JavaScript is required to use Bungie.net

#Community

originally posted in:Stars of Alpha Lupi
Edited by Fort_Max_Station: 5/1/2017 11:46:01 AM
4

Destiny: Becoming Legend: Intro

This is the introduction. If want to move to the next part, or read an actual description of the story, click [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Clan/Post/1901902/223764924/0/0]Table of Contents[/url] [b]From the diaries of Commander Jacob Hardy, pilot, Ares One[/b] The mission is a go. Crew of three: Mihaylova, Qiao, myself. Immediate departure at the next Hohmann window to Mars. The MREs and return ships will chase us out. How do I feel? I said at the press conference I felt privileged. Historians will read this diary, but it won't take their insight to tell the world that I'm terrified. It's the human reaction. What I wish I could convey is the - the exhilaration. That's the biggest thing. I'm not a spiritual man, but I've always believed there's something transcendent about spaceflight. Something pure. We go out there because we can. Because it's who we are. Now we go because we have to. Because the unknown came to us. In fourteen months we'll be face to face with it, and by the time we arrive, it should be active again - just like it was active on Jupiter, and Mercury, and Venus. I wonder what happens if it doesn't stop at Mars. I wonder if it'll leave us there in the sand, and come to Earth, and do here what it's done everywhere else. I hate that we're carrying weapons. I understand the necessity. But I hold to my belief: there's something beautiful out there. It's up to us to reach it. Everybody asks about the words. The truth is I'm not much of a poet. Ares One didn't leave us with bandwidth for anything except blunt competence. We came in perilously hot, trying to select a landing site through the chaos of thickening atmosphere and turbulence that bloomed off the target. A twenty minute round-trip lightspeed delay to Earth meant we could only count on ourselves. When the number three engine went diagnostic during the second course correction, I thought we might go catastrophic. But Qiao brought us in. Mihaylova brought us in. I just flew the ship. The Ares One excursion vehicle was built for thin winds and icy dust. We came down into a storm: the breath of God, a ripple of change rolling down off the artifact. We aborted on three sites and finally I took us into powered hover and brought us down on reflexes and instinct. Then we ran the checklists, suited up, and left the vehicle. There was a script, and it's true, I botched it. I got my boots down and I made the most famous gaffe in human history. Said the first thing that came to mind: a warning to the others. "We're walking into a rising wind." I didn't mean to say anything immortal. I just thought it'd be useful to know. The hike from Ares One. You've watched it. Everything was recorded. I think you can get it in full immersion, now, and fly around like a hummingbird. I'll add what I can. The route was planned. We all went together - the CEV and Ares One itself had enough automation to go home alone in the event of crew loss. Whatever we'd find at the artifact, it needed the human element. We carried rifles. They made us heavier and slower and probably less safe. I think the argument about the rifles can be left for another time. What's important is - It turned out well. Look at me. Look at us! You're talking to a ninety-year-old man. A ninety-year-old who's never been sharper. I'm miles ahead of every cognitive benchmark. What's happened to me is good. What's happened to all of us is good. When we crested that rise and made visual contact with the artifact I don't think any one of us dared dream that it would end this well. We went to Mars at the cutting edge of human civilization. And it wasn't our weapons that won the day. It was our ship. Our training. Our camaraderie. Our belief that if we just reached out to the universe, not to grasp for profit or security but with an open hand, we would be elevated. We were right. That makes me so happy. To this day. Three human beings stood on a high ridge and saw the shape of the future. Saw rain strike a millennia-old desert. Felt the air sweeten with oxygen and warm water and the beginnings of life. I am sometimes asked if I felt something die. The end of the era of human self-sufficiency. I don't know how to answer that question. I do know that I was changed. Nobody could experience that kind of wonder and remain unchanged. The decades since have proven that to me. I knew I'd never fly another mission like that. I recognized the need for a new love. That's why I threw my fresh cognitive skills into understanding the Traveler. How can one entity so quickly and utterly remake an entire world? Fifty years later, I'm conversant in high mathematics, particularly topological thoughts and the slippery irreality of Light. I'm involved in a project to study the Traveler's terraforming actions right now. But I still enjoy the interviews. I like going back to that mission. It makes me unspeakably happy to see how well it all turned out. And it makes me happy to remember I was there. We called it the Traveler, and its arrival changed us forever. Great cities were built on Mars and Venus. Mercury became a garden world. Human lifespan tripled. It was a time of miracles. We stared out at the galaxy and knew that it was our destiny to walk in the light of other stars—but the Traveler had an enemy. A Darkness, which had hunted it for eons across the black gulfs of space. Centuries after our Golden Age began, this Darkness found us. And that was the end of everything. But it was also a beginning.

Posting in language:

 

Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

View Entire Topic
You are not allowed to view this content.
;
preload icon
preload icon
preload icon