Honest Work | Personal Log 01.10.3309
10 Jan 2023Mark Zero
-//Log Entry Start[Date: 01.10.3309]
[Location: Moisuc Dock, LP 834-42]
I needed a break. The war against the Thargoids is raging on, and looks set to continue for the foreseeable future. The good news is that humanity's managing to hold, for the most part. Independent groups of Pilot's Federation Commanders, like the Anti-Xeno Initiative and Post-Disaster Evacuation Service, have been taking on most of the burden of picking targets and driving the Thargoids out of the systems they're attacking. The bad news is that Aegis is still stuck in limbo, the Superpowers mostly still have their thumbs up their asses, and Azimuth Biotech is still getting away with acting like they're a benevolent partner in saving mankind.
But that's all above my pay grade right now. After spending the past few weeks either trying to defend stations from attacking Thargoids or evacuating people away from the front lines and into the safety of the rescue ships, it all got to be too much. My nerves were shot, Firebrand ended up so torn up from caustic damage that I needed to dry dock her for repairs, and I just wanted out of a cockpit for a while. I went looking for some different work, and found it in LP 834-42.
For all the noble talk of defending humanity going around in Pilot's Federation comms channels focused on the war, the reality is that we'll still rip each other apart in a heartbeat. Wars between factions are still going strong in the bubble, and civil unrest tends to leave a lot of a system's smaller infrastructure offline, and often on fire, and being picked over by scavengers.
I've been picking up jobs from a PMC faction called "Leviathan Scout Regiment" to get their planetary settlements back online in the wake of an ongoing war between two smaller factions in the system. Simple stuff; take a power regulator, go to the site and secure it, bring the local reactor back online, manually depressurize any buildings that are on fire, get paid. Toughest part of the whole thing is the scavengers. Especially if they get there before you do; there's no sneaky way to land a hundred tons of spaceship before they mark you and start firing.
Well, ok, that's the second toughest part. The toughest part is stepping over the bodies of the settlement's former inhabitants to get to the atmospheric control console and vent the atmosphere before the fires eat through your suit's shields.
Aside from just generally getting paid for it, and tallying up numbers towards S&R accolades, there's another benefit to this work. Unless the suit approving the recovery gig is a credit-pinching idiot, the facility's inventory is considered a total loss before the contract's even been posted to the kiosks. And to get the job done, they've temporarily gotta give you full security access to the site. It ain't exactly a secret that these facilities are often full of specialized goods and components, as well as local secure data terminals. Which means as long as you deal with any scavs, and leave the settlement powered up and stabilized, there's a general understanding that some stuff's going to go missing and get written off in the insurance claim.
It also ain't a secret that most Pioneer Supplies locations can upgrade your gear if you bring them the right bits and blueprints, and that most bartenders have connections to a whisper network of goods traders and data brokers to turn some extra credits with the rest of it. It feels a bit funny doing boots down mercenary work to shake off the burnout of fighting the Thargoids, but I've got a freshly upgraded Manticore Executioner, an ice cold glass of Indy Bourbon, and a couple million in the bank for my trouble. Life could be worse.
-//Log Entry End