Habilious
Theo sighed and shifted a stack of dockets to the other side of his desk. It was going to be a long day. The shipment of cadmium bound for Hecate had to be scoured after a dock man had discovered Vemiccian weevils in the hold. The freighter, Cassius, was late… again. Abraham and his lot had been caught trying to smuggle "refugees" for the third time this cycle. And to top it all off, Theo hadn't had a chance to eat his lunch yet. A fine day to retire.
His bad knee creaked as he stood to stare out the window at the ships at their soft dockings. Habilious, what a shit hole. It was the one station in the sector big enough to accommodate a shipping depot worth a damn. That alone made it a magnet or every type of vermin from every corner of the sector. Thieves, refugees, disease, and any other dirty, illicit or plain old nasty thing you could think of.
Theo had no sympathy for the poor sap the bureaucracy had lined up to take over his position. Being shipping director wasn't a hard job by any means. It was dealing with the miscreants that made Theo glad to be going. A few of the dock men had tried to throw him a going away party, but he would have none of that sort of foolishness. Not when there was shit to do.
He sighed again. Habilious was a shit hole. There was no arguing that, but it had been his home for the last 25 cycles. Tomorrow he would climb aboard one of those rusty tin cans and head back to… "To what?" He mumbled to himself "To smog, war and disease?" Habilious may be the unwashed back-end of forever but at least on that chunk of floating refuse he wouldn't have to worry about some ass hole politician dropping a damn Nuke on his head.
Theo rubbed his eyes wearily. It was going to be a long day indeed.
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