FILE 17: AKA ‘THE ANGELICA INCIDENT’
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FILE 17-A
Narration 1
An audio playback of the enclosed file. Proceed with caution.
Narration 2
An additional playback.
The log enclosed within this document is derived from the audio recordings of Escape Pod 4 of the SS Angelica approximately two days into its deep-space voyage and an estimated six minutes before its destruction.
The purpose of the Angelica’s deployment was to search for reported radio frequencies in an uncharted region of the Carnation District and report any findings back to Base Camp Alpha (the nearest lunar base) before recording said findings for further analysis.
Such alleged radio signals had the potential to be physically and/or mentally damaging to the human body, and thus the Angelica was protected with layers of padding along its upper, middle, and lower sectors. At its time of deployment, the ship held 6 crew members, 5 of which are confirmed to be terminated and 1 whose status is unknown.
LOG START
A light scratching noise is audible as the Escape Pod 4 broadcasters power up. The audio is noticeably quiet at first but well within the limits of human hearing. A frantic voice is heard, slowly increasing in volume as the broadcasters fully activate.
“This is Captain McKennedy of the SS Angelica speaking; any nearby receivers please respond!”
No other radio signals are present. McKennedy can be heard grunting as he attempts to zone the broken navigational systems of Escape Pod 4 onto Base Camp Alpha unsuccessfully.
"I repeat, this is Captain McKennedy of the SS Angelica speaking, any nearby receivers please respo-
McKennedy is interrupted by several sharp thuds on the exterior of Escape Pod 4. After audio analysis, the source of the banging was determined unlikely to be from an meteoroid or some other form of space debris.
“Dear God, they’re trying to get in!”
A few seconds pass. McKennedy's breaths are ragged and irregular; he is clearly hyperventilating. A sharp hissing noise vibrates along the interior of Escape Pod 4.
“No, no, no, fuck! The fucking fuel tank!”
McKennedy mutters in a distraught tone, before leaning in towards the broadcaster microphone.
“To any active receivers: a hostile alien parasite has assimilated all five of my crewmates aboard the SS Angelica and is currently attempting to gain access to my escape pod. The beings have taken control of the ship, despite my best efforts. My fuel reserves have been pierced from the outside and are leaking rapidly. I myself have already managed to eliminate one of the life-forms but four still remain.”
Two muffled, unintelligible voices can be heard transmitting from outside of Escape Pod 4, picked up by the pod's comms.
“The…these aliens…they’re attempting to persuade me to leave the escape pod. They’re…floating…floating outside the windows in spacesuits. Crew members Chuck and Edward. They’re dead, but the aliens are mimicking their voices. They want me to believe it’s them...”
The pod's systems softly crackle and spark in the background.
“I’m calling in a Lunar Strike on the SS Angelica’s position, effective immediately, in order to prevent the assimilation process from spreading any further. As for myself, I may have just enough fuel left to steer myself clear of the blast radius, but without my navigational systems, I have no means of returning to any nearby Lunar Base. I will beam my co-ordinates out onto this broadcast as soon as I am far enough away from the Angelica so that I can be rescued. Captain McKennedy out.”
The broadcasters of Escape Pod 4 click as they shut off.
LOG END
An early prototype of the modern Lunar Cannon, the type of weapon used to fire the Lunar Strike at the Angelica.
The message was relayed to Base Camp Alpha receivers less than a minute after its initial broadcast, thanks to a lone scouting ship that picked up McKennedy's signal as it was patrolling the area close to the SS Angelica. Soon after the message was received and relayed to the Nightfall Lunar Hub, a Lunar Strike was fired at the SS Angelica according to Captain McKennedy’s wishes as a precautionary measure against a potential hostile extra-terrestrial invasion. The strike was 100% effective, as the Angelica was destroyed upon impact and 5 of its 6 potentially “infected” crew were killed.
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FILE 17-B
Several months after the events of FILE 17-A, a discovery was made during a small-scale salvage mission directed at the ruins of the SS Angelica. One of the crew members of the SS Intrepid (the ship dispatched to carry out the mission) discovered a relatively undamaged audio log floating alongside a dishevelled corpse likely belonging to one of the 5 dead crewmates of the Angelica. After multiple low-ranking Intrepid officers listened to the recording before it could be intercepted by Nightfall commanders, it was swiftly confiscated. A severe reprimanding was given to the offending officers, and the ruins of the SS Angelica were subsequently abandoned to prevent another possible data breach.
The audio log’s transcript is detailed in the following document.
LOG START
Several comms systems initiate their start-up sequence, eventually forming into one singular communications frequency.
COMMS 1, Crew Member ‘EDWARD’: Hello? Is anyone there?
COMMS 2, Crew Member ‘CHUCK’: Reading you loud and clear, Ed. Gus and Frank, do you copy?
COMMS 4, Crew Member ‘GUS’: Positive, Chuck.
COMMS 3, Crew Member ‘FRANK’: Can confirm, Chuck.
CHUCK: Edward and I require a status report. What the hell is going on up there?
GUS: We passed through an errant signal an hour back. We were going to record it as per protocol, but it was too strong. Overwhelmed our monitors, crashed the system. We had to restart the whole damn thing all over again, which is why comms were down. McKennedy was fixing something down in engineering when it happened. When we went to check up on him-
FRANK: We found him seized up, unconscious, spitting froth all over the floor.
EDWARD: Come again, Frank? Are you implying the signal affected McKennedy in some way? How is that possible?
FRANK: Well, that's the thing. There's no protective padding down in engineering. It's a completely exposed area. The readings all confirm it.
CHUCK: Fucking hell.
EDWARD: But that's...are you absolutely sure?
