The insurance miracle

I’m still shaking sand out of my boots. Losing the Freelancer MAX hurt — not just the ship, but everything inside her. Or at least, that’s what I thought. It is literally the only thing I own.

Turns out, the ship’s previous owner had worked some magic with R.R.I. Somehow, he’d locked in lifetime insurance, marked the title as if the ship was “new and in mint condition,” and — god knows how — even convinced them to cover military-grade components. I wonder who he was in a past life. 3 hours after filing my claim, I got called into the RRI office.  I showed them the paperwork, and there were no questions asked. No delays. R.R.I. literally handed me the keycodes to a brand-new, freshly painted Black Freelancer MAX like I’d just driven it off the showroom floor.

Boxes, tools, and mining gear were still gone, but walking away with a fresh MAX made the loss sting a little less. I can’t explain how the old owner pulled it off, but I wasn’t about to argue.

Since then, I’ve been back to running lighter jobs while the new bird still smells like factory paint. Spectemus keeps trying to rope me into more escort runs for his security and mining ops, but watching rocks split doesn’t light a fire under me. Not yet.

The bunkers still call me back now and again. Same story — “secure” facilities, somehow overrun from the inside. I clear them, tag the bodies, shake my head, and cash the creds. The jobs pay, but they don’t answer the real question gnawing at me: what the hell is going on in this system?

For now, I’m back in the black, in a brand-new MAX, with a lifeline I didn’t earn but won’t waste. The verse rarely hands out gifts. When it does, you fly them until the tanks run dry.