The newbies had gone from a state of awe to a state of disrespect and back twice during the duration of the trip. While I realize that the children are indeed the future and we need them or else there will be no more sentient life, I despair utterly at their annoyance. It's safe to say that I'm not exactly a family man. I don't know what to do with kids. The fact that, by the various standards of their species, my squad-mates were in fact adults has no effect on this particular feeling. I measure maturity by experience, for the most part, and nearly everyone in the flight business long-term does so as well. This works mainly because immature pilots tend not to advance in this career after a while, either because nobody will work with them or they say the wrong thing to the wrong people and cease to advance in a more permanent fashion.
"New Outward Station" is being built as I type this up. It's going to be, judging from the incomplete shell, the typical sort of enormous station that species new to interstellar travel build. This is to make up for the fact that they really don't know what they're doing when it comes to stations. More experienced species build their stations as small as possible, to cut down on maintenance coasts and to annoy freelance pilots who stop by there and have to duck to be able to navigate the halls.
Also, I'd like to take a moment of your time and yet more space in storage to complain about naming systems. While the actual name of this station probably sounds inspiring to the species that named it, and likely has all sorts of subtleties, my translator reduces it to "New Outward Station."
I would make a conservative estimate that there are around several trillion stations that share that name. I could ask the computer if I wanted to find out for sure, but it likely wouldn't know and would have to go ask the Library, this far out from civilization it would take forever and cost a ton, and I just don't care enough. The point is, nearly nobody names things originally. If the translator gives me a name for a station that ends up being "Small night-blooming flower native to the planet this station orbits found only in the high reaches of the southern hemisphere during the correct season", it's not a name I'm going to keep using but it at least shows that they gave naming it some thought. Those stations that aren't named "Outward Station" "Border Station" "Station for the Inspection of Others" and such are nearly always named after the planet they orbit, and if the species is native to that planet, that name is always "Dirt". So there are even more Dirt Stations than there are Outward Stations.
I'm not entirely blameless in this, of course. I named my ship after a planet, too, so I am, of course, flying around in a starship named Dirt. Still, my ship's name is inspiring to me, and has all sorts of subtleties!
In other news, the first part of my contract is now officially complete. The construction security team for the station has taken over responsibility for the tugs, and now the only thing I need to do is get the newbies over to Poln so they can go about doing that mercenary thing that they would not likely do very well. Oh, I know, the contract didn't say a thing about mercenaries. For all I know the people of Poln want them to congratulate them on a job well done. That, of course, is entirely unlikely. It's the middle of a war for them, and they got some newbie pilots on contract to do some dirty work. Luckily, my contract just has me getting them there. Otherwise, I don't even have to get involved. Oh, I'm sure I could command a high price if I felt like flying a few sorties, but the problem with mercenary work is that you're likely to get yourself killed. Besides, the real money is in smuggling.