SLAVEGEAR 2
KATSURA'S MASK
KATSURA'S MASK
Operation: Daring Columbus
After Action Report #34-142-423-A31
After Action Report #34-142-423-A31
The following is the transcript of the verbal mission debriefing, which took place on the Union VTOL callsign Sokol-1-1, en route to Tesia, Beusoleil, 2068 (Post Impact) November 24th, 01:59 local time. The file has been classified 'Top Secret' by the Soren Intelligence Office.
"As the head of an international pharmaceutical corporation, Kashiwagi Brice was one of the most powerful men on the planet. His money and influence could buy anything. Anything, except the health of his daughter.
Born with a rare genetic disorder called Cystic Fibrosis, her lungs couldn't work properly, accumulating viscous liquid and laboring her breathing. There is no known cure.
She was predicted to die by age 22, but she held on until 26.
After exhausting every possible option and failing to save her, Kashiwagi placed her into a medically induced coma, as per her last wish, to make her passing more painless, and then, he attempted suicide by her bed.
It was then, that his tragedy was exploited by a Parasitic life-form named Kaznachey, an alien being from another planet. Kaznachey offered only one thing - the secret to perfect gene editing - in other words, a permanent cure for Kashiwagi's daughter.
All he had to do, was create a portal to Kaznachey's home-planet, and extract a certain Red Orb from there.
Kaznachey provided everything, the blueprints for the portal, the theoretical physics behind it, the coordinates of the Red Orb on his home planet. Brice was so blinded by hope, he never stopped to verify the calculations Kaznachey fed him.
The result? Instead of portalling a 15 meter wide room, full of heavily armed soldiers to the other side, the Portal expanded to 50 kilometers, and swallowed not only Brice's covert underwater lab, but the coastal city of Ragnveig and all of its 1 million population.
Upon reaching the other side, the people of Ragnveig managed to establish contact with Brice and reported the first sings of the Parasitic disease, spreading and killing their populace on the alien planet. Afraid for his daughters life, Brice denied the Ragnveig survivors an evacuation back home and stranded them on the alien planet. Quarantine must be maintained, he reasoned. Kepler must remain uninfected, by this alien virus.
The people of Ragnveig were abandoned on their new, alien world and left for dead. While Kashiwagi tried again and again, to extract the Red Orb from the alien planet.
Only, the people of Ragnveig didn't die. They adapted.
They incorporated the Parasitic life-form into their bodies, turning them into something more than human. Something, that could push back against the Parasite threat. They called themselves - Witchers.
Upon discovery of their survival, Kashiwagi tried to wipe away the evidence of his sins, by ordering a military private company to wipe out any survivors of Ragnveig, still living on the alien planet. The result?
The Witchers won. And they now believed they were in an existential war with Kepler. That is the reality we must recognize, as we move forward toward negotiating a peace deal with the Witchers - they spent millennia believed they were at war, with us, all of us. Not just Brice and his private army, but all of Kepler. All of the Union.
Meanwhile, the Witchers were fighting a losing war with the Parasites on their alien planet. And the Parasites were winning, predicted to overrun the planet as a matter of time. The Witchers had no choice. They had to evacuate. They had to Migrate, back to Kepler, just to escape the Parasite horde.
Their solution? Construct 9 Castle Cities, 9 Strongholds of epic proportion and place 9 Teleportation Pillars at their center, then move the civilian populace into those cities and finally, teleport the cities, right into Kepler.
Their method? Anchor each Teleportation Pillar to its corresponding geographical location on Kepler, several years before the Migration takes place. The process of 'Anchoring' included a Witcher contingent teleporting to Kepler with the Pillar, anchoring it in place, and then teleporting back, leaving behind the ghostly 'Anchor', a ghostly after-image of the Pillar in question. From that moment on, the Pillar was there, and it wasn't, at the same time. It was transparent, incorporeal and completely impervious to damage or destruction. It was anchored.
What the Witcher's haven't realized, was what effects these Pillar would have, on Kepler. You see, the Parasitic lifeform, so prevalent on Nifelheim - that's what we began calling the alien planet, due to its extreme sub-zero temperatures-... where was I?... Yes, I'm sorry, I have been up for 36 hours.
The Parasitic life-form has a very unique ability... they can communicate with you telepathically, across vast distance of space. And being the Parasitic life-forms that they are, the only thing they generally communicate, is their desire for you to become easy prey.
