Challenge #02653-G096: Blandishments for the Bland

Anything else with CLARC?

(Sorry about the blast from the past. Slowly getting fully caught up.) -- SilverRey

[AN: Nothing to apologise for. I love that you love the old stuff enough to deliver some inspiration. Hopefully you're reading faster than a story a day ;) ]

Every fleet has its screw-ups, every force has its dead weight. They may also serve who stand and wait, but those who sit on their butts with a finger up an orifice are not doing anyone any good. When those forces had the limits of a planet, the dead weight could be expelled from the service, and given directions to the way out with a not-so-fond farewell.

In space, it's another story. Forces cannot, for ethical reasons, give the dead weight a boot out of the airlock with a livesuit and all of their stuff. When funding is tied to the numbers of bodies in the force, even the butts at rest are useful in tipping a scale somewhere. Yet those same butts cannot be allowed near anything important. Therefore, they are sent to the area of least damage.

Allegedly welcome to Transit Station Eighty-Six. If you lived here, you'd be screwed by now. It's a make-work station where the crew are pretty much permitted to do whatever they like so long as they don't interfere with the automated systems. CLARC of course, is the exception to that rule.

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