Earnest Ed was about the size and shape of an Ocellus Type Starport: big, round, and with long extremities that made him look as if he was constantly about to lose his balance. I was directed to him after spending some time at the bar fishing for jobs. Once they pointed him to me, he was impossible to miss. He was visibly drunk, his small round eyes darted all over the place, and he smelled of some sort of distilled liquor. Probably a station specialty so foul it was either considered a rare export or an illegal substance in most sectors of the galaxy. Most likely neither of those, and it was just booze too cheap and filthy to be traded anywhere else off station.

You can usually tell which kind job you are going to get by the person offering it. Earnest Ed, the large, plump man in a worn suit and tie, looked like a salesman who knew you had no choice but to buy what he was selling, so why bother pretending. His outfit looked like it had been out of fashion this side of the Galaxy for at least two centuries and the kind of job he had for me was, of course, a job hauling biowaste to the next system over. He wasn’t some expert negotiator pitching a multi-million credit deal, and I wasn’t some decorated pilot transporting the royal jewels of Princess Aisling Duval. So I took the job. Not like I had that many other prospects at the moment. And I wasn’t quite ready for another long haul through deep space anytime soon.

Transporting crap from one system to the other is not the most glamourous thing, but it pays well enough for the short hauls you have to pull off. Khayyam Orbital’s recycling facilities were overworked, Earnest Ed explained. Probably trying to process whatever he was drinking, I thought. All I had to do was take some biowaste containers to Bokeili Port. Easy and quick.

Transporting quality goods across the known galaxy

I had tried my hand at moving rare goods, but the only reason some random crap is considered rare is because you can only find it on some far off system no one would bother going to otherwise. You end up carrying a few couple of tonnes over thousands of light years and if you are lucky, you only run into a few pirates along the way. If you are unlucky, which I certainly am, you run out of fuel in deep space and wait to die.

Veteran pilots know that, when planning long routes, you take into consideration basics such as ship jump range, the mass you are carrying, and where to stop along the way to refuel. But all that planning is useless if you don’t actually stop to fill up, and only realize it once you are in deep space with no station or outpost in sight. The thing is, after flying in supercruise for so long, jumping from system to system, your mind can start to act funny. You hear stories of pilots who get space dementia, seeing giant interstellar turtles with elephants on their backs, or fly into stars thinking they are following beautiful, scantly-clad space manatees. Or was it sirens?

Me? No space dementia, just stupidity. By the time I realized my mistake, I was too far from any populated system. My radar showed nothing but rocks, and my navigation panel was overwhelmingly in the red, the message ‘low fuel’ besides every possible destination.

I panicked for a moment. I went through my modules and functions and every system in my ship looking for a way out. I went through my inventory. I had some time on life support, but almost no food left, only a frozen burrito that by the looks of it must have been left behind the previous owner of the ship.