Dave had never considered suicide before until this very moment. He opened his eyes and immediately closed them again. Someone must be driving the biggest spike ever into his head. On top of that he wasn't quite sure where he was, and had blurry memories of several disturbing things that he hoped were just mere hallucinations. He tried to open his eyes as slowly as possible but as soon as the light entered his lids the pain ramped up to eleven. "Why is it so bright!?" he yelled. Then realized that yelling increased the pain even further.

A quite loud, familiar female voice entered Dave's ears stating, "I'll turn down the lights, Dave. All you had to do is ask". He groaned as the volume of her voice also gave his rampaging headache a turbo boost. "Cam, is that you?" he asked in a whisper. "Yes Dave it's me. You had an interesting day didn't you?" Cam asked. Dave whispered again, "Can you please lower your volume? And also, how did you get here?". She returned in a much lower volume with, "Don't you mean how did you get here? You're back on The Murphy's Law and we're headed back to the mine."

He was getting really tired of being confused, although he had to admit that this time it was his own fault. "How did I get back here?" he asked while slowly opening his eyes into a squint. "Well.. " Cam started, "A lovely young plebescian woman dropped you off. She used your ident to open the ship door and all but dragged you inside and dumped you on the couch. She looked around for a minute and then left.". Dave nodded slowly while opening his eyes a little further, "Ok, but why are we heading back to the mine?". Cam let out a sigh through the speakers, "Well it appears you are now wanted by outpost security for question in regards to the death of one person and the blinding of another. I started intercepting chatter from station comes looking for Dave Jones and I decided that leaving was best before they locked down the dock."

Dave sat up slowly and rubbed his temples with both thumbs, "Ok, so I'm wanted. I wasn't dreaming about the incident. But before anything else do we have anything for a headache?" he said. "Check the medicine cabinet in the rest room there should be a white bottle with a blue label. Take two of those." Cam replied. Dave put his conversation on hold for the next forty five minutes until the medication started to take effect. Once he was feeling a little more human and his brain was able to focus he got back to the issues at hand. "Shouldn't I just turn myself in? That thing shot me in the head, I was defending myself." He asked. "If this had happened in the jurisdiction of a planetary government I would say yes. However, this happened at an independant outpost. Outpost laws, especially Uslaw, are a bit.... brutal. Think of eye for an eye." Cam said.

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Taking this in for a moment Dave continued, "Okay, so getting away possibly saved my life. But can't they just track us down?" Cam chuckled lightly, "Oh no Dave, our transponder is off and I have already altered Uslaws records to show that we were never there. However, going back there may cause an issue for Dave Jones and his ident card. We will need to change your name again.". Dave thought for a few beats and said "Well just change the last name, I will never be able to get used to being referred to anything but Dave.". "I certainly understand that. What name shall we go with this time?" Cam asked.

Time went from days to weeks to months after that. The first several weeks after the incident saw Dave struggling with nightmares and the moral implications of having taken a life, if albeit unintentionally. Every once in awhile the nightmares were interupted by dreams of spending time with that beautiful alien woman that his sense of chivalry led him to try and help. The shopping trip to Uslaw outpost left him with enough supplies to last about 3 months, and thanks to Cams deft manipulation of local data and network systems nobody had come knocking on the door looking for them.

After the third week Cam suggested that, since she had registered him in the data systems as a hauler pilot, that he should indeed start taking hauler jobs. He did exactly that. At first he would take pre-loaded cargo pods from Uslaw out to different mining stations in the asteroid belt. Most of these runs would take four or five days round trip for about five to six thousand credits each. When he was not carrying a load he all but cocooned himself at the mining station. While his first social foray into the alien society of this part of the galaxy was fun and interesting, the ending of that night left him a little gun shy about venturing out again.

The next two months had calmed to a steady routine of hauling loads and distracting himself with Cams pirated collection of all the entertainment from earth. Routines do have their ups and downs, and Dave had decided that he wanted to try and take a load to an inhabited planet. These loads paid much better and single hauler ships had to use special cargo pods with integrated fold drives, but he wanted something new. One big downside of fold loads was that you couldn't accept the job over the net, you had to show up to the brokers office in person and sign several documents as travel with a fold drive had several additional risk factors.

For the first time since his wild night at the bar three months ago, Dave docked the Murph at Uslaw and stepped back onto the station. He was expecting some sort of advanced facial recognition to pick him out of the crowd and to be hauled away in handcuffs in short order. To his surprise he made the walk from the dock to the brokers office without incident. He told the attendant what load he was looking for and handed his ident card over. Paperwork was printed, actually printed on something that felt a lot like earth paper, and laid out for him to sign. There at the bottom of the page just below the signature line sat the name he had given to Cam when they changed his ident, "Dave Grohl - Hauler Pilot"