Return Flight: Dockmaster Straub returned aboard the re-designated ‘Maschinenpistole’ under transponder silence. Reported a temporary sensor cascade and requested manual dock override from Hangar Control. Hull showed evidence of moderate burns and particulate scoring consistent with debris field traversal.
Behavioral Notes: Technical staff noted increased reclusiveness. Straub declined medical assessment and did not submit a full mission debrief, citing “non-engagement classification.” Observed working solo in Hangar Bay 3 on off-shift hours — primarily focused on power system refits .
Multiple junior technicians report Straub sealing the Maschinenpistole's cockpit for extended durations, including periods where the reactor was powered down. Access to Bay 3 has since been informally restricted under his authority.
While no breach of protocol has been formally logged, internal command review is pending due to minor anomalies in Straub's shift behavior — including altered sleep cycles, reduced mess attendance, and atypical redundancy in ship diagnostics (e.g., repeating the same test suites across identical subsystems).
Straub maintains full rank privileges and continues to perform standard duties as Dockmaster without direct disciplinary concern.
Recommendation: Low-level observational flag. No immediate threat detected. Possible stress response to prolonged isolation.
PERSONAL LOG - SUPPRESSED FROM MAINFRAME:\ He didn’t bring the Valkyrae home.
It wouldn’t have been right.
Instead, he pushed the wreck into the graveyard cruiser frame in Grid F3. He carved a telemetry blindspot using old hash-pulse beacons and jury-rigged dampers, tuned to obscure magnetic contrast. A private tomb. Only he knew the pulse patterns.
Back at Pacifica, he was calm. Cleaner than expected. Wrote the paperwork in under an hour — dry, bureaucratic, flawless. No red flags. The kind of report that no one bothers reading twice.
Then he stripped the Arbeiter to its skeleton and started again.
He claimed it was for “operational compartmentalization.”\
That was true — in a sense.
He worked alone in Bay 3 for three nights. Rewiring. Scrubbing out diagnostics. Reinforcing cockpit hardpoints. He tore out the neural jack and installed an adaptive buffer matrix — one of the modules he’d scavenged. Didn’t explain where it came from.
When a junior mechanic offered to assist, Straub didn’t answer. Just kept tightening bolts until his knuckles bled.
Maschinenpistole’s hull gleamed like a blade. Her drive systems purred without a hitch. No faults. No malfunctions.
The Unioners would call it over-engineering. He called it discipline.
But he still locked the hangar behind him.
Later that week, he filed three consecutive supply requisitions for cockpit shielding. Justified under "plasma insulation redundancy." Engineering flagged it, but no one challenged the Dockmaster.
He returned to schedule. Inventory logs, scrap allocations, crew rosters. All by the book. All on time.
And yet…
Each time he passed the airlock door, he touched it. Not absentmindedly — deliberately. A silent check. Seal pressure. Magnetic latching. Once he ran the diagnostic twice. Then again, just to be sure.
That night, he sealed his bunk door.
Then he sealed it again.
He checked the oxygen valves.\
Slept in uniform. Boots on.
And when he closed his eyes — the dreams came.
Blue light, like oil through water. Shapes moving behind his eyes. Not memories. Not thoughts. Just impressions — something pressing outward, testing the seams of his mind.
A voice — no, not a voice, a sensation — came to him like an old friend:
“You are not yet ready. But you are listening.”
He jolted awake.
Nothing in the room.\
Nothing on the sensors.\
But his hand was already on his sidearm.
It took an hour to calm down.
In the dark, he whispered to himself. Just to hear something familiar.
“No breach. No contact. ”
And yet… he didn’t check the Valkyrae’s location ping.\
Didn’t even open the grid tracker.
He already knew it was still there.\
Waiting.
So was he.
Log continues → ENTRY 003: "Visions in the Metal" pending decryption.
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Internal Report: Restricted Access