Log Entry - Trading Route Gamma-7
> Phoenix is humming along, reactor purring like a contented cat. Just finished calibrating the jump drives – you never want those playing up mid-jump. Heading towards the Sol Collective; got a batch of Lucia's Emporium habitat modules they’re itching to get. Supposedly, the new design boasts enhanced gravity plating and bio-regenerators. They’ll be a welcome sight at some of the Collective's remote outposts. While I’m there, I’m angling to convince them to send a few frigates along my route. There are whispers of some old Earth-aligned planets scattered along this sector – maybe something worth scavenging. Historical artifacts, you know. Gotta get lucky eventually.
Log Entry - Arrival Sol Collective
> Docked at the Collective Hub. Smooth landing, as always. The exchange went even smoother. The Collective's Quartermaster was practically drooling over the Lucia's Emporium modules.
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> Mentioned those Earth-aligned planets and showed them some projected orbital maps. They saw the potential, for sure. One bit of good news, but I am going to need to manage a couple of crew shifts on the Phoenix, my own people need to rest a bit. I’m also still getting the hang of this encrypted channel, the planet they are interested in has no time limit so I might go back to that one too.
Log Entry 751-Solar Cycle 373 - Scavenger Route Delta-4
> Couple of jumps in. My frigates are doing their scans. We hit a planet earlier today with some interesting surface readings. Looks like there were once sizeable settlements here, but now just twisted metal and dust. My crew and I went planetside yesterday, and the frigates stayed in orbit. We found some random data cores and a few odd artifacts, all buried under layers of sediment. Nothing remarkable on the surface, but you never know with these things. The cores are encrypted, and I can’t make heads or tails of the artifacts; one looks like a ceramic plate with faded writing, and another is some sort of metallic sphere with strange etchings. Might be junk, might be gold. I'll find out soon enough.
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> Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Log Entry - Haggling & Bargaining
> Back at Gamma-7. Found a small trading outpost orbiting a gas giant. Dropped anchor and hailed the station. Decent enough traders, not too greasy. Unloaded the data cores and artifacts and got their initial appraisal; some tech specs, some cultural data, and the rest was just junk. They lowballed me like they always do, claiming "limited market interest." But when they ran the cores through their analyzers, I caught their expressions—eyes wide, jaws tightening. They were trying to keep it cool, but I knew they'd found something good. The tech data might have been a lot better than they were letting on. Time to haggle.
Log Entry - Reward
> After a long session of bargaining and a lot of back and forth, I walked away with a payout that is more than double what they initially offered. They were clearly desperate for those data cores. The metallic sphere turned out to be a pre-collapse navigation device, apparently valuable to some historical societies. They didn't say much about what was on the data cores, but I could tell it was advanced stuff. I've been at this long enough to read their tells, and I know they got a steal, but I also got a good price. It’s a win-win. Another successful venture with the Phoenix. This trip has been more profitable than I thought. Time to chart a course for the next stop. Maybe there are some more hidden treasures out there...