07/11/2175 Unknown Time: Transmission Sent Grushan Quarantine Buoy: O RN-06: 08/24/2175 1517 Grusheran Standard Time: Transmission Received Rizheran Deep Space Emergency Communication Network
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My name is Lieutenant Michael J. Stevens, communications officer aboard the TSS Swordfish, registry LCM-1201. I was stranded on the third planet orbiting the star RN-06. My ship was destroyed in battle with an unidentified starship that seems to have originated from the planet's surface. We'd never seen anything like it; it just appeared from out of nowhere and ripped through our armor like it wasn't there with some kind of energy weapon. The captain ordered the crew to abandon ship in escape pods and make for the planet's surface. As far as I can tell, I'm the only one that made it. I'm on the planet's eastern continent, the one that wasn't destroyed in whatever cataclysm hit this place a thousand years ago. I only just managed to get my escape pod's transmitter online; I'm hoping I can patch through to the quarantine warning satellite that the Grushan left in orbit and send out a distress signal that way. There's not a good chance even if I can do it that I'll get a message out, and even if I do, there's no way anyone hears it for weeks or months. I may be dead by then. But, as I see it, my options are limited. So, I'm sending the transmission and hoping someone down the road gets it. I'm going to be recording daily logs of my experience down here and transmitting those as well; if I don't make it off, I want my stay to be useful to someone. I'll record more or less daily and if I have anything interesting to report in the meanwhile. I'll start with today being the 26th of June 2175. I have enough emergency rations to survive a week, maybe two. The vegetation on this continent is a bit sparse, but my hope is that some of its edible; I have one portable chem-kit to test it out, but I haven't used anything like it since my academy days; the consensus in fleet command was that it wasn't too likely that we would ever have the chance to need it. There doesn't seem to be too much animal life either, so I'll have to find something in the way of plant life to eat if a relief ship doesn't come within a week or so. I'm using my escape pod for shelter, since I had just enough fuel to land on the ground instead of water. That's another thing that worries me; I have only about a week's worth of clean water. I've seen a couple of lakes, but neither looks all that appetizing. One was green and filled with this organic slime; the other looked like an industrial dumping ground and was absolutely saturated with black sludge. That probably won't be drinkable for a few thousand years. I'm not hopeful about the other lake either. Still, it may rain; it looked like there was a stormfront inbound from the East; RN-06 3 has a reversed rotation from how it is on Earth, so it makes since that that's where the weather comes from. In fact, I had better get to expanding my shelter for the night; the pod's solid, but it's a bit cramped. I'll log in again tomorrow or some time tonight. End log.
06/27/2175
I took the liberty of collecting a fair amount of rainwater during the storm yesterday. A lot of it accumulated in puddles on the top of my escape pod. I took a sample of it and analyzed it with my chem-kit—just to be safe, since I didn't really expect a problem. It was a good thing I did though, because it had a pH of about 4.7, which for water is absurdly acidic. So it's definitely not safe to drink without some major treatment and probably not safe to even touch too much. At least it isn't highly basic, I suppose. That would eat skin really quickly. That puts me in something of a tough position; I have about a week's worth of water in emergency storage on my escape pod, but any more than that and I'll have to start getting creative. Groundwater scanners come as standard on the newer escape pods, so I'll run a search for that; in addition, I may just be able to filter and boil that industrial sludge depending on how the chemistry looks. Between those two things, I suspect I'll have my work cut out for me today. I'll check back in at sunset. End log.
