Professional's Handbook to Blowing Your Space Evaluation For some reason I ended up signing onto a joint contract with Diana. The arrangement was simple: prove I have the combat chops to keep Aioi safe if I plan on dragging her into the deeper sectors again. Can’t really call it overprotective—no one wants to leave a young crew member alone with some scruffy, half-reliable spacer like me. And yeah, I get it. I’m self-aware enough to know I come across as a weird, grizzled relic from the void lanes. This kind of evaluation was bound to happen eventually. Not my first rodeo being tested, either. The mission to gauge my skills? A two-cycle sweep of a debris field. It’s one of those dull but critical jobs: searching for rookie pilots who’ve vanished into the asteroid belt, dismantling illegal salvage beacons set up by reckless fools hoping to make a quick credit, and generally cleaning up messes only desperate spacers bother with. Those who disappear into the void don’t usually come ba...

Zero Shrimp, One Titan, and a Very Annoyed Space Captain The station’s recycled air was cool and dry, a welcome contrast to the stale, metallic tang of my spacesuit. I unsealed my helmet, taking a deep breath, and followed Aioi through the processing station’s sterile corridors. Today’s void harvest: ten stellar crustaceans and a Void Titan’s sensor core. Not bad, except Aioi caught all the shrimp. Hard to pull rank when you’re outperformed. Guess it’s time to brush up on low gravity harvesting techniques before next time.   “A Void Titan wandering out here? Wild stuff. No bounties posted for it, right?”   “None. It was hanging in near side of the moon, just outside the main field.”   “That’s troubling. We’ll need someone to check it out.”   At the processing station, I handed over the Titan components. The techs scanned them, encoding a bounty credit chip for the Guild. Since the encounter wasn’t planned—and involved a Void Titan—I made sure they...