Damn those couriers!

I'd just had victory snatched from the barrels of my railguns when my orbit exceeded the range of my warp disruptor, and the Rifter pilot was able to warp out of the belt with only a few points of damage to his shield from my strafing run as I zoomed past him. So then I was at a planet, aligned and keeping an eye on the belts, when someone else warped in with their cruiser. They were 103km away, but started moving towards me, so I activated the warp drive and immediately warped to the belt I was aligned with.

Following protocol, I immediately warped out from the belt to a safe spot, waving goodbye to the pilot as he entered the belt as well. Nice try, but no cigar.

So I was sitting there in my safe spot, trying to ignore the chatter in local from all the antipirate guys that had just entered, when suddenly someone's knocking on the pod door.

What the... I'm alone, in an interceptor. Who the frak is knocking on my door??

Systems check - there's a courier hooked up to my airlock door, demanding attention! How the hell did he find me out here? I guess those postal couriers always find their 'targets'...

If there's one thing I've always been banging into people's heads, it's to never think you're safe at a safe spot. And never leave your keyboard while you're at a safe spot - dock in a station instead.

So I set the ship to dock at the station (including the small courier ship attached to my airlock), and then left the pod to go find out what the courier was. It's a small ship, so it was only a couple seconds down the empty corridor to the airlock door. I let him in, quickly pressurising the airlock and opening the door into the ship.

"Package for you sir," he said, handing me a package and a pad for my signature.

"Why the hell couldn't this just be put in my post box back at the station?" I angrily asked him.

"It needed your signature," he replied. Just as he took the pad back, the interceptor was rocked by explosions.

What the hell? Was my safe spot discovered? The courier jumped back into the airlock, but was just in time to see his ship disintegrating on the other side of the outer airlock door. He turned to look in fear at me, but I closed the airlock door on him. For pressurisation reasons, you see...

Running back to my pod, I got in it just as the interceptor disintegrated around it. I saw the quickly freezing body of the courier fly past a window. Serves him right, I thought, distracting me like that.

I quickly took stock of the situation - the pod was outside the station, right in the centre of the interceptor wreckage. Was I attacked by the antipirates at the station? Then a flashing light on my console drew my attention, and I was reminded of my global criminal countdown timer, with 4 minutes remaining.

...

I'll need to get the pod replaced, of course, as it has lots of dents and damaged equipment on the inside, from all the kicking I was doing.

Never think you're safe at a safe spot.

But never try to dock a small ship while your criminal timer is still counting down.

End of lesson.