SID 23112.29

KEINMOND-CLASS MINING PLATFORM KEINMOND II

PLASMA DRILL TECHNICAL TEAM KTT-1

CT2 ARMIN SHALE

TECHNICIAN'S LOG

Ok, so here's my big question about this whole feedback damper katastrofo: why are we sending so much accumulated plasma energy to the drill in the first place? As it is now, the SOP has us feeding 400 kilocams of APE into a plasdrill that is rated for a max of 250 kilocams. We have to shunt half of the APE to the damper loop just so the drill doesn't go redline and blow us all to smidirini. Of course, with this damper loopback deal, the reserved plasma energy is being channeled back into the main drill stream with enough of a delay that we stay below the maxline on the drill. Yeah, the drill stays in the blue, but the drill stream gets a turbo boost, which if awesome if we're trying to blow up planets but sucks if we're just trying to make a big hole.

The obvious solution to the problem is to just disable the damper and cut the the volume of APE we send to the drill, which is what I've suggested to Bert. He agrees, in principle, but says the bosses don't want us to tamper with the damper (hee hee, rhyme) at all, not under any circumstances. They just want us to keep running live tests (we've started to attract quite a crowd for these, for some reason), keep gathering data (and debris), keep giving presentations and demonstrations. I'm like, "How many times do we need to demonstrate that the drill doesn't work right?", and Bert just gave me a funny look and shook his head.

Anyway, hope this testing doesn't mess up the holidays coming up. Festini da fratos is in less than a week, and I'm looking forward to going back home to Kasmakani and getting some of Aunt Hank's home-made peanut butter banana pie. Man, I can't help it, but I do love Tupelotide. Gotta get my shopping done, though. Need to zip down to the exchange, see if they have any of that Spico Malnovo that my Ma likes. Tried to give her that Ledo de la Angla stuff instead last Festini, and I thought she was going to chuck it at my head. My Ma doesn't mess around when it comes to fragrances.

SID 23112.17

KEINMOND-CLASS MINING PLATFORM KEINMOND II

PLASMA DRILL TECHNICAL TEAM KTT-1

CT2 ARMIN SHALE

TECHNICIAN'S LOG

Okay, so I'm really not sure what happened with the plasma drill test. Everything started out five-by-five, all gauges reading blueband, plasma channeling cleanly through the manifold and into the globular matrices. No problems apparent, everything good to go. Then, right at the cusp of the ignition stage, WHAMMO: the feedback damper disengages and the plasma stream goes bugnuts. Long story short: instead of drilling a 50 m diameter hole into the test planetoid, we blew the thing to gakking bits. We turned a scale 2 planetoid into a cloud of talcum powder.

I have checked and rechecked the tapes, and I just can not see how, or why, the damper snapped back like that. We simmed the plasma drill 10 dozen times in the weeks leading up to today's test, and we never saw so much as a nm of movement in the FDS. The tracking system we had problems with, of course- repeatedly, endlessly: we finally just had to crack open the main tracking console and poke around, which is how we discovered that the holographic targeting module was wired-in upside down- but, even if we still had a tracking problem (which we don't), that wouldn't explain the FDS loopback.

So, to review, the plasma drill went apecrackers during its first live test, and we have no idea why. Glad I'm not the one who had to present the test report. Bert tells me the meeting actually wasn't too bad, though. He says the attendees (mostly Wing Commandants- but also two High Gouverneurs, for some reason) were pretty cool about the whole FDS overloop deal, didn't seem to be too concerned about it at all. Mostly, he says, they just wanted Bert to replay the test footage over and over again. Kind of weird. Also, they apparently really wanted to examine some of the planetoid fragments left over from the blast, so Bert had to send a probe into the debris field to gather up samples. So I don't know what that was all about, but, whatever.

I was planning to replace the entire feedback damper assembly this afternoon, but Bert told me to hold off. Apparently, Wing Commandant Neris wants to test the drill again tomorrow to see if the problem recurs. Bert says that the test planetoid is in the Kismy system, but I'm wracking my brain and I just can't think which object he's talking about, unless he means the Kismiti moons (ha ha).

SID 23112.16

KEINMOND-CLASS MINING PLATFORM KEINMOND II

PLASMA DRILL TECHNICAL TEAM KTT-1

CT2 ARMIN SHALE

TECHNICIAN'S LOG

Graeme saved my ass this week. Yeah, I know - it's hard for me to believe, too, but he did. He totally saved my ass. He saw me struggling at work the other day and was all, like, "Dude, what is wrong with you? You've been, like, totally drag-assing lately. Why are you so gakking zoned-out?" He asked me these questions in his usual jerk-ass way, but, for some reason, I thought I detected a note of (I don't know what else to call it) concern in his voice. So, you know, I pretty much told him the truth.

