Found this in the Electra system

Investigating a couple of megaships in Pleiades Sector AB-W b2-4 suddenly got a bit scarier than I expected. On both occasions a Thargoid Interceptor arrived shortly after me. As I have no offensive capabilities I just did a quick scan and then headed away as fast as possible. Landing on the nearest port, there was another Thargoid Interceptor close by, but this time it was just a crashed wreck. All 3 registered as separate discoveries in my Codex.

Basilisk

Cyclops

Wreck

Chasing more listening post logs I found myself in Aries Dark Region DB-X D1-63. This system had quite a few volcanic active bodies and plenty of raw materials not maxed out in my hold. Took the time to land on a number of them and got 5 more geological features to tick of my list:

Carbon Dioxide Ice Fumarole:

Carbon Dioxide Ice Geyser:

Water Ice Fumaroles

Water Ice Geyser

Silicate Magma Lava Sprout

Found a listening post with a log about a megaship in a nearby system. Seems whoever was logging the message where concerned that the ship should stumble upon a hidden site. I'm going to check it out.

From the logs of The Pandora, it seems they did indeed find something in COL 285 Sector CV-Y d57, body AB 4a, but was attacked before they could get there, something big.

Big does not describe the site, enormous is more like it. What is this thing? It seems to be a mix of a geological and biological structure of some sort, definitely of Thargoid origin. No movement on the scanners so I'm going to park a bit out, put the ship in silent mode and take the SRV in for a closer look.

It's absolutely huge and when I got closer to the central structure I found out it wasn't completely abandoned. Quite a few drones showed up and registered as Thargoid Scavengers when scanned. Luckily they didn't have much shielding so they where easy to bring down. Blowing them up scattered some strange materials around which I was able to scoop up with the SRV.

When moving close to the central structure the SRV's systems started to behave erratically, so I didn't stay long. Just scanned a few uplink devices and moved a bit away again. The drones kept coming and I decided to stay and pick of as many as needed until my holds where full of these, for me, unknown type of materials. A nice side effect was that as my SRV registered more and more positive kills, my combat ranking started to increase.

As I was leaving the site I spotted some canisters with alien materials. As I have no cargo rack onboard I was forced to leave it, but I'll have to make room for a cargo rack if I can encounter rare materials around such sites. Jumped to the nearest station and switched one of my AFMU's for a 8t cargo rack, going back to see if the canisters are still there. Ok, new plan. Dump those canisters as fast as possible, they are corrosive as h***.

While scouting a route to the Pleaiades Nebula I spotted a trail of inhabited systems, leading from the bubble to a small cluster around the nebula. Having no other plan for the moment, I was going to check out the systems along that trail for interesting sites.

Found 5 different geological features on 2 different planets in 42 N Persei:

Iron Magma Lava Spout

Sulfur Dioxide Fumarole

Sulfur Dioxide Gas Vent

Silicate Vapour Fumarole

Silicate Vapour Gas Vent

Even if A class stars are rarer than K, there's still quite a few of them. I needed more information to narrow down the number of candidates. I started by assuming that the Adamastor was heading even further down the path it was heading when it was redirected to Geological Survey 23B. Barnard's Loop was mentioned in the article I found, so that's my assumption. It was headed somewhere in the region of Barnard's Loop. I further more assumed that it would plot a direct course from where I was now, in Musca Dark Region PJ-P b6-1 to Barnard's Loop. The last assumption I made, came from the log entry: "Currently 1.. Ly..". I guess the last entry was hundred-and-something LY from somewhere. My first search would be between 100 and 200 LY from Musca Dark Region PJ-P b6-1. That would narrow it down to a manageable numbers of systems.

No luck, after scanning about 10 likely systems I wasn't any nearer to the last location. The last clue only gave a relative location, but relative to what? It seems it was not related to the second entry in the log. As I didn't know the target system, there where no way of relating the search to those coordinates either. The only thing remaining was to check if the distance in the log entry was related to the Adamastors present location. When it arrived on sub light engines, the trajectory passed the last few system was calculated. If I used those as a guide and looked for any A class stars within 100 to 200 LY from Chukchan in the same direction, that would be my last attempt without any further information.

Bingo, first system I arrived at, HIP 69200, contained a unknown signal at body 1B. It was Professor Carver's crashed sidewinder.

It seems the story is more complex that I thought. The Adamastor was for some reason forced to jump before everyone was aboard, leaving both scientists and mercenaries behind to die. If the mercenaries was not shooting the eyewitnesses what was they fighting against?

It seems this trail is at an end, now only the beacon signal remains, but that leaves very little to go on.

I started out from the last known system on the itinerary which was HIP 33386, then I envisioned a cone of space stretching out in a line from Chukchan through HIP 39748 and HIP 33386. Filtered my galaxy map to only show K class stars and started to visit and scan each one inside this volume of space.

