Economy: A Telling of Stories
07 Jul 2023Centuris Blake
"The economy is the telling of stories, and stories don't need to be true to be believed, only told."As I've been evacuating refugees from alert and invasion systems, I found myself looking at my ship data and taking note of the economy-class cabins those 92 souls are packed into. I have audio and video feed, to be able to monitor for any potential issues, and the stories some of these folks tell...
I've been a pilot for a long time now, traveled out into the black, and heard many fantastical tales from fellow explorers and traders. Somehow, none of that compares. Many of us are well-versed in the dangers in our galaxy; precious few pilots can say they've never had a close scrape with death.
These civilians though, many of them have made these rocks and stations their homes. So few have traveled far enough to experience the terror of dropping out of witch space too close to a neutron star or felt cold dread as a Thargoid interceptor rips you out of hyperspace and scans your shutdown ship. And now they are finding themselves in the middle of this war, casualties of someone else's grandstanding and arrogance. It doesn't surprise me that their stories are some of the most fantastical and harrowing I've heard.
Somehow, those still don't compare with the tales uttered by the injured... I swapped passenger cabins for cargo racks today, transporting the injured that have been placed in escape pods for medivac. I almost couldn't complete my preflight inspection, hearing them recount in a drug-induced haze the manner in which they received their injuries. Caustic burns, contusions, and lacerations, regular burns, all from Thargoid attacks on stations and settlements.
We need to end this gorram war. I don't care if it's Azimuth, Aegis, or a return of INRA; somebody needs to hurry up and find a way for us to beat the Thargoids back once and for all. The money has been good, but at the rate things are carrying on, pilots like myself are going to be turning our ships into flying hearses before too much longer.