I'm finally out of the trenches. After spending a year buried in Bayern-class battleships, that assignment is finally over. My teams and I thought we might never see space again, but we're done. I could not be more grateful. I love tech, and I love working with my hands, but sometimes you just need to be out amongst the stars. I took my team for a drink our first day finished, and met a very interesting woman, Gunda Riehl. I think her and I are going to stay in touch. She's fiesty when she drinks, that's for sure.

The Union decided to reward me for my work upgrading these old battleships by giving me command of one, the Tizerhuk. She's a good, sturdy ship, and I personally saw to the armor upgrade, so it's the best of the bunch in that regard. I also was able to hold onto the assignments of my tech teams, so we will now be able to respond anywhere in Rheinland or Union territory to any engineering emergency. The specialized tech equipment almost puts us on par with a shipyard in terms of repair abilities, though we can't really manage to construct anything new with what we've got on hand.

They also assigned me an Arbeiter, to get around when a battleship-size craft isn't needed. I've been flying it around Pacifica and Bering, just doing some patrols and getting used to being behind a flight stick again. They briefed me on a recently-executed traitor, Hunter Wolff. Hours after reading the briefing, I ended up running into someone asking about him. A day later, someone else. This kid got into it bad, and apparently involved several Union allies and enemies. He may have even had independent contractors. We're going to be undoing his efforts for a while - but it's right he died. He questioned Frei. You don't question the Arbeitsdirektor, ever. No matter, though. We have his body, and he made the mistake of using biometric encryption on his communications. We'll figure out how to read it all soon enough.

On an unrelated note, a young Arbeiter by the name of Travis Doyle has proven himself quite capable already. In a mission log he put in a request with high command to work on recovering wrecked ships from Bering and putting them to use, reconstructing them. He has a solid plan, though already he's had to modify it. I'm hoping to have the opportunity to guide him and put him to work on this. He seems bright and capable, and I can't wait to see what he can do. If he keeps up with this level of ingenuity, though, he's going to be commanding a technical team like I do before long. It's nice to see a kid with initiative.

Other than that, I'm enjoying adjusting to the new space. The battleship is at Krefeld in Cologne for now, and I'm about to board my Arbeiter to go back and resume command. Once there, we're going to be looking out for new engineering challenges to solve.

When I finished my ship refit assignment on the Bayerns, I never imagined that Corin Frei would decide that I'd make a good diplomat. I'm a technician, an engineer and a leader. Why the hell he thought I'd be good at communicating with foreign powers and other people, I will never know. Still, he decided that I should be in charge of talking to the Lane Hackers. Just to tell them we won't nuke Bering again, as long as nobody else does. It's a joke. We should have used more warheads on Marshall Station and reduced the thing to rubble, and shown Harmony just how far we'll go to be rid of their treachery.

Beyond that, Arbeiter Doyle continues to impress. He's finished construction of the repair ship for recovering wrecks out of Bering, and we're going to be arranging time in the near future for him to go out with an escort patrol, and we're going to start towing in damaged vessels. Thanks to the Junker Congress we've got solid plans for keeping the hulls shielded while they pass through the system, so that means they won't be damaged by the piles of crap floating around the system. It's good to see a young engineer coming into his own, and I'm proud of Doyle. I think I'll be recommending him for a commendation once this is all through.

Finally, I reached out to "Cleaner Gamma 5," a rogue repair ship that decided to help Harmony in a fight a couple weeks ago. I offered him a contract. The little punk countered on me, and is only willing to offer a commitment of one vessel, on contract, and nothing else. He actually expects to be able to stay neutral with the entirety of Sirius. That poor boy is sadly mistaken, but it will be entertaining to watch him try. Neutrality is over-rated. If you want real power, you need to take it by force. Years of experience have taught me that. I just feel bad he's going to have to learn that lesson the hard way.