When Schiller arrived at the accident scene, he saw no spaceship. More accurately, all that remained was a field of scattered parts. Only the ship's tail was vaguely recognizable, and even that had been burned black. Two Symbiote agents stood nearby, trembling.
"What happened here?" Schiller asked.
"We're not entirely sure either," one of the agents said. "We were just on a routine patrol when this guy suddenly flew his ship straight at us. We dodged to the side, then the ship wobbled into an asteroid. We didn't have time to stop it..."
The scene was a disaster. Not only had the spaceship shattered, but the asteroid had died too. Since everything had exploded into pieces, the three of them spent quite a while locating the pilot and passenger.
These aliens had fairly sturdy bodies. Their ship and the asteroid had both blown apart, yet their corpses remained intact. But intact corpses were all they had left. The two were dead beyond any doubt.
One had been impaled through the chest by the spaceship's control lever, while the other's head had been smashed to pieces. As Schiller approached, he caught a strong smell of alcohol. "This is why they say don't drink and drive, and don't drive after drinking. Apparently, that applies to flying spaceships too."
He felt a little guilty. When the group had been leaving, he had considered reminding them to book a room upstairs, but he knew they held some unfavorable stereotypes about humans. If he had insisted on keeping them there, it might have seemed like coercive salesmanship and damaged the tavern's reputation, so he had let them go.
He had not expected these aliens to fly drunk this badly. Space was incredibly empty, after all. The odds of a small spaceship hitting any obstacle in