Cosmos Postman

"Alpha Centaur E! Not Alpha Centauri!", Sam hurled the package into the heap with the other wrong deliveries with angry exhaustion that comes easily to a 54 year old. The StarEx delivery logistics had earned a notorious reputation once they went inter-galaxy. For a corporation handling interstellar travel one would assume they at least get the galaxy right. Yet the number of misplaced deliveries was on the rise with each shipment.

And the Zonal Post Office in each sector was in charge of handling wrong deliveries. Which meant that once every week Sam had to take the droid and a rusty bucket of a ship across two parsecs because someone out there couldn't read their letters. Moreover he was given a fuel allowance only for the shortest path of travel - one that went through the isolated Makran system. The clans and the pirates were always vying for control violently over there. Once Sam got caught in a scuffle between Allied Miners and The Belt Union. They used his ship as cover until it was just a floating piece of metal and plastic in space. He had to escape in the emergency pod abandoning the ship and its cargo. While the ship was covered with insurance, he was forced to pay a penalty in installments for the missing cargo. The beautiful retirement he had dreamed of - a humble cottage by the bay on the paradise world of Kwa'ee with his dear wife - had become more of a dream. His wife had left him too.

He scanned another wrong delivery package which sent the machine into a frenzy. Highly inflammable and banned substances were detected. He was slightly intrigued. On closer inspection and to his amazement he could make out an explosive configuration inside the package. His palpitation increased. This must be reported back to StarEx and quarantined. Luckily the interstellar shuttle that brought in the shipment was still in the bay, he could just hand it over to them and they'd take it from there. After placing it in a fragile transport module he headed to the bay. The people on board just wouldn't hear him out, they were busy with nothing. He tried with the greatest urgency to explain what he had found but it was to no avail. They told him that they deal with such complain across the stars but it is always some fancy gadget or the other, however if he still had doubts he could place it with the 'Unaccounted Returns' section at the back of the shuttle and HQ would decide on what to do further. Bewildered by this development but also not feeling motivated enough to pursue it further, he packed it in another layer of basic quarantine packaging and left it with the shuttle. In the evening he left for Alpha Centauri with the other misplaced packages, the shuttle too departed for HQ.

A week later the Space Force was hunting for Sam as a prime suspect in the explosion at the space port on Earth 4.0. It seemed like no one had seen or heard from him since the day he left for his sortie. However three days later a ship was found in the Makran system filled with holes floating across empty space. Its pilot was found deceased outside the emergency pod clutching the door lever that was probably stuck. Further investigation lead to nothing but more mystery and wild theories. And in that way Sam's end was more intriguing than his life, or so his droid recalls.