I told him about my trouble sleeping, I told him about my nervousness, my paranoia, my tremors, and he's all, like, "Yeah, well one thing that might help you is if you stop drinking so much gakking coffee. I think I've seen you drink, like, 5 cups so far today already," which was true. He had seen me drink 5 cups, and he had not seen me drink 4 additional cups that day. Yeah, I was at about 3 liters for the day by the time he pointed my coffee abuse out to me, and then it was suddenly so blinken obvious: I was pounding the java to overcome my sleep deficit, when, in fact, my sleep deficit was caused by all the java I was pounding. Vicious circle and all that, and the whole thing exacerbated by all the cheap june I was drinking in the evenings to help me fall asleep.

So, right then, I quit drinking coffee. Switched to herbal tea for the rest of the day. At the end of my shift, I went back to quarters, cranked up the Enya, put on my special t-shirt, and settled into my rack. It took me awhile to drift off, but I stayed in bed, focused on the Enya, and, eventually, I was gone. I slept for 12 hours that night. Woke up a little groggy, but I stayed away from the joe, and by mid-morning I was fine. Better than fine, really. I was calm, alert, rested. The next night, I slept for fewer hours, but I woke up feeling even better.

Today, I woke up feeling like I could tap and re-seal an entire crate of gas canisters, recalibrate a turret-mounted diaphone, and still have the energy and patience to sequence and key two-weeks worth of drill reports- and it's good that I woke with that feeling, because those are the very tasks I had to complete to prepare the plasma drill for tomorrow's big test. So, again, thank you Graeme, you big jerk. I owe you one.

SID 23112.08

BLACK LEGION STATIONS 02V1 & 16K2

BL7 AGT GRAYSHIFT SEVEN

PERSONNEL AUDIT LOG PAL-ASCT2

SUBJECT ARMIN SHALE, CT2

Standard audit initiated SID 23108.15 following protocols IPAP-201 and IPAP-307 and in accordance with Imperial Memorandum IPA-DOC 1.01: So You'd To Audit Your Support Personnel. Audit record follows.

-SID 23108.19 Gunstar Vengeance. Personnel Audit, Section #1: Observation Period A.

Subject Armin Shale, human male from Redchili City, Anbarium Prefecture, Kasmakani III. Birthdate SID 20110.22. Height 1.9 meters, weight 82 kilograms. Brown hair, balding. Unmarried, unattached. Jessegaronic by birth (Western Synod, reformed), but no longer practices the faith. Severely myopic, but allergic to retinox 5, so must wear corrective lenses (spectacles, Imperial-issue, tortoise-shell browlines). During off-hours enjoys classical music (Air Supply, Night Ranger, Mr. Mister), literature of the scintilli-nosferatic school, and Kismiti cuisine.

Survey of IPE-Ts from previous 5 duty cycles finds that subject scores well within the blue echelon for the following evaluation categories: Knowledge, General Competence, Handwriting, Cleanliness/Neatness, but also finds that subject scores in the lower reaches of the taupe echelon for the categories of Teamwork and Spirit. Further observation of subject will be required in order to locate the source of this chromatic dissonance in subject's CRE chart.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-SID 23109.10 Gunstar Vengeance. Personnel Audit, Section #2: Stress Testing A.

Item IPA-STEC.4 Environmental Control Adjustment Module TKU98 introduced to the EC system for subject's cabin. As a result of installation of ECAM unit, actual control of temperature and humidity levels in cabin was passed to IL station 02V1. Over subsequent 14 hour period, constituting the entirety of subject's off-shift, temp was increased in cabin by 14 deg Celsius and humidity was increased by 19%. Subject first noticed temperature and humidity changes at 24:17, spent subsequent 6 hours attempting to determine cause for these "spontaneous" environmental changes. Subject stress levels monitored by station 02V1 during this period. Subject managed to bypass ECAM unit at 05:19. Subject then slept until 06:45. Subject arrived at work assignment at 07:45, 15 minutes late. Stress Test A result metrics collected, compiled, published, and distributed as directed by Imperial Personnel Audit Protocols IPAP-201, IPAP-202, and IPAP-307.

SID 23112.01

KEINMOND-CLASS MINING PLATFORM KEINMOND II
PLASMA DRILL TECHNICAL TEAM KTT-1
CT2 ARMIN SHALE

TECHNICIAN'S LOG

Still having troube sleeping. Still worried about that book. Tried to relax tonight, had around 4 (5?) finger of june to try to reelax and calm down. Well, still worried but soo relax. Probbaly too relaxed to type this log entry but, whatvere. I can't be bothered by every liyyl;e little misspelling and puntuation error. Hey, man I'm doing the best I can.

