Kilnday Thirdweek, Howl's Batten, 147/32

Son of a bitch. Son. Of. A. Bitch.

Keddle. That rot-damned moaning sack of crap. All he ever did was complain and grumble, in between the odd bit of semi-competent navigation. He wasn't the best, by any chalk, but he did his job. I thought that finally, after all these years, I'd found a navigator I could stick with. One that was sensible enough not to get shot, strong enough so that he wouldn't die of some unknown illness, unambitious enough not to betray me, unromantic enough not to desert for the love of some random whore. By the warty bowels of the Allsoul, I've had shitty luck with navigators. But Keddle... damn it, I really thought he was going to be a stayer.

Turns out he isn't. Turns out Silo was getting suspicious about all those engine parts going missing. So when we set down in Jander's Maw, a half-day from Scarwater and our meeting with Macarde, Silo decided to hide out in the engine room and see what happened. Saw Keddle rifling through the spares. Followed him all the way down to the workshops in the town, where he saw Keddle selling them off to a craftbuilder. After that he came back to get me.

Keddle screeched to the high skies when we turned up at the tavern where he was drinking. Course, he said he was innocent, but if Silo says otherwise then there's no question. We dragged him back to the Ketty Jay. Me and Malvery were pretty angry, to tell you the truth. We probably didn't conduct ourselves too glamourously as we were kicking the stuffing out of him. I came close to shooting the bastard, but in the end Silo stopped me. Sure, it wasn't a lot of money, but he was stealing! From me! I mean, damn it, there are limits!

Well, I had to get him out of my sight, so I put my boot in his arse and shoved him off the cargo ramp, hands tied behind his back. He went down pretty hard on his face, but he can count himself lucky I didn't put a bullet in his back.

After that, we took right off. Couldn't stay there a moment more. Figured we might as well go overnight to Scarwater. It was close enough that I could find it myself.

It's almost dawn now. We've put down in Scarwater, waiting for the place to wake up. Later today I'll go see about ripping off Macarde. Later today I'll get looking for a new navigator. After that, I'm gonna get roaring drunk and get into some kind of fight. It just feels like one of those days.

Why me, Log?

Why me?

Transcriber's note:
At the time of writing, this was the final entry in the Logbook Of The Ketty Jay. Darian Frey was never known for his diligence, and he apparently forgot about writing in the logbook after this date. Considering what happened afterwards, however, he can perhaps be excused. The affair which followed has been luridly recounted by various pulp biographers, but I direct your attention to the only official and unbiased account of the tale, written by this humble scribe, which bears a title as honest and straightforward as the words within: Retribution Falls, available now in bookshops all over Vardia.

Daggersday Secondweek, Howl's Batten, 147/32

So here's the plan. We need aerium, badly. The last lot we got hold of has pretty much run dry. Lawsen Macarde wants aerium too, but he doesn't want to pay full price for it. I don't even have enough to buy it for cheap, and if I could find some I'd keep it for myself.

There is, however, a way around this.

I'm not too proud to go trawling round junkyards for aerium. See, abandoned ships are not that uncommon, and plenty get shot down. Scavengers just strip what they want and leave the rest, but the higher-ups don't like to leave wrecks rusting all over the place. So sooner or later the big haulers turn up and take them off to the junkyards. Thing is, what a lot of people don't realise is that good aerium can be run through the engines four or five time before all the gas is released. Sure, by the last couple of times your craft flies like a whale and you're liable to drop out of the sky in a storm, but many's the time I've ended up flying on recycled aerium, and I'm not dead yet.

If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for Macarde. So we've been haunting the junkyards, siphoning tanks, and we've got twelve canisters all sealed up and ready for deliver. We're going to flog them to Macarde and use the money to buy three or four canisters of the real stuff from a legit supplier. The supplier will charge and arm and a leg, of course, but I'll pay this time. If you cut corners, you might get some seedy bastard delivering you a load of useless aerium, after all.

All this will mean two things. One, we'd better make ourselves scarce before Macarde finds out what we've done. Two, we're never coming back to Scarwater. I'm fine with both. Macarde's probably not that desperate for aerium that he'll immediately fuel up with the stuff we give him, and Scarwater's a dump anyway.

One more enemy to add to the list. It gets difficult to remember them all, sometimes.