I decided on a Spaceweed Farm which meant I could not procure all my blueprints from Janne Samdi, the Argon Federation Faction Representative. She did have a Large Container and Large Liquid blueprint and as well as a Water factory module I picked up. 

I finally assigned a captain to the Minotaur gunship, a service member with promising piloting skills from another ship. His name is Colen Verma and I had him take me to the HAT Argon Trading Station in Hatikvah's Choice I to see if I could get some of the more illicit production modules from my murderous friends, the HAT.

He was not good to go.  Sometimes I wonder at the dregs from these station university graduates.  The captain of the brand new Ides transport had an authorization in his hand to fill any local station shortages for the specific wares associated with the job requirements (Shield Components, Field Coils, or Drone Components) and could not bring himself to go to a neighboring system to get them.  I had given him a couple piloting seminars on how to use gates and find trades up to two gates away; this shouldn't have been a problem.  However, for whatever reason, it was.  He sat in empty space for hours, doing nothing, and when I asked, he could only say he was "looking for trades".  

Due to the number of times we have seen the problem be entirely my fault, I did not express any frustration and just finally issued him direct orders again to go pick up specific trades and drop them off.  I will just continue to check on him.  It is not unlikely I will discover I screwed up the paperwork because I did not go to university to learn how to fill it out.  

Speaking of university, there are those tutorial files my mother insisted I take from the family library.  I could load one and see what happens.  I took the piloting one a long time ago and remember enjoying it quite a bit.  

Naaahhhh.....

While I was getting my ad hoc trader on mission, I got another alert from Silent Witness XI and put the fleet on course to back up a Kha'ak invasion.  It was quickly cleaned up when I arrived but I lost another of the Rock Navy ships.  After some discussion with the Rock Navy fleet captains, I sent one of the drillers and two of the fighters to Windfall I Union Summit where the VIG had a Wharf we could use for repairs.  (Come to think of it, I probably need to give that faction some attention.)  I then reassigned the entire Royal Navy, including the two PE and the two brand-new shiny cruisers.I took my cruiser and headed back to the Argon Prime Shipyard to sort out my mission plans where I could purchase blueprints if I needed to.  

While I was brushing the sleep from my eyes, the comms channel flipped on and Deena Vendel, the fleet captain guarding the drill miner in Silent Witness XI, called about a Kha'ak squadron giving them problems.  I did not waste any time and set the Royal Navy for her coordinates.  She had, of course, swept them clean by the time I arrived and I moved through the region clearing out what I could find.

Funds were chronically low due to my heavy investment into the fleet so I used the last million in the bank to purchase another hauler and picked up a mission to fill a shortage in Argon Prime.  It has been my experience these shortages can be fulfilled by anyone and I still get the payment from the Argon Federation government when the contract is complete.  The trade should be profitable even so, though it may take some attention to detail on my part.

Now to get the auto-trader authorization on these specific goods with a base in Argon Prime and the captain should be good to go!

Captains Log - It's been a busy few days.  Let's keep the focus on the business-related information for the moment.

First of all, I was forced to set up an escort fleet for each of the two remaining Miners in Silent Witness XI as the Kha'ak have become an increasingly constant threat.  Just as I got a solid fleet in place (this was yesterday), an SCA ship tried to bully me into dropping my cargo.  I recognized the ship layout from my policing activities for the Antigone and slipped into a blind spot to disable their engines and the turrets one-by-one.  Finally I called in the newly created fleet of heavy fighters who eventually hulled the thing while I keep focus on the engines which kept getting rebuilt despite the lack of drones on the radar.  All I can say is that Captain could not have expected that outcome and he had a heck of a service crew to keep those engines coming back online.  I would have loved to have had a different outcome but he was not open to negotiations.