Maybe I'm being paranpoid, but I swear I'm being watched. I feel like eyes on are me all the time. Can't single out any one party thopugh, more just a feeling that I am being observed. So, yeah, drunk, sleepless, paranoid. Ignoring spelling errors and punctuation mess ups. Great time and place to be me, whooie!

SID 23111.19

KEINMOND-CLASS MINING PLATFORM KEINMOND II
PLASMA DRILL TECHNICAL TEAM KTT-1
CT2 ARMIN SHALE

TECHNICIAN'S LOG

I'm tired as all gakk. Tired, exhausted. Can't seem to fall asleep, though. Been up and down for hours now. Tried to sack out around 22:00, but, no luck; tossed and turned, then finally gave up and dragged myself out of bed. Poured myself a finger of june, plopped down on the settee, threw on the holovid, and tried to zone out. Now it's 24:35, I'm exhausted, dizzy, and bored from holographic infomercials, but I still can't fall asleep.

Why? Well, I'm worried. Worried, worried. Found a little book in my locker today. Have no idea how it got there; the lock is keyed to my thumbprint and retina pattern. Someone'd have to dupe both sec-prots to get into the locker, and why would they go to all that trouble just to leave me a little book?

Yeah, about that book. Brothers & Sisters is the title. Little short hundred page story, about a close-knit family and its trials and travails. Greeting card garbage. But there's something about the writing- strange turns of phrase; sequences of words repeated multiple times throughout the story; endless, obsessive descriptions of hemp-based foods- that leads me to think the book must be some kind of coded text. From the Communion. I think they're trying to recruit me. I think I may have unintentionally signaled some kind of interest when I went into that weird hippie store those weeks ago.

Great. They think I'm a closeted Brother of the Book. All I know is I have to get rid of it. I need to dump it, but I need to dump it in a way that doesn't look like I'm dumping it. Eyes are watching everywhere, I know. Leave it in a stall in the gents? Maybe. Let someone else deal with it. I'm just worried that the Communies will continue to try to reach me. How soon before Black Legion catches on? I know there's gotta be some onboard. Those IL folks don't play around; they'll airlock you as soon as look at you. Gakk, I think I need another finger of june...

SID 23111.04

KEINMOND-CLASS MINING PLATFORM KEINMOND II
PLASMA DRILL TECHNICAL TEAM KTT-1
CT2 ARMIN SHALE

TECHNICIAN'S LOG

Gax, it's cold here. I crank my CC up and up, but it never seems to get warm. Must have something to do with the cooling system for the plasma drill; it keeps the drill cool, sure, but it makes everything else gakking cold, too. As an old climate control engineer, I gotta admire the efficiency and effectiveness of the cooling matrix, but c'mon man. I'm like a gakking pengu in here.

Thank the Imperator for double-layer coveralls, I guess.

Still getting acclimated (hee hee) to the new assignment. Lots of meetings and training sessions. Lots of amazing opportunities for embarassment. Turns out that a plasma drill isn't as much like a plasma cannon as I had been let to believe. Really made an ass of myself on my second day, when I mentioned something about ejecting the antimatter capsule from the fuel chamber. Which you must NEVER DO with a plasma drill, because the antimatter capsule in a plasma drill is not jacketed. So, a big "NO" to ejecting the antimatcap, unless you want to obliterate two star systems and a large orbital mining facility. Sheesh.

At least I have the beaches of Kismy Prime to look forward to, right? Sorry, bub, but the ol' KP is all booked up. Festival of Gama Gesh, and all that. All month long, of course, because the Kismiti Concordians never met a minor religious observance that they couldn't turn into an excuse to miss work for 5 weeks. In the Western Synod, Gama Gesh Day means we get to take the afternoon off, maybe go see a movie. Have a nice turducken for dinner.

Anyway, Kismy prime WAS a no-go, so I settled for a quick trip to Kakalak I in the Sebarti system. It was okay, I guess. The beaches were fine, but I don't think Kismy has anything to worry about. Plus, it rained most of the trip, so I spent a lot of the endweek poking around Viabos City, trying to find some good battos, maybe pick up a book to read. I wandered into this funky shop, started poking around. Pulled a book off a shelf, read the title - The Communion of Free Beings by Lister. The Book. Holy gakk! I had never seen it in person. I didn't even think you could buy it openly. In fact, I'm certain you can't, so I figured the book was a plant. If I pulled it off the shelf- blammo: a strike team of Black Legion comes bursting through the windows and carries me of to be "re-educated". No thanks. I spun on my heels, calmly walked out the door, the jogged all the way back to my lodge. Stayed in my room the rest of the trip.

So, yeah, won't be going back to Kakalak anytime soon.