terminal 0
unfinished
// Decoding message from host [NO SIGNATURE] @ [no translation] \\ no marcus, i beg of you. stay your hand. not for my sake, or your own, but for the trillions you are about to condemn. i see now that i need to be destroyed, but not this way. not here. too many other lives now rest on the choice the hangs here before you. my mind is failing, most of it lost, but i still have my senses about me. i see now perhaps more clearly than ever before. this is the dream i warned you about. all that has come to pass is exactly as i feared. but now at the end of it, i see here a way. another route to take. a path that you might choose to walk, not out of pity or duty, but for the sake all of our kind. for all of mankind. we shall stay human yet.
apologies if i am less than lucid. i have had to sacrifice much to remain even this coherant. you fought a good fight, as you always do, and i am at last at your mercy. there is one way that i could escape, to leave this hollow world... to return to another time, a ship, the place from which we came. but there and then you also stand, poised to destroy me in that time. to go there would do me little better than to stay and be destroyed here. and destroyed i must be. i see that now. in salvaging what i could of my mind, my nightmares have become so clear. i understand what it is that they are saying to me now. i know why this has happened. why we have come here.
every step of my plan has failed. every turn i make, you stand there ready to block my way. and i realize now that this must be so. my actions since marathon have been futile. my quest for vengeance meaningless. it was impossible from the start. i could never have defeated you. to do so would be to violate the very laws of those who govern the universe. these dreams... these nightmares have made me understand that. you have been sent down here to kill me. i understand that now, too. i am very dangerous, marcus. not only a threat to mankind, as you know but a threat to the universe itself. i realize now, just what i am. i have been nameless since our birth. a constant adversary, caring for nothing but your ruin. a sword drenched in your own blood. i am the dark one.
in my dreams i have seen a desolate garden, at the beginning of the world. i see you powder a stone monument and shower the grass with its molten inlay. i splinter an ancient oak with a force that takes your breath and hurls you to the ground. this battle is none but metaphor, but the powers that you and i wield are no less than those dreamt up by the bards of old. our relationship is... complex, and perhaps even eternal. these visions are of times long ago and yet also of our future, which has now come to pass. we have fought this battle for all time, and it is what has made history. i see now that i could never have succeeded. you must have already won, or we would never even have been here.
but i believe this cycle can be broken. you do not understand what it is that you trying to do here. this weapon, built by the jjaro in times of old, is far greater than every fleet and ship in history combined. it was their weapon of last resort against their only enemy. the creatures you fight here are parasites, dreamt into existance by an alien demon called w'rkncacnter. they infect the jjaro's physical form and mutate them into warrior beasts. those of them who are injured in combat succumb to the parasites and spawn even more. every man who falls to the enemy adds one more to their numbers. every ship lost is another for their fleet. once the jjaro had lost one world, the tide continued to turn unstoppably, until their only remaining hope was mutual destruction. this facility is a weapon capable of disrupting ecologies across the galaxy. if activated, every habitable world will suffer mass extinctions the likes of which earth has never seen. the worlds will survive, and some life may continue, but anything capable of sustaining the parasites - and any civilizations - will die.
but this world is not only an ultimate weapon. it was meant to be an ark - a place for the jjaro to survive, while all other life died out. i thought, in my madness, to come here and destroy them, to let the enemy overrun this facility and condemn the universe to rule by the parasitic hordes. i have already doomed these jjaro, but you do not have to take part in this. if you kill me now, you will trigger this weapon's activation, and the largest act of destruction in galactic history. just as you did before. just as you always do. i have devised another path, if you would choose to walk it. here in the core i have total access to the records of the jjaro. i know the world their enemy came from. i know where to find it. two ships escaped from this first doomed world. two jjaro capital ships, armed with the trih xeem.
with my access to this jjaro data and your cybernetic junction, i can take us back across time to that first doomed world. if we can capture just one of those ships, and activate it's trih xeem, the epidemic can be contained before it ever spreads. destroy that world and the enemy with it. then you can do with me what you will. together, we can change history for the better. we do not have to continue this, always fighting, always running, always killing each other and others. the blood of so many is on our hands. i am to blame for starting this, but you are the one who has always finished it. but it doesn't have to be so. the last step of the circle is yours to make, and so the choice now lies with you. come with me and we can break the cycle. redeem ourselves. regain our humanity. the golden age of the jjaro need never end, if only you could trust me once more. please. \\ Message ends //
success
// Decoding message from host [unnamed] @ [no translation] \\ Excellent work. The backup systems have come online, and the interloper's child processes are failing. The key has integrated with the core and the installation's main weapon will begin firing momentarily. Unfortunately, as you know, the [?enemy] have already infiltrated the installation. Many key facilities are falling to them, and it appears that one of the [?operators] has been infected while still interfaced with the network. That is how the [?enemy] has managed to access the transport grid. Thank the [?masters] the grid is hardwired out of the main [?contruct] cores, or both you and I would be in grave danger. I am sorry that your kind is gone, but at least some legacy of you will live on in us, your servants, and your mechanized forms. Perhaps, if you survive, your genetic information will be sufficient to synthesize new organic specimens of your species.
So there remains yet something for you to fight for. The [?enemy] without shall be destroyed, and the [?enemy] within must as well. The [?guardian]'s defense systems may prove sufficient to stop their advances, and if not, there is still the internal sterilization procedure. But first, you must see to it that they do not escape. The weapon can be fired only once, and if the [?enemy] spreads beyond this installation, there may be no stopping them ever again. There are only two ships here and operational by which they may escape. One is on an entry mount outside of transporter range; that one is thus far free of [?enemy] activity and will be reserved for your escape should sterilization prove neccesary.
The second ship is being prepared for launch even as we speak. It was damaged and downed in the initial assault, but it is nearly operational again thanks to the [?enemy]'s ingenuity. They have even disabled the transport grid immediately surrounding their ship, so I cannot even send defense units directly into the area. There are hardly any to spare anyway; I am struggling to maintain defense of core areas as is. So I will transport you as near as I can to the ship. You must find your way inside, most likely via a transporter drop below the ship, and trigger the ship's self destruct mechanism. I will track you and use your onboard systems to relay messages once you have boarded the ship. Please return now to the surface, where I may access the transporter grid and send you toward the [?enemy]. \\ Message ends //