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It’s been a pleasure to take on the vessel as her fourteenth commander. She’s old, but she’s still got the fire they promised. A step away from flying Condors, thin as paper bags - she has a skin of steel. You can see the resilience bursting out of every polished out burn mark, every dusting of space debris over the windows.

We had expected problems with the forward shield array, but she’s held the worst the Sudnebel could ware. Helm, I handpicked myself - any rogue can play at gunnery, but a ship’s survival is measured by how the flight stick is handled.

The crew is more skittish than I could have hoped. Many of them have been raked together from raiding parties - a few are openly uncomfortable with any sense of a chain of command. These… outworlders - they lack the tenacity of the Pacifica stock. I have advised the Commissar to be judicious - positive behaviour will be rewarded with positive rationing. Get a man to think with his stomach, and you own his soul.

We were careful to keep our route through Dresden keep to the head five - we’re stacking a full fifteen crew, but our reactive armour suite has yet to be filled with ablative packs. It means we’re down to our structural hull - and she’s a firm one - but will be of little use until her sensors are reclaibrated. The chaos in Koeln has wrecked havoc with the nerves of the weaker men - on other vessels, some are jumping at sensor ghosts, given the chance.

I will be careful to ensure we have none of that here. Wedel crew or not, we will remain tenacious in action. We are the Union’s best - our posting proves as much, and we will enforce the will of the Directorate wherever our ventures take us.

That is, of course, if our course holds true. Dresden was a dangerous system before the war - Stuttgart, almost as much. There remain rumours that the less sympathetic elements of the LWB have been selling our navigation data to the Hesse. We will be vigilant.

Once we have arrived at Koeln, I will be sure to write again.

Our transit was as smooth as could be hoped, given the circumstances. Without Arbeiters to escort us, I will admit to some…. concern, over the smoothness of our passage. The crew were never so daring as to admit relief, but I could sense the helmsman smiling when we had made our way into Stuttgart without so much as a sighting of a Hessian fighter. Perhaps they are preoccupied on other fronts.

Tactical has been running over careful calibrations of the vessel’s forward gun - steadily adjusting the targeting parameters to ensure the continuity of the beam. It’s starting to approach standard operating capacity, but the components are dated, of course. This is nothing new, certainly good enough for Koeln standards, but I worry if it will be capable of maintaining thermal stability in its time of need. I have yet to have encounter a Hesse gunboat with my own eye - yet, if our employment is to bring us anything more than wine women and song, I fully expect to have our largest cannon ready for the hunt.

I have promised to triple the bier ration upon visual aquisition of Krefeld - the promise has massively defrosted the attitude of the crew. Time will tell if operations will permit me to make good on my promise.

I make a habit to not mix personal prayers into my duties concerning the men, and retired after the formalities had been attended to. Publically, I prayed for victory; for the swift annihilation of Hesse nemesis, or at the least, a deposition of the warmongers who had started this conflict. Privately, I prayed for little Lotte, Mario and Tristan.

I am keen to receive our sealed orders. The last packet came over seventeen hours late, due to the recent Hessian strikes our positions in Frankfurt. If the northern front is in danger of collapse, then the situation must be truly dire - I wonder what wisdom induced the Arbeitsdirektor to direct us here, whilst our sister-ships die to defend us.

I will grab several hours rest whilst I have the chance. I complain, but the first officer seems competent enough.

We’re here.

Three days of consistent flight and the crew has bedded down. The Koeln system - vast, a forest of planets, yet so desolate you’d think humanity never alighted here. That is, if you turn the comnet off.


The pirate chatter is rampant, of course. Unioners are rarely spartan with their signal intelligence. Yet I am hopeful that we can attempt to do some good here - install discipline amongst those who’ve never held a knife in their lives.

Most of the hopeless causes come from Hamburg, ‘course. Koeln isn’t rife with disciplinarians - life travels at a steadier pace, here. Yet there’s a wiff of subterfuge in the oxygen; if you wanted to violate the will of the Arbeitsdirektor and get away with it, you’d do it here.

Before the war, many of the Unioners here forged a living out of building and repairing ships and resources for the itinerant LWB. The LWB are not known for their engineering excellence, but they can hold a welder well enough. Before, they were the lifeline for the region - now, they are the uncertainty. We know little of what the LWB has been getting up to within the depths of the Omegas - systems they would certainly have to court the Hessians and the Communists to thrive within.

It is likely they are selling them information. I wonder if they are out there, now, selling our position to the Communists?


It is not the time to dwell on such matters.

We pulled up to the station - and to our irritation the gantry remained occupied - an LWB cruiser, under service by our organisation. Perhaps they may have realised it inopportune to be servicing Vidars in the middle of a war; although ear-wagging aboard the station has done much to imply that our engineers may be completing a bargain of their own - a chance to investigate the Hesse’s experiments with our own designs, without fear of reprisal. Hm. I would trust my brothers more if I did not know of their greed.Time aboard Pacifica has ruined my sense of trust.

I am sure that the Nightcrawlers districts me just as much as I do them.

There is, however, hope. Our reactive armour is being gradually refitted - not as rapidly as it might if the LWB had not consigned themselves to our wet-dock, but progress is progress. On a lighter note, I have heard word that the Bastau will move down from the home fleet to join us at the front for final refit. The crew will be glad to have the cover of her artillery. Captain Withmann is a good man, and under the circumstances, the best we could have hoped for.

Still all quiet on the southern front. Several months into a war, and not a battlescar to show for it. The crew are revelling in the tranquillity - I am not.

Once our guns and armour are re-toothed, I will write here again.