Data drive connected.
Analyzing data…
No data pattern found, possible encrypted data.
Evaluating encryption… … …
Algorithm found, decrypting…
1 file found: “Mnas log”.
Accessing.
07.08.31.06.11.12
I’ve arrived at Yarro’e. It took all my life savings and was almost a six month trip but I’m here. It is a barely habitable terraformed planet orbiting a flare star. Looking up at the night sky I can see the satellites that generate the magnetic shielding, the only thing stopping the cities and farms from being irradiated by solar flares. Its cities are sprawling, you can’t get anywhere without a vehicle. The rest of the planet is mostly desert. The sooner I get off this rock the better, people were never meant to live on planets. Hopefully that half finished data archaeology degree will help me find what I need.
21.30.28.07.11.12
I have found it difficult to find accurate information about the Mnas Colony. I’ve found many rumors, and fictional stories but no logs, chat records, or news stories about the colony. I’ve found news stories mentioning the colony, with links to news stories about the colony, but those stories are gone. Even official government records are missing anything about the colony, in a chat record between the finance minister and security minister two hours of the chat are missing, the rest is almost pristine. It’s like the data about the colony had been deliberately erased.
01.28.12.08.11.12
I have found it! I have found the coordinates. It was in a chat record between a Mnas colonist and his family. E 3098.23, 8278.4, 209. The data has been partly corrupted but star charts show a star at those coordinates, an F type star with no large rocky planets. I am planning on renting a ship to travel there. It’s twenty one to twenty six days away at FTL speeds. Hopefully I can rent a faster ship to cut off a week. I don’t know what I will find but I will have proven it is real.
25.32.04.08.11.12
I arrived in the system yesterday. I cold slept through the trip. It took this long to get past the cold sleep sickness. I heard that it could take weeks for the body to readjust after cold sleep, so I bought some stimulants to speed that up. It’s not the most healthy thing to take after having my body cooled to near zero degrees and my heart slowed down to a beat a minute but I have a job to do.
I’ve been scanning the system for artificial EM, neutrino, and tachyonic emissions. After six hours of moving and scanning the scanners detected unusual neutrino emissions coming from a class C planetoid. Its diameter is 891 kilometers, the surface is covered in a layer of ice and salts over a rocky crust, its gravity is 0.26 standard. I saw lights from the colony as my ship approached the planetoid. It appears the main colony was built in a crater, covered with a glasteel dome, around the main colony are multiple glasteel greenhouses. A guidance signal is still being broadcast, so I’m following it to the ship’s entrance airlock.
22.34
The continus airlock is still functional, as is the artificial gravity. The lights in the port are mostly on and there are several ships in the port, but no people, only abandoned equipment, some stacked cargo, some cargo strewn. The ships and cargo have a layer of dust on them, it seems no one has been here for some time. The whole aria has an eerie feeling about it, as if something bad happened here. There still had to be someone on the colony, even automated maintenance systems couldn’t keep the power and gravity on this long.
I unloaded a quad bike from my ship, loaded climbing equipment into the compartment under the seat. The eeriness drove me to bring my kinetic force gun and molecular disruptor handgun with me.
11.35
Riding down the main road to the colony I passed many abandoned vehicles, mostly cargo trucks. A mile and half in I found vehicles bunched against the side walls, they appeared to have been a makeshift barrier that had been broken through.
24.35
I’ve reached the main colony another half mile after the broken barrier and a few more. The main colony was indeed built in a crater. It’s separated into at least thirty tiers. Looking down from the edge of an upper tier I could see much of the colony was still under construction, I could see molds for plascreete, and earth moving equipment at the bottom, they appeared to have been making a park with a lake before whatever happened here. While much of it was under construction most of it appeared to have been finished and used, but no one is around and I’ve found no recent evidence of habitation.
The place seems utterly abandoned, and it appeared to have been abandoned in a hurry. What is more frightening are the bullet holes and scorch marks from fire fights. Throughout the area I explored I found evidence of some war that started and ended quickly. Turned tables, makeshift bariors, bullet holes, energy weapon scorches, but no bodies, not even bones.