The build jobs on the new station modules drained the bank account again so I had to take a few jobs.  I took a patrol job for each of Argon Prime and Hatikvah's Choice I, the latter of which resulted in another PE which I outfitted and added to my squad.  I tentatively accepted another Hatikvah Free League (HAT) sabotage mission against the Antigone where they want me to nuke some engines on a freighter.  I've been tracking the freighter through a few systems, but I am still on the fence about this one.  It always hits the faction relations when I act so brazenly against the factions best interest.  If the ship happens to wander into an unclaimed zone, I may take a shot as the engines will assuredly be repaired.  I am quite tired of assassination missions, but hey,... engines are okay I guess.

The fleet arrived and I picked up a protection job to test their combat readiness.  It turns out those PE cruiser's are about twice as fast as the Argon ships of the same class and I must say, I have gotten spoiled.  I wound up putting in an order for two more cruisers , this time asking for Cerberus Vanguard's, the combat cruiser, instead of Minotaur Vanguards, the gunship.  I do believe I am going to stay on this Minotaur for now because I like the crew and I suspect it would demoralize them if I left so soon, but we shall see how it shakes out.  It is just as likely I take one of the Cerberus Vanguards and leave the mixed bag to the fleet to mind the gate.  It continues to get overrun now that the Paranid have completed their drive-by.

In any sort, the day is off and I am as well.  I put a call back into my now less panicky manager at the Hull Parts factory (he's seen us buzz the station with our small fleet) and he is sending over the Weapon Components we need.  There is a small Argon Weapon's Component factory just on the border of  the conflict and I took the liberty of decorating with small turrets.  It is a vital part of our ship building enterprise and if the Argon military industrial complex is not going to step up, then I am more than happy to do so.

One fighter and the Ides were the total losses by the time I go there, which was mostly my fault. I should not have assumed three fighters could handle three Kha'ak, which is what I had left there originally.  I am used to taking these three PE and a fighter into those fights but these PE are cruisers, not fighters. I grouped the remaining 6 fighters into a Patrol fleet named the Rock Navy and put in an order for a new Ides to rescue the stranded crew. Again the Argon Wharf delivered with stellar speed and I did not lose anyone.

The Kha'ak ambush on my under protected miners was a debacle that had nearly bankrupted me so I stopped at the SCA station in the Silent Witness XI system to sell what inventory the squad had collected and pick up a few missions.  They could only offer a repair job from the SCA, but the Hatikvah Free League had a lead on the station and HAT wanted me to plug someone's engines in Teladi space.  This will do wonders for my reputation, I am sure. </sarcasm>  

Repairs first!

The Hatikvah Free League have a larger view of my prowess as a privateer than I do, perhaps.  Their job was not to plug someone's engines, but to shoot down any two police cruisers belonging to the Holy Order of Pheonix.  They were pretty specific about the type, which makes me wonder if I am about to prove a prototype make and model is unfit for combat.

In any case, I roamed around HOP space until I found a couple in Lasting Vengeance who were not near any (populated) stations, and enaged in true privateer fashion.  They were not up to snuff; if I were the HOP commander, I would refit that make and model immediately.  I was even interrupted as I attempted to commandeer one that was abandoned and had to wipe out another squad of three.

This second round of combat ultimately led to me losing one of my fighters which held three crew members.  The HOP police cruiser could only fit two, so one was going to be left behind.  According to spacefaring tradition, Ban Braks, a Service Member of the original fighter and the one with the least accrued skills of anyone else, was left to reach the abandoned station.  

I often wonder how he is doing.  I mean... he has a whole station to himself now.  That has to be a heck of a story.

While I was slipping back up to Argon space, the Kha'ak deployed another wave against my miners so I invested heavily in a new squadron of fighters and sent them to patrol the system. They hulled drill miner so I sent the boys in my squad to reinforce the fleet and docked for the night at the Argon Shipyard.

