Working for yourself isn’t as easy as it seemed at the beginning. Still, it’s fun, profitable, and deadly dangerous. Especially when, all of a sudden, you run into an alien civilization and learn the most unpleasant information—that you, and indeed all people, don’t have long to live.
But is that a reason to despair? Of course not. And it’s not a problem that you have just one starship—millions of years old to boot. The main thing is that you’ve got a loyal crew nearby, with whom you can casually destroy a couple of fleets.