It's been two months since I last wrote. I should jot something down here.

The last two months have been nearly constant activity since [REDACTED]

We did clear the slavers out of Tuttle Installation in Col 285 Sector EY-L B23-3. KIL had the numbers but PTN had the money and the ships. I made much use of the Moonbow Dominator in that effort. Even with all the new ships released since the Second Thargoid War, nothing wins a fight in human-controlled space like a fully engineered Federal Corvette.

Portia has wrapped up work on two colony systems. Col 285 Sector FY-L B23-1 (AKA "The Cinderella System") now boasts a robust refinery economy of over 34 million persons with three main ports - Coriolis-class Cinderella Station, surface port Charming City, and asteroid base Lady Tremaine Legacy. Lady Tremaine Legacy also boasts a healthy agricultural export economy, including alcohol. I'm told the wine is pretty decent. The pain in the neck here is that all these ports are 55kls from the main star.

The second system is HIP 68296 ("The Persephone System"). This used to be called the Snow White System on account of the main world being large enough to support seven surface ports ("the seven dwarfs"), but once construction began the locals started to refer to the main planet as The Seven Hells on account of it being dark, high gravity, and either constantly too cold or constantly too hot. A committee decided to rename all the installations after places and figures from the Greek Underworld. HIP 68296 now has a massive industrial and high-tech manufacturing economy providing jobs to over 74 million persons, based on three main ports - Coriolis class Persephone Station, spire city Hades, and mid-sized surface city Tartarus. Unfortunately there are rumors of slavers in Tartarus and even of extremely illegal [REDACTED]. Even less fortunately, I don't have time to investigate these rumors due to [REDACTED].

Portia recently took on some PTN contract work building new colonies in [REDACTED].

Right now I am taking a few days off to catch up on sleep and laundry. I have encouraged Portia to take a week or so to get in good with the Federation, in order to purchase her own Corvette eventually, and to make friends with some of the engineers in the Bubble.

Okay, back to laundry, then back to sleep.

Tuttle Installation Management gave us the run-around on their breach of contract. The actual Station Manager started with denial of the slave market, then tried to feed us some chicken-with-leak story about how the slave market is "for entertainment purposes only." I pointed out that those slaves were selling for sixteen thousand credits each, enough to buy a condo on Lave Station. "You just don't understand the high rollers we get here," she said. High rollers visiting a military installation on a distant moon in a new colony. Right.

The Station Manager's Assistant knew better. He was embarrassed to look at me. Maybe it was the PTN logo and five elite patches on my jumpsuit. He must have figured out that I could end KIL in this system.

I've filled in my higher ups in PTN and they're as pissed as I am. We're going to send this one up the ladder.

This afternoon I flew to Tuttle Installation in Col 285 Sector EY-L B23-3 myself and confirmed that there was an actual Imperial slave market there.

This is not acceptable.

We have a meeting tomorrow with station management (who work for KIL) to discuss the rider and a possible solution. Hopefully we can resolve it quickly and I don't have to move this up the chain at PTN. Portia might be small potatoes but PTN's position on slavery is one of zero tolerance. They've literally gone to war over contract breaches like this one.

After nine and a half months in the black - and turning in billions in exploration and exobiology data - I am finally back home, which is to say, in the Bubble.

Turning in my last billion of exobiology data for probably the next few years was surprisingly anticlimactic. Just a "huh" from the Vista clerk at Mbutas and then she credited my account.

Unfortunately I haven't made it back to my carrier in Ulicunabopa yet. No sooner did I get to the Bubble then my colleagues at the PTN let me know that we're in a desperate fight in Musscheim against our old rivals the Endin Prison Colony.

A bit of ground combat action later, I'm sitting in my hotel room in Cousin's Progress when Portia calls me. I was expecting the call to start with "welcome back" and "let's go get dinner" but instead she starts with news that the Kwakiutl Independent League have been selling slaves out of Col 285 Sector EY-L B23-3.

That's a big problem. Portia and I helped them expand to that system on the basis of a contract that strictly forbids traffic in slave labor of any kind, including prison labor. Unfortunately, Portia caught them selling slaves in Tuttle Installation.

I need to rest up, but tomorrow we're going to have a conversation with KIL. We're not going to let this continue.

I'm taking the neutron superhighway back home and I have Elite V Exobiology rank already, but old habits die hard and the money is good, so I'm still doing exobiology.

This morning I downloaded Supratech's upgraded software for the genetic sampler. This was a HUGE patch and marked "2.0.0." I couldn't believe my eyes when the patch notes said that this would expand the detection range of the genetic sampler from 75m to 750m.

I've had a chance to try it out a few times and this highlighting on the scanner is buggy, but so far this thing has helped me locate two hard-to-find biological sample sets, one a well-camouflaged bacterium, and one a hard-to-see fructus metallicum on a dark planet. In both cases the samples were about 250m away - well more than the 75m that my scanner was capable of earlier. So while this new firmware needs work, what I have now is a big improvement.

