My sleep was incredibly peaceful. After I woke up I felt remarkably refreshed. My body also felt incredible. I felt lighter and my mind calculated things at a new speed. I could also recall and search the info in my head easier. The effects of sleeping are astounding. Of course I didn't think that this would happen every time, otherwise these races would have long surpassed the Empires tech level.

Still, sleeping makes me feel great. I'm going to sleep more often. With that decided I went to the kitchen on the ship. Having the inside of the ship be an artificial Sub-Space, 5 times its actual space, is really handy. I guess that when you are dubbed the last hope of a species and Empire, you get some good shit. I mean who would leave that last hope without any help at all. That's just asking for them to die. Nobody in their right mind would leave it to chance.

I've gotten better at cooking. After getting some local produce(local at a galactic scale) I decided to try some new recipes. Right now I decided to try making a Vilgaian Soup. It's made with gisian bone broth, water, some herbs, vegetables, and gisian breast meat. The recipe also said to try something called cocaine, Aldion told me later it is a drug, but I didn't have any. It tasted good, the meat was really tender and complimented the herbs and vegetables greatly. Would recommend.

Today I decided to go to the Mercenaries Guild. In the milky way's history mercs have always been independent contractors, taking on jobs from anyone about anything, depending on who's taking it. Very profitable but a very cut throat work environment for the little guys. Anyway, a while back some humans decided to make an entire organization dedicated to mercenaries. They did it so that mercs could have a safer work environment and provided a lot of services. They offered jobs that anyone can take, but took a cut from the original pay. They also provided legal advice, ensured the authenticity of the job, made sure you got paid the actual amount, medical services, training, and others. They also determined the danger of the jobs and the capabilities of the job taker. They became very popular with people that couldn't cough up the fees of bigger more successful groups and didn't trust the little guys in getting the job done.

At least that's what the receptionist told me. They graded the mercs and jobs by a native letter grade: F, E, D, C, B, A. These ranks showcase your capabilities and could be upgraded or downgraded. There is also a success rating and satisfaction rating. Success was whether you did the main job, like if you delivered an object, and satisfaction is how well the job giver felt like you did the job and how well they liked you, like if it was in pristine condition or not, or if you were an asshole while delivering it. Some people just want the job done and couldn't care less who did it, within reason, and some people would rather have a job done by someone more sociable.

All these things combined into a giant galactic organization with a high approval rating. So high that the Federation mostly lets them go their own thing, within reason again. They test your capabilities by giving simulation tests in a VR testing rig at their offices. Within these they test your fitness, UE use, piloting skills, problem solving, and a variety of other things then give you a rating when it's done. They do this by creating a randomly generated situation, or if that situation didn't test you well enough they made you do more until the test administrator felt that the testing was satisfactory. I had to do multiple tests on multiple situations, from my individual capabilities to my ability to work with others and deal with contractors. My testing took a couple of hours until the administrator felt it was satisfactory. I got a B+ ranking, mostly because my physique isn't up to par yet. Everything else was done amazingly well.

After that I was told to take contacts below my grade in order to get used to the process and how things worked. I had to do this for 2 months until I could freely take on contracts. I was then given my access code for the Guilds interface in the Systems Connection Hub. I decided to take an escort job of a freighter filled with unprocessed materials to a Manufacturing Planet called Geldim. It is a couple of days away so it should be a quick job.

I then left the station and left to rendezvous with the freighter. It took me two hours to get to the moon where the freighter is. It is about 50 meters long and box-like. The owners of the ship are part of the Malryion species, a race of sentient magma golems. Their race is famous for producing some of the sturdiest ships in the galaxy, only matched by three other races. Their ships are incredibly sturdier than most other ships and can take a lot of punishment because of that, and their fair deals and general delivery of agreements, they are highly favourable merchants and shippers. They are also fairly passive unless provoked. Their weaponry on the other hand is fairly weak with their favorability to defense.

After meeting them, they are quite nice and understanding, we immediately headed out. It was a quiet journey most of the way until we had to come out of Sub-Space because the transport had a malfunction in their engines. It is quite suspicious as their ships are generally incredibly reliable and rarely had any malfunctions unless they were badly treated or old.

As they were fixing the malfunction a large group of ships came out of Sub-Space and immediately opened fire.

"Damned pirate's." Angrily said Thantos, the captain of the freighter. "They must be targeting the shipment. We've already lost 15 freighters in the past month alone." He grumbled in what sounded like an avalanche over the connection he had between the ships.

"Sir, I do not believe that these are normal pirate's. Their weaponry and timing do not suggest they just found us, but instead that they were waiting for us. Be careful their weapons can break through our shielding and damage the hull." Aldion informed me. He is correct, the timing is just too perfect along with the malfunction. I have to capture some of them.

Immediately I fired a couple of Ion bursts to the attackers.