FRANK: 100% positive. It's present everywhere else on the ship, even the suits. Probably just a manufacturing error that engineering got skipped.
CHUCK: Or Nightfall skimping out on us. That padding's the most expensive material on the ship. Wouldn't be too out of character for them, cutting corners to save a buck or two.
GUS: It's not important right now. We need to tell you guys something.
EDWARD: What about Daniel? Is he safe?
GUS: I was just getting to that. When we found McKennedy, we brought him to Daniel, who was, as per usual, in the med bay. It didn't take long for him to come to, but when he did, he started yelling about aliens and parasites and all sorts of crazy shit. We couldn't calm him down, he was just...rabid. Completely out of control. He took a lunge at Frank and when Daniel tried to sedate him, he…
Gus trails off, his voice weak.
FRANK: He sliced his neck open. Lost too much blood before we could do anything.
The group is stunned into silence.
EDWARD: God…
CHUCK: Daniel's dead?
FRANK: He bled out, Chuck. He's gone.
CHUCK: And neither of you stopped him?
FRANK: We tried. All three of us together could barely hold him down. He was like a wild animal. I've never seen anything like it.
Once again, the comms go silent for a few moments.
EDWARD: Where is McKennedy now? Did he get away?
GUS: He’s jettisoned in one of the escape pods, but he’s yet to accelerate away from the ship. On his way out, he smashed up almost all the comms, so we've no hope of sending a distress signal. We can't even contact his pod. Establishing a local link with you two is as far as we can get.
EDWARD: So what do we do?
FRANK: You and Chuck are at the lower right-wing of the ship, correct?
EDWARD: Yes. We've been maintenancing the suits for the last hour or so.
A virtual reconstruction of one of the airlocks aboard the Angelica.
FRANK: Good. Grab a couple and navigate to McKennedy’s escape pod out of the East airlock. Find a way to empty the pod’s fuel reserves and dock it back into the ship manually. Meanwhile, we're going to fix the comms. When you get McKennedy back into the airlock, we can seal him in from here. Then we can start heading back to Base Camp Alpha. And remember, the effects of the signal should only last a few hours. I imagine the captain will have returned to his usual disposition by the time we arrive.
CHUCK: Understood, Frank.
EDWARD: Is it a requirement for me and Chuck to depart together? If I stayed on-board I could help with-
FRANK: That’s a negative, Edward. Docking the pod is a two-man job. Get back to us when it's done.
Gus and Frank exit the comms. Chuck and Edward remain in silence as they don their protective suits and exit the Angelica. Within a minute, they arrive at Escape Pod 4.
EDWARD: Captain? Captain, can you hear us?
Edward attempts to open a comms channel with McKennedy's pod, to some degree of success. All that can be heard, however, are McKennedy’s muffled, distorted shouts. Edward thumps on the metal exterior of the pod.
CHUCK: Stop that, damn it! You’re just going to freak him out even more!
McKennedy can be heard shouting into the comms of Escape Pod 4. Audio analysis concludes that McKennedy's speech matches the audio of the log included in FILE 17-A.
CHUCK: Take this wrench and remove the casing for the pod’s fuel tank.
Edward unscrews the casing as per Chuck’s instructions. It takes several tense minutes.
CHUCK: Fuck, that’s really set him off.
McKennedy continues shouting into the comms of Escape Pod 4.
CHUCK: Right, now we open the pod.
EDWARD: But that'll kill-
CHUCK: I couldn’t give less of a shit if it kills him! Those two aren't gonna order me around anymore. Daniel is dead. McKennedy is a murderer and they didn't stop him. The blood is on their hands, all three of them.
Chuck is audibly seething with each word.
EDWARD: Chuck, I know he was your brother, but you know that’s not-
CHUCK: Shut the fuck up, Edward! You always were a spineless little shit. I’m taking this into my own hands. We’ll say the pod leaked, McKennedy got sucked out, and we couldn’t do anything about it. You dare tell anyone else otherwise and I'll have your head on a fucking stick. Okay? You stay there and don’t even think of trying to stop me.
For the next few minutes, Chuck can be heard attempting to force open the door to Escape Pod 4. Edward makes a futile attempt of talking him out of it, which Chuck seems to pay no attention to.
CHUCK: Bastard must’ve put it into lockdo-
A distinct whooshing noise drowns out Chuck’s voice as Escape Pod 4 accelerates away from the Angelica at a high velocity.
CHUCK: Son of a bitch!
EDWARD: He can't get too far with that little fuel. Maybe if we-
Both Chuck and Edward’s attention seems to suddenly be diverted.
CHUCK: What is that? Another ship?
EDWARD: That’s a Lunar Strike...
CHUCK: You’re fucking kidding me.
Gus and Frank suddenly join the comms.
GUS: Both of you get to the escape pods as soon as possible.
A loud roaring sound can be heard as the crew members talk, rapidly getting louder.
CHUCK: Can’t you move the ship out of the way?!
GUS: There’s no time!
FRANK: Gus, we’re not going to make it. The elevator's too slow.
GUS: Don’t fucking say that! We’re going to (unintelligible).
A magnified image of the Angelica roughly 24 hours after its destruction, captured from the Nightfall Lunar Hub.
All four men can be heard talking over each other as the strike approaches, before the noise reaches its peak, and the comms go silent on all ends.
LOG END
Additional note: the information included in both FILE 17-A and FILE 17-B is highly sensitive and therefore liable to extermination through the mass deletion of all documents contained within the libraries of the Nightfall Lunar Hub, in the event that such files were to come into the hands of a foreign enemy or unauthorized group with intent to release said files to the public.
Thank you, and God bless America.
"Let our shining beacons cast the paths to the goals we seek." – Samuel Morgan, the Founder and President of the Nightfall Lunar Hub.