XI-16-3O · Exodus Yellow
Bungie · Entelechy
ANNOTATED TRANSCRIPTION FOLLOWS
Mayday, mayday, mayday. All stations, this is the Exodus Yellow, 25,000 souls aboard. We are under attack by unknown hostiles and sustaining heavy damage. Engines 1 through 6 are down, kinetic weaponry has been disabled, and we are transmitting in the blind. We have a possible SKYSHOCK event, requesting [STATIC]
[Emergency broadcast is merged with sensorium telemetry from the Exodus Yellow's Chief Medical Officer Dr. C. Liang. An open medical data feed is displaying updates on the condition of the ship's officers. Several are listed as deceased, including the captain, and the remainder have moderate to severe injuries. All are located on the ship's bridge.]
[Dr. Liang is running through the corridor connecting the ship's medical bay to the bridge. She is speaking rapidly on an open audio channel with Comm. Officer S. Bennouna.]
LIANG: But we're not a warship!
BENNOUNA: Doesn't matter to the Warmind. Not under CARRHAE WHITE.
LIANG: We can't possibly have any working guns! Not after that last hit. What does Rasputin expect us to do, wiggle our engine nozzles at that * big ugly triangle?
SYSTEM WARNING//STRUCTURAL IMPACT
BENNOUNA: Pyramid, doc.
LIANG: This is not the time for pedantry! How can you be so calm?!
BENNOUNA: Kinda have to be, don't I? Nobody else is in any shape to do anything.
BENNOUNA: If we're in CARRHAE WHITE and Rasputin's telling us this is what we've gotta do, then the alternative must be worse.
LIANG: Worse than 20,000 dead colonists?
BENNOUNA: Hold-oh, *, doc, grab (STATIC)
[Liang lurches violently and impacts the wall. Her sensorium's medical data feed cuts out and remains offline.]
LIANG: Ow! Bennouna, what was that?
BENNOUNA: [STATIC]
LIANG: Bennouna? Anyone?
BENNOUNA: [STATIC]
[Liang resumes moving down the corridor. She exhales sharply and begins to speak to herself, recording with her sensorium.]
LIANG: Okay. Okay, status. Our systems, including communications, are on the fritz, we're limping on two engines, at least three quarters of the crew are wounded too badly to act, the captain's dead, and we've got no guns.
LIANG: If whatever we're fighting doesn't kill us all, Rasputin will.
SYSTEM WARNING//MASS GROWL; PHAETON STRIKES; STERILE NEUTRINO SCATTERING
LIANG: Oh god. Oh god, oh god... what is that noise?
[Sounds of metal groaning; Liang abruptly stops and begins to back up.]
SYSTEM WARNING//EXO.YEL TENSILE STRENGTH EXCEEDED
[Ahead of Liang, support struts begin to fracture. The floor ripples, and the ceiling buckles. The portion of the ship Liang has just come from is not as strongly affected.]
[Tension is released; the ship's structure snaps back into place. Liang falls hard but recovers.]
LIANG: I could feel that in my teeth. Some kind of gravity wave.
LIANG: Rasputin's gone mad. We can't hold position any longer. We'll die, we'll all die.
LIANG: Anand.** I just need to get Anand up, and she can get us out of here.
[Liang resumes moving forward; the ship's structure shows visible sign of strain, with materials having stretched and deformed far beyond normal tolerances.]
BENNOUNA: [STATIC]
LIANG: Bennouna? I'm here! I'm here!
[Liang reaches the bridge airlock; the door shows visible fractures but opens when Liang applies force.]
LIANG: Bennouna—
[Liang begins to retch violently, backing away from the door. The bridge is covered with a layer of organic material and damaged flight suits.]
SYSTEM WARNING//WARSAT PREPARING TO FIRE
[Still heaving, Liang clutches the door frame. She opens a wide-range broadcast channel.]
LIANG: All stations, all stations! Stand down! We are in your line of fire!
SYSTEM WARNING//WARSAT FIRING
LIANG: Please! This is the Exodus Yellow, 25,000 souls aboard-
SYSTEM WARNING//EXO.YEL HULL INTEGRITY FATALLY COMPROMISED
[The ship comes apart around the Warsat's beam; Liang tumbles unprotected in vacuum.]
