People are stupid and lazy, generally speaking. And when you live down a gravity well, where oxygen is free and plentiful, that's usually ok. A small slip up, or a moment of giving into laziness won't kill you. Not so much out in the black. Forgetfulness, laziness and stupidity will kill you faster than anything when your're buzzing around in a pressurized tin can surrounded by a universe of vacuum. Ironically enough, that's the only reason I'm alive and free.

I would have woke up with a start, but cryo doesn't let go of you that fast. In addition to the cold temperatures, cryogenic sleep involves a cocktail of paralytic and suppressant drugs. My head cleared slowly, and I finally managed to drag my eyelids open to find out why the hell I was in cryo sleep. It was dark aside from the moniter lights, and colder than  anything I had ever felt before. I tried to shake the drugs out of my head, and figure out how I had ended up here.

The last thing I clearly remembered was answering a want ad for starship mechanics. The up front terms had looked good, and I decided to go to the advertised location at a local bar and interview. In hindsight, I should have been a lot more wary. The police had been warning citizens for a while about a gang kidnapping and enslaving skilled workers for sale to various pirate organizations in need of mechanics. They must have grabbed me, hit me with a short term amnesiac and stuffed me into a cryo pod for transportation to a pirate infested backwater so bad that they couldn't hire decent ship mechanics.

But something had obviously gone wrong. With my head clearing, I looked at the status lights on the pod again. Primary power was out, and the pod was running on reserve power, which was why it had opted to wake me up. There was a large yellow and black striped handle in font of me labeled "Manual Door Seal Override" I reached up, grabbed it, and attempted to pull, but my arms were not cooperating. I looked around the coffin sized pod again. There was a large illuminated red handprint on the wall beside me, with lettering that said "Press palm here for emergency wake up".

After trying to press the wrong hand against the pad, I finally succeeded in matching my right hand to the glowing icon on the wall. I instantly regretted it, as dozens of micro needles shot out of the wall, pierced my hand, and pumped me full of artificial adrenaline and anti-sedatives. I grabbed the release again, and this time did my best to yank it off of the door. The front of the pod slid back, and I fell to my knees, appreciating the warm air inside the miniscule cargo hold I found myself in. I looked around  incredulously upon recognizing the interior. A fucking sidewinder? What kind of idiot moved slaves in a Sidewinder?

The kind that didn't maintain his ship well apparently. The ship was dead quiet. The normal hum of drives and powerplant were gone, replaced by an unnatural quiet that left me listening to the rush of blood inside my ears and my own breathing. As I kept listening, I could hear mechanical sounds coming from the open hatch that allowed access to the ship's engines. As I watched, a man in a pilot's flight suit minus helmet pulled himself through the hatch, and froze when he spotted me next to the open pod.

I didn't consciously decide to attack. I'm pretty sure the artificial adrenaline that was still buzzing in my head made the choice for me. I crossed the hold to him in two steps, and hit him in the throat. He collapsed to the deck, and I suddenly noticed that my neck hurt a lot, and my ears were ringing. I looked down and saw a sidearm lying beside the man as he struggled to breath through a crushed larynx.

I picked it up, and after a brief internal debate, shot him twice in the head. He had intended to sell me into slavery. Fuck him. The drugs began to wear off as I stood there thinking about what to do next, and I sank down to the deck plates and sat holding my head as I came down from the stimulants that had brought me out of the cryopod. The projectile had creased my neck and felt much worse than it was.

What now? I had just killed the man who had the ignition and access codes to the dead, unmoving ship I sat in. I was pretty certain I could bring the powerplant back online, but it would do me no good without codes allowing me to start and control the ship. I could turn on the emergency beacon, but odds were good that it would bring this slaver's friends, rather than emergency services, and that would either mean being recaptured or blown up. I had no access to non-emergency comms without codes, so just calling for pickup was out of the question. I was stuck here, unless I could crack the shipboard computer

I looked at the toolbox. First things first. I'd be out of air very soon unless I could bring the powerplant back online. I picked up the tools, and climbed into the access hatch beside the dead body.

I climbed back out 15 minutes later. At least this slaver had had the good sense to invest in his life support. I'd have been long dead if not for the improved oxygen bottles he installed on the tiny fighter. The air was already starring to smell distinctly stale, but I finished manually rebooting the power plant, and heard the air scrubbers hum to life. I sat back down on the deck beside the dead body, looking at the cryo pod I had come from. I was no longer in danger of asphyxiation, but the ship also still wasn't going anywhere.I was just starting to wonder exactly how hard it would be to crack a ship's AI, when the slaver's pocket comm chimed a message. I fished it out of his flight suit and started to laugh. He had it secured by a simple thumbprint scanner. I pressed his cooling thumb against the screen, and was welcomed. A message blinked on screen, demanding to know why he hadn't arrived with the cargo yet. I dismissed it, and pulled up the digital keychain.

Bingo. Ignition codes, access codes, credit accounts, and a pilot's federation license. Everything I needed to get the ship moving. I could head back to the station, report my kidnapping to security and-

That train of thought died, and another one hit me. Why go back?

I had a ship. I had access to enough credits to get fuel, cargo, ammo and some better guns. I pulled up the pilot's federation license and checked the name. Dirge. Obviously a fake name, but the pilot's federation never really had cared about that. I'd have to change it, but a quick search told me that for a nominal fee I could correct or alter my registration. I sat in the hold, thinking about the new life that was in front of me. Nothing about going back to my old life was particularly appealing.

Half an hour later, I sat in the pilot's seat, watching the cryo pod that had held me drift toward the local star, now holding the body of my kidnapper. I wore his flight suit and helmet, sanitized of blood and brain matter. The ship didn't sound right, but a couple weeks in port would let me give it a full tune up. I called up the nav computer, and checked my current location. Azrael system. The slaver had made it quite a distance from where he snatched me before breaking down. Something about that name appealed to me. I tabbed over to the pilot's license, transferred enough credits to cover the fee, and tapped in a new name. AzraelDirge. I figured I owed the ship's old owner that much.

I called up the ship's AI, and began plotting a jump. A soft female voice came over my headset from the ship's AU "Hello CMDR AzraelDirge. Would you like to assign myself or this vessel a designition at this time?" I laughed a little. The former owner had obviously bought this ship and gotten the pilot's federation license to be a temporary cover. "Designate yourself Katy. Designate this ship Secondhand Luck."

My route locked in, and the FSD charge progress bar appeared in my HUD. The future was looking bright.