You make your way back up the ramp, and The Starfarer welcomes you with the same tired groan of metal settling against magnetic clamps. The cargo hold smells of lithium coolant and old rubber—familiar now, almost comforting. You run your hand along the port bulkhead as you pass, feeling the patch welds where someone before you plugged a micrometeorite hole with more optimism than skill.

The cockpit first. You settle into the captain's chair—the coffee stain on the co-pilot's seat still there, still unclaimed—and bring up the diagnostic suite. Your fingers move across the console with the same precision you once used to navigate surgical interfaces. The numbers appear, and they tell a story you do not love.

Hull integrity reads at 80%, but three of the hull stress sensors are reporting micro-fractures in the port-side frame—probably from a hard manoeuvre the previous owner never logged. Not critical yet, but left unchecked, they will become critical. The shield generator cycles at 93% efficiency. Functional. Marginal. The reactor hums at nominal output, but you can hear that harmonic whine during the spin-up sequence, the one the salesman called character. You have heard that sound before, in colony medbay equipment pushed past its design limits. It means the reactor is running hot—maybe 10% above recommended tolerances. It will hold for now, but a sustained combat situation could push it into the red.

You move aft to engineering. The fuel lines are intact, no leaks, but the port thruster assembly has a worn gimbal bearing—another few thousand hours and it will seize. The point-defence turret tracks properly on a test sweep, but its targeting software is three versions out of date. Against an asteroid, fine. Against a pirate with evasive capability, you might as well be throwing rocks.

The cargo manifest checks out: forty tonnes of processed lithium, sealed and stable. That is your ticket to Vega and 200 credits. But as you stand in the engine room, listening to The Starfarer breathe around you, the calculus is clear: this ship needs an engineer who knows reactors, a gunner who can fight, and parts you cannot afford yet. The lithium run will pay for fuel and maybe a hot meal. It will not pay for the rest.

You lock down the diagnostic terminal and head back toward the airlock. The port-side airlock sticks. You wiggle the handle just right. The concourse waits.