NOW: THREE MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK ON THE FESTIVE NIGHTBEAK

Security Interview Footage submitted to GDC Ongoing Thirder Incursion Investigation.

Location: The Pope Tlee The Fourth (Tlee Station), Wolf-1061 C, approx 14 LY from Sol

Subject: Securitydrone Ri Zomjoop, 1st class.

Interviewer: GDC Investigator, Ident [classified].

Zomjoop: I’m not sure what else I can say I haven’t already said.

Interviewer: Let’s just hear it again.

Zomjoop: OK. I was doing my standard scanner sweep of the station when I saw an alert. This was Warnseve, nine point one hour.

Interviewer: Yesterday night, then.

Zomjoop: Right. When I followed the alert, I saw an external auto-camera had picked up a flash of light that resolved into a tight series of overlapping circles, about three meters across, covered in strange writing, hovering about five meters over the surface of 1061 C about ten meters outside Airlock D1. And from the circles, two… well, Thirders, dropped down, in space armor, and started to walk towards the airlock. One was armed with a hammer. The other had a short sword and a stick.

Interviewer: “Overlapping Circles.”

Zomjoop: Yup. Red ones, red writing. From my time in the navy, they looked sort of like Tunneling Circles, but I mean… way too small, right? And stable? And the writing-

Interviewer: An alert went off but nobody responded?

Zomjoop: Standard protocol was for me to radio the closest Securitydrone, so I called Airlock D1. The drone on duty was reading a sordid, I think, but put it down. By the time I called, the Thirders were at the Airlock. One of them - the one with the stick-

Interviewer: Yes, the “stick.” Can you describe it?

Zomjoop: Uh… well, it was a stick. Wood. Polished. Something dark. Very thin and tapered. It was open to space, but glowing. Only maybe... just short of a half meter.

Interviewer. Wood. I see. Wouldn’t wood sublimate all of its moisture and just turn into dry junk?

Zomjoop: I assume it was… treated with something. Anyway, the stick Thirder waved the stick at the guard and made some gestures with their other limb and the guard sort of shrugged and opened the airlock, cycled them in, and killed the alarm. The Thirders opened their faceplates to the atmo.

Interviewer: Just like that. They just let them in. What did the guard do after that?

Zomjoop: Just went back to reading.

Interviewer: Went back to his sordid. Did he seem… surprised? Did it seem conspiratorial? Did they know each other?

Zomjoop: I didn’t get any of that. It was just a “sure, whatever” moment. It would be like if someone with the rank badge showed up and.. .not even an order, just you know you have to open the lock, so you do.

Interviewer: And then they entered the tunnels proper. Continue.

Zomjoop: They walked for a bit and came up to a Securitydrone on duty and seemed to ask it some questions. The Thirder with the stick was periodically waving the stick and gesturing the whole time, but neither of them seemed battle alerted or anything, just calm and cool. The drone pointed a tent down the corridor and the Thirders went that way.

Interviewer: …

Zomjoop: It’s all on the recording if you want to see-

Interviewer: I saw. Aliens in space armor - armor that looks more like a fancy dress armor, not functional combat armor, flashing silver, one with a hammer bigger than any life form could carry, and the other armed with a.. .with a stick, for eggs sake, strolling down the tunnel, drones of all shapes and types walking past. Nobody noticing.

Zomjoop: Oh, Cyhp’ds noticed, they weren’t invisible or anything. Drones stepped out of their way. It was more like, nobody cared.

Interviewer: Nobody cared.

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Zomjoop: Yessir, basically. So they walked a short ways to the level security post and then the stick one talked to the Captain on duty. The captain then disabled and locked out the security alerts for the station.

Interviewer: So if anyone else sent a message or tried to sound a general alarm, they couldn’t. Any idea why he did that?

Zomjoop: Aside from the stick and the waving, I think the stick Thirder just asked nicely.

Interviewer: And they speak our language?

