<div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/0/08/Mrinka_Pirate_avatar.jpg)</div><table class="bbc_table"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Character name:</strong></td><td>Harrin Ffrrit</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Location:</strong> </td><td>By the ore bins</td></tr><tr><td><strong>With:</strong> </td><td> Everyone</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Doing:</strong> </td><td> Watching the shuttle leave</td></tr></tbody></table><br/><hr/><br/>There was nearly always one. The warning siren went off on the shuttle just as the last of the inmates scrambled clear. The mechanical voice blared from the speakers. "<tt class="bbc_tt"><strong>Warning: Stand clear. Warning: Stand clear</strong></tt>" Heat washed over her, unaccustomed and almost stifling, and Harrin raised a finger in a customary salute that apparently was an insult to humans. The shuttle lifted in a cloud of steam, the roar of it's engines drowning out any conversation or cries for assistance. It was just as the shuttle was entering the cloud layer two hundred metres up that it banked sharply and something - some one - fell from it. Harrin turned away, not wanting to see someone die in such a dishonourable way. Better to resist arrest and be killed by the police than to fall to your death while begging to be allowed back into the ship that brought you to this miserable exile.<br/><br/>Except, of course, Harrin had tried resisting arrest and all it had got her was a stun gun shot and a couple of broken chest-plate bones from the beating after she was captured.<br/><br/>She looked at the crowd of newcomers who were gathered around her number two. Some pretty looking fresh meat in there, she decided, wondering which one she would take to bed tonight. "Right, lets get these containers emptied ready for first shift..." she barked. The irony of a cat barking orders was not lost on her, human culture having almost completely dominated the Mrinka.<br/><br/>The first container was packed full of duraplaz components - pit props, shoring beams, rails, spacer bars, and right at the bottom, she saw, from the inventory sheet attached to it, were the components for three new living cubes. Those would be grabbed by existing inmates anxious to get out of the stable blocks.<br/><br/>The second container held more mining components, but also the plazweld rolls they needed, components for extending the power grid, components for three new ore carts, and a crate of duraplaz tools.<br/><br/>The last container was loaded with frozen food blocks. The process of transferring everything from the shuttle's containers to the waiting ore wagons was not that arduous. The heaviest items were the food blocks - also the most difficult to handle. Everything else was made of the immensely strong but unimaginably light weight Duraplaz material. Having done her share of the backbreaking hard work of moving the full containers, Harrin now stood back and watched, supervising as the smaller and lighter inmates shifted the goods. Harrin also had a copy of the "live cargo inventory" sheet, and was checking out the newcomers who would be on her shift.<br/><br/>"You. Molova!" She growled at a small, pretty human. "Start pulling your weight or you'll not have any weight to pull". She slapped the human on the behind. A couple of the new arrivals looked to be in genuine difficulties. The one with the tail caught her eye. She moved next to the woman and checked the bioplaz sheet the inventory was printed on. "Hmm. Syndel. Ouranii? Not one I've come across. You have a problem, Ouranii? Is there something you need? You want to be special? Or do you have a genuine problem?"<br/><br/>Harrin shook her head. The woman was the only genuine non-human in the bunch. She was also taller than Harrin, something the Mrinka regarded as a threat, and thus the fur-covered shift leader needed to quickly establish her dominance over the other non-human. Her tail was lashing back and forth as she waited for the Ouranii to reply.