While we were discussing the options and opportunities, I got an urgent message from the drill miner he was under attack and fleeing.  I immediately dispatched the wing to the aggressor's coordinates and set my autopilot to the miner.  One of the squad was finishing up a lockbox I had assigned him before docking so I left him be; he would catch up when he finished.  By the time I got to the miner, the wing had already cleared the aggressors and the drill miner was already back to work.  I queried them and asked if everything was alright and the cheeky bastards pretended nothing had happened.  Tough birds, those miners.  I left them to it and headed back toward Argon Prime.

The blueprints established and the trade ships assigned to haul building supplies, I picked up a kill Xeno job for the Argon Military and the squad and I headed back to the Hatikvah's Choice / Tharkah's Cascade gate.  I swooped in with full enthusiasm and it wasn't until a lull in the battle that I realized the job said Kha'ak and not Xenon. 

I headed into TEL territory to pick up a miner protection mission; for some reason the bugs like picking on the rock munchers.

So one of the dock hands, I think he might have been a foreman or something, pulled me aside after a game of cards last night and quite kindly set me straight on a couple things. 

"Look, you too fancy to be talkin' like that, kid," he had said, his tobacco smoke whisp framing his piercing eyes.  "You be going Places.  You got you a Ship.  That's all it takes ya know," he nodded. "Now you must be smarter about these things than a wrench monkey."

And so... I spent all day trying to get smarter than a wrench monkey.

It turns out the younger dock hands refer to the Xenon ships as "bug ships" because that is what they look like, not what they are.  The Xenon are machines run by AI bots, through and through, and the fact that this commandeered PE has an atmosphere and a pilots chair is just because the Xenon have some base programing they have not been able to override yet.  There was no bug that jettisoned and no, they are not afraid of fire.  The only way I am getting my hands on these things is in the off chance we disrupt the connection to the AI core before the thing burns to a crisp.

The Kha'ak now, they are bugs.  Like, literal mindless drones doing the queens bidding.  Except, apparently no one knows if they have a queen. The fact they actually have the more symmetrical, machine-looking ships is more a result of the Xenon AI being developed by Terrans.  

It was a long day of educating myself while the repairs were being done on my machine-made, AI abandoned, "bug ships" I was going to use to supplant the enemy efforts in our galaxy.

My last forray of the cycle was interesting, you might surmise by the attached media files above.  To mimic my siblings: "What had happened was..."

I had planned to dock close to the Argon Defense Platform where I had been scavenging from the Xenon ships destroyed out of the gate.  I know, I know... you old-timers are laughing and saying "Well, she was asking for it!".  Screw. You.  And cheers, 'cuz it's my bug ship parked in your dock, wrench monkeys.

So I got to the Defense Platform and a small stream of Xenon became a flood so I immediately engaged along with the typical Argon military forces nearby.  While chasing down a Xenon PE close to the highway, it suddenly stopped and hung in space, oxygen burning as it vented from the hull.  I could not hardly believe it; I have hulled hundreds of these things at this point and they always burn to a husk.  The bugs just don't have a sense of self-preservation OR it's getting overridden by a sense of aggression, depending on who is buying your drinks at the pub.  So... why was this thing suddenly empty.  Is it the fire?

Then I snapped out of it and threw the gunner into the pilot seat.  I've instructed him on how to handle the ship but never given him any formal pilot training, something I must fix.  Honestly this should be expected, if not a Xenon, it would be him flying to safety while I hacked a Data Vault or something.

So now I have two Xenon PE's.  And yes, a special thanks to the wrench monkeys who do not let their predilections get in the way of making an enemy ship operate in tip-top shape... as long as it's going to be used against the enemy who built it.  I agree with that sentiment.

While the logistics of my first station were slogging along, I focused on the mission channel for that required capital.  I had taken the Discover Vanguard one jump from Sun City to Hatikvah I where the Argon had a defense platform set up outside the gate to the Xenon system of Tharka's Cascade XV and began scavenging any crates I could from destroyed Xenon ships, getting in my licks when i could and selling at an Argon wharf in Argon Prime when the firing zone got particularly hot. 

