Entry 07

The camera feed begins, flickering as always. The man pictured on the screen is moving with tired motions. Senn comes into focus, his eyes rimmed beneath by petechia, a wearied expression on his face. He speaks in a voice concealing uncertainty with forced stoicism. "I managed to load the data on a Claw-class frigate into a simulator program. I ran it a few times, while I had some downtime."

He pauses and brushes one hand against his forehead, pulling back the short hairs on his head. Where he usually is seen wearing his ivory coat and uniform, he now wears only a sleeveless white undershirt and his BDU pants, exposing the pale skin of his arms. 


"I could handle it at low speeds. It managed to get up to almost a thousand meters per second, just like the Thrasher. The weapons systems can't penetrate much, but it's the immobilization features that I think will benefit the company. Those function perfectly..."

Again he pauses, lowering his eyes in a rueful fashion. He quickly fishes through his belongings, hastily bringing a cigarette to his lips and lighting it clumsily with the silver box he always had on hand. With a deep breath, he takes in as much of the smoke as he can fit in his lungs, exhaling it in a cloud that momentarily blocks the video feed.

"When I activated the microwarpdrive, the velocity reached two-point-five thousand. As soon as it hit three thousand, the simulator read my blood pressure spiking. I blacked out before I could deactivate the program." He glances up to the camera, the undersides of his eyeballs a misty color of red from multiple blood vessel fractures.

"From what I can tell, it's almost impossible for my body to handle speeds above three thousand. I couldn't target anything... even without the normal forces of physics affecting me in flight, my eyes can't track targets through the pod's interface, and my brain can't register the information... for lack of a better term, even in the pod, my optic nerves can't function fast enough." 


The pilot turns reticent again, gingerly touching the lid of his eye and wincing. He reaches away from the camera, retrieving a pair of white capsules and popping them in his mouth, washing them down with a gulp of water from a canteen.

"Much the same way pilots begin to feel 'phantom ship' pangs from exposure to the pod, it seems the speed of my ship affects my physiology as well. I can't think of a counteraction for that... I have the basic optic implants from the pod pilot academy, maybe..." 


He sighs heavily, standing up and looking visibly frustrated as he walks away from the camera. The words "not enough" are heard in his mumbling, moments before he returns and shuts off the feed.