With my employment with Mr Hound nearing its 3rd year in a row now my employer has seen fit to supply me with a soft clone, effectively making my employment under his service permanent and ensuring that I will indeed get to spend my retirement fund some day. With this dubious honour Mr Hound has requested that I begin to keep a log of my duties in his service so that my predecessor might have something to help them ease into this difficult job; unlike me who was simply thrown in the deep end of the pool and told to stop drowning.
And so I begin this log by addressing you - predecessor - for you will have much to learn and if lucky, a few days with-which to start. One of the first things that you shall learn about working for a pod-pilot is that they operate on their own schedules. When the order to initiate a warp comes you will be expected to warp then and there, no matter how loud the rattle in the manifold is. This is not to say they are uncaring or unsympathetic to your problems as ship engineer, you simply need to understand that at all times they are looking at a much bigger picture than you are able to see.
The second thing you will learn is that they are temperamental and very, very whimsical. You see, in a very real sense they are the mind and soul of the ship. If the ship were a body then your pod-pilot would be the brain and you as ship engineer are the immune system. It is your job to ensure everything is running as smoothly as possible and patch up any wounds. In the same way you do not need to know how many platelets are clotting around a cut, your pod-pilot does not need to know every detail about a damage control op. Informing them of the approximate time to structural failure via the "wheel" is sufficient information in what is already a chaotic situation. Manage how much information you send to your capsuler and you will increase the life expectancy of the ship and by proxy your own.
The third thing you must know is this: This is a game to your pod-pilot and they gamble your life in it. Don't get any delusions of grandeur don't think you need to go down with your ship because your capsuler sure as hell wont. This is the toughest one to balance, on the one hand you must perform your due diligence and tend to the needs of the ship, but on the other hand you are very much a mortal human and while this may make it seem like an easy decision its really not. You are a thousand times safer aboard a dying ship than you will ever be in an escape pod, so even if you seek to look after number one it is still in your best interests to keep the ship floating as it were. Unlike a pod-pilots capsule escape pods are unshielded, unarmoured and incredibly fragile. Do not think that just because the escape pod is unregistered (and thus effectively invisible to capsulers) that you are safe. Bits of shrapnel, unexploded ordnance, stray shots and radioactive engine exhaust are all very real and very deadly threats to an escape pod. Conversely the biggest danger you will probably have to deal with on a dying ship is a zero-g fire and a hull breach. Both much easier and safer to deal with than the dangers met once you abandon ship. Never the less, always know where the pods are and - I cannot stress this enough - always wear your rigs helmet. My helmet has saved me from eating hard vacuum more times than I care to count and I can practically guarantee that it will save your life one day.
Thats all for now, but hopefully enough of a primer for you. I'll try to include more detailed reports for the maintenance repair and operations of a capsuler ship in my next report. In the mean time if that rattle still exists then check the shield generators difference engine, I believe the fault may lie with the maser-flux.
~ Ship Engineer Issak Yudovich
