Illuminae

Interviewer: Were you able to retrieve him?

Kady Grant: I, uh—are there likely to be any prosecutions for stuff that happened down there?

Interviewer: They X-ed out a quarter of my crew. None of us is going to weep if you’re telling me you took out a BeiTech squad to get to him.

Kady Grant: Like I said, I’m pretty small, and there was a lot of blood all over everything. I guess my foot slipped on the accelerator. It was hard to reach, you know? I ran a bunch of them down and pulled up right beside him.

Interviewer: What did he do?

Kady Grant: He said, “Hey, Kades.” What a catch, seriously. The truck’s door was missing, though, so it was easy for him to climb in, and we took off like we were outrunning a blizzard. We could see shuttles coming down on the outskirts of town, and they didn’t have BeiTech markings on them, so we risked it. We were hoping they were evac sent by our research fleet.

Interviewer: And then what?

Ezra Mason: I don’t remember much. I think I made a joke about needing to see her license and registration. Because, you know, she just ran over a bunch of—

Interviewer: I get it.

Ezra Mason: Right. And then I said “I’m bleeding,” and she said, “Shut up, I’m not talking to you,” so I just kinda concentrated on not dying. There was blood everywhere. It hurt so much, I think I started laughing. I think maybe I was going into shock. Kady was yelling at me to put pressure on it, but it hurt less if I didn’t. There were fighters overhead. I remember being really cold. I remember looking at Kady driving, covered in blood, with her hair crusted with snow and everything. I think I told her she was beautiful. Then the lights went out.

Interviewer: You made it to the shuttles?

Kady Grant: We made it close. We were driving a BeiTech truck now, so I had to stop and drag Ezra across the ice so they could see we were civis. A couple of the med center staff had made it out there, so they were putting the wounded on shuttles with those guys, and the rest of us into the others. I was screaming my head off, trying to get someone to help me lift him in. I don’t even know how I dragged him. The whole time there were these missiles arcing in and exploding around us, fires starting. I guess they decided if I could yell that loud, I wasn’t hurt bad enough to make the wounded shuttle, so they made me leave him with the doc. That’s how he ended up on the Alexander and I ended up on the Hypatia.

Interviewer: You’ve been very helpful. Did you see whether any missiles hit the refinery?

Kady Grant: I don’t think so, just the black cloud. They wouldn’t blow it up, though, would they? I mean, if BeiTech wanted the colony gone, they’d have just ratted to the UTA about it. They obviously wanted the hermium we were mining for themselves. They’d hardly destroy the only way they had to process it.

Interviewer: We can’t speculate yet on what their aim was.

Kady Grant: I guess if they catch up with us, we can ask them before they blow us to pieces.

Interviewer: There’s just one last thing, Mr. Mason.

Ezra Mason: Can this thing please include those pain meds you promised?

Interviewer: We’ve had another update to the casualty lists. I’m afraid I have some news about your father.

Officers of the Alexander,

In the two days since the assault on the Kerenza colony, the battle with BeiTech forces, and our subsequent withdrawal, our analytics crews have been working around the clock to assess our situation. In summary, here are their findings:

• Our jump gate generator is heavily damaged—wormholes can still be created, but will more than likely collapse before a jump can be executed, resulting in the Alexander’s destruction. Acting Chief of Technical Engineering Colonel Eva Sanchez reports the damage is irreparable, given our current resources (most notably, the death of former CTE, Mallory Yzerman). Essentially, independent jump travel is not an option.

• The closest static jump gate able to return us to a core system is Jump Station Heimdall (Novus VII). Though the station itself is on the other side of the universe, a waypoint/wormhole leading to Heimdall is 6.5—7 months’ travel away at current speeds. In short, we are looking at over half a year’s journey before we can jump to safety in a populated zone.

• Missile strikes sustained in the battle have damaged our Artificial Intelligence Defense Analytics Network (AIDAN), responsible for many vital shipboard functions, including main drive control and jump gate calculations. The same missiles that damaged AIDAN also eliminated a considerable percentage of our neurogramming staff. Although AIDAN is self-repairing, and still functional, the full extent of the damage is unknown.

• Several other areas of the ship sustained damage, most notably our H2O reservoirs, defense grid and propulsion systems.

• At least one BeiTech dreadnought participating in the Kerenza attack, BT042-TN, aka Lincoln, survived the battle and is currently in pursuit of our fleet. With current damage and crew levels, our tactical staff estimate we have a 22.7 percent chance of surviving, should the Lincoln engage us.

• The two civilian transports we are currently escorting—science vessel Hypatia and heavy freighter Copernicus—are carrying 3,348 civilians from the Kerenza colony. Alexander is carrying a further 1,097 civilians. Given aforementioned damage to Alexander’s H2O reservoirs, this overpopulation will place increased strain on our supply situation. Neither the Hypatia or the Copernicus will be of assistance should the Lincoln engage us.

• Distress calls have been issued on all United Terran Authority channels via the Heimdall waypoint. No reply has been received. In all likelihood, this means our transmissions have not been heard.