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"Come on," I muttered to The Culprit as I maneuvered the ship through the area between Ja'Quen and its second moon, Pilarea Si II taking extra care not to push the engines too hard. I wanted to make sure not to put off too much energy just in case any IEC ships were nearby reading energy output signals. If they thought The Culprit was just a floating hunk of space junk like everything else in this quadrant it would keep me off their radar.
The life of an illegal Junker consisted of a lot of sneaking around and praying that I didn't get caught like many of the ones before me. I had countless cycles of short naps and interrupted sleep because if I wasn't aware I could end up dead.
Or worse.
There were things worse than death. I had spent my entire life living in space and visiting shithole cities. I'd heard stories and had seen firsthand about the seedy underbelly of the galaxy. Flesh traders. Slavers. And if I was lucky, one of countless galactic prison camps.
That meant constant awareness.
Endless vigilance.
And lots and lots of cat naps in the pilot's chair on the command deck.
Looking out into the ship graveyard I could only feel excitement for what I was about to do.
The dead space of ship parts, lost cargo, and asteroid pieces was a potential secret goldmine that I had just gotten lucky to come across. The tip board—a holoscreen in the Hyzen spaceport just outside the planet of Ja'Quen—consisted of dozens of locations all over the Yuhunr galaxy where the last locations for intentionally dumped cargo, disabled ships, or distress signal pings. A place where legitimate salvagers were able to get leads on cargo they could return to their planets of origin for nominal fee or for Junkers could undercut the competition and make thousands of creds off illegally obtained cargo.
The one that had caught my eye did so because it was a small job, just medical supplies carried by a small freighter from Pharsouk that no doubt was headed to some rural allied planet. The provided manifests showed it was a philanthropic transport and those were always credit heavy.
The return fees would most likely be so small that most wouldn't pay it any attention. No one else want to waste their time on a handful of credits but it wasn't far. And fuck, one thousand creds was better than none. Medical supplies were easy to offload anywhere and it wasn't exactly illegal contraband (except for the fact that it was salvaged) but as long as I stayed under the radar it wouldn't matter.
Easy money in my pocket.
The busted up and dented exterior of the craft revealed it had to have been hit by an asteroid storm. There was no telling how their ships AutoNav (or even the captain or navigator of the ship) hadn't steered away from the storm. It was a new enough model that it should have had the proper systems to auto divert.
The lack of cargo on the ship was more than a little disappointing.
But I was an opportunist and there were other ships in the same graveyard that didn't look disturbed. I had already wasted a cycle. What was another one to make sure the other ships were actually empty?
