Six years was a long time to get over her anger. True, the job at Silaris yards was hard, dangerous and, as was usual, severely underpaid, but it came with a nice, everyday routine and, given the shipyard orbited a ball of rock and water ice called Wolf 1061c, decent enough water rations. Even in spite of the occasional accident - hull failure trapping her in a utility closet for ten hours here, coolant leak leading to inhaling the fumes there - it’s grown on her. And now it was all gone without as much as a real reason. ‘Reassignment of excess personnel’ she huffed at the thought.

But soon, the fury was gone, replaced by bitterness. And a few more months dulled that into resignation. How she managed to keep her sanity throughout the journey was beyond her knowledge. Perhaps it was the small luxuries she enjoyed throughout the journey. A pair of skilled hands connected to a tech-savvy brain was a sought after commodity in a world where the party pushed for discarding old and buying new, and for a time, the extra work had its benefits. A bag of less-crappy candy, a pen and a few sheets of paper, once even an honest to god pear. Still, she was glad the journey was over. There was a big universe out there, and new things were just around the corner. Question was: would they be good or bad?

Astrid stood up and tripped over her bag for the twelfth time that week. Well, as far as omens go, that one was pretty clear. She put all the tools back in their respective places, hefted the bag over her shoulders and headed out. There were still two things she had to take care of. Shoving her way through the crowded corridors, she took care to avoid the guards loyal to whatever the Party said and made her way to one of the nicer canteens where her target waited. There he was, one of the guards she knew to be a little more reasonable than others. She waited for him to notice her and send his buddy around the corner before approaching, handing him a small box. “Diodes were good, some contacts came loose when you dropped it. Just soldered it back, it’s good to go.”
“What will that cost me?”
She pointed in the canteen. “I need to get in there.” Being shipped to the ass end of known space, she wanted to get one last decent meal before the dehydrated diet she thought inevitable. That, and she agreed to meet the second customer there. The guard nodded in thanks and pointed out a way around the scanner.

She picked her order from the cheaper options and quickly found her customer, taking a seat and returned the thoroughly fried headphones with an apology and layman’s description of how unfixable it was without replacing half the innards. Once her disappointed customer left, she dug into her meal, eyeing the people around her. No one stuck out much, but she noticed there was one person other than her in her field of view who sat alone, a greying gentleman with a nonetheless impressive beard. She gave the man a friendly wave when he looked up and turned to finish her meal. She was usually too busy with work to care much for people, but perhaps there’d be time for those here. After all, how busy could it be here? OR, they were on the edge of known space because the Party wanted something built here, and in that case, they would get swamped.