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Logbook
Entry_01
January 21, 828 A.S.


We actually did it.

We powered up the main reactor and nothing blew up. Life support's running at only half power and the engines may be purring like a cat choking on a furball, but the ship's running and that means we can finally get out of Bering.

Question is, of course, where do we go? Logically, we should head to Rheinland in hopes of finding people and materials that can help us put this boat properly back together. So we could head south and look for the jumphole to Hamburg. But something tells me that the Krauts wouldn't be too keen about seeing us roll up in one of their own warships. That only leaves Liberty. There's plenty of scrap floating around in Texas and New York and maybe the Junkers on Rochester can lend us a hand with some of the repairs.

I just hope us showing up in an old Rheinland corvette doesn't trigger any mass episodes of PTSD among the police and navy patrols we're sure to come across. Isabelle had the idea to add a prefix to our transponder to make it perfectly clear that this is a civilian vessel and not a one-ship Kraut invasion force. I hope it works.

Regardless of the troubles that probably still lie ahead of us, I'm proud of what we've accomplished. We got ourselves a proper home and I'm its captain.

Here's to the Carkadan.

Edit:
That thing I said about nothing blowing up? That was a bit hasty. Activating the cruise engines ruptured a fuel line and nearly depressurized the engine room. Looks like we'll be flying on impulse for a while.


Logbook
Entry_02
January 22, 828 A.S.


I cannot stress enough how tedious spaceflight is at impulse speeds. So bless whatever genius it was that came up with trade lane tech because I think I would have rather abandoned the Carkadan in the middle of nowhere than travel all the way to Manhattan and beyond without.

We made it to Rochester in one piece and with only one run-in with the law. Honestly, I wonder whether the people the LPI hires and the navy recruits ever bother actually reading the laws they're meant to enforce. Because this lot sure didn't and Isabelle is sure that it almost resulted in the ship getting promptly re-scrapped. But cooler heads - mine, in particular, - prevailed and they let us go.

The Junkers didn't exactly welcome us with open arms, probably because they aren't used to seeing military corvettes ask for mooring permission at their stations, but they let us do it anyway. The promise of credits quickly got them to work on our new home.

Two Vierling turrets, one point defense turret, and a cruise disruptor are all the armament that we were able to salvage. Not much, but it should be enough to deter any lone pirates.

The nose-mounted cannon technically should work but a row of capacitors is broken and apparently the design is proprietary Rheinland military tech. So unless the Kraut navy provides tech support to civilian salvagers, I don't think we'll be getting that gun to shoot any time soon.

The engines are only somewhat busted. The Junkers managed to patch the fuel line but they advised us against engaging the cruise drive until we get it properly looked at. That's hardly going to be an option, so I'll spend what credits we have left and have them fix it up enough to at least run for short bursts. Not like we'll be able to afford much more anyway. Of course, in their desire to be special, Rheinland decided to run their engines with some fuel other than H-fuel. We siphoned enough of it from the other wrecks to last us for a few weeks but where we'll get more once that has run out I don't know. We can't exactly visit Rheinland for a quick top-off.

I had the thought of maybe replacing the entire engine with an open-market model but lo, turns out the entire housing is also a proprietary design. The folks here explained that they don't have the tech it requires so we'll be stuck with this MOX-guzzling monstrosity for now.

At least we finished pressurizing the remaining compartments. No more putting on an evac suit just to get to the latrines.

We will have to figure out a way to earn some credits if we intend to fix this boat up any further. It's turning out to be more expensive than expected and Louise isn't sure whether it's worth the effort. We might just be better off selling it all for scrap.

We'll see.


Logbook
Entry_03
February 12, 828 A.S.


Things have been pretty busy these last two or so weeks. Lots of maintenance to do on the Carkadan, trying to keep her from tearing herself apart every time we'd travel through trade lanes or jump gates. The patchwork of hull reinforcements we've managed to weld into place has held up surprisingly well, if at a tragic cost of aesthetic pleasure. Not to claim that the ship was particularly pretty to look at to begin with, what with her being a Rheinland design and literally fished out of a graveyard.

We ended up leaving Liberty in favor of less nosy pastures. The Taus, to be precise. Belle and I had never been out to that region of space but Louise assured us that it wasn't as bad as the news made it out to be. Needless to say, she was promptly proven wrong. Turns out the place is basically Old Earth's Wild West in space. We pretty much stumbled from one border skirmish into the next our first few days there, which would have been fine by me if we had at least been able to pick up some decent salvage from the aftermath, but no luck there.

Instead, fortune smiled on us another way.

While observing a battle between those Outcast cardi sniffers and some strange team-up between the Gauls and Bretonians, we ran into a Rheinlander, of all things. Practically as far from home as he/she could be. Of course, they hailed us and wanted to know what the hell we were doing flying around in one of their old corvettes. I told them the truth and they seemed to be not too upset about it.

Few days later we got contacted by the Buro des Marinenakrk... the BDM. When I read the sender ID on that transmission I nearly pissed myself, but, as it turns out, the Rheinlanders wanted to offer us an agreement to let us actually keep the Carkadan. Obviously, I accepted. So, a few days ago, they sent an inspector up to Tau 37 and we let him look all over the boat. He didn't seem too pleased about the state the ship was in but that's hardly our fault. We're not the ones who got it nearly blown up in Bering. In the end, everything seemed to check out and we were even offered help with repairing her.

Looks like I was right not to give up hope as quickly as the others.


Logbook
Entry_04
April 04, 828 A.S.


I haven't written much these past two months, huh? Or anything at all, for that matter. Well, truth be told, nothing worth logging has happened. Getting the license from the Rheinlanders was a huge weight off all our shoulders, so we got back to fixing up the Carkadan with renewed vigor. We got the cargo bay cleared of all the garbage it had collected, which gave us some space to do some cargo hauling. Not a whole lot, of course - hell, the Rhinos I used to fly could carry more than this boat -, but it's better than nothing and makes for a pretty safe source of income. Lord knows we need it if we want to keep this thing running.

I heard on the news that the civil war in Rheinland seems to have come to a close and that the parties are reunifying under some sort of joint government. Great for them. Has me worried though. I have no clue whether the new government is gonna uphold the bargain we struck with the Bureau. I sent a message to Captain Trager about that yesterday, haven't heard back yet. I just hope this doesn't spell any new trouble for us.

In the mean time, we just have to keep on trucking. Even if the Krauts go back on the deal, we're not just gonna give up our home.