Ambition
Copyright© 2020 by Yob
Chapter 2: Homeworld
This isn’t much of a home but I can’t afford anything else. A chair with a desk that sinks when I pull down the fold up bed.
Many of my class of pilots live in exact copy cubicles as mine, in Bachelor Pilots Quarters at the few spaceports scattered around the globe. Joe and I share this one. In and out. One of us is always out, piloting Holy Cow. There is a finite number of BPQ cubicles and a lengthy wait list to rent one. Joe rents this one and as a benefit of being his employer, I’m allowed to use it when Joe isn’t, roommates in passing.
Nearly every coin Holy Cow earns goes for ship expenses.
After fuel costs, replacement heat-shield tiles, rebuilding telescoping rotor segments, paying a salary for my alter-pilot Joe Boueff, costs of port commissions and required inspections fees, then all the income left goes for the hefty quarterly payments on Holy Cow’s purchase lien.
I eat out of dumpsters.
Not disgusting garbage, pizza crusts and plate scrapings, nothing like that. Discarded space provisions. The asteroid-tugs are gone for many months at a time, sometimes almost a year. When they depart on a new voyage, they dump any remaining old food stuffs and re-provision with all new. I scavenge the old packs. There are no expiration dates. It’s only in an excess of caution they were replaced.
It was while dumpster diving, I met our girlfriend, Sue Lee. Joe’s and mine. Girlfriend. Joe and I share nearly everything except toothbrushes and surfer trunks. The sprayed on skin-suits we wear in space don’t have pockets. Surfer trunks have capacious cargo pockets with velcro flaps to close them. The drawstring waist cord ends are also handy for tying onto things you want tethered on your lap and not drifting around. Like a barf bag or a three ring binder with perforated skin mags clipped inside. We wear surfer trunks on top of and in addition to the skin-suits. It’s practically a spacer’s uniform now days.
While I was in a dumpster organizing my salvaged meals into most and least preferred, because I only have two arms for carrying, Sue Lee vaulted in on top of me. My first response was to protect myself from whatever vicious beast just attacked me. Feral dog perhaps. Intent on keeping clear of it’s jaws, I grabbed it by the fur on the scruff of the neck and held it’s head away at arm’s length. Took me a minute to recognize I had gripped a girl by her greasy ponytail. A kicking, clawing, scratching girl, screeching foul names at me. Might even be cute underneath the grime and tattered rags she wears. She calmed down, became still and quiet at sight of the big fist I threatened her with, cocking my arm.
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