I've decided to put off the search for a Wolf-Rayet star until later. There's a better solution to it than going through the records by hand, but it's going to take me some time and I'm eager to get home.

Portia has agreed to stop begging me for money in exchange for me bringing her some souvenirs from Sag A*, so I'm loading up on those. Paying five whole credits (!) for a tee shirt is peanuts compared to the tens of billions she's kept begging me for to pay for building a city here or an Ocelus starport there. When I get home we'll have a talk about what we want our "new home system" to look like in Col 285 Sector EY-L B23-3, and how much I want to pay to "speed things up."

For now I'm focused mainly on preparing for the trip home. I expected the first leg of this trip to take me two months - it took me just a bit more than three weeks. This next leg should take me two weeks on the outside. I still have plenty of cup-a-noodles left, but I should top up on fresh water and get some higher quality food to last the rest of the trip. I'm also keeping real coffee on hand - not the instant stuff - to help encourage me along. Last but not least, I'm getting fresh livery on the Moonbow Explorer - Elite V Exploration badges - and for my Artemis suit.

And I'm keeping the paint in the horrible shape it is. For bragging rights.

Tomorrow I'll have one last shower, one last real eggs and fake ham breakfast, one last fake steak and real potato for lunch, and then head out.

It took me a while, but I made it back to Explorer's Anchorage. Even though most of my trip was already-discovered neutron stars, I managed to collect 150MCr of exploration data and almost 2GCr of exobiology data. As a result I achieved the rank of Elite V Explorer!

My ship has really taken a beating on the way. The mechanics told me that my ship was considered to have 0% ship integrity and 0% paint. 0% paint is considered a badge of honor among explorers, so I've left that alone for now. Everything else is repaired, rearmed, and refueled.

As for myself, I have rented a room, taken a real shower, and am relaxing with a hot cup of no-kidding actual tea, with actual clover honey produced by station bees, as I write this. I'm going to take a few days to do laundry, sleep in a huge bed, eat real food, resupply, and write my sister a postcard.

While I'm here, I still have one more exploration goal, which is to find an undiscovered and unmapped Wolf-Rayet star. That search starts in the station data banks. This has proven to be a real pain in the neck. I'm finding plenty of Wolf-Rayet stars just by searching through the galactic map, but checking them against EDSM shows they're all at least discovered. I can probably keep up this mind-numbing work for a few days before it will drive me nuts. Here's hoping it doesn't take that long. I used this same technique to eventually find some unmapped black holes back in March, but that search took me just a couple of hours. This is taking much longer, and I'm not sure I want to spend more than a few days on it.

As a side note, I phoned my sister just now. Portia tells me she is a third of the way through development of HIP 68296, which she's calling the Persephone System. Currently they're building a sprawling city called Hades. Portia tells me this will require as much materials as was used to build the entire of Col 285 Sector FY-L B23-1, and it will house tens of millions of colonists. She also mentioned that she could hire outside parties to speed up the hauling process for a "mere" 21.7 billion credits. I don't think she understands how long it takes to make that kind of money. It'd be quicker and cheaper for us to just haul all that stuff ourselves.

Just as the bad news came all at once, the good news also has come all at once.

First of all, my new lawyers have sorted out my tax mess, which I can settle with a lump-sum payment to each of the three superpowers. By going through the PTN's tax accounting service from now on, all my taxes will be paid quarterly without my having to intervene (as long as the money keeps rolling in).

Secondly and more importantly, my legal mess with Portia's colonization efforts has cleared up. The Imperial Reserves are aware of her effort and are willing to let her name a station after me as long as there is no claim that I am an actual princess. So that saves me some headache.

Both of these mean that I can now leave Beagle Point and fly back to the Bubble. My plan is to take the neutron superhighway to Stuemeae FG-Y D7561, freshen up there, and then proceed via neutron superhighway to Ulicunabopa. It's a long journey and should take me the better part of three months.

Meanwhile a third wrinkle has developed, in that my sister is asking for another loan. About four months ago I loaned my sister eight billion (with a B) credits to help build new facilities in Col 285 Sector FY-L B23-1. This work is now complete - the result is a new community, which she calls the Cinderella System, of over 20 million people working an extraction/refinery economy. Now she's asking for a much bigger loan to cover building another community in HIP 68296, which she's calling the Snow White System, based around manufacturing. I won't quote how much she's asking, but it's an eye-popping amount of money even by PTN standards. But, she claims it will significantly speed up development of the new system. My question is what all the rush is. I am not inclined to loan her the money - it might set a bad precedent.