Zomjoop: No. I patched into the audio at the post and I heard it talking. It sounds like bird squawking, not proper speech. But Captain Kimhap seemed to understand it.

Interviewer: I see. So they kept walking and came to your duty location, at the central operations annex.

Zomjoop: Yessir. With the security disabled, they opened the door and just came in.

Interviewer: And… Securitydrone Qadip reacted, right?

Zomjoop: Yeah. He pulled his blaster and told the Thirders to stop. The one with the Hammer pulled his hammer up, looking like he was going to do something, but the stick Thirder put a limb on it, stopping it. Then it waved its stick at us. Qadip looked confused and staggered but armed his weapon and started shouting.

Interviewer: And that’s when you blasted Qadip.

Zomjoop: Yeah.

Interviewer: You blasted a fellow drone. One from your own squad.

Zomjoop: Well, yeah. He was going to shoot them.

Interviewer: He was a cousin of yours!

Zomjoop: He was going to shoot them. And no offense, he’s a bit of an egging venthole, and if you knew him you would have blasted him, too.

Interviewer: Continue.

Zomjoop: So then the stick Thirder talked to me. She explained she was a female, and -

Interviewer: She spoke to you in bird squawks?

Zomjoop: Oh no, in Cyph’d. In Souther Shoals as well, my own dialect. She sounded like a nice lady from the Hive.

Interviewer: And you don’t think that was unusual? Right now, you don’t wonder about that?

Zomjoop: No?

Interviewer: What did she say?

Zomjoop. Said she was a witch. The only witches I knew about were from stories from my people - those bad, egg-stealing sea witches, right? So I asked if she was a bad witch, and she and the other Thirder sort of laughed at that and said no, they were good witches. So that seemed OK then.

Interviewer: …

Zomjoop: Then she asked me if I could download everything I had into something that they could take with them. So I said sure, and I rustled up some data modules, and copied the entire secure archive into them. Meanwhile she waved her stick - she called it a "wand" - around a few times.

Interviewer: How nice.

Zomjoop: It was a lot to carry so I dumped my pack out and let them use that. Then they started to leave, but I came to my senses and stopped them.

Interviewer: And?

Zomjoop: I explained that the archive is encrypted, and they’d need keys, so I copied the keys down onto a personal module and gave that to the witch, and she thanked me. And then they left.

Interviewer: They once again just walked out of the station with every drone passing just not caring.

Zomjoop: Sort of. I had followed them. I guess I was curious. Once we got to the airlock, though, there was a shift change and I guess the new squad were confused as to what was happening. So they started shooting at the Thirders.

Interviewer: Imagine that.

Zomjoop: Then the guard at the airlock opened the lock and banged the cycle door open, so all the atmo started venting. It blew all the new shift drones outside along with the airlock guard. And I started to get dragged out too. I was pretty terrified.

Interviewer: And the Thirders?

Zomjoop: They magnetized down when the lock blew. But then the witch turned to her companion and said “oh, not this one, he was nice.” The one with the hammer then grabbed me and saved me. Real nice of them.

Interviewer: Hmm.

Zomjoop: They dragged me over to the airlock controls and I closed the cycled doors. They waved goodbye and I cycled them out. They walked outside, then they jumped up inside their Tunneling Circle and were gone.

Interviewer: And everything went back to normal. You only knew something unusual might have happened when External Security arrived, because they got the alarms from the data archives. Nobody sounded an alarm or reported anything internally.

Zomjoop: Why, should they have?

Interviewer: Does anything upset you about the incident?

Zomjoop: I lost my best backpack.

Interviewer: And the second shift Securitydrones?

Zomjoop: Ventholes.

Interviewer Recommendations: Any Cyph’d who encountered the Thirders is compromised. They need to have their brain scrubbed and re-assigned to non-security menial duties. Securitydrone Zomjoop needs to be remanded to internal operations for further debriefing and possibly brain coring.