After scanning between 40 and 50 systems I was beginning to reach 370LY from Chukchan, which was the supposedly range of the Adamastor at the time. Finally I found a lone listening post in Synuefe XE-Y c17-7. Unfortunately it seems that any message it was supposed to have conveyed was corrupter after 200 years. It read:

8BFGTY4PLU67-RTYO06.45:GN63-74PHGJI E67-:F563-21-574.9 ER34.6-DER8+WEST U.5 -RTG10 RTH8-4 6T.WR4564-21 +G134.2 RT55.4 GDW THE42.1LY 764.2Y-45TG4.BTJ-Y. 6ORT437.1D341-67.Y5DS 243 45TY-3234

Anyway, if this system was the first entry in the log I pulled from the Adamastor and it was redirected to the Geological Survey in Musca Dark Region PJ-P b6-1, then that system might be the second entry in the log. The last entry was not much to go on, but again it might be possible to narrow it down as A class stars are much rarer than K and M stars mentioned in the first two entries. Of to Musca Dark Region PJ-P b6-1 again.

I was just 8 jumps out from Chukchan, so I decided to check out the Adamastor for myself.

Once close to the ship, a message was received from an individual claiming to investigate into the works of Azimuth Biochemicals 200 years ago. I was beamed an access key to be able to decipher any logs found on the ship that would supposedly lead on the origin of the signal received by the Adamastor itself recently.

Hard to work out where exactly the next clue is, as far as I understand it should be in a system with a single K class star and 11 other bodies in the Taurus region. However there are plenty of K stars around that region. Guess I'll head over and see if I can work it out once there.

Nothing sticks out as an obvious place to look here in the Taurus Dark Region. Heading back to Chukchan to investigate the Adamastor some more.

Stopped overnight at Chamitoff Station in Chukchan and found a news article about a local investigator that had started to piece together Adamastor's itinerary. The first 2 stops supposedly where HIP 39748 and HIP 33386, with a course for Barnard's Loop with 370LY worth of fuel. Perhaps if I extrapolated the line it was going I would find the systems mentioned in the logs?

With Chukchan as the supposed starting station, the 2 first stops where almost in a perfect line roughly 100Ly apart.

• Chukchan: 143 : 56 : 40
• HIP 39748: 173 : 1 : -63
• HIP 33386: 196 : -37 : -142
• ? 222 : -84 : -233

There where no K class star exactly at this location, but a few pretty close. It is worth a shot.

Stopped by a couple of systems inside the Coalsack Nebula. The first one was empty aside from non-human signal sources and I quickly moved on. The next one, Musca Dark Region CQ-Y d86, at least had some planets and moons. A quick scan of the planetary bodies indicated that at least one had some biological signals present. First one was some Bark Mounds.

The planetary composition suggested there should be quite a few minerals I still hadn't maxed out in my hold. And with the terrain being relatively flat, I set out to gather a few minerals while I was there.

I headed out of the nebula again, straight for the nearest port which was Betancourt Base in Musca Dark Region PJ-P b6-1. Safely in dock, I checked the latest scan of the system. A couple of places showed more sites that I presumed contained Thargoid Barnacles. I cruised on over for a closer look. To my surprise, there where some even more interesting discoveries than the barnacles themselves. At one site an old SRV had crashed and was abandoned. Sadly the logs was corrupted and no information could be found.

Close by there was a small base I hoped would yield some clues to the site.

Something strange and important definitively happened here. From the logs I guess that the scientist made a discovery and when they reported it, Azimuth Biochemicals sent in soldiers, took whatever the discovery was and then killed everyone.

Oh my god, from the next logs I found it's clear that this is one of the last, if not the last site the megaship Adamastor called at before malfunctioning and disappearing for about 200 years. The scientist here at Geological Survey 23B actually came across a downed Thargoid vessel and retrieved "something" from it. This is why Azimuth sent in the big guns and just killed everyone that knew about it.

I went out to the wrecked ship, knowing that anything at all of value would be long gone, and with it any threats. Strange to be so close to something not of human origin.

After a few glasses of Lavian Brandy at the local watering hole, the "On the Rocks Bar and Grill", I got chatting with a few fellow travelers. They assured me that encounters was quite rare unless you sought them up yourself, just be prepared to high-wake out at a moments notice and all should be fine.

Next morning I double checked my ship insurances and plotted in the course for planet A1 which showed quite a few land based signals. Sure enough, I was able to check of my list a couple of entities. The first site I set down at there was a strange protrusion from the ground, once scanned it turned out to be a Common Thargoid Barnacle surrounded by multiple Thargoid Barnacle Barbs.

Having heard that there should exist another, yet larger barnacle version, I scouted all the 16 sites that my scanner had picked up, but they where all of the same type. Oh well, it's a start.