06/27/2175
Well, I'm no better off than I was before unfortunately. The industrial sludge is a chemist's playground of toxic things; there's a lot of hydrocarbons, phosphate groups, and ethers in there. Somehow it has about three different heavy metals too, and more Radium and Uranium than I've ever seen anywhere, even in the Korean nuclear waste zones that you're required to tour at the Academy. One way or another, it's toxic as anything ever, and no amount of boiling, filtering, or exposure to UV screening will make it drinkable. The green lake wasn't really much better. The pollution was actually comparatively mild next to the other one, but there was just enough of it to choke out any dissolved oxygen. That's fine by me for drinking, but unfortunately, it's been completely swallowed by a native algal bloom. Not just any algae either; this stuff manufactures a pretty nasty neurotoxin just in case someone tries to eat or drink it. Oh, and there's also an abnormal concentration of toxic sugar salts. I may be able to drink it if I put it through some pretty intensive treatment, but nothing I tried made too much of a difference. As for groundwater, I couldn't find any in this area, as I'd hoped. I'd imagined the geology would be more or less right for it, since there's some large hills to magnetic north of me, but if there ever was any groundwater, it's been used up now. Food will be another problem; I was sampling all of the vegetation in the area when I had finished my water tests, but it's almost all toxic. I can't say I'm surprised; toxic water and toxic algae and acid rain don't make for the most appetizing plants. Even if all this was a relatively recent occurrence, that'd be the case, and since it looks as if some natural selection has been at play between the industrial waste and now, I'd say everything still alive in this area has to be stuff that's adapted to the toxic environment. I'm not giving up hope, though. I'm thinking that I'll go farther out from my pod. It's risky, and dangerous; I don't want to get caught in an acid rain shower, after all. But in all likelihood, unless the captain got out a distress call, I'll be here for a while. In any case, I can't go farther than walking distance. But that will be tomorrow's problem, I think; I haven't been this tired in a long time. End log.
06/28/2175
Today, I'm going to try and make it to the foothills to the north that I mentioned yesterday. My hope is that I'll be able to use the higher elevation to find groundwater. If there's snow up there, I'll check that too, but I don't see any, and I don't really expect to. I don't know if I've mentioned, but this place is one of the hottest places I've ever been in, and its absurdly muggy. I suspect that whoever lived here must have fouled the place up pretty badly with greenhouse gasses. At least, if the thousand-year-old sludge is any indication, that's probably the case. Anyway, I don't think there will be much snow on that mountain. If there is it'll probably be undrinkable anyway. I'm going to bring my supplies with me up there; it'll be a rather long trek up and back, and I don't want to run out of drinkable water a day or two early just because I left it all here. I'm also going to have to salvage some metal from the pod so I can put up a shelter if there's more rain. And the transmitter so I can keep sending these logs. All in all, I think it's going to take a small cart to bring everything. There's some dead trees around; I'll see if I can use the wood to build one. I know it's very risky to wander off into an unknown planet with limited water supplies; hell, I'm probably going to use more water walking up a mountain than I ever would dying of thirst. The way I see it, though, I'm going to use the water one way or another; I might as well spend what I have in search of better supplies further afield. But, we'll obviously see how it goes. I'll probably log in again at the end of the day. End log.
06/28/2175
I probably covered about fifteen kilometers today. I lost a bit of time because I wasn't able to build with the dead wood that I mentioned earlier. I hadn't guessed how old and rotten some of it was. It crumbled the minute I put my hand on it. I upset a swarm of insects that was inside it too; lucky for me they didn't sting or anything, they were really just space gnats. But they flew up my mouth and my nose and into my eyes and I had to get out of there pretty quick or risk being blinded. I'll bet they're toxic if eaten too. There were other trees, and some things that looked for all the world like giant mushrooms, but I didn't have the guts to face that swarm again. It stayed put after I left, just hovering there. They do worry me a bit, but I can't say why really; they're just gnats, after all. In any case, I had to make my cart out of salvaged parts from the escape pod. It wasn't until afternoon that I was able to get a move on. I think this planet has a faster rotation than Earth does, because night seemed to fall really quickly. Anyway, I've stopped and set up camp for the night. I have a tent set up and a metal sheet above that. I've taken the liberty of bringing all of my supplies inside with me. I'm starting to really mistrust this planet. It sounds paranoid, but I think it has it out for me too. I don't know; I suspect I'm just tired. I'll get a move on tomorrow. End log.
06/29/2175
The gnats have followed me all this way. I'm sitting in my tent right now looking up at the ceiling; the whole outside of the tent is crawling with them. And they're not even doing anything; they're just sitting there, like they're waiting for me to come out so they can attack me again. I've never heard of insects that small traveling so far. And it almost looks like there are more of them than there were yesterday. I'm sure an entomologist would have a lot to say about this, but my specialty is quantum and EM communications systems. That was hard enough. I'll go through the survival guide that the escape pod had and see if it has any suggestions. There's too many of them to kill, after all. End log.