The Parasites project thoughts of insanity into their victims, rendering them helpless, and ready for easy consumption. The people of Ragnveig, having lived on Nifelheim for over millennia, developed a sort of immunity to this. A limited immunity, but an immunity nontheless.
For them to fall victim to telepathic influence, they'd have to receive a very significant telepathic punch.
You must understand this before going forward. Why this tragedy befell us.
The Witchers and their civilian populace on Nifelheim have grown largely immune to telepathic influence. It happened slowly and gradually over millennia and that's why, most didn't even notice it happen.
They developped limited immunity, without even realizing.
So when they began constructing Parasite Suppression Obelisks around their cities, Obelisks designed specifically to protect them from Parasitic telepathy, and by extent, protect Kepler from these same influences - they miscalculated.
Their Obelisks had a design flaw from the get go - they weren't strong enough.
A Nifelheim human civilian could stand right in the middle of his Castle Town and feel no parasite influence what-so-ever, thus the Obelisks were deemed a success. But the Nifelheim civilian was stronger of mind. He had limited immunity...
An immunity the Kepler population lacked and never developed.
What was good for Nifelheim, wasn't good enough for Kepler at all. And while the Parasite Suppression Obelisks did protect Nifelheims population, they weren't strong enough to protect Kepler's.
And so, with each new Teleportation Pillar anchored to Kepler, the Parasites telepathic influence seeped in as well. The human population on Kepler, who were anywhere near a 2,000 kilometer radius of the Pillar, began experiencing sporadic episodes of mental breakdown.
Each Pillar's appearance was accompanied by episodes of pure madness on Kepler. Hundreds of thousands of people had gone psychotic or homicidal, in the span of a few seconds. Wives murdered husbands, children murdered their mothers, brother killed sister, hundreds of thousands of lives were lost on Kepler, families destroyed, people killed, maimed, disfigured.
We still don't have the exact death toll.
We only know this:
The Union considered this an act of war. They believed the Pillar's appearance was a prelude to a massive invasion. And prepared a devastating response - whatever emerges out of those Pillars, when the times comes, will be instantly, and utterly destroyed.
As far as the Union knows, they are now at war with Nifelheim.
You're asking to assign blame. You're asking me to point to a culprit? I can't.
Who should I blame? The father who's grief was exploited, until he turned into a genocidal monster? The Parasitic entity that lied and twisted his hand, and catapulted a million people to Nifelheim, to use them as food? The Witchers who miscalculated their Suppression Obelisks power, who didn't understand their own immunity and had no means to register its lack on Kepler? The Asteran Admiralty that unknowingly obliterated a Nifelheim city of one-hundred-thousand, out of pure panic, in a pre-emptive attack to stop another Pillar from manifesting? Or the Parasite horde that mindlessly walked forth, killing millions on Nifelheim and killing millions more on Kepler by projecting telepathic insanity?
I'm not a judge, I'm a soldier. My job is to protect the people around me. And Kashiwagi Brice, and Kaznachey, and all those in between have left us with one hell of a mess to sift through...
The Witchers say, a single Parasite is enough to a doom a whole planet. They just... multiply too fast. They were so careful, driving themselves to selfless sacrifice, time and time again, to prevent contamination of Kepler. They died by the thousands, to make sure not a single Parasite could ever reach our world.
Now, there is a whole city infested with them. Beusoleil is burning. And with it, our future burns. I look into the eyes of our children and I see an empty void. There is no hope in them.
They're just going through the motions, like every good soldier does, but they think we already lost.
They think Kepler is lost. This is our final stand and we have nowhere else to Migrate to. This is where humanity dies. The Parasites will spread across our globe, leaving it a barren husk, just like they did to Nifelheim and our children think there is nothing we can do, to stop this.
Our children will fight to the bitter end, but not to win. They'll do it, because they don't want to die with regret. Our children, ironically, our only hope for the future, have no hope left themselves...
Well, I guess we, as parents, will just have to have enough hope for all of us. Its our job, to guide them, after all. And if we can't give them hope? We have no right calling ourselves 'Parents'.
Now, please excuse me, its our time to deploy."
-Transcript of the debrief of Capt. Brown
Task Force Bruiser, Soren Navy
November 24th, 2068 (P.I.)
01:59 local time
Tesian airspace
7 kilometers off Beusoleil