Planet: Tyrunus Sempicus – UA Date: 06/12/2983, Local Date: Unknown
Ship Time: 0532
Journal Entry NO 001 – Waking Up
None of us expected to make it out of the war alive. Least of all, me. I know I’m not some cog in the grinder, but I’m far from the ranking officer onboard The Hanzo. Of course, I sort of am now. A lot of good people died what feels like days ago for me, but has, in reality, been… four decades.
Travel takes forever when access to the Snap Rifts is severed. Even our FTL comms were down, that’s how critically damaged The Hanzo was. Is.
I piggybacked off of the comms beacon for this backwater planet (one of the ones we were tasked with protecting from the Nephilim Colossi) to learn that the war ended a little bit after the majority of our crew died. Captain Grifford is alive, sort of, but in critical condition and without a meddoc onboard, I don’t think she’d survive coming out of cryo. Those cryopods were a godsend.
Might be a bad choice of words, given the near angelic nature of those otherworldy entities that threatened our very existence, but I still believe.
Brother woke me up after a decades long sleep as we’re approaching Tyrunus Sempicus, a planet on the outermost rim of civilization. There’s a few settlements planet side, but it looks like the one that’ll be closest when we reach deployment range is Waterdown Springs. It’s one of the bigger towns on this planet.
Anyways, I have a couple of hours, half a daily cycle really, before landfall and I need to run another diagnostic of the ship, check the mechs, see if anyone else is alive. I don’t have high hopes though.
Planet: Tyrunus Sempicus – UA Date: 06/12/2983, Local Date: Unknown
Ship Time: 1856
Journal Entry NO 002 – It’s Worse than I thought
Well… It took a while to wander the whole of the ship and I think I’m tired of my own voice. But… first, mister log entry thing, want the good news or the bad news?
I know you’re just an AI program transcribing my words. I know it, so why am I asking you to pick out what I divulge next? Because I don’t have anyone to talk to.
*sighing sound* Okay. Good news.
Well, good for me. I am now the ranking officer on The Hanzo. Yep. Ole Brandivere Couvers has been promoted from Standing Corporal of the Astral Union Naval Corps to Second Pole Lieutenant of the Mechanized Calvary. Yeah. So, log entries (I will be continuing to label them journal entries) are now mandatory since I’m now an officer of the navy.
Go me. *sighing sound*
I know I said ranking officer on The Hanzo which brings me to the bad news, and there’s a lot of it. Computer, take a list.
Captain Grifford didn’t survive the cryo stint. I’m officially alone up here. It’s how I’m ranking officer. All my friends and comrades are dead.
There’s a number of holes through The Hanzo. She’s still space worthy, obviously since I’m recording this, but diagnostics put us limping along. Comms, FTL long range at least, remain down. As is the sending capabilities. I can hear things from the planet, but there won’t be any talking back.
I did a couple of space walks and the comms will remain down for the time being. The Nephilim Colossi we were engaged with knocked our array off. Diagnostics told me that, but I had to see it for myself. Describing the ship as holey cheese wouldn’t be inaccurate.
Polter just reminded me that the old Earth phrase is Swiss cheese
Two of the three shuttles are out of commission.
This allowed me to plunder them for parts to get the third drop worthy.
Mech bay is a mess. Of the half dozen mechs we carry, only one survived. Almost made my promotion to the mechanized calvary a moot point.
Back to the good news. I’ve got a mostly space worthy ship (I expect it’s little more than scrap and I’m lucky to be alive), a shuttle to get me down planet-side and back, and a mech.
His name, as he’s told me, is Polter and that syncing with him was a pleasant experience. I still have tingles in my toes and my cyber-fingers, so I think it was one way. Since linkin’ up with him, as you might’ve guessed from my earlier revelation, he’s been talking to me via my implant.
With enough time, I might find a way to give him access to narrate some of these logs as it seems he’s had lots of quiet time to think. AI must experience time similar to we fleshbodies since he’s complained a few times that he’s not had someone to talk to for a decade since the last remaining mech AI went offline.
Guess he couldn’t talk to Brother. Wonder why that is. It was above my paygrade before.
Might still be.
Never expected to ponder such quandaries. Hell, never expected to actually get to sync with a Mech if I’m being honest. Been a grease monkey most of my life and now I get to experience what it’s like to ride one of these things.
Okay. I’m getting tired and I think I’ve updated everything officially that needs updating. I’m going to get some shuteye in an empty bunk-bay. I’ve got planetfall tomorrow and want to pretend to be rested (who’d’ve thought that after sleeping for a few decades I’d still be tired, eh?).
I’ll record another one of these planet-side.
((No dice rolls this session, just some set up for Brandivere and Polter. Next time we'll see them land on the planet. If you've enjoyed this and would like to jump into the world of Ion Heart, jump over to Parable Games or load up a late pledge on the BackerKit page.))
Comments