Debris Park

Debris Park

Once you end up living at a graveyard of ships in a debris field, they say your life is over. That saying isn't that true, if you get lucky you end up at a good one.

I didn't choose to haul cargo, I was born into a family that did so. A space freighter these days encounters all manner of troubles on his way, piracy, federation tax patrols, crazy space cults, renegade comets, drifting cities, and they all want a piece of your cargo if not your life. That's part of the reason I ended up at Debris Park, a graveyard of ships stretching amongst the asteroid belt's calm zone, debris has gathered here so long that an entire city has been built into the biggest asteroid, Rock bottom the place where the few lucky ones get to live.

Now that you know a bit about me and where I currently live I might as well tell you my name, which can get you into trouble at several sectors were you to claim you were me. Dan, when i was a kid the other kids would call me Dan the smuggler, because I always had food in my pockets.

I stretch to you the point that my current situation is only temporary, i've got a working space suit, a smaller light corvette ship that hasn't yet completely fallen apart and i've got a space current map of the most dangerous zone in the belt, either I die or I get very lucky, i'm placing my bets on getting lucky.

Now I might need to explain to you that the best loot a spaceman on a graveyard can get his hands on is in the dangerous zones, where a sane man will never venture out to but I suspect you already  knew that. 

I had just returned from my last run to the shaken stone, a bar at Bottom's rock. I had decided to leave once the local gang had started to trash the place once more, if you stayed long in a bar fight chances were you weren't leaving in one piece, a lot of people get shot or beaten to death there and really Jenda wasn't offering freebies today, she had enough paying customers not to mention I had the map now.

Current maps are one of the hardest things to come by in a debris city, they show you the debris pathways that you're supposed to avoid when looking for salvage. Only a madman dives into a dangerous zone without one, well only a madman also dives into one with one. I had gotten the map from Old Sal, one of the oldest salvagers in Bottom's Rock. It wasn't that Sal was willing to give it up but figuring as he was already dead I had helped myself to his pockets, afterall he had been my friend.

I live in a asteroid house, the small asteroids here are attached to hyper wire that keeps them from drifting around the calm zone. Immediately as I'd removed my suit and stepped out of the airlock I was greeted by the familiar metallic voice of Sue, He's my robot housebot which I happened to salvage from one of the zone's. He's military tech but also a very good cook.

 "Did you find anything, a bush or two perhaps, or the bottom of a bottle?" Sue said.

"I got the thing that gets us out of this hole Sue, this time it's for real." I said.

"It's George i decided it today." Sue said. I have to explain when I got him I engraved his metal housing with the name Sue and been calling him that since then, alcohol had something to do with it, have to admit that much. Every day he picks a new name he likes and I keep calling him Sue.

"Listen sue I have a current map, old Sal's map he gave it to me, with this we can finally be out of here." I said.

"Sal gave it to you? That's a first"

"No, he didn't exactly give it to me"

"So you just took it?"

"You know everybody at Bottom's rock is a thief if the opportunity presents, besides he was dead what was I supposed to do?"

"You'll be letting me take a look right?"

Sue isn't a morally conflicted piece of tech, he doesn't really care for the humane morality standards, no one ever programmed him to. I took the chip, and fed him it.

"Tasty."

"Rhonda is coming here"

"Sal, you never learn. That woman is trouble"

"You know she's the only diver good enough and crazy enough to dive a danger zone, and she's got a good bottom"

"Always the optimist."

I knew Rhonda from way back, she studied diving from old Sal, just like I had, in fact that had been how we met in the first place. I didn't know how I'd break her the news, she had always liked Sal.