Two months earlier...*

"Good Morning Spacers! Welcome to another beautiful day on Port Garatha and I am your host Jarba and Gler!" bellowed two nasally, high pitched voices over the comms in perfect unison which awoke Captain Allen Brekk with a groan of pain as the mother of all headaches assailed him.

"One of our top stories today!" continued the news anchors whose voices made it feel like Allen had a megaphone close to his ears. "The ongoing conflict between the Unorian Stars Alliance and the Senashir Ascendant Covenant rages on over at the Edris System, prompting local mercenary companies here on Garatha and elsewhere within the sector to scramble for any juicy contracts!"

Weariness filled the Captain as he weakly got up from his bed, the familiar stench of cheap liquor, more of rotgut to be honest, filled his quarters as shuffled towards the bathroom. The automatic door that led out into the hall of his ship, the Sojourner, opened as he approached and it lit up with bright cyan lights that hurt his eyes.

"Meanwhile, miner strikes on Sikarra continues on its 2nd week, prompting a strong response from the Stleen Corporation who have vowed to take whatever actions it deems necessary to ensure that, 'the salt must flow'".

Tightly keeping his eyes shut as he groaned again, the Captain soon made it to the ship's bathroom where he drained his bladder of the previous night's binge. He then shuffled towards the sink where he pressed down a metallic handle which caused cold water to pour from the faucet.

"Also on our headlines, an unconfirmed report of vessels belonging to the Urok Horde in the Volasis System has caused a significant amount of civil unrest. We can probably expect refugees coming from over there in the near future".

Giving it a moment to fill up the sink, the Captain plunged his face into it and he allowed the ice cold needles to pierce his brain which fully jolted him awake. Lifting his head from the sink, he grabbed a nearby towel to wipe down his bearded face where he was greeted in the mirror by a familiar figure that quite frankly, looked like shit.

The Captain was a man who was dressed only at moment in a pair of boxer shorts and a sleeveless shirt that had seen better days. He possessed fair skin, brown eyes and a chin covered in a fairly unkempt bushy beard with hair that was about as much as a mess while the rest of his body was covered in scars, burns and other marks of a hard life and the beginning of a beer belly could be seen on his gut.

How the hell are you still alive? he asked himself with some genuine curiosity for over the twenty five years he had been a Spacer, he had been shot, stabbed, burned, had his bones broken, had been poisoned, mauled by an Ursonid and had even had a case of the Klokian Gut Worms. It was a miracle that nothing in his body had been replaced with some cybernetic replacement, nor had he bothered to replace anything with a gene enhanced wetware, save of course for the cloned kidney and liver which were entirely his fault really for having to be replaced.

And what did he have to show for it? He thought as he took a moment to study the old wounds on his body and he remembered so many different times when he had to fight for his life. He lived aboard a rickety old ship where on most days he had nothing to eat but nutri-paste and drowned in debts from the kind of people who would think nothing about breaking his legs before having him spaced out an airlock.

A part of him wanted to ask why? Why did he keep living like this? Why couldn't he just sign up to be some Corpo owned Transport Pilot or join up with a salvager guild and comb through the metallic graveyards of destroyed ships? If he had asked himself this twenty years ago, the younger him would answer that it was about the freedom, the excitement and the adventure of being a freelance spacer.

To be young and stupid he thought as he pressed a key that would drain the water from the sink and he turned around, back towards the hall where he could still hear the voices of the local news stations his ship's comms was tuned to. A paid advertisement from the Ylon-Abani Corporation was playing, inviting prospective colonists to join the ongoing colonization efforts on the planet Hadreth where there was "certainly" no infestation of parasitic life forms, yeah right thought the Captain.

A few meters down the hall between the empty living quarters of any other possible crew mates (not that he had any for he preferred to fly solo) he arrived at the ship's kitchen area where he opened up the refrigeration which was filled with nothing but more plastic tubes of nutri-paste and assorted bottles of cheap alcohol. Grabbing one tube that was labeled to be chocolate flavored, the Captain knew well enough it did not taste as such but it was not like he had much of a choice for a Spacer like him, it was either the paste or Sylen Grehn brand Biscuits which was "certainly" was not made from other sapient life forms.

He just needed a good haul was his thought, one good payday so he could wipe away his debts and get out of here. The galaxy was a big place and he had traveled to dozens, if not hundreds of worlds, habitats and ports where it would be easy to just disappear and start a new life.

One good haul was his thought again as he sat there eating the bland paste which only very vaguely tasted like chocolate and he resolved to give his fixer a call and see if there was any work to be done. If he was lucky, there would be something, anything to get out the cess-pit known as Port Garatha.