The Anomaly (1 of 3)

Main article: The Anomaly

The Anomaly (1 of 3) is the first of three sub-missions comprising the Level 4 mission The Anomaly. It does not involve combat against hostile ships, but a properly tanked and combat-capable ship is still required due to environmental hazards and the need to destroy several large collidable objects.

Level	4
Type	Encounter
Objective	Rescue Fajah Ateshi.
Ship suggestion	Raven Navy Issue (video)
Extra	No active defenders, but weapons and tank are still required.

Overview

Mission briefing

Ever heard of The Anomaly? Lots of superstition around that name - it's one of our ships that vanished completely while testing an experimental jump drive. A trading vessel heard The Anomaly's signal last week and so we sent out a salvage crew, The Paryi, to investigate the site where it reappeared, but something went wrong. We received The Paryi's distress call yesterday and can't make sense of it. It seems some of them were killed in an explosion near The Anomaly, and the survivors escaped in life pods but are trapped there by gravity waves exuding from the ship. But the other things they said… well, some of them must have cracked under the stress. If there were any survivors from The Anomaly, they would've contacted us, after all. You need to rescue The Paryi's survivors, especially Dr. Fajah Ateshi. Once we learn what they uncovered, we'll have a better sense of how to proceed. The Anomaly was a very expensive project, and some very powerful people are invested in figuring out how it vanished.

It can be helpful to fit a microwarpdrive or afterburner for this mission in order to minimize the time spent in the damaging cloud.

This mission can be blitzed by bringing Oura Madusaari (kept from a past run of this mission) in your ship's cargo hold, which will allow players to bypass approaching the life pods and proceed immediately to the acceleration gate. Upon entering the second pocket, destroy the silo closest to The Anomaly, obtain Dr. Fajah Ateshi from the dropped cargo container, and return to the agent.

Tip:

• Fitting a Micro Warp Drive or Afterburner is recommended.
• Approaching the other four damaged Pods will also trigger a message and the Pod contains a Stranded Pilot (not needed to complete the mission).
• Using Combat Drones to kill the Debris Silo may kill them. Sentry Drones will take damage but survive.

Details

Pocket 1

There are five Life Pods in this pocket, one of which will spawn a container with Oura Madusaari, who must be in your cargo hold to activate the acceleration gate. The description of the correct life pod (via "Show Info") is different from the others; it reads "A life pod from a long since destroyed ship". The other pods contain Stranded Pilots, which have no use.

Approaching the correct pod will trigger a message and spawn the cargo container with Oura Madusaari. The life pods themselves are actually structures, so they cannot be moved with a tractor beam. Loot the container, then proceed to the acceleration gate. Oura Madusaari is not consumed upon activation of the gate, so she can be brought on subsequent runs to bypass the life pods.

Message from Ooura Madusaari
Are you real? I turned off my radio because they keep trying to talk to us, I can hear them begging, pleading, scratching inside my head… look, I locked the gate behind us but now Fajah's trapped there, at their mercy, because of us. I'll open the gate so we can save her, but please, don't listen to the other voices, don't listen to anyone except Fajah.

Structures

		WD	EWAR	L
	4 x Life Pod
	1 x Life Pod
	1 x Acceleration Gate

2nd Pocket

The mission objective item, Dr. Fajah Ateshi, can be obtained by destroying the Pressure Silo closest to The Anomaly (an  Orca situated in the middle of a non-functional wormhole object.

After proceeding ~5km toward The Anomaly, a damaging cloud will periodically deal 5 hits of 200-400 damage each, so it is best to proceed quickly. Though all Pressure Silos can be attacked and destroyed, only the one closest to The Anomaly must be destroyed. Pressure Silos will explode when destroyed, dealing ~800 damage to ships in close proximity. Because of this, it is best to avoid using combat drones to destroy the silos, as they may be destroyed themselves.

Structures

		WD	EWAR	L
	3 x Pressure Silo
	1 x Pressure Silo
	1 x The Anomaly

Transmissions

As silos are destroyed, players will receive the following transmissions:

Strange Transmission

They called me to identify the body, and I told them she divorced me last year but they didn't care because she had no friends, no family on the planet at all. I went in and they pulled back the sheet and she was there beautiful like she was asleep, and my full name was carved delicately into her left arm like calligraphy, the blood dried like rust on parchment. Every time I closed my eyes for a full year after I saw that. I still miss her.

Strange Transmission
"You have failed your family," he tells me with gentleness I know he's incapable of feeling. "You have dishonored us. You know what to do." And I know that the honorable thing is to fall on my sword like a good girl, so I take it out and push it through his chest and show him exactly what I think of his precious honor. I will never have to apologize again.

Transmission from the anomaly

He promised we would go to the beach on my birthday, so we went, even though it was raining, even though we didn't know where mom was again. I was collecting shells, and I found one that was perfect and round and smooth but then I looked back to the shore and saw him just standing there, the first time I'd ever seen him cry, and I wanted to say something but couldn't, just stood there, frozen, the shell crunching in my fist, and I looked down and my hand was bleeding but I didn't feel it at all.

Strange Transmission

//I'm naked and I'm walking the blue-painted halls at military academy, and it's okay because everyone gets hazed like this and I'm in better shape than all of them so I'm not ashamed, except this means they can see the scars twining from my back and down to my knees like snakes, and what starts as laughter turns into confused whispering and sounds of pity as they realize how recently I was a slave, and I want to kill them slowly just like I did the man who gave me the scars, but I just walk on, seeing only red.

Next: The Anomaly (2 of 3)