06/29/2175
After consulting the guide, I tried to smoke the gnats away. It probably wasn't the best solution, since I had to burn a blanket and I wasted a bullet to get it burning, and now everything I have smells like gunpowder and smoke. But I was able to get the gnats off of my tent. They scattered and I was able to gather my things. I think I'm going to have to wake up before sunrise; hopefully the things have to sleep sometime. Funny thing, though; I look back every once in a while, and I think I still see them following me at a distance. I wonder if these things have just evolved that way; I've heard of army ants, but I've never heard of anything that just follows an animal around the way these seem to be doing. In any case, I've made it about thirty kilometers, and I've set up camp again. Hopefully the gnats will give me a night's peace. I'm about at the base of the hill, and I'll start up tomorrow. Still no signs of groundwater, unfortunately. Not much wildlife either, other than those gnats and the toxic plantlife. All of which is to say that I'm probably going to hit some major food problems before too long. Maybe I can eat the gnats. End log.
06/30/2175
The gnats still followed me in the night. I'm afraid they took shelter under my metal sheet when some rain fell in the night. I was right though; they were calmer in the dark, and I was able to sneak out so I could do a more proper job of smoking them out. Once they were gone, I packed up and started uphill. I got another few kilometers up the hill, but my progress was slow. I stopped a lot to scan visible areas for groundwater or streams or anything, but there wasn't any. I'm on one of those stops right now. I'm recording now rather than when I set up camp because I'm starting to really run low on water. I have enough for maybe a day's worth of walking at this point before I have to start drinking urine. And those gnats. They're still following me. Some of them are still flying in that same lazy cloud. I think there's more of them too. I'm starting to see a black smudge on the ground beneath the cloud too; either there's some other bug with them or some of them got lazy and decided to walk. Anyway, I really don't like it. I wish for all the world I had some poison right now. I might start collecting acid water from the sky. If I can make some kind of a spray bottle, that might teach them for bothering me for days. End log.
07/01/2175
A little after my last log entry, I climbed over a ridge and really couldn't believe my eyes. It was a city, or a town, leftover from whatever ancient civilization used to live on this world. It was getting dark, but any shelter seemed better than another night with the gnats. So I made for the town, and in the light it does look like a very small town. There wasn't much light at the time though so I wasn't able to get a good look at it. I could see that it was built of some strange black stuff that didn't really respond to sunlight. I wonder if it's the same sort of stuff that the put on the ship. Anyway, since there was no one to really object, I forced a door on one of them and spent the night. I was more or less happy to do it, since I'd rather not spend another night with the gnats. In any case, I'll explore the town today. Maybe it won't yield much in the way of food or water, but neither is scouring the hills at this point. Besides, if there's life in this spot there really should be water to sustain it, unless they're some life form that can go without clean water or...I don't know, thrive on acid rain. But at this point, I have a better chance of finding a water filtration system or a clean well than a clean lake or stream, so I might as well try while I can. Besides, if this place is related at all to the ship we fought, we might be able to find valuable information for the Hegemony and the Federation. So I'll plan to get to it as soon as breakfast is over. End log.
07/01/2175
I started off with the building I'm in. The gnats are outside in real force, but I don't think they can see which building I'm in. I'll hope there aren't broken windows somewhere, or I could have a very unpleasant night. I started with the first floor, which was mostly nondescript. There was a wide foyer by the door and a few rooms that built off of it kind of in a circle and a few rooms that built off of them. There was what appeared to be a kitchen with countertops made of the same black stuff as the house. On room was like a living room and had a giant monitor that completely covered one wall. I can tell what it was by the exposed wiring from how many centuries ago that hasn't really been touched since then. I think it actually was the wall, except for a handful of doorways. In the third room that adjoined the entry there was a single uncut stone in the center surrounded by an empty pool. Of course, I have no idea what it is or what it was for, but it made me uneasy. This room also had a staircase that connected it to a basement of sorts. I went down, expecting to find the remains of some sort of cellar. It looked instead like an ancient dungeon. It was long and unlit and made of the same sort of black stuff as everything else. It had steel bars on both sides and chains on the wall with cuffs on the end. At the end of the room there was some electronic equipment, but what it was for I don't really want to guess. And there were bones in the cells. Not many, by this time; a lot must have fallen apart into dust by this time, but a lot were fairly well preserved. I don't know if they were the same species as whoever built the place; they might have had a zoo down there or something. Every skeleton I saw was basically the same, though. It had a kind of oblong skull with a large cranial chamber, with incisors and molars both, and six arms and legs. That's all I could really tell you about them, though; there were other things that looked a little like bones but weren't quite; I don't really know how to describe them, and as I have no way of sending pictures, I'm at a bit of a loss. There were also some long thin bones, but they weren't connected to the skeletons anymore so I'm not sure what they were. After the dungeon I went upstairs and found things more or less as I expected; a bedroom, with what was left of a bed, a bathroom, and another entertainment room with a tv screen. Then there was a spiraling staircase that let out onto a tower balcony. There were a lot of bones scattered around in the upstairs, and especially on the spiral staircase. There weren't any bones on the balcony, but up there they would have been exposed to the rain, so that's not too surprising. I suspect they were there at one point though. From the balcony I got a good look at the rest of the town. It was only a handful of buildings, really; maybe twenty or thirty at most. They were laid out in a kind of circular pattern around a single taller building in the middle. All the houses are identical except for the center one, which is about three times as tall and has a lot of other facilities; one section looks like a helicopter pad, and another looks like a power generator from here. I checked my building for a water filtration system, but I didn't find one. The central building will be the next place I check of course. I'll have to cover my face really well, I think, because if anything, there are even more gnats out now than there were before. It's like a fog of them now. Anyway, I'll check in again once I've reached the central building. End log.
