Anomalies in the signal feed 3/3

Previous Pendleton:

Two weeks of quiet and then last night we got one more short bust of traffic. See below. Tell your crypto guys that they're full of it: these are patterned signals that scream &quot;manmade&quot;. Any chance another colony ship is somehow in the vicinity? Or some kind of Earth military presence out here? Because something is intentionally making that signal.

I raised my concerns to a gentleman on the Council who enjoys a bit of pillow talk. He said he'd look into it, but I'm pretty sure he was only humoring me to get my pants off. Your gender can be so childish. I bet you a credit: ten years after we make landfall, our whole society goes matriarchal.

Are you sure you want to go back to friends? Sometimes-naked-drinking-buddy Sigrid doesn't care about other stuff as long as you show up in her bunk on the regular. But actually-your-friend Sigrid cares about you and thinks that Emily is a controlling, belittling harpy whose only talent is making you miserable while simultaneously convincing you that you like it. Naked Sigrid thinks there are plenty of fish in the reservoir, but Friend Sigrid thinks there's not a lot of Pendletons out there and isn't giving up that easy. Apparently she also talks in the third person when she's upset.

Is there any other way I can escalate this mysterious signal thing? We need to take this more seriously and there's like two weeks left before the Vanguard launch.

Sigrid Sent from my iMoblImplant - Please excuse any spelling errors

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Sigrid:

I'm sorry for taking so long to respond. It's not because of what you said. I just wasn't sure how to break the news to you.

I resigned my position a few days ago. Emily and I both have chits for the Vanguard and we're using them. We've already sold off everything that doesn't fit in the Vanguard berth.

I know how you feel, but I love Emily. I think she just needs to get off this ship and into a new environment. Everything will be better once we do that.

I brought your concerns up to the Vanguard's Nav commander. She tried to brush me off but I think I spooked her enough to make an impact. Vanguard's still using Delta vector for the approach, but they're adding some additional imagers and a couple of weaponized shuttles to the loadout. The shuttles are basically floating tin boxes with peashooters, but they're better than nothing.

You would be proud of me: I told the woman that there could be an Earth military cruiser out there and that our fearless senior staff might need an exit strategy if things got spicy. Worked like a charm.

I'm sorry. Don't hate me. We launch in a few hours. I wanted to say goodbye in person, but Emily thought it would be a bad idea.

-P