Logbook entry

3|21|3307 - "The Proverbial Saddle"

"Being out there amongst the sleeping suns really does something inexplicable to the mind. You know, that peculiar feeling you get, a bottle deep & half way thru your FSD fuel - it can't be drowned, can't be buried, can't be covered up or forgotten; love it, dread it, run from it; all the same, we all end up finding our way back. Maybe we could add it to 'death & taxes' if we knew what to call it. Then again... maybe it's better that we don't have a name for it at all. Some things are just meant to be, rather than talked about."



"Been a while since I used this thing. Did my best to drink away the nine figures worth of heads I chopped, before the 'goids turned everything inside out a few years ago. One day some toothy blonde said I should 'live a little', and after being just about fused to the seat of a Ferdie during my freelancing campaign in Rotanev, I thought so too. Turns out the only thing good about living slow is the people, and whatever intoxicants you can manage to scrounge up; even then, after a while it all starts to feel the same, just like the old man told me. 'You can take the rat out of the race, but not the race out of the rat' - so here we are."



"Somehow managed to keep my finances (mostly) together between escapades; guess being a roaming cheapskate surfing desolate outpost bars has its advantages, even if they are few & far between. Went back and forth on it, but I tucked the ol' Fer-de-Lance into storage after staring at it in the hangar for too many damn months. Something about flying her just don't feel right to me no more, like wearing a different person's skin or something. So I searched the galactic grape vine, talked to the old mates, and found a Krait on discount from some laserbrain ex-Sirius pensioner out in the boonies. That damn filthy corpo haggled me half to death, but as it turns out the business end of a blaster still negotiates better than I do. Some things truly never change."



"Gotta say, she is a sight to see, from the outside. Corpo had it kitted out for atmospheric flight, all the bells & whistles - turns out it has control surfaces I didn't even know existed on starships, so go figure - old dogs can learn new tricks after all. Had to call in more than a few contentious favors, burn a couple bridges that didn't need burning, but at last she's fit for combat and then some. True, the inside was a hellscape of gaudy corporate kitsch & literal decades of degradation, but that's not anything a powerhammer & arc tool can't fix. Admittedly still a work in progress, though... interior design is far from my forte. As long as she flies, right? Named her Scylla, after that old Earth myth, the tentacles that pull you clean off your boat. Seemed fitting at the time, though I'm not sure why."



"And now I'm here. It ain't the gravity gardens of Lukyanenko Terminal or the spin-cycle activity on Danvers Station, sure, but unlike those spots these lads know how to keep their lips sealed & their wallets open. And considering the state of the galaxy nowadays, which I'm sure I need not elucidate on, per se... you can't ask for much more & keep your head. My new employers, or old ones - it's complicated - seem to have plenty for even an old scalp-hunter like me, and they don't ask too many questions either. So for now - until the credit river starts running dry again - it's back to decimating pirate brotherhoods, toppling questionable regimes for other questionable regimes, playing the three most powerful galactic factions in history like my personal slot machine, and if I'm still bored out of my skull after all that, well, at least I still have a few bottles of stolen brandy from those fancy whitesuits on Achenar."