Miami Pete:

Just a little free-writing.  Hope you like it!

"The world is my oyster. My bowl of cherries runneth over and there are no pits!"

The drunken exultation was shouted over the hum of the rundown spaceport pub, annoying everyone around my friend and Capitan, Pete. Pete wasn't a bad sort really, he was just celebrating.  A little too much if you ask me but even I had to admit, he had good reason. The payoff on his latest run netted him enough profit after bribes, fuel, more bribes, crew pay, fees (basically bribes), as well as a sundry of other expenses to make some much-needed repairs to the Haul-o-caster.  Yea... Haul-o-caster.  Cheesy name, but Pete's a cheesy guy.

Crew pay, of course, is basically just me and compared to "real" spacers I work pretty cheap. Pete picked me up on Deltos IV, rescued me really, Deltos IV is, was, and always will be the worst hole in the universe, and he has never asked for anything in return. At the time I thought he was going to demand all kinds of perverse payment, and to get off Deltos I have to admit I would have done anything. But he never has.  That was ten years ago now.  I've been with Pete ever since.  Well, not BEEN WITH Pete... He still hasn't asked for THAT, but I've been working for him ever since.  He took a skinny, beaten and bruised pre-teen girl and taught her how to be crew on a freighter.  He gave me a job.  He saved my life.  If he wants to celebrate, who am I to argue?  Just wish I didn't have to carry him home.  Ah well, I may be small, but the grav on this particular spaceport is relatively low, so he shouldn't be TOO heavy.

The next morning was predictable. Me working quietly while Pete groaned a lot while holding his head. I didn't mind, I did preventive maintenance on the life support, an overhaul of the nav system, and cleared out a problem in the waste disposal.  After having lived on Deltos IV, even that last job wasn't bad.  Hell, just HAVING waste disposal was a luxury after living on Deltos.  Normally I would be doing maintenance on the engine systems too, but Pete hired one of the station crews to do a major overhaul on the engines thanks to our big haul. It amazes me just how much I've learned to do over the last ten years. When Pete found me on Deltos, I couldn't even read. If I was lucky, I might have found a spot working at one of the manufacturing sweat shops, but who am I kidding?  I probably would have eventually gotten caught by one of the flesh merchants and forced into making a living on my back. You don't have to be able to read to do that. Believe it or not, even then I was one of the lucky ones. Some of my friends had been SOLD to the flesh merchants by their own parents at a much younger age. Deltos IV is known for that sort of thing. Pete finding me and taking me off Deltos was like winning the lottery.

An easy day of maintenance for me, and a hard day of hangover for Pete later, and the next day Pete was on the lookout for our next load.  Would it be medical supplies to a desperate colony? Machine parts to an orbital factory? Envoys to another planet's government? Weapons to soldiers on a remote world fighting for freedom? The anticipation always gets to me. Pete can usually find us a load anywhere. Not always one that pays for much more than fuel/maintenance costs, but often enough that we do OK. The load that brought us here was much needed starship parts for the local militia ships. It seems they are having problems with Pirates in this sector, so they needed the ships to be in top condition. To do that, you need parts, and they wanted them quick. The Haul-o-caster sure has a funny name, but she's got some legs. Hauley (my pet name for the ship) is fast! This haul, we made the delivery in time to get a nice fat early delivery bonus, and likely some word-of-mouth advertising. The militia was impressed.

Pete's main method for finding new hauls was simple. Find a likely pub with a likely table and then lean back and sit there until a load comes to him. It's surprisingly effective, although perhaps not all that surprising since haulers like ours aren't common this far out. Most freighters ply the safer routes closer to civilization. I asked Pete about it one time, and he said that he didn't like all the rules closer in.

A few days pass and still no load. I was reduced to puttering around Hauley while Pete was out "looking for a haul" (aka, getting drunk). The maintenance was all done and the ship was in top shape if I do say so myself. My pride in the ship comes from the fact that I do nearly all the maintenance now days. At first I couldn't do any of it, but over the years that I've been flying with Pete I've learned just about every system on the ship. Before I came along, Pete was always a lazy engineer, just doing enough to get by. Not me man! I don't want to die in space because something failed for lack of maintenance! The only thing that Pete wouldn't budge on was the ship's exterior.  The outer shell of Hauley is made up of a miss-matched, sometimes primed, sometimes painted, no-two-pieces-the-same-color, menagerie of scavenged parts and whatnot. Sure it's air tight. Sure it's serviceable. We have atmospheric capabilities after all and if your heat shield isn't up to snuff you die as a fiery streak across the sky instead of making a nice calm landing that you can walk away from. So you can be dang certain it's solid. I wouldn't have it any other way. But according to Pete, pretty ships attract pirates. Guess you can't argue with that.

So the day found me INSIDE the engine. I know, I know, Pete just had the pros do a complete overhaul and let me tell you those guys know their stuff. Hauley is an odd combination of a chassis from a military cargo vessel, mated to the engines from a much larger long-haul freighter that was designed to ferry supplies out to distant colonies. The resulting ship may not carry as much as one of the larger freighters, but it can fly circles around one. The rest of the ship's systems are likewise miss-matched, but they've all been carefully integrated into the ship and work very well together. No bailing wire nor bubblegum allowed!