The rest was good. After a few days on Beck's World with the stress of trying to sell our cargo and purchase some new goods, as well as having to deal with the customs officer and the drunken consul it was great to back on board the Kalitá safe in the hydrogen-bubble of jumpspace.

I made the rounds in the morning to make pleasantries with the passengers in their lounge and talked through the repairs we would need with Otto at length. James was keeping a good eye on the low berths and Annie was whizzing about as normal with errands from the passengers and preparing for the evening meal. Just like clockwork.

Some of the time I spent contemplating my lack of astrogation knowledge and the time it was taking me to calculate the required jump vectors. I hardly have even the most basic knowledge and have had to rely on following specific instructions and triple-checking all of the calculations. I can see a dire need to either get the textbooks to allow me to learn the ropes, which will take a fair amount of time, or get a computer and program to assist. It seems that both would be prudent, so my mind was made up to head to Moughas (Spinward Marches/Regina/2406) , where the higher technology level of the planet may offer more in choice of the computer systems I could purchase.

I was brought out of my contemplation when Annie pinged me to inform me that it was nearly time for the Captain's Dinner once more. I smartened myself up and put on a brave face with the hope that the dinner would go smoother than the last time.

The dinner, of course, didn't go as planned.

I continued my conversations with Gebke, asking if she was heading no further than Enope, hoping that she might be going further so we could take her passage once more. However, she declared that Enope would be her final stop, despite the cold of the planet. With the little knowledge I had of the world I enquired if she was going there to visit the Caverns of Enope; the Ancients' site where flora and fauna from dozens of worlds had been transplanted many years ago and left to grow and evolve over that time in a honeycomb of interconnected artificial caverns, lit and watered by processes that the researches were still investigating. She replied that she might one day, but that was not her destination.

The only other logical place would have been the mining operations, but Gebke had shaken her head to that as well, before Floyd Parma interrupted and gave his opinion on the mining. An easy project he called it. The minerals were fairly simple to mine if you were able to build the habitats to allow the workers to survive in the frigid conditions. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of these habitats had been built and there were nearly seven billion people down there carving out an existence and getting paid a great deal of money to do so.

Turning to Soon Ho Scarpa I asked if he knew much about Enope. He did not, as he had come from a system many parsecs away, though declined to weave that into the conversation. A note for Annie, though, was that Soon Ho wasn't intending on staying on Enope, so he might be one we could add to the passenger list to Moughas if he was heading in that direction.

When I turned to talk to Tyson Kulakov I was a little surprised by his reaction. He was sat up very straight and his back was stiff, with an accent that James told me later that reminded him of someone from the Core sectors, although James did say he thought that Tyson was faking it. He kept mentioning the Imperium, and how it was fantastic that they were patrolling the space lanes around Enope and that the facilities on the planet were kept at a high quality by the Imperium and the Emperor's hand.

This talk, however, seemed to rattle Catharinus Matsuo somewhat who seemed to take great offence at some of the language and Tyson's Imperialistic posturing.

The talk went on and started to get a little heated, but before Annie or I could intervene, Catharinus stood up and threw his plate of food right at Tyson. Luckily the aim was off somewhat and the plate missed Tyson's head by a few centimetres, but the food on the plate splattered against the noble's white jacket.

Otto was quick to restrain Catharinus and between him and Annie they escorted him off to his stateroom. I profusely apologised to Tyson, who stormed off to his own stateroom in disgust. The dinner ended, unsurprisingly, not that long afterwards, as the passengers swiftly made their excuses and made their way back to their rooms.

As of the last dinner we have some work ahead of us to calm and placate our passengers. I have one passenger confined to quarters and am keeping my fingers crossed that another does not take action against the Kalitá for their actions. Annie has, once again, her work cut out!

#0001 — 018-1106 @ 1100 to 018-1106 @ 2300 IST Ω

We made a concerted effort this morning to ensure that our passengers felt both safe and looked after on the Kalitá with a double-pronged approach. James had come up with a plan to use some of the sterilising equipment in the medic bay to clean Tyson's dirty clothes from the previous night, and Annie was to go about placating his ire with this as one of the offerings in hand.

Whilst Annie was dealing with Tyson, I headed to Catharinus' stateroom, to which the door had been security locked overnight as was my prerogative as captain of the ship. I did not want this to be a permanent situation so decided to debate the interstellar regulations with Catharinus with the hope that he would agree to self-impose his own confinement for the promise that neither we, nor Tyson, would press any charges once we reached Enope's starport.

I must admit I nearly made the mistake in thinking I knew much more about the legal affairs than Catharinus, but I managed to convince him that staying in his stateroom would be the best for everyone and that we would agree with Tyson that nothing else would come of the situation.

Passing on this information to Annie helped her win over Tyson, who calmed down completely, particularly when a few hours later he was presented with his robes in pristine condition once more.

