Evangeline Anastasia McDowell

[Bazza]

Entry#: 049
Date: 13 - 12 - 817 AS @ 08:26 SUT
Title: Untitled.

Where to start? I suppose the beginning would be a good place....

We all trundled into Puerto Rico and got the Antaeus docked with Vieques, right next to my other pet project, the Maelstrom; which in its own right was assembling wonderfully. In just a few hours the boys had new scanners and radar systems installed along side the Gateway Shipping transponders and IFF box the clowns had left on board.

After that there was a bit of shuffling around of my property. The Antaeus, being a container transport, has nowhere to store fighters internally. Which means they'll either be in space for the full tour of duty or not be there at all. Not too fond of either choice, because the terrains we pass through can be quite dangerous for smaller ships; at the same time the people who live in those terrains can be quite dangerous for bigger, unarmed ships like the Antaeus.

I decided that having the escorts with me was still the best thing to do. It simply meant more frequent stops to replenish their oxygen and fuel supplies with some clever course plotting to avoid the gas clouds and minefields.

Everything done and dusted, with Kana and Fumika sharing escort duties between them and Misaka by my side, we started our first revenue journey with the loading of 2,500 tonnes of universal hull panel components from the smelters. Made from the finest recycled garbage they provide the Junkers of Puerto Rico with a large portion of their "legitimate" income stream. Rather than buying and selling, this trip was a courier job. The goods were bought and paid for by the customer in advance, now it's time to move them out, with a cut of the profits going to the shipper. The overall profit is lower, but in some ways it's easier since I don't have to worry about finding a buyer for my wares.

The convoy left Puerto Rico and begun the journey to Freeport 1 in Omega-3. We had to use the jumphole network to avoid the Liberty blockades in the independent worlds linking Liberty with Rheinland, a mere detour for us with absolutely no threat to our convoy bar the occasional Xeno nutcase. But even those guys would know better than to pick on a ship with two trained fighter escorts.

We rejoined the tradelane network nearby the jumphole linking Texas to Hudson. We dropped out of the lane prior to reaching its' terminus at the gate to Hamburg (with the Rheinland patrols guarding it) and flew through open space into the asteroid field hiding Dawson Base. We docked the Antaeus with the station and the crew retired for the evening. The crew enjoyed some of Liberty's finest bootleg liquor.

We set out 14 hours later refreshed and revitalised. The convoy made its way through the asteroids to the Bering jumphole.

On the Bering side we encountered a patrol of Unioner ships. Unioners tend to only care about you if you're Republican or a Xeno; they didn't seem too interested in a Bretonian Shetland with obviously criminal escorts. We gave their base a wide berth simply to avoid unnecessary friction.

A few hours later and we found ourselves in the Hamburg system. The flight to Hamburg orbit was unremarkable. We rejoined the tradelanes for the rest of the journey to Freeport 1. The trip was quiet and uninteresting through Hamurg, New Berlin and the Stuttgart systems with one exception.

Throughout the journey I had been picking up transmissions from a small ship, likely a fighter, which seemed to be following me. I'd first received contact in Texas, and the ship had ghosted me through Hamburg, New Berlin and Stuttgart. I'd engaged in some casual banter with the pilot, without knowing a single thing about him; clogging up the open channels as is typically the case in Liberty, but rather unusual in the other houses, likely because they are as bit less retarded. Through our chatter I deciphered he had the same destination as myself, so I wagered with the man a million credits if he could get there before I did. A bit of harmless fun to keep me occupied for the trip. I had absolutely no idea where he was, what he was doing or who he worked for. Unimportant details, really.

I entered the Omega-7 system from Stuttgart and quickly fell into trouble. A Corsair bomber had taken out one of the trade lane links and ambushed our convoy as it spat out the end of the functional links.

The corsair opened a comms channel and demanded that I hand over 1.5 million credits. Obviously he didn't feel like a casual conversation. The problem with bombers like this one is that even though they can't bear arms against a fighter, he'd be able to get rid of me before my escorts could get a shot in.

It quickly became a rather tense situation, mainly because I couldn't remember the password for the ship's neural net account. Just great. I had it written down somewhere, but the paper had gone away at some point. I got the crew to scramble and find the passwords while I tried to stall the Corsair for time.

Things were starting to look a bit worrisome when, like a knight in shining armour, the ship I'd been chatting with earlier came barrelling down the lane. Project X was it's name according to my scanners, a fighter of some kind I wasn't familiar with.

The pilot quickly analysed the situation and thankfully took my side. Him, along with my escorts now had the upper hand and it was showing. The Corsair backed away from us and held his ground some distance away. He was now out-gunned 3 to 1. Even the best pilot wouldn't be able to withstand that much incoming fire for long enough to be a threat to me.

And, to seal the deal, Project X had called in Rheinland Military support. With the Corsair well and truly on his way to death we high tailed it outta there. We flew directly to the jumpgate to Omega-3 and left the Corsair to his fate.

We reached the first break in the lanes at Aaland Shipyard. The ship was being manoeuvred into position for the next tradelane when my stalker came out the end of the lane we'd just been in ourselves. It then occurred to me that the race was still on.

However by that time, it was too late. The fighter was magnitudes more agile and had been sucked up by the lane entrance long before we were even in position. I reached Freeport 1 in just enough time to watch the fighter dock.

I found the pilot on board and handed him his winnings, plus a bit extra for helping us out. I'll pay 100 times the amount to someone who works with me over someone who works against me. The Corsair wanted 1.5 million, this bloke got 2.

After offloading our cargo me and the crew decided to stay for a little while to recover.


To top it all off, I am 99% sure I just saw the Peterborough docking with the Freeport.

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