In any case, I've been prepared for some time now to head back home. The ship is completely resupplied with enough food, water, coffee, tea, and everything else, for a three month journey. I've even installed high-efficiency laundry unit so that my shirts and underwear won't have to go three days between changes. Last but not least I picked up a couple of tee shirts for myself and a beagle plushie for Portia - she likes that kind of thing.

Next stop is Stuemeae FG-Y D7561.

After my short trip to Ishum's Reach, I made a quick trip to Beagle Point to turn in data and get some rest. Unfortunately the last 12 hours have been anything but restful.

It started out when Universal Cartographics paid me 172,500 Cr for "being the first to map Oevasy SG-Y d0". This is extremely unlikely given how many very motivated pilots have already visited this system with a water world and two terraformable worlds, and when I brought that up, they told me to keep the credits and started an investigation into what caused the error.

That investigation attracted the attention of someone at UCHQ in the Bubble, which then flagged to the Imperial Revenue Service, the Federation Revenue Service, and the Alliance Department of Revenue, that I could be reached at DSSA Distant Worlds in Beagle Point. This resulted in notice stuck to the hatch of my Mandalay from a helpful Agent Simms. It turns out the Imperial Revenue Service, the Federation Revenue Service, and the Alliance Department of Revenue all want a piece of the 31 billion credits in cash and 15 billion in assets I've amassed so far, and they're involving their criminal investigation units. I was positive that I had my lawyer at Lave Station handling this matter, but he apparently retired while I was out in the black and sent all the correspondence to my old address at Lave Station, not my new address in Ulicunabopa.

Fortunately the Pilots Trade Network has an incredible legal services team and they are now on the case. Unfortunately I need to be available nearly constantly for the next several weeks until this is all sorted.

An even worse situation has come up with my sister's colonization efforts. I mentioned before that she was building a string of colonies called "The Princess Worlds" where the major stations are named after princesses or princes. She tells me that she's filed plans with Brewer Corporation - still subject to approval - to construct two Orbis-class stations in Col 285 Sector EY-L B23-3, normally named after princesses, after each of us.

What my sister doesn't know is that my Imperial Reserves rank means that I am subject to court martial - which can carry the sentence of imperial enslavement - if I claim a rank higher than I have actually earned. And my current rank isn't Princess or Queen, but Dutchess. So now my new lawyers have a different matter on their hands.

I'm going to try to talk my sister into not building anything in my name unless and until I manage the rank of Imperial Reserves Princess, which can't happen until I get back to the Bubble. And meanwhile, I'm hoping she can convince Brewer Corporation that the system plans for Col 285 Sector EY-L B23-3 were just a draft and that the stations will be named for someone else entirely.

All of this is to say - I'm going to be hanging out at DSSA Distant Worlds in Beagle Point for a while until this is all sorted out.

At least the view from the bar is amazing.

Today (July 14 3311) I made it to Ishum's Reach (Oevasy SG-Y D0) after seven months of exploration and exobiology, from the Bubble to Colonia to Sagittarius A* to Beagle Point and then to here.

I took some photos - you can look at them here

I took the time to land in two spots - the "official" furthest body from Sol, Oevasy SG-Y D0 9 f (the grey planet), and the current furthest body from Sol, Oevasy SG-Y D0 8 e (the brown planet where she's in a crater). The big stripe of stars? You are there. You can also see from these photos that my paint job ain't what it used to be.

Thanks to having an 84 light year jump range, it took me fourteen jumps from Beagle Point to get here, much fewer than the 43 jumps mentioned in another journal by an anonymous pilot. The jumps, starting from Beagle Point, are:

1. Ceeckia YX-F C12-0
2. Ceeckia ZB-K C25-0
3. Ceeckia BI-I C26-0
4. Ceeckia FJ-I C26-0
5. Ceeckia OE-E D13-0
6. Myeia Thaa SI-B D13-0
7. Myeia Thaa RI-B D13-1
8. Myeia Thaa QI-B D13-0
9. Myeia Thaa UO-Z D13-0
10. Ceeckaea QK-C D14-0
11. Oevasy MA-A D0
12. Oevasy NA-A D0
13. Oevasy RG-Y D0
14. Oevasy SG-Y D0

An easier way to do this is to set your nav computer to Ceeckaea QK-C D14-0, and then, once you reach that, to Oevasy SG-Y D0.

Surprisingly, Oevasy SG-Y D0 has two terraformable worlds and a water world, which, if the Brewer Corporation ever loosened up the colonization rules, would make this a great colony system for tourism. If that prospect worries you, have no fear - the path here requires a few jumps much longer than the current 15 ly limit, and besides, there are some materials that can ONLY be produced in the Bubble, and even a fleet carrier is going to have trouble hauling those all the way out here.

If you're a carrier owner looking to land here: the rings around B9 have tritium.

Next stop is back to Beagle Point to turn in data and rest a while.