[center] [h1] Meanwhile, somewhere marginally less reputable...  [/h1] [/center] 

"D'you know what the average life expectancy for a member of the guard is?" Big Fletcher, a small wily man with a lithe build, asked dryly. 

"Can't say I do." Little Fletcher, a great big giant of a man built like a Baneblade on Psychon, admitted. 

"Fifteen hours." Big Fletcher informed them. 

"Sounds about right." Little Fletcher shrugged. 

"D'you know what the average life expectancy for a citizen of Outpost 57 is?" Big Fletcher inquired in his light Terran accent. 


"Nope." Little Fletcher said simply. 

"45 hours." 

"Oh, that's higher than I'd have thought." 

Little Fletcher pulled a Lho-stick from his baggy trouser pocket, lighting it before taking a drawn-out puff of the rolled paper tube. 

"So, here in this scum-ridden backwash, surrounded by  gangsters, murders, rapists, and general lowlifes', we're safer than we were in the Emperor's army." 

"Probably less likely to get eaten by Tyranids." Little Fletcher said nonchalantly.

"What does that tell us, my steroid-guzzling friend?" Big Fletcher inquired. 

"Dunno." 

"It tells us that the universe is a grim fucking place." 

"Sounds about right." 

The Fletcher's were ex-Imperial Guard cannon fodder, turned guns-for-hire, who had accompanied Nisvillia Blissponis  on her relocation from Port Wander to Outpost 57. 

They were big and small respectively, dressed in a motley combination of casual attire and second-hand body armour. 

Nisvillia, by contrast, was an obese young ginger, with a freckle-splattered  face and an arse so wide she took up one side of the booth the group were currently sat in. She wore her usual relaxed yet stylish getup, and her fiery red hair was tied into duel pigtails. 

"Did you figure this out before or after we passed the gang of street urchins quite literary eating our of the rubbish tip?" Big Fletcher frowned. 

"Somewhere between that and the twelve year-old hooker ." 

"Its only grim if you acknowledge it," Nisvillia said helpfully, between mouthfuls of of her medium-rare Grox steak, cooked tenderly in Amasec "Otherwise its just background noise." 

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a thousand is a statistic."  Big Fletcher declared rather profoundly. 

"Bet the bloke who said that didn't have many friends." 

"Well, we just heard Big  say it, so that's probably accurate." Nisvillia smirked. 

The trio sat in the [i]Broken Exhaust[/i], a fairly ritzy, by Outpost 57 standards, bar in the more up-market district of the space station. It was still early hours, and they had a long day ahead of them, so it was unsurprising that more than a few empty glasses littered the table infront of them. 

"Did you hear anything back about the Anniston job?" Nisvillia asked Big Fletcher after a slight pause, licking some grease off of her dark lips. 

"All taken care of," he said with a curt nod "there's one less Squat on Outpost 57." 

"That's the bosses lunch paid for, then." Little Fletcher grinned. 

Big Fletcher took another puff from his Lho-stick, a thread-like trail of smoke slinking back over his shoulder.

"Here's to another day of bloody murder in this grim fucking universe, then." 

Nisvillia couldn't help but smile "Wouldn't  have it any other way."