After looking and shooting at Thargoid barnacles in the Pleiades, I finally gave up and bought a meta-alloy in Maia instead. I gave it to Felicity along with the exploration data I gathered on the way and have now access to some of her upgrades.

I went back to Eranin and got myself an eagle as I heard it was the most manoeuvrable ship out there, and also one of the most fragile. I tried it against a wanted criminal in a Keelback and got my face torn off. I'll spend the next few days getting better in combat so that I can defend myself properly when going on my duties for the People's Party.

Just arrived at Merope with another commander, it was a nice exploration trip although the high threat non-human signals we started to encounter when entering the Pleiades were a bit spooky. Now that I've uploaded my data to Universal Cartographics I'm more inclined to see what those signals are about. We'll also need to harvest Thargoid Barnacles to get some meta-alloys for Felicity Farseer. I'm sure nothing will go wrong.

I went on an exploration trip above Eranin and found a planet with ammonia-based life, along with a water world, some earth-like planets and a shipton of icy bodies. I sold my data for over 700k credits back on Eranin and received an invitation from a Felicity Farseer. I heard the name before, apparently she's a famous engineer with some interesting Frame-Shift Drive technologies. I'll have to check it out.

I found a commander to partner with for my investigation of space communism and I have been showing him the little I know about piloting a sidewinder. During a break at Azeban City, he wanted to do a mission for Eranin's Mob involving stealing appliances from a trader in Asellus Primus, and I learned several things:

• Traders like to travel in group to defend each other

• Attacking traders is not as legal as I thought

• Police is very quick to go to a fight scene, and to kill the offenders

• The bounty for attacking a trader is much less than I expected, as well as the cost to re-buy a ship

• I saw a space prison for the first time

I'll think again before I let my fellow commander rope me into illegal missions.

Today I carried enough passengers through my taxi service to buy a Cobra Mk III, which I named Five-Year Plan because of my initial intent to go exploring with it. However, its FSD range seems rather limited, so I might have to convert it to a mining ship, or find a profitable job to amass the funds to upgrade the drive. There's always bounty hunting, although I still have nightmares of Mark Falcon's desperate pleas...

I accepted a mining mission from the Eranin People's Party and set out to get some bromellite, which meant I had to learn how to find minerals. After some trial and error, turns out that neither Shippy or Social Collectivism 17 could hold all of the equipment required, and I failed the mission. In other news, I am now a one-man taxi service, and it's the most profitable operation I have done so far.

Bought myself a hauler as I was always running out of cargo space on Shippy, named the new ship "Social collectivism 17" to blend in with the locals at Eranin. So far it looks like it's working as they gave me a simple sourcing mission that made me over 200 000 credits, my most profitable trade to date. I did not expect to get rich from a communist state, so having my new ship reimbursed several times over on its first trip is a nice surprise.

The People's Party instructed me to deliver some water to a neighbouring system, Rakapila. I was surprised to see that the faction I was delivering to were the "Rakapila Aristocrats", a term that should be vilified by any good communist... Isn't the destruction of social classes one of its main objectives?

Anyway, while I was there, I decided to try an assassination mission to test my weapons. The target was Mark Falcon, a deserter wandering around in the Keries system.

My poor graps of my spaceship "Shippy" must have been torture to Mark. He was well aware that I was coming after him, he told me several times that he was "done killing" and that he was sorry for what he did. It took me around an hour to finally catch him and deplete his hull to 15%, only for him to charge his drive and escape. I looked for him for another hour in Keries, sometimes to another system and back to see if I could track him. He was still pleading for mercy but I felt I couldn't let the Aristocrats down. When I finally caught to him again, my weak weapons took incredibly long to destroy his ship. At least I was able to control Shippy well enough to stay behind Mark the whole time I was slowly eroding his shields, like the legend of dwarves killing elves by first breaking every bone in their body before finally leaving them to bleed to death.

On a positive note, the Eranin People's Party is now cordial towards me, as well as the Aristocrats. I'll try to figure out how these two seemingly opposite factions could be working together, it could be a key to understanding space communism.

As part of my investigation of modern space communism, I accepted a mission to retrieve bootleg alcohol from a crash site seventeen systems away. It was three systems in when I realized I had accepted the mission not from the Eranin People's Party but from the Eranin Expeditionary Institute. While stopping to refuel, I upgraded my Frame Shift Drive and replaced one of my cargo bays by a fuel scoop. The seventeen systems long route was now only three systems away.

At the planet, I tried out my SRV for the first time, learning to scoop using scrap metal that had landed nearby, as drones were seemingly watching the bootleg alcohol. Once I was confident, I rushed to the alcohol, took one and drove away as fast as possible to my ship. It took me several minutes to figure out how to get my ship to beam me inside, which was awkward in view of the Federation drones.

My investigation of space communism has not advanced, but at least I learned a few things about using this spaceship.

As a fan of history, I have always been intrigued by communism as a form of government. However, back on Earth in the 20th, 21th and 23th through 26th centuries, it never seemed to end particularly well for the citizens. Now that I have acquired my pilot's licence and a Sidewinder, I'm able to investigate for myself how modern communism works, if it does. I'll be doing missions for the Eranin People's Party in the next few days and will report my findings.