I have been asked to deliver a message to the galactic community by an "associate". Transmission is as follows.
I'm now headed to Beagle Point so will be out of contact for a while. Good luck all. CMDR Farcall, signing out.
“Subject 650” - 8th January 3303
The first thing I remember is light. Red filling my vision, red filling my very being until I was sure that I was the very embodiment of red itself. The second thing I remember is sound. It screamed at me, washing over me, saturating me - as water would saturate a sponge. It was the sound of danger. With a sudden motion my body lurched forwards and slammed into the cold metal floor. I couldn’t remember my name. I couldn’t remember where I was, or why I was there. But I did know one thing - I needed to get out. A quick glance around the small, barren room revealed a set of broken shackles on the floor, and several metal loops on the wall closest to them. On the opposite side was an empty doorway. The door was lying in two pieces on the ground, metal twisted and torn as if it had just been part of a high speed collision with something very heavy. Stencilled on one of the pieces was the text “Subject 650”. The other piece bore some sort of logo or symbol - a small white dot with a crescent shape to its left. Without wasting time wondering what had broken my shackles with such ease, who Subject 650 was, or why the door was scattered in pieces on the ground, I lifted myself up and hauled myself out of the room.
The hallway beyond was long and cramped, and stretched from left to right as far as my still-fuzzy vision could recognise. The colour red dominated this area too, although the sound of the klaxon was quieter here. It was now, however, punctuated by short bursts of popping, as if a swarm of woodpeckers had found their way into the metal corridors and were now trying to find a place to nest. Reaching into my memory provided no clues as to which direction lead to the exit, so I chose randomly and started to move as fast as I dared push my aching legs. I quickly stumbled to a halt after turning a corner and finding two bodies lying face down in a large pool of thick liquid. The liquid was red - but this time a deeper, shinier red. Without stopping to identify how these people met their fate, I stumbled onwards with a renewed urgency.
I don’t know how many corners I turned, how many stairs I climbed, how many more corpses I stumbled over, before my endurance was finally rewarded. A metal door with the words “Docking Bay 12” stencilled on slid calmly open as I tentatively approached. Moving slowly into the space beyond, lest I meet the same fate as the people I found before, I searched every corner, trying to maintain a balance between caution and speed. Finally my gaze was drawn to the center of the bay, where it found a Faulcon DeLacy Mk I Sidewinder, parked with its wide flat nose facing a wall made of shimmering blue. Finally, a colour that wasn’t red! Without so much as a second thought, I scrambled up the docking steps and into the cockpit. I had no knowledge of what any of the buttons laid before me on the various control panels did, let alone how to fly the ship out of the docking port. Yet my hands just seemed to know what to do, just like how I somehow knew the model and manufacturer of the vessel at a mere glance. The engines fired up in a huff, as if grumpy at being awaken from their slumber. Docking clamps released, throttle up to max and the ship darted out of the bay’s airlock and into open space.
I slumped back into the pilot’s seat, my adrenaline supply finally running dry and exhaustion setting in. Unfortunately it was not yet over. My pending slumber was interrupted by a sudden sharp white light, filling the cockpit. I pulled the flight stick back, revealing my former prison in the cockpit glass above me. Or rather what was left of it. A huge ball of fiery death was racing towards me, as if angry of my escape, or perhaps it was the colour red attempting to take revenge of my betrayal. Adrenaline filled me once more from an unknown source and I slammed the throttle forwards and engaged the frame shift drive. There was no time to consult the galaxy map and plot a route so I had to rely on the previously programmed coordinates in the navigation computer. The drive hummed into life and the ever cool voice counted down from 5, guiding my ship into FTL travel. The shock wave from the explosion hit just as the sidewinder entered hyperspace, and for a moment it felt as if I was being propelled to another star by the force of the combustion rather than the power of quantum mechanics. Once more I sank deeply into the seat, the temporary adrenaline boost gone almost as if ripped from my body and left behind in normal space.
But it seems that fate was still not done with me yet. Not a moment after I shut my eyes, they were snapped open once more by alerts and a warning voice that exclaimed three very ominous words. Hyperspace conduit unstable. This time my pilot’s muscle memory had no answers as I held tightly to the flight stick, trying not to be thrown from my seat as the ship was thrown around the hyperspace tunnel itself as if were the inside of a present that someone was excitedly shaking and trying to determine the contents of. If only I had remembered to strap my seat belt on properly before bursting out of the airlock, like the warnings written in various locations around the cockpit had begged me to. Suddenly everything lurched forwards and I was thrown from violently from my seat, the top of my head smashing hard into the glass. My vision failed me as my bruised and battered body floated backwards through the air. Or perhaps it really was suddenly very dark - the usual chattering of the ship’s computers and low hum of the life support systems were gone, replaced with a deep, barely audible growl, punctuated by what sounded like sonar waves from a submarine’s radar. A feeling of dread filling my stomach, so overwhelming that for a moment I couldn’t feel the pain from my scalp, although I knew that I wasn’t going to remain awake for much longer. Ice seemed to creep inwards from the edges of the glass and the temperature dropped very quickly, my short rapid breathing pushing forth plumes of condensation. My eyelids slowly drooped shut as the damage from my head injury finally took what was left of my consciousness and banished it far from my grasp. The only thing that remained, burning strongly throughout my very existence, was that feeling of dread - as if the peace, hope and happiness was drained out of the very air around me.
The next thing I remember is awaking in a Federation controlled starport medbay. The doctor who checked me over after I awoke, the first person I ever remember having talked to, told me I had been recovered from an escape pod by a Federation patrol. Supposedly the ship I had escaped in was nowhere to be found. The Federal officer I spoke with afterwards affirmed that there are no records of any kind of prison or other type of facility matching my description within 30 LY of where my escape pod was found. The officer declined to answer if any such facility existed anywhere in Federation space, or indeed anywhere in human populated space. Despite repeated requests for an investigation into what happened on that day, the entire event seems to have been swept under the rug - no stories broke to GalNet about the incident. To this day I do not know where I had been incarcerated, or what I was a subject of. Subject 650 - did that mean there were 649 others before me? I have not yet recovered any memory of before my escape, and no doctor I have visited since has been able to diagnose the true source or cause of my amnesia. I don’t even know my real name, though the jumpsuit I was wearing inside the escape pod bore the name tag “Thomas F. Narne” on the inside of the collar. I do not remember ever putting on the jumpsuit, even though I was pretty sure I wasn’t wearing it when I escaped.
So that is my story. The Federation loaned me a new sidewinder and allowed me to fly missions for them, on the condition that I kept quiet about what happened. I have since replaced and upgraded my ship several times and now fly various missions all over the bubble. From delivery to bounty hunting, I have made a small name for myself among several minor factions and systems, and I have a non-insubstantial collection of assets under my control. To this day I continue to explore tentatively outwards, in search of any kind of information regarding the place I escaped from, who I was before then, and the strange events that unfolded afterwards. It is only recently, after increased reports of Thargoid activity, discoveries made concerning the unknown artifacts and even hyperdiction by Thargoid ships that I realised that I am connected to all this somehow, and the decision to reveal my story has been made.
Although I have revealed my name, know that this is an alias and for now I wish to remain anonymous among the galactic community. I retain certain information relating to the Thargoid hyperdictions that is not publicly known, and to reveal it so readily would put my plans into jeopardy. Should anyone desperately wish to contact me, the following codes and keys will allow a determined commander to do so.
173-1, 166-6, 189-1, 225-3
A unit of measurement
A fictional creature
I'm now headed to Beagle Point so will be out of contact for a while. Good luck all. CMDR Farcall, signing out.