Tox Transit Star.
Calling it a transit star was generous. A junk-and-mining planet would have been more accurate.
The planet was divided into two starkly different halves.
One half was rich in mineral resources. The other was a dumping ground too ugly to look at.
It was a very unusual Transit Star.
The mining district still resembled a normal transit hub, with shops, inns, and lavish entertainment venues everywhere.
The junk district, meanwhile, was home to scavengers so filthy their faces were almost impossible to make out.
Derelict spaceships, spent fuel, and broken equipment formed hill after hill.
Those mountains of junk supported quite a few scavengers.
Yet right on the boundary between these two districts stood a spaceship exchange.
It straddled the mining district and the junk district.
A great many spaceships were parked inside.
Brand-new, secondhand, modified, even ones with custom paint jobs.
But every last one was the same model.
They were all Shuttler spaceships, the favorites of bounty hunters.
That popularity brought a staggering amount of money through this Transit Star every day.
When a Shuttler spaceship developed a problem, its owner had to bring it here for repairs or have technicians dispatched from here.
The main reason was that the Shuttler's core technology was not available to outsiders.
As a result, bounty hunters arrived every day to buy, modify, or repair their Shuttler spaceships.
But not one of them dared cause trouble on the planet.
The planet was jointly owned by three bounty-hunter teams rated A or above.
Lotlyn, Dimal, and a mysterious bounty hunter known only as T.
No troublemaker had ever left this Transit Star alive.
In the junk district beside the exchange, several scavengers were going about their day's work.
They sold anything useful they found to the spaceship exchange in return