Most of the Khonsu's crew is down at Cape Hope for Easter.
I doubt most of them are there for the religious reasons... unless you count the bars as churches and alcohol as God himself. In the Order, that might as well be true. There's precious little for a man do to other than that in these desolate systems. Either he's bored, disturbed, or drunk - the latter being off duty.
Order business is light as usual. The same old nonsense, fighter jocks wanting Corsair pulse cannons, Corsairs saying no and trying to estrange relations - which I'm quite fine with - or Zoners trying to get their greasy palms on a Hathor for some demented reason. This is so frustrating, really. Everything is so bureaucratic, corrupted, and useless around here. Gone is the idealism which created us, gone are the reasons I joined the Order. We do less fighting of the Nomads than we do paperwork and routine patrols in civilized systems.
I continue my research into the Nomads and Daam-K'Vosh, hoping to merit some new weapon from the K'Vosh technology, or locate some weakness in my experiments with the Nomads.
Currently, I'm observing the same cascade resonance between the Major, Minor, and Lesser Nomad neural clusters arrayed in my lab. I've been up for three days straight watching this, and I'm going to bed in just a moment after the computers finish logging the data and locking down the labs.
I think that I might have stumbled onto some vitally important fundamentals of the Nomad "telepathic" network, as I call it for lack of something more scientifically concrete.
The K'Vosh research is going slowly. The artifacts are, as usual, hard to decipher. Roland has been of some assistance, but I know he's involved in another, more secret project to the side. Even I won't press him for details on it. As such, my own research into the Malvada and Theta debris clouds and the artifact strains found within is going quite slowly. I've begun constructing isolation and activation protocols, but it's still not going as fast as I'd like it.
Neither we nor the Nomads can fully comprehend these, save that we both know that they are dangerous. Fortunately for us, we can figure out how to use them to some extent - which is what saved us all in the Nomad War. The Proteus Tome, the Sprague Murals, and the Keystone were what won the war, not the Order's skill... we would have been doomed had it not been for the Daam-K'Vosh. The Nomads have outlawed artifacts in the houses for years with their influence - as they're a threat - but I have found no evidence that they can manipulate them at all.
Perhaps that is no coincidence. The Daam-K'Vosh left the Nomads to look after Sirius, the Sprague research suggests... and I imagine that one wouldn't want the groundskeeper tinkering with whatever is inside the house if one takes a holiday. It could very well be that manipulating artifacts is beyond the abilities of the Nomads completely.
Ah, the data is logged. I'll be finishing this log up.
I'll set the computers to auto-process the cascade data.
I believe that this will give valuable insight into exactly how they interface, and why it is that the Wilde operate autonomously from the Nomads that are not infesting humans even though their cover within human society is non-existent. It seems a paradox, that spies would continue to exist in their disguises long after they were found out... but I'm hoping to apply these results to the Wilde I've captured myself, and reveal their connections to the rest of the Nomads.
A trip out to somewhere might be in order after this. The Order is beginning to wear on me like life itself. It's slowing me in my goals sometimes, rather than expediting the removal of the Wilde and Nomads from Sirius.
Such is the way of all things, I suppose. Decay and corruption meet all on their paths.
That likely includes myself as well.
First: No, it did not take me this long to become sober.
I simply neglected to write down boring things...
The Khonsu is now repaired and resupplied at Evora... and has been, for several days back... but we haven't moved out yet because we've been waiting for a replacement set of reactor rods - ours were workable, but rather old and inefficient. It's given me some time to sort out my path, and I do believe that I will take the Khonsu down into the Omegas to prove my research's results and expand upon my findings both here and there, as I shall be continuing my investigations with materials and information gathered in that area of space.
As far as moving in with the Hessians might go... I imagine they might let me on their bases, but an Order research vessel and Order crew might not be so acceptable to them, and for good reason. We're allied with their enemies, and our diplomacy is ceaselessly and irreparably stupid.
Once I thought I might fix it, but I lose heart with the inefficiencies and bureaucracies of the Order... not to mention that certain members of High Command are Corsairs, and that's bound to keep our organization bound in its chains of hindering diplomacy and from its true purpose and role as the destroyers of the Nomad threat.
I just hope that the Hessians - the true vanguard against the Wilde - see that I see things their way.
Well, good news and bad news.
Good news is that the relations with Corsairs are falling apart, thanks to a bit of a slip made by what appeared to be our side in otherwise congenial diplomacy. Things have come to a head since then, and fallen apart more completely than not. That's the bad news too - travel down through the Omegas will be a bit more difficult than previously anticipated, what with Corsairs sure to be less than amiable if I were to make a crossing to the territory required.
We launch today, though, and we'll be heading south nonetheless, at least until we hit Freeport 15 or Freeport 9. Then... then we'll see how the waters sit. We'll head up into the Sigmas if the Omegas look a mite too turbulent to effectively cross in this old barge... I have business that could be conducted in that area, namely the checking of certain fish traps on Kurile...