I was absolutely stunned at one point, while raking lasers on a Xenon PE, when the bug dumped the ship before it could explode and left the barely functional cruiser floating in space in front of me!  After gawking for a few seconds I suited up and scanned it for an entry point.  There was one and I was incredulous to find the bugs had built the ship to meet human specifications for flight!  I suppose they could not be bothered to change their blueprints.

The PE only seated two, one pilot and a gunner, but it is my first ship upgrade from the Discoverer Vanguard!  I promptly sold Discoverer Vanguard to fund the PE's repairs and sent the rest to Sun City's station manager.

 I dubbed the PE ship "Starbuck" and was able to begin accepting missions on behalf of the Argon military.  One of the first easy missions was certainly not for the faint of heart and I quite suspect someone remembered my past discretions.  The intel request for a 25% scan of a specific Xenon station in Tharkas Cascade VII which required staying at close range for some time.  The station was specified in the mission orders and the job involved a lot of high speed gate passes and slowing down only when I could keep the station between me and the Xenon destroyer parked at the station.   I got out with some hull damage and my largest paycheck to date.

The Argon Prime shipyard doubles as the Argon Headquarters so I was thrilled to identify and fulfill a request for the SCA which granted me access to the black market on station.  The mission involved delivering some components I could craft at a crafting station from the multiple Xenon drops I had gathered, which made me glad I had not yet sold them. 

The Antigone Republic contacted me offering a rather surprising promotion.  It might have been for accepting a mission to mine a HAT station which makes it a little ironic as i immediately lased the mines after the credits transferred. I accepted the promotion and docked for the night.

So far, the non-plan of the plan is all coming together... sort of

Finally!  So, I am the captain of my own ship!  It is a classic Argon Discoverer Vanguard and it is officially my keys to greatness, I can feel it.  As the daughter of an Argon government official, I sometimes get to enjoy perks a typical civilian does not get and this is certainly one of them.

The ship does not come without some qualifying conditions, of course.  My mother is nothing if not shrewd and she had her children compete in a myriad of competitive gauntlets which, more often than not, made no practical sense whatsoever to her children as participants.  Personally, I took it to mean there was a universe full of unknown dangers and possibilities.  I do not want to codify that experience, and in any case it would be too messy for a captains log, and we are starting fresh, for sure.  Yeah... for sure!

The rest of my siblings have moved into their government posts, under mother's supervision and out of my way; I have my freedom, which equates to this small sum of credits and this absolutely beautiful dust ball of a ship!  As she said, "Thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all places whither thou goest" and walked away.  I partially agreed, except in that my life was never hers to begin with!

...

Okay... I'm back.  I took a few minutes to look around this cabin and it is, as expected, quite used.  I bought a few shots and a celebratory cigar from the mechanics on the docks which reminds me: my credits won't last long and I need work.  I'm going to check the channels and be right back.

...

So, I found a channel which announced all the local jobs in this system.  Nothing stood out, really.  There was a rather optimistic posting for anyone who could build a System Scanning Array Production station, paying the station value plus 50%.  I accepted it even though I have no funds to build anything yet, mostly because there was no expiration date and I intended to build a solar array production array anyhow.  Maybe I'll just tack on the System Scanning Array production module and get the Solar Array production value included in the value of the station?  Hmm...

I did check my available blueprints which showed my mother had completely scrubbed the company data from the ship and my systems.  I will have to buy or steal the blueprints before I can start building the station.  Oh well... blueprints are always a good investment.

Now... to find actual liquid cash.  My impact at the moment is so negligible at the moment, I could not repair my ship.

My map data is as blank as everything else, so I think I'm going to hit the highways between systems and try to find the loop.  A periodic run of the super highway is a good way to check the job channel in multiple systems and that is exactly what I need.  

Signing off and getting to work.  

Captain Zaely Codix... signing off.