[Liang's sensorium captures a gap in the debris field.]
[The Pyramid Ship is completely unharmed.]
TRANSCRIPTION ENDS
SCRIBE NOTES
*Expletives omitted.
**Most likely Flight Dynamics Officer P. Anand, who was one of the injured crew on the bridge.
It was quite difficult to find firsthand accounts of the Collapse. The Humans who lived through it are long dead, and any contemporary Exos have been rebooted several times since then. Most data, even when encoded and protected in engrams, has degraded too badly to be recovered, especially under the post-Collapse conditions on Earth. But I heard about Neptune—the city of Neomuna, and the people who hid there during the Collapse. I suspected they might have more complete records.
The journey to Neptune was long and quiet, but the rumble of a ship's engines is as familiar to me as any lullaby. It's a shame that there isn't any remote uplink to Neomuna's archives yet, but to be honest, I relished the chance to visit it myself. The stories and images were pale mimicries of the city: the lights, the colors, the sounds!
I have never seen anything like it. This is not mere exaggeration; I mean that, until now, every settlement of every civilization I have ever seen has been a ruin of its former self. The Last City is a marvel, a testament to humanity's survival and spirit, but even here, I can see the scars left by your Collapse. Neomuna was marred by the war which landed in its midst, but it was still a vision. I could see the shape of your Golden Age in its skyline.
I was greeted warmly by Scribe Laghari. How marvelous to discover a kindred spirit! She was quite helpful, and I shall have to return when I am able - the Neomuni have a tremendous bounty of information in their CloudArk. I have even been asked to share some of my own stories so they may be recorded for posterity! Together, we were able to retrieve and repair several records that had been damaged, either by Vex incursions or data degradation, and I have included the most relevant record here.
Also, Scribe Laghari asked me to tell you hello, and to remind you that the Hall of Heroes is open to you whenever you may wish to visit. Her holoprojection performed an unusual motion when she said this—I believe that you would call it 'waggling eyebrows’? It was very fascinating. Is there a corresponding gesture among Exos?
On to the record itself. We can see that the Black Fleet deployed gravitational weaponry, which is corroborated by other accounts of Sol's Collapse (cf. REP # 904-TITAN-NPA) and our own records of the Whirlwind (cf. REP # 112-|RIIS-WWD). Such weapons were not described by the Noesis's account of the Witness's attack (cf. SCRIBE ARCHIVE XI-14-9D). We also do not see evidence of what the Noesis described happening to their civilization: slicing, anatomizing, temporizing. Nor do we see any serious attempts from the Witness to communicate.
I have reviewed everything I could access about the Warmind's attempt to halt the Collapse. Rasputin declared many protocols, two of which I find important here: CARRHAE WHITE (a state of emergency so severe that Rasputin could seize control of the entire system's defenses, and even conscript civilian ships to serve in combat; suggestive of a threat of extinction), and TWILIGHT EXIGENT (a situation that required a change of Rasputin’s ethics; if obeying ordinary ethical restrictions would result in the extinction of humanity, then Rasputin needed a way to bypass those restrictions).
Rasputin seems to have enjoyed abstruse terminology - useful for masking intent, but quite difficult to parse. How do I pronounce CARRHAE? Is it easier without mandibles? Perhaps I should start a dictionary. It would be easiest to ask Ana Bray directly, as she knew the most about Rasputin, but I thought it might be… discourteous, to ask so soon after his passing.
According to all the documentation of Rasputin's defense of Sol, even with such extraordinary circumstances allowing him to act beyond his normal limits, Rasputin could not stop the Black Fleet. Had the Great Machine not acted, the Black Fleet would have ground all of Sol into dust.
Still, I cannot understand why the Black Fleet would choose to deploy gravitational weapons. If they were totally unharmed by humanity's greatest weapons - if the Witness could disassemble entire fleets with a wave of its hand - why would they need to use such comparatively slow weaponry?
Perhaps this was not done out of necessity. But why, then? I feel that I am still missing something.