Citadel's Lifeblood

[Ush]

Drinking gets to a stage where you can't even taste it anymore. Or feel drunk. Drinking gets to a stage where you stop being 'drunk', and instead seem to find a new type of soberness. Ever since coming to this hellhole, Esc'or'nuruodo had found that place. He likened it to crossing an ocean. No matter what, you go far enough and you'll reach the other side. He'd done that three times since landing here, and each time had led to him nearly weeping with the things he found he could understand in that state.
Peragus wasn't the normal place for Scorn to hang around in. It had once been an important part of the galactic economy, being the only source of fuel in the Kwymar Sector, but it had been destroyed three thousand, nine hundred and fifty one years before the Battle of Yavin. The Harbinger had ripped it apart, setting off a chain reaction that had torn nearly every asteroid in the area into a thousand pieces. But somehow the fuel had survived, and the great machine that was the Empire latched onto it, draining it like some vampiric parisite, using it to keep Tellos supplied.
Now, the station wasn't bad off. It had shops, supplies, a half-decent cantina, everything a settlement would need. But it was living on borrowed time. For twelve years this place had been slowly drained of fuel, and when the Empire arrived three years ago it had only gotten worse. There was a small Imperial garrison here. Maybe twenty men. A Captain led them, but he was useless. Twenty or thirty pounds overweight and he spent more time whoring than doing work. But how bad. Scorn doubted he'd have been able to stay here this long, unemployed, if any of these Imps were worth a damn. You could be damn sure none of these had been on Curoscant.
Scorn thanked the Ishi Tib bartender, who made a gesture with his oddly-shaped hand, and stumbled out into the street. The facility had started out much like the old one had, all those thousands of years ago, but times change. It had started when the Empire had shown up, and some of the Imperial Garrison had brought their wives, husbands and children, and then the miners had, and suddenly you had a settlement of three and a half hundred people.
One of them had been a Chiss CAIN agent, long since retired, that had left no family when he passed on a couple of months back. Scorn had recieved a message from him a while back, one he'd probably sent to anyone passing through the Kwymar Sector. 'Anyone', meaning any CAIN agent, of course. It had just been offering his home as a safe haven, and when Scorn arrived he'd shut off the signal. He was living here, now. Alone.
He'd made the most of it. The old man wasn't too badly off, in his dotage, had gotten quite a bit off what Scorn assumed to be the evading taxes. Scorn, who'd arrived with no money, quickly lost all this buying food, clothes and drink. He had about one thousand credits left, he reckoned, which he would be using to get off of here. Of course, he'd thought that when he had two thousand credits left...
Still, Scorn would leave when the time was right. He had no goal in life anymore. He was a CAIN agent. A remnant of an organisation long since gone, a defender of a civilization so poor they no longer really counted as a civilization. Scorn had no prospects. He couldn't exactly put his past occupation on his job resume, could he? Considering that all he'd done was betray the Ascendancy's allies and gotten his face half-burned off, he didn't really want to, either.
Scorn ended up at a railing, watching miners and droids work. His red eyes followed them as they latched onto the next hunk of rock and whittled into it. Mining made for a boring job, and a boring life, but it was better than anything Scorn had ever done. Maybe he'd take it up when the money ran out. You never know. Anything could happen, after all. Scorn sighed and stumbled away, coming away from the high of drunkeness he had just been in. Anything could happen. Anything at all...

 

[Cortan]

Once, he had been a party to the construction of starships.

Not merely an uncredited shrimp who fastened a plate on the bulkhead, or someone who supplied the humanoid resources. No, Codaeseus Birov had overseen, planned, and directed the building of what could be described as monuments to engineering. Vast vessels that could be anywhere from a few hundred metres in length, to miles, cities that could cross from one end of the galaxy to the other, armed to the teeth with turbolasers and crewed by the finest that either Mandalore or the Imperium had to offer. It shifted mostly from the former to the latter as the years went on, but that didn't really undermine the marvel of his task.
To be fair, to be the foreman of a mining operation was a job that most in the profession would envy, and he had secured it with little trouble after his arrival on Peragus some... weeks ago. He couldn't be bothered to remember it in any more precise detail than that - he wasn't sure how long he was to hold the position after all.

Not that Cod was particularly complaining about that either. He had been loathe to settle down ever since his early retirement from ship making, both to keep from being easy to track, but also because he found it difficult to comfortably do so. Having left his old life behind, being honest to himself for one rare moment, it felt almost wrong to solidify a new one on some alien rock that his people, neither biologically nor culturally, had ever really held. A strange complaint from someone who was oft times a mercenary these days, but then, that had been a necessity, just as was being a foreman until he built up a decent stockpile of cash.
The Mon Calamari watched his subordinates toil at the rock from a nearby balcony, lightly rubbing a few credits between his fingers. People would probably get the wrong meaning if he said that he liked the feel between his fingers, so he just went at it in silence.

One thing he made a small note to himself over was how they had been slipping behind in production. Not because they had slowed, particularly, but because demand was going up and outpacing the rate at which things got processed. Chances were, they'd need more men, and chances were, that was something he'd be responsible for. And given how little he was currently doing, there was the possibility that he could... maybe... get to that.
With a sigh, Cod went to the nearest lift, making way for the upper levels. Hopefully, this wouldn't take too long - being driven by an external market, mining was one of the few guaranteed sources of income on station. Shouldn't be too hard to find someone desperate enough for it.