Another Ending

“This is the last of it?”

Watching from Eta’s hangar balcony, I had a good view of the loading operations for her freighter. There still was a sizeable stack of containers of various sizes, but the dock crew was making swift work of loading them, and more importantly, the stack was no longer being replenished with new containers from our corporate hangars.

Standing next to me, she just nodded confirmation, checking off items on her data pad. Unperturbed, I continued.

“I am not sure I fully understand - I thought you loved playing with your reactors? Why this sudden change of heart?”

She tapped a few more times on her padd, then put it down onto the balcony railing.

“Well, it wasn’t exactly sudden,” she answered after a few moments of watching the dance of crew, waldos and containers. “It has been getting stale for a while now - not the reactions as such, but the endless travels to and from Jita.” She sighed. “I wish I enjoyed trading as much as producing.”

She gave me a sideways glance. “Add to that the commute to our home system, to take care of our Corp reaction POS, and suddenly I spent most of my time moving haulers around.

”So, I thought, time to take a break. Do something else for a while.“

I could empathize with her, having been in that situation more than once myself.

”Any concrete ideas yet?“

”Sleep for a week once this stuff is moved?“ She grinned. ”Actually, I don’t know yet. Maybe I go mining for a while - I still want to build this Moros, just because - or just exploring. Maybe hook up with Heloisa for a while. As long as it’s in general closer to home, to you guys.“

A mischievous wink.

”Of course, I get might get really bored, and simply put up my towers again in our home system - war-dec risk be damned.“

”Can’t live without your daily dose of radiation, eh?“

”Yup!“

Down in the hangar, the stack of containers had magically vanished, and the crew was closing the loading hatches on the gigantic hull of the Obelisk.

”Looks like your ride is ready.“

”Mhm, hm - I better get podded up.“ She straightened up, then hesitated. ”I admit, it feels weird leaving this place after almost two years.“

”I know.“

As she still didn’t move, I waved her on. ”Go on, I’ll follow once I took care of the paperwork for terminating the office lease.

“CEO being the last woman off the station, and all that.”