The Spirit of Fortune

[Genevieve]

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
Genevieve Uihara's Personal Journal

12-AUG-830
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

Ask and you will receive.

Looks like the stars smiled down upon us again, because mere hours after I wrote that last entry, the commander of the Xeno Alliance broadcasted a message on a Zoner frequency about evacuating Bethlehem Station, offering transport and escort out of Liberty. I wasn't about to pass up an offer like that, even if I don't know a thing about the man, or his Alliance, for that matter, nor how trustworthy they are. All I know is that they don't like Liberty and that they have frequent dealings with the people on Ames Research Station, and that was good enough for me as far as trusting them to get us out of Pennsylvania was concerned.

We prepared to unmoor just as soon as I got a reply about guiding us out of the system. Traffic around Bethlehem was surprisingly light. I expected more people to make a break for it, but maybe I should have known that most of Pennsylvania's Zoners aren't going to bail on their home. Even if that means getting arrested or killed by Liberty. Their problem, not ours.

We met a freelancer of sorts - or maybe a revolutionary, or idealist, or terrorist? Who knows? - by the name of Erich Klugmann. Rheinlander, former leading figure in the Bundschuh. I didn't get to ask too many questions before the Xeno, Cobra, pinged us with coordinates for a rendezvous. Klugmann offered to escort us there and I accepted. Good call, too, because we ran into a Rogue gunboat halfway to our destination, but their attempts at disrupting us were nothing our countermeasures couldn't handle, and once Cobra and his wingman popped onto our scanners, the pirates turned tail.

As promised, the Xenos and Klugmann escorted us to the California jump hole - it actually exists! - and then through California to the jump hole to Cortez. The escape out of Liberty was surprisingly uneventful. Almost disappointing, to tell the truth, after how close a call our last attempt was. Cobra offered to reimburse us for our efforts in helping the Pennsylvanians, but I declined. I'm not about to take someone's money on top of an escort free of charge. Gretsky complained, of course, and I get it, we could use the cash. But now that we're out of Liberty, earning a few credits to keep us afloat shouldn't be too difficult.

Anyway, we parted ways with our new "friends" after I insisted that we owed them each a favor and made our way to Bretonia. Simon has some friends on New London who might have a job only the Spirit can handle. But I'll send off another message to Sis and Edgar before we take on any new work to let them know we made it out of Liberty alive.