilot they could get.The last week has been relentless. Scouts pouring in through witchspace portals as fast as my multicannons could destroy them. Thargon swarms screaming in on kamikaze barrages, leaving me tumbling in space with thrusters and weapons shattered. Hydras hammering my ship with punishing caustic fusillades as I pound at their hearts with a half-dozen shard cannons, desperately hoping that they flinch first before my hull disintegrates. Sleep has been brief naps snatched between attack waves, sprawled on the pilot's chair or curled beneath the control console. Even then, I see stars wheeling behind my eyelids, the flicker of tracer fire, the horizon lurching sickeningly on planet after planet, in system after system.
Procyon. Sirius. Tau Ceti. Barnard's Star. Names from centuries past, from the days when no creature of Earth had yet set foot among the stars. The near neighbours of a home I never knew, yet still feel an instinctive need to protect. A home now overrun with perils that few would have imagined back then, and where billions are still holding out in hope of rescue.
Another alert, the controller's urgent voice bawling from the comm to order every ship to launch immediately. This is it. The final push to clear this system. And when that's done, we take back Sol.
When this is all over I'm going to sleep for a month.