14.03.05.08.11.12
I rode through the main colony, all the way around the tier I was on, even climbing down to explore the other tiers. It was all the same, bullet holes, scorch marks, barriers made of furniture, construction material, and vehicles, but no bodies, no evidence of habitation after whatever war happened. Someone had to be living here though, somewhere in this colony people had to be living and maintaining its systems.
I feel like I should leave, that something bad happened here, that there was a reason this part of the colony had been abandoned for so long. As much as I tried I could not think of a reason why. I have to investigate further.
29.05
I moved on from the main colony to explore the living areas adjacent to the main colony. I found more broken makeshift barriers in the large hallways of the living areas. Doors were torn open, tables, couches and chairs were used as ineffectual barriers against the doors before whatever they were hiding from broke through. Even the shopping and recreation sections of the living areas showed evidence of the war. Still no bodies.
The elevator doors are open but the elevators don’t seem functional. I have to climb down. Fortunately I brought climbing equipment and an anti-gravity suit.
03.07
All the once inhabited levels seemed the same, makeshift bariors, and bullet holes. The levels still under construction were either abandoned or in the same condition. After a look at each level I made it to the engineering level.
It stinks, a putrid smell, I can’t describe it, it’s like nothing I ever spelled before. I can only say it was worse than the smell of a rotting corpse mixed with raw sewage. It was the worst smell I have ever smelled. It burned my eyes, I gagged and coughed, nearly throwing up, I could taste it when I tried to breathe through my mouth. My rebreather is helping but it was already in my lungs when I put the rebreather on.
It’s dark down here. Many of the lights in the rest of the colony are out but enough are still on that I could mostly see, but down here all the lights are out. This is the engineering level, where the colony’s power and gravity systems are. Even automated maintenance breaks down over time. Someone has to be maintaining the systems. The levels above me, from what I’ve seen, have all been abandoned. I’ve only explored a fraction of the colony, maybe they are on the other side of the colony. But why would they keep the engineering levels darkened? It doesn’t make sense.
Part of me wants to get the hell out of here. I am legitimately afraid, I’ve never been this afraid. I can’t let my emotions get the better of me. There has to be a logical explanation for this. Someone is alive here, maintaining the colony’s systems. I have to find some evidence of them and where they are down here.
28.20
There was a reason why the colony was lost. It is not a place for humans, not anymore. Down in the engineering levels I found what killed the colonists, what they couldn’t kill. I have no words to describe it. I don’t know if it is biological, technological, or something else. All I know is it took up the whole of a gravitational generator room, it was waking up, and it knew I was there.
I ran faster than I ever ran before. It took me the better part of an hour to climb down but I climbed up in less than fifteen minutes. I wasn’t fast enough. When I reached the top something grabbed my leg, I shot it, I don’t know how many times, with my disrupter. It didn’t let go, I know I hit it because I felt its weight let go, but the arm still gripped my leg. When I pulled myself out of the shaft I pulled off the arm or tentacle or thendral, I don’t know, it seemed to be all three and It was still alive!
I ran for my quad bike. More must have come up from another shaft because something was at my quad. I can’t begin to describe it. It was something utterly alien. I don’t know how to describe it! I emptied my disrupter into it, shooting it to pieces but it was still alive!
More came up behind me from the shaft I climbed up. I shot at them with the kinetic force gun. I’ve been shooting guns since I was a kid. I’ve shot projectile guns, energy guns, even rifles and shotguns. I must have placed the gun against my shoulder wrong because the recoil broke my collarbone, but it did knock the thing back. I readjusted the gun and fired four more shots knocking it into the elevator shaft.
The thing near the quad bike, the one I had shot to pieces, it was coming back together. I knocked it away with the kinetic force gun. I jumped on the quad bike. There was another one in front of me. I ran into it as fast as I could accelerate. It grabbed on to the front, I punched it as hard as I could, breaking two fingers and cutting my knuckles. It fell off, slashing my arm as it did.
I sped away from there, finding my way back to a transit tunnel. Once I reached my ship I abandoned the quad bike and left the colony.
Once I reached FTL I just stared out at the view port for hours wondering if any of it was real, wondering if I had gone crazy and imagined it all, for a while I thought it was a reaction to the stimulants. It was real, my leg is still bleeding, two of my fingers are broken, and I have scratches on my arm. They don’t hurt anymore, now I’m only feeling a strange tingling sensation.
End of log.
C.L. Who Writes 
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