Only moments after we had delivered Tyson's cleaned clothing there was a loud bang from somewhere within the ship, the lights went out and were replaced by the emergency lighting, and a low level alarm kicked in. I rushed to the bridge, but the alarms had already ceased and the lights restored by the time I arrived. Otto had already tracked down the issue and cut the alarms and restored power.

Heading down to engineering I found Otto near the power plant at the main fuse point, shaking his head.

The primary turret had had a surge and tripped the entire set of fuses. Another gift from the ancient girl that was Kalitá. Otto suggested he would be able to patch everything up, it was probably a coupling somewhere that had blown. We really needed to get some spare parts when we could afford it though. Next time we may not be as lucky.

Otto reported back to me a few hours later that he had replaced the power coupling and checked the power lines to make sure everything was in working order. So far we have had nothing else trip or waver, so it seems, at least for now, we are back to normal.

#0002 — 019-1106 @ 1100 to 019-1106 @ 2200 IST Ω

We are starting to get into a good routine for our exit from jumpspace. Passengers may set their own alarms for earlier, but I have instigated an alarm and order for one hour before exit for the passengers to ensure they are safely in their staterooms and for all crew to wear a vacc suit from the ship's locker. Annie is stationed on the bridge with me, Otto remains in engineering, and James stays safely in the medbay. This protocol should continue until fifteen minutes after exit.

The exit to Enope went perfectly to plan and as we entered real space once more I quickly moved to the sensor station to see the data from the local communication buoys. It only took a couple of minutes before we had a readout of the system and any important traffic information.

There were no significant challenges to traffic, though the indications were that the highport was busy. With billions of people living on an icy planet that wasn't unexpected — the freight ships supplying food alone on a day to day basis would jam many systems.

Course was set for the highport with just over six hours of travel. I let the passengers know over the internal systems and Annie headed out to busy herself with preparations for offboarding the passengers and making sure that Tyson and Catharinus did not meet each other during the process.

I gave James the nod to start cycling the low berths to bring our other passengers round and he headed off through the cargo bay with his medikit whilst I took a quick look at the incoming newsfeeds.

Dentus was coreward of Kinorb, where we had come from. I wondered if this was related to the terrorism at Riesling Downport and maybe the Ine Givar, although based on the feed it did sound as though it was just a horrible tragedy. It had happened before the explosion at Kinorb and the news had gradually chased us rimward.

The approach to Enope was safe and steady and although there were many ships heading to and from the planet they all gave wide berths, the vast distances of space allowing us to pass safely.

I caught up with James a few hours later to see how the low berth passengers were faring. It was always a nervous time from what I had heard, and even that some people never made it. I'm not sure how much of that was true, but after speaking to James he had stated that one of the passengers, Kirilka, had not shown strong metrics as the start of the recovery and that James felt he had even been close to losing her at one point.

Most of them were now comfortably seated in the passenger lounge, however, with Annie taking care of them alongside the high passage guests.

It took us well over the six hours to eventually get to within orbit distance of Enope and the frigid world was quite a sight out of the viewports.

Contact was made with traffic control at the starport and we were asked to hold our ground. It appeared that we had arrived at a particularly busy period and there was a nine-hour long queue we were promptly put to the back of. I reluctantly informed the passengers and crew and there was nothing else to do but wait patiently.

Gradually, over the stretched out hours, we moved closer and closer to the highport until we could see the structure in the viewports. Tiny at first, but slowly growing, until we could even clearly see the Imperial Sunburst glowing softly against the blackness of space.

Finally, we were giving landing clearance, the automated landing beacons guiding us to a empty section of space close to the station where we were supplied orbital parameters to keep us in step with the station. The call came through to inform us that a shuttle for any passengers would be arriving promptly and we could already see a fuel tug creeping slowly towards us. We had arrived at Enope.

#0003 — 024-1106 @ 1945 to 025-1106 @ 1200 IST Ω

As the fuel tug approached I contacted Otto, who took over the comms station. The tug was an automated drone and Otto was able to direct it to the fuel lines on the Kalitá where it attached and began the laborious process of pumping the fuel into the ship via the refinery.

The process would take a while, so as a crew we decided that the best course of action would be to leave the ship alongside the passengers on the shuttle and go and find somewhere to eat and relax at the highport. We would need to start the process to find a buyer for the cargo as well as begin the search for more passengers. Perhaps even a little light shopping.

The berthing costs were quite expensive for a C-grade highport, with an initial cost of Cr500 for the first day and then a further Cr100 for each day after that. However, this did pay for the shuttle transports and even included any visits down to the surface. On top of that the cost covered any cargo and freight handling. But first, before worrying about the cargo and journeys to the surface, we needed a meal.

It wasn't long before a shuttle arrived, a bright blue modular skiff, and after allowing it to dock against the cargo bay and take the high passengers' luggage we ushered our guests to the airlock ready to depart.

Powering down the systems I put the Kalitá into a secure mode and made sure I was the last one through the airlock onto the skiff.

#0004 — 025-1106 @ 1300 to 025-1106 @ 2100 IST Ω