Family Ties

[Knucklehead]

Incoming Transmission
Name: Eman Modnar
Comm ID: Eman_Modnar
Encryption Key: Public
Access Granted
Begin Log

I was sitting in the Shetland's Officers' Lounge when I got a call from Airom. Seems he'd met another Luxury Liner pilot named Shagohad and wanted me to show him the one I've been flying. I had a hold full of prisoners waiting to be turned over to the authorities, so I figured I'd bring them to the Battleship Missouri rather than the place I would usually take them.

Seems this particular liner pilot was a little loopy and decided to land his ship manually on Manhattan. As I dropped off the prisoners I had brought from Edinburgh, he started moaning about needing more money. Finally, I made him an offer. If he could beat me in a fight, I'd pay him 30 million credits. He accepted, and we made our way to the Connecticut system for the challenge. Another fellow, this one flying an Anubis like they sell on Curacao, was going to spectate. Guy by the name of Tavei-something. Seems I'm just as terrible with names as Dad and Airom...

Anyway, we check out each other's equipment and set a few ground rules, and get ready to fight. He had 3 missile turrets to my 1, but his guns were all level 4 transport turrets, while I have 4 basic gunboat turrets.

We square off a good distance away, and we open fire. I must have surprised him with how much power I had, as I had removed all but a third of his shield with his shots hardly denting mine. At this point he calls a timeout, and says he wants to go get his fighter instead. Fair enough, I say.

When he returned, we square off again and start shooting. After a minute or two, we ended up drifting toward our spectator, and one of Shagohad's missiles locked on to poor Tavei instead of me. Knocked him out in one shot.

We called a timeout until Tavei came back, and we all headed to Newhaven to stock up. After getting myself unstuck from the docking port, we set off to search for a better location for our battle. Our first choice was the abandoned station not far from Newhaven, but that was a little too close to a minefield for our tastes. So we settled on the center of the big race course for our battle. This time, Tavei would be with me against Shagohad.

We squared off and went over the ground rules again, and began counting down.

Tavei and I kept the pressure on Shagohad for a fair amount of time, but I found myself drifting a bit too far whenever he and Tavei were going at it. Eventually, Shagohad knocked Tavei out of the fight and turned his full attention to me. Quite frankly, this helped me out considerably, as he would be easier to concentrate on. A few minutes later, Shagohad fell under my firepower and we thanked each other for the fun and challenging match.

I decided to help Tavei out a bit, as he hadn't been flying long but had done an admirable job in the battle. So I payed him 1.5 Million credits for his part in the fight. I was done for the night so I retired to Manhattan, telling Tavei how much a trader ID cost before I headed for Mom and Dad's place to crash for the night.

So that leads me to this morning. I had gotten a call from Hawaii that they needed some Lux. Goods while I was on Manhattan, so I headed out towards Kusari. On the way there, reports were coming in that a group of NovaPG and Bushido ships were making their way toward Rheinland.

That put them awfully close to the Hawaii and got me spooked pretty well. I was so spooked that I totally forgot to unload my cargo. I didn't realize it until I got to Helgoland station and still had the goods in my hold.

I called up the quartermaster at the Hawaii, and he said they still had enough from the last shipment after all, but that Baden Baden needed some now. So I set course for the shortcut to New Berlin.

It seems the group of pirates had engaged a small RM fleet just outside the planet. And yet, somehow, I thought it would be better to head for Stuttgart by turning toward the planet first. Fortunately, the pirates had no interest in me or my cargo, so I proceeded to Dortmund, only to find another pirate, a Corsair this time, beating up on the police there. I made my way to Bonn and the Stuttgart gate, radioing a heads up to the RM about the Corsair at Dortmund as I went.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, aside from the occasional tradelane foul-ups along the way.

After dropping off the Luxury Goods, I left on my regular run up until I got back to Manhattan. Seems a group of people had heard about some festival over at Gran Canaria and wanted to make the trip. (I had heard about the festival from Airom, and wasn't too excited about it myself, but a paying customer is a paying customer...)

After the group had boarded the ship (about 1800 regular guests and 100 VIP's), I set out for Gran Canaria. The trip was uneventful, aside from the turbulence upon exiting the jumphole to Omega-49. When we arrived at the planet, I found no sign of the festival, but the majority of the passengers were happy to make the trip anyway. The VIP's weren't too impressed, though, and refused to pay the full bill for the trip. Fine with me, I was just glad to get them off my ship. They have a way of complaining about almost everything...

I decided to hang out on the planet and do a little shopping.

Who knows, maybe when I get back from shopping, the festival will have started.

By the way, I picked up a couple presents for Dad and Airom...

See you later.

Eman Modnar, signing off.

End Transmission

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It's official, I have too few ships now...