How about if this functionality is rolled into fleet operations/faction relations? Skill line in the fleet tree focuses on faction relations, expanding the range at which you can give or take aide from friendly fleets, and unlocks a hullmod like most do at level 10 that only works for small ships, is designed to be put on a shuttle that outfits it for long-range solo interstellar travel, makes it fill itself with fuel and supplies and then locks it to not be used for repairs or cr, makes it unable to be used in combat (automatically retreats) and unlocks an active campaign ability that sends out the shuttle from your fleet with its emergency reserves under the command of a liason officer from the closest, friendliest faction who off-screen emergency burns to the nearest market and calls for an emergency resupply run at the cost of a sizeable hit to your remaining goodwill from the faction (doesn't put you in hostile status unless pirates, will come back to that).
When the fleet arrives, the dialogue gives you the options of compensating them for the cost of your fuel and supplies gained (only mitigates the damage to relations a little bit because no faction wants to be on good terms with an idiot that can't calculate their minimum fuel needs like the rest of the galaxy), you can compensate them for your costs and the cost of their fuel and supplies getting there and back (halves the relations loss, and costs roughly 3x the last option but is still a pain in the assignment for them because that's time lost they could have been doing something else), or you can offer to pay them for their costs and ask them if they want to see what was so important for you to inconvenience them, which opens a trade window from you showing them what your haul was that necessitated you stranding yourself, and the supply fleet automatically has a selection of your cargo slated to be transfered over to them, based on the value of those goods at their faction's economy, preferring goods with a high value/space ratio and with whether they're just asking you to compensate them for their time fairly or how much they're exhorting you depending on where you stood with the faction when you sent the shuttle. Oh and you could just say "sorry, I have nothing to give you" and walking away a free loader.
Then, once they've left, you have to deal with the high possibility that your SOS shuttle was seen because of its judicious use of emergency burn and what it was doing figured out and the supply fleet being followed to you by a scavenger fleet of the faction that might most want you dead (or just pirates because that's what they do), making, for a small independent fleet, making sure that the convoy is happy enough with you afterwards that they wouldn't just sit back and watch you get eaten by wolves more important the more toes you've stepped on.
I hear you asking "what happens if you're not friendly with anyone?" Well, the independent are a loose faction, and one of their traders won't care that you haven't made friends with their boss's boss, money is money.
"What happens if the nearby factions aren't friendly and you are on the bad side of the independent?" Well, you better hope you're on the good side of the bad people because if you're on the bad side of the independent, the convoy will be owned by pirates, and rather than the size of the scavenging fleet that follows the convoy being determined by how big your fleet is give or take a bit (anywhere from 50% to 120% your fleet's ship value), it's determined by how big your fleet is, exactly, multiplied by how far from maximum relations you are with the pirates, because the shuttle went to the people that sent the scavenging party (anywhere the convoy itself sent from a rival faction's mercenary group looking to see if your fleet will pay their extortion for help against the scavengers). Have you been killing every pirate group you can find and are their #1 most hated? Don't run out of fuel in a place where no friendly faction can get you