Bill Cothran stood silently in the equipment room just off of Hangar 6, where the non-integrated portions of the drilling and mining gear were stored. His blue eyes were aflame as they played over what was now his responsibility, taking in the dirt, grime, and general filth caked and smeared on the complicated hunks of machinery scattered haphazardly around the room. It was clear that the mining team for second shift had stopped caring months before their shift ended; the equipment was a wreck, and clearly hadn’t been cared for nearly as well as it should have been.

“Lazy sons’a’bitches…”

His words became a snarl, and his massive hands flexed dangerously for a moment as his iconic temper flared like gas on a bonfire. Growling in his throat, the burly miner stuck one coal-shovel paw under a nearby cart piled high with filthy tools and parts and upended it with a grunt, scattering the offending objects with a shocking clatter of metal on metal. He stood for a moment longer, reigning in his wrath, then stalked over to a worktable holding another pile of grease-caked drill parts.

[i]Can’t clean up after themselves...Can’t even make sure shit’s in workin’ order for the next crew….[/i] Bill was a hardass where work was concerned. He always had been. His father had taught him that your tools were analogous to your life; if a man couldn’t keep his gear in order, how could he expect to keep his life in order? The state of a man’s equipment could tell you the state of his finances, the state of his house, and the state of his personal life. Bill always kept his in top shape, and he expected the same from those he worked with.

Seizing a detached drill-bit about the size of a basketball, Bill hauled it up onto his shoulder with a growling grunt and stalked from the room, the 100+ lb chunk of steel settling its uncomfortable (but by no means unbearable) weight onto the meat of his shoulder, secured in place by the iron-like grip of his right arm. 

“Reece!” he roared, storming towards the good ship Loretta, his long strides eating the distance with surprising speed for a man of his age. 

“Shit-birds! Shit-birds, every one of ‘em! They didn’ clean a fuckin’ thing, half the damn gear has busted up hydraulic lines, there’s hydro-fluid every-fuckin’-where, and…”

He paused, eyes locking on Delilah, and pointed at her with the sausage-like index finger of his left hand.

“Who the fuck are you? We don’t want any ThinMints. We got shit to do, girl.”