07/01/2175
When I left the building, the gnats attacked in force. I've never seen anything like it; they just landed on me in mass and started biting everywhere and crawling under my clothes. I was mostly protected by my adaptive nano-fiber jacket and leggings which contracted when they sensed danger, but I wasn't wearing gloves, so the little fucks did a real number in my hands. I had to run as quickly as I could to the central building and I was obliged to leave a lot of my equipment behind. Fucking ass! They are really like army ants, only they hunt instead of forage! One minute I was fine, the next they were just on me everywhere. I wonder if they're native or bioengineered. I caught one still on me when I made it to shelter. I don't know how to describe it, but it has a red marking, like a tattoo, on its back, like one of those black widow spiders on Earth, but irregular; I think it might be a letter of some kind. What kind of assholes would engineer such a thing though? I wonder...But no, it couldn't be that. Maybe the people who died in that stairwell were running from a swarm of those things? They seem to have a limited altitude in their flight. I wonder if somebody engineered these things to hunt down the native population. Or a slave rebellion, maybe. I'll be willing to bet whatever it was, they weren't able to control it. Maybe it went after them too. Shit, but it sounds like a bad science fiction novel. But anyway. The central building. I'll explore it and check in when I'm done. End log.
07/01/2175
A lot of this building looks like a governmental building. There were a couple of halls that looked more or less like courtrooms, or committee hearing rooms, or something like that. Most had a central throne and dirt floors in front of it. There was a massive central throne room in the center with some sort of statue sitting on another black stone, like the one in the other house I visited. The statue was made of steel; it has seven blunt heads that look like different alien animals with rubies set as eyes, though a lot of the rubies have fallen out. It has eight arms, each one looking almost like insect arms, and holds orbs in each one. The orbs remind me a bit of planets, but they're unclear facsimiles. It has seven tails that all end in fire. The thing made me uneasy to look at. There was an empty pool in front of it, as well, like with the stone in the other house. I wasn't surprised this time when there was a dungeon downstairs filled with the same bones, but this time almost all were pressed against the bars on the wall. Upstairs were some other empty rooms with ruined furniture that might have been desks of some sort; maybe it was a school room or something. There were more bones in there. Otherwise, there was something that might have been a science lab or a torture chamber, one of those things. Then, in the higher floors, more empty bedrooms and utilities and rooms with giant screens. After that, some more rooms with equipment that I didn't recognize and another balcony. There were bones leading up to this one too. I went back downstairs and found an extra basement with more equipment that I thought looked like a water filtration system. I'm in a computer room now that was on the fifth floor trying to get the thing working again. Hopefully I'll be able to find a way to check in again, assuming I don't have to cannibalize my transmitter for battery. If so, then this will probably be my last entry. Tell my family I love them and I wish them all the best. End log.
07/01/2175
I did it! I got the water filtration system working! It's stale water, but it's more or less clean! Oh, am I glad to taste it! With that, I'll be able to survive for a lot longer, though perhaps not more comfortably. Who knows? Who cares! I'll worry about food in the morning! End log.
