A plastic chit slid across a smooth white surface and struck Swires' hand as it was returned by the rather obviously phoney-smiled vendor in the Islay supply pit. It bounced off a fingernail and rested with two pairs of eyes on it. "Hell you mean, 'not valid'?", Swires asked as his gaze narrowed until they adopted an ophidian quality. "This is a cold million creds, there ain't no such THING as -not valid- there, you motherf-" His rant was interrupted by the heat-up whine of a readying rifle pointed in his direction by one of the Islay peacekeepers, specifically tasked with covering the shopfront. His arms immediately flew up in front of him, palms out. "Alright, alright, I get it... Fine, if it ain't worth a mil, how much IS it worth then?" At the teller's nod, the rifle was lowered and secured. A -massive- grin split the greasy little man's face immediately afterwards, and Swires felt his consciousness slowly fading, being proverbially crushed to death by heavy boredom as the teller begun spinning terms such as "risk compensation", "exchange rates" and "economic viability"...
An hour later, he was sitting in his usual spot- Back against a rusted, graffiti-covered hall barrier with broken, misshapen letters reading "Green Hell Beergarden", ass on the cold metal grating, rheinbier in one hand and a thick roll-up of some herb in the other- Gaian stores were always oh so advanced and creative about the sale of.. stimulants. He pointed his eyes down at the 250,000 credit chit he held in his hand, sighed sadly and pocketed it into his tattered, old BAF pilot's jacket. Afterwards, he slapped his palm against the barrier, producing two hollow thumps. "Same old, same old, buddy. One step at a time... We'll get it done." With a groan, he then picked himself off the floor and shuffled off slowly with the lit rollup hanging from his lips.
He paced his way slowly into drydock J-4. It was almost abandoned, apart from two mechanics working on a faulty generator which caused the chamber to be lit only by the piercing beams of the mechanics' flashlights, the backup lights' dull faint orange glow which, when he thought about it, wasn't much better than utter darkness. But the prominent features were the signal lights flashing on and off in an odd bumpy pattern in the dark, describing the outline of a mostly deactivated, nearly unrecognizable piece of a "Pilgrim"-class slave liner. The ship in question appears to have been broken in half, hinting at a catastrophic end for the crew, if any existed- Still, the wreck had been thoroughly searched and no signs of life nor death were found. The hulking mystery in front of him loomed in the dark as he plodded along a catwalk and collapsed into a chewed up polyester lounge chair setup in front of the hangar control room.
He watched the ship in silence, past the occasional pop and crackle of the rollup he was sucking on, until it was too short to keep inhaling, at which point he added to the array of cigarette burns on the chair's side as he extinguished the butt and let it drop through the catwalk grid into a small graveyard of various smokables' butts at the hangar bottom. "Goddamnit. Where's all this headed, with this fuckin'... snake, who does he think he even is? Two-fifty outta a mill...", he grumbled as he pushed against the control room door. Having entered, he stumbled around in the dark until his shin hit the edge of a fold-out bunk hanging off the wall. "Sonofa- rrrrrgh" pushed through his lips, but then he simply collapsed into the bunk and was asleep before he knew it, rheinbier puddling on the floor where he dropped the bottle.
Sucks to be a weight on the wrong side of the brilliance-insanity scale.