It is really annoying when a civvy ship gets out of route. Always something gnarly, something that shouldn't be, but the higher ups refuse to "waste" their elite forces on that unless confirmed beforehand it is absolutely essential. Something about not using their best superluminal engines unless it is absolutely necessary. You heard some weird stories about such engines, how, sometimes, the largest spaceships equipped with them come out of hyperspace coated in interdimensional goop that gives weird life signatures. There is probably some exageration to the story, but that is how I heard it, no way to confirm with how uptight the Galatic Defense Force (GDF) has been these last couple decades.

That's why you couldn't hide your annoyance when a seedship deviated grossly from its trajectory. On your shift.

"This is Delphos-9, reporting on Acorn-27 trajectory. It is headed straight to a blackhole."

"ETA?"

"On the blackhole?"

"Positive."

"72 days."

There is a long silence in the hyperspatial comms. You poke the device thinking it is broken.

"Delphos-9 here is Artemis-4. High command authorized a boarding."

"A... boarding? Aren't everyone there... huh... frozen?"

"High command believes the AI on Delphos-9 malfunctioned. They want you to check it."

Great. Just great. You were busily levelling up on your favorite MMO and now you have to go check some goddamn haywire AI. You are aboard Delphos-9, a space station orbitting a gas giant in the system N3R-IP14HLI, some just call it "RIP system". A fitting name, for it is in the edges of known space and the only thing you do is monitor Seedships inbound to the frontier. It's been a decade since the last time one of these ships malfunctioned, turned out the AI ship sensors broke down and it was trying to correct course blindly. That is probably what is going on with this one as well.

There are only six people in the space station right now, and the only fighter ship docked in, the Dart-1, can only really take three people. You wouldn't be able to talk anyone to go into this shitty mission in your place, but you can drag one or two other souls into this drudgery. The Dart-1 is equipped with a state of the art superluminal drive. From where you are to the coordinates of the Acorn-27 would take one week.

The problem is the trip back. The Dart-1 doesn't have enough fuel to return. You *might* be able to refuel it with the fusion engine from the Acorn-27, but even that would be suboptimal - it would take a long time to recharge the hyperspatial capacitors of Dart-1 with that outdated garbage that passes for an engine on Seedships. It always struck you as strange how they send expensive superluminal fighters that have no way of recharging themselves or even suporting life for longer than three weeks to the corners of known space. Do they think everyone who does space travel is a suicidal maniac?