07/04/2175
I know it's been a while since I checked in. Something went wrong with my transmitter after the second. The computer I activated turned on some sort of transmission inhibitor and I had to spend the last few days fixing it. There wasn't much else I could do. At this point I can't risk going outside. There are enough gnats to fill every one of these houses to the brim with them. They've started to fling themselves at the windows on the lower floors like battering rams. Some of them climbed up the side of the building yesterday and started to do the same to the balcony doors. All day today it's been like that, a thousand tiny pebbles of sand beating themselves to death against the walls and windows. I haven't eaten since the first. I can't make it out of the building to get to my rations; those fucking bugs will eat me alive if I so much as open the doors. So I've had to hang out here and wait for starvation. I can't even eat the gnats; I analyzed the one I caught and killed, and it contains an insanely strong neurotoxin. So that much is out. I haven't given up yet though; there are some nasty chemicals in the lab upstairs and I'm hoping to weaponize them somehow. I just need a delivery system for it, and I can kill maybe a million of them at a time. Might make a difference, might not. Worth a shot, though, as I see it. Something I hadn't noticed on my first walkthrough of the building was that every room goes through that statue's room. I mean, say I want to get from the throne room to the school room upstairs. I have to go through that statue to reach the stairs. Or say I want to go from the schoolroom to the computer center, which are both upstairs. I have to walk along a balcony that overlooks that thing. The same sort of thing is true for every room in the house. And the thing watches you at every turn. It doesn't matter where you come in from, one of its heads will be facing you. Even if it isn't, the eyes follow you the way some paintings do. So, you can walk into its gaze without even realizing it. And I almost think the thing has a mind of its own. Last night, I was finally fed up with the thing and took a loose beam to beat out the last of its ruby eyes, but that somehow made it worse, like it was still watching me, but from everywhere now instead of just the eyes. I have to turn around every once in a while, just to make sure it hasn't moved. [sighs] I'm probably going insane. I don't know. It's only been a week. But I am hungry, and I don't think I'm sleeping well enough. Anyway, I have to work on my chemical bomb. I'll check in later. End log.
07/05/2175
I had a dream last night that that statue was laughing at me. Not doing anything really but laughing while the gnats finally had their way with me. I thought it was just a dream. But then I woke up and I realized I must have sleepwalked, because I was right in front of the thing. Then I noticed that a couple of gnats had somehow gotten in. Only one or two, and they were asleep. But I had to turn the place inside out to find the crack. Turns out they found a way in through the water intake system; I thought it was taking water from a well, but it turns out that there is a stream that flows through it; toxic, of course. The stinkers have been clogging it with bodies for the past day trying to squeeze themselves through. They only got a handful in and the rest drowned before night fell; but if they keep trying it, I don't know if I'll be able to maintain a clean water supply. I killed all the ones I found and spent the whole day on my chemical bomb. I think I have a way to deliver it, but I don't know how to get it out to them without letting them in. I'll work on it. End log.
07/06/2175
Dreams and visions all day today. The statue again, always laughing at me, and the gnats who must work with him. I hate it. I hate it with every ounce of flesh I still have. I hate its putrid, disformed heads, I hate its stupid conglomerated body, I hate its chicken-like feat, I hate the fucking rock it's standing on. And I hate these gnats. I hate them worse than anything I've ever seen. Why don't the little pricks just eat each other? Why do they give a shit about me? They are many, and I am one. Like the heads. Many against one. And I'm so hungry. End log.
07/06/2175
I figured out to pump my chemical bomb into the stream the same way the gnats were coming in. We'll see if they like that. Hopefully, it'll have a wide enough field of effect to wipe out the majority of them. It'll be nice to have some fucking piece and fucking quiet. After they're gone, the statue's next. End log.
07/07/2175
The bomb didn't work. It just didn't work. It was in the stream and it detonated, but the river soaked up the toxins. A handful of gnats died. A handful. I should just open the doors now and let them have me. It'd be better than dying here with that thing looking at me.
07/08/2175
I can't leave its sight now. I try to leave, but it calls me back. And I here it laughing. I hear everything it says. I will die. There is no hope. And it's going to Earth. I can see that now. The black ship will go there, and bring its gnats, and slaves, and bones, and statues that are somehow alive, and they'll not rest until every man, woman, and child is eaten alive. Eaten alive! Eaten alive...why do I fight it now? What good can I do against it? The gnats will eat me one way or another. I wish this fucking planet would have died a thousand years ago. But now it's my turn. For what? For gnat food. All my training. My wife. My family. My education. Gnat food. And after that, gnat shit. And then nothing. Ahh, the thing is laughing at me...it's laughing...it's laughing...Shalvool nos ravanoch! Zakal-Faah menoo!
07/08/2175
[Insects buzzing sound persists for approximately forty-four hours]
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