Ash Cobalt
Road Warrior
Location: Bracca
"Sorry bud. A hundred's the best I can do." The scrapper's face bore the stony resolution of someone who'd been done with the current argument some time ago.
Cobalt had been scavving long enough to know that look well, and to know it was either a hundred or nothing. If he wanted to eat tonight, he'd take the deal. Never mind that he'd fought a full-grown Dianoga to get these particular specimens. Apparently, that was the price of risking his hide. One hundred credits.
It had been some time since he'd whacked that Jedi for the Hutts, and the credits from that gig, though considerable, had long since dried up. Thankfully, no retaliation had ever emerged from it, but now, that was the least of his worries. The Hutts weren't paying out nowadays, and old Whottoo had long since gone dark, so he'd been forced to look elsewhere for his daily bread.
"Fine, frak it. Give me the credits." A bag of vaguely-salvageable junk slid across the counter one way, and a small handful of shiny credit chits sailed across in the opposite direction. It was a beautiful sight; enough for a few hot meals and a bit of fuel for his vessel. Enough to get off Bracca for good.
He didn't care for the place at all. Cobalt had long learned to hate idealogues and true believers of all types, but as fanatics went, the Mandalorians who now owned Bracca were a hell of a lot better than the alternatives. Other likely spots, like Lotho Minor or Raxus Prime, were either swallowed up by the advancing Blackwall or otherwise so close to Sith turf that it mattered little.
Of course, the faceless armored warriors and the Sith were effectively in bed with one another nowadays, if the stories were true. One big happy, incestuous family. Cobalt couldn't relate. It had always been him against the galaxy, and over time, he'd come to prefer it that way. No ties, no roots, nobody telling him what to think or do, and nothing keeping him from packing up and flying off in a hurry.
He took his money off the counter hastily, unable to keep the quiet disgust from his face and movements. This life was getting harder to sustain all the time. Less and less of the galaxy was free land, more and more of the good salvage sites were under somebody's thumb or otherwise unreachable. Every outing, he ended up having to fly just a little further out, spend just a little more time, fight just a little harder.
Eventually, his number would be up. He'd end his days hacking up chunks of his own lungs in some god-forsaken ruin or junkyard, after being just a fraction of a second too slow to move out of the way of a shot. His species seldom died in bed, and he'd almost certainly be no exception.
So be it. For tonight, he'd done more than enough thinking, and it was time to recycle some of his hard-earned credits back into Bracca's economy.
As it happened, there was a place right across the street from the salvage exchange. If success in business was all about "location, location, location", then the owner of this fine establishment was a genius. There was a constant trickle of traffic from the exchange to the bar, and Cobalt lost no time in joining it.
A few minutes later, he was hunched over a grime-encrusted bartop, holding a glass of something that looked and smelled like toxic waste. True to form, Cobalt drank it anyway. He wasn't quite able to contain a sigh of relief as he did so, feeling days of mental and physical exhaustion be washed away before the onrushing tide of low-grade liquor.
That comfort wouldn't last; he usually had to pay out the nose to get enough booze to be really affected, but for now, it took the edge off. He'd knock out a few drinks, then head back to his ship to sleep. One more successful run was something worth celebrating, however meager the payout had been.