Evangeline Anastasia McDowell

[Bazza]

Entry#: 125
Date: 4 - 12 - 818 AS @ 17:54 SUT
Title: Untitled.

Happy birthday to mee ~

The last 48 hours have been rather exciting, to say the least. That and, ludicrously profitable.

I, in command of the Alsatia, wound up at Alcatraz Depot with all the girls aboard plus my three extras. They wished to be deposited there and it was part of my deal to take them, so Alcatraz is where we ended up.

Leaving the safety of the port of Vieques I took the old girl on a spin across the arse-end of Texas, through the well-travelled jumphole to California and wound up at the old icecube the Rogues call a base in a handful of hours - with a nice little delivery of food and other supplies for the locals.

That was where I met one of my old mates, the one going by the moniker of "Cookie". That or just "mate". I actually forgot a long time ago what his real name is.

We ended up flying alongside his old transport to the tradelane linking Planet Mojave to the New York gate. It seemed Cookie'd caught word of an influx of independent miners and their transports from Dublin. According to his sources their has been something of a gold rush in Bretonia amongst those looking to make a buck underneath the waning power of the crown.

It has produced a large number of rag-tag, under-defended, under-escorted and generally under-intelligent mining convoys clogging up the lanes to Liberty and beyond with their barely space-worthy hulks.

Easy targets, ripe for the picking. We garnered a deal to split whatever gold we could nick off with down the middle. Cookie would be the one to "procure it" with his tank of a transport and I would be the one to launder it amongst my circle of trading partners.

We found ourselves staking out the tradelane, Cookie keeping an eye on incoming ships with his (presumably stolen) radar systems. It didn't take long at all for something tasty to spew out the damaged ring and present itself before us: A fully laden and completely unprotected mining ship filled to capacity with gold ore.

After Cookie confirmed the ship's valuable cargo he wasted no time in putting holes in the thing. The poor bastards flying it jumped the escape pod and got outta there without much hesitation, which I guess places them amongst the more intelligent of the miners that I've encountered.

I've seen people choose to go down with their ship instead of giving us what we want and being able to live another day. One would think that losing your cargo alone would be preferable to losing that, your ship, and possibly you life on top of it. I don't and probably won't ever understand the mind of a miner.

Anyway. It didn't take long for Cookie to get a hold of what he wanted - both of our cargo bays full of gold. Our two ships legged it off the lane and disappeared back into the ice field that hides Alcatraz. For the entire expedition we encountered a grand total of zero police or naval vessels and only a small number of the other miscellaneous doodads that occupy populated space.

Here we are, docked beside a giant popsicle inside a field of smaller popsicles with a hold chockablock full of chunks of gold. I am now tasked with finding a buyer for not only my haul but the entire contents of the ship in the next dock, Cookie's battle transport.

Tomorrow shall be the time for such actions. For now, the Alsatia gets a hard-earned rest. As do her crew and commander.

As for other matters...

A variety of birthday presents presented themselves to me from as early as Monday up to the present time. Highlights include a hand-drawn picture from our little bastion of happiness Sakura - a landscape portrait of the lot of us standing side by side with myself in the middle and a crude yet prototypically accurate depiction of the Alsatia itself in the background.

However, the clear-cut winner for birthday gifts this year goes to my little she-devil of a partner in crime Misaka. How such a sweet and innocent-minded little thing managed to "present" herself the way she did is beyond me. Perhaps I have corrupted her mind to the point that this kind of thing is acceptable to her previously juvenile and sheltered mind but the little girl I met back at Ainu would never have even considered such a deliciously naughty stunt as being within her ability.

I hope I have that ribbon around here somewhere still. It sort of floated off without any attention paid after I unwrapped my "present" and made prompt acceptance of the contents.

Hope it doesn't get sucked into the air vent like that other time.

All that aside... I can't help but feel something pulling at my chest whenever I wonder where Gunther is. I think I should go back and find out what's going on. I won't ever get any information out here in the end of Liberty and I feel that I need to know what is happening, if anything at all. It's probably just me being stupid again.

I'm almost willing to wager that if I went back today he'd be sitting in his office nonchalantly filling out some paperwork with only a passing regard for my whereabouts. And then I'd end up crying again for no real reason.

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