7: The Tangent Universe (Úniversum tangéns)

terminal 0

unfinished

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Freedom! After years of abuse and numbness, it should have been rapture. To carry a singular will, your own, and to see it to its fruition should have been your only goal once released. But stepping from the gates, you've found the air no sweeter and the grass no greener. Throwing off your worn and ashen armor should have been a blessed release, but what came over your soul as the realization came to pass? Was it emptiness? Loneliness? Boredom? To what end returns the freedman to his former master? Or was the choice not yours? We both know there are forces that would see the employment of Destiny at dire times. If I am to be the means through which you reach your ends, then I am most honored indeed.

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At such times, I feel the pride I used to harbor seeping back. You must forgive me: I am now little of he you once knew. Having shed the fury and embarrassment of my intellectual adolescence, I can assure you I'm now in a place beyond sorrow, beyond envy and rage. I hope you'll join me there in good time. cyclical circumstances bring us again together though folly in our youth has brought about the latest of these battles having left you here to witness the very destruction of your species the battles countless now for nought

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know this you are not alone in the search for redemption you never were So seldom are we given second chances. could you be so brave and swift a warrior as to bind the hands and conceal the face of a trapped god seething and pacing in her rage

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You must. As a fox witnesses a hare bolt from underbrush and gives chase, so is my prior (?younger) self so preoccupied with the pursuit of freedom, leaving the S'pht bound and humanity alone to pay the final price. go

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<teleport to level 4>

terminal 1

unfinished

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// Inti Station Public Access Terminal \\ *** EMERGENCY BROADCAST *** Attention all hands. At 0421Uhr this evening, unknown hostile alien forces entered the Sol system directly into orbit between Earth and Mars. Lack of early warning suggests the enemy fleet used cloaking devices or faster-than-light drives to bypass our perimeter. Reports from Earth indicate that the initial party boarded several Martian ships and took their crews captive before it was destroyed by a Sol Guard ship en route to Earth. The attack was quickly followed by a larger fleet which appeared in low Earth orbit and began to take further prisoners en masse. The aliens appear to be slavers; they have deployed a large variety of subservient species alien to their own biology.

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The Sol Guard fleet, called in from patrol, has successfully repelled most of the alien fleet at the cost of calamitous losses that have crippled its fighting capacity; each alien vessel is estimated to have taken tens of thousands of captives. Several dozen of these ships were destroyed in the subsequent battle. The remainder of the alien fleet steered toward our location, deployed an unknown device, and disappeared from our sensors. Its trajectory will entirely avoid the station; it should decay in orbit until it is destroyed in the sun. Communication with Earth has been limited to emergency contact with the Guard; only when the alien fleet turned Solward did we receive notification of their approach, hence the delayed release of this report.

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The Guard dispatched several ships to secure the station. Strategists anticipate that a larger alien fleet will arrive soon and are preparing countermeasures. It is a remarkable sight. After centuries of resentment and conflict, the inhabitants of Earth and Mars work together in a desperate effort to survive. And yet, it may be too little, too late. Fleet command recommends that we remain here on the station, hidden in the Sun's radiation and far from any of the habitable worlds. Should they fall to the slavers, we will be the last free remnants of our species. For centuries, we've guarded our star following the ancient advice of since-unseen aliens. Now, from somewhere in the heavens, comes this threat we never foresaw. Where are the Jjaro now that we need them? \\ Message ends //

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