Capsuleer's Log, YC117.3.22 "The Changing Tide"

[REDACTED]
[REDACTED] - Oasa

There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. -H. Melville, The Whale

In those rare moments of quiet, I look to Caroline's Star. From my current vantage point deep in the drone lands, all that remains of it glows a yellow and ochre smudge against the mundane backdrop of the Oasan nebulae. The superluminal event had sent me down a thousand wormholes looking for answers, but all I'd found were more questions. And an obsession verging on insanity.

In my madness I had lost the El Dorado to raiders while returning from a meeting with Hilen Tukoss himself. I'd been furious over Tukoss' refusal to leave his hideaway and join me on an expedition to a nearby anomaly, one of the massive structures that had recently appeared all over known space. He'd sent me away with a warning to avoid even traveling through systems fostering the mysterious towers, and when I inquired as to why, he spoke but one word:

Drifters.

I'd set out alone to investigate the structure, and with my attention focused on searching for intel on the Drifters, the sound of my warp drive shutting down was the first indication that I was in trouble. I killed the search terminal and pulled up my defensive overlays. I had two interdictors spitting out warp disruption probes while burning hard into optimal range, and a Loki trying to close in to hold me down. Goonswarm. I kicked on my afterburner and set my Geckos on the 'dictors, in an attempt to keep them off of me long enough to get out of range of the probes. I was scrambling to avoid the Loki's webifiers when the fighters dropped out of warp. My long range scanner pinged a Nyx in system! I overheated everything I had in a last ditch attempt to get away but it wasn't much use against a squadron of Einherjis.

I climbed out of the clone vat in Perimeter with a bad taste in my mouth. In my months of searching, I'd turned up nothing and nearly gone bankrupt and insane in the process. I couldn't go on like this. The Scope report on the loss of the Rex to a Drifter superweapon cemented that idea in place. I regretfully sent a notice of separation to the Signal Cartel. I had enjoyed my time with the organization, but I can't play a passive role in what is to come. The destabilization among the alliances and deafening silence from the Empires is turning New Eden into a more dangerous place by the hour, and in times like these I need my guns more than principles.

I'm still an explorer at heart, but I'm a realist above all.

My fixer put me in touch with some old associates of mine that were in the midst of reforming their corporation and offered my assistance to their cause. The Drifters had shown how effortlessly they can destroy capital ships, and their willingness to do so-- this tells me it is the strength of numbers we need in the face of such a thing.

We will build an army. We will secure our sovereign systems. We will survive.

This is Gunner Stahl, captain of the warship Quantum of Fury, signing off.

END TRANSMISSION