USF Progenitor & Crew: Adventures in Cosmos 01

AoT1P: [#49] Alpha Centauri

Santos was an Irish, white man, tall in height, on the thin side, though with a belly. He had dirty-blonde hair, semi-long like a rockin' headbanger, and sported a backwards-facing ball cap with a USF alternative engineer's emblem on it. Peter was a white man shorter in stature who looked nimble, stout, and old. He had dirty grey and brunette hair that was slightly longer in length than Santos's hair, and wore an astro-engineer's outfit that looked like Santos's, with the exception of the various stickers and buttons that decorated his suit. William 'Santos' Davies and Peter 'Mr. Mokes' Berger were good friends and colleagues, also working together on the same ship with a crew of six other men, all of who worked in delivering materials between stations, working on contracts for the USF though not exclusively. Mr. Mokes and Santos were side by side at a work bench in their ship's engineering bay overseeing robotics and logistics. The ship was docked at a space station made for trade federations and affiliates, as well as construction businesses and robotics engineering start-up projects and meetups. They were working on remote control devices and repairing the drones connected to the service operations that would deliver the items from their ship into the station's storage units. Santos was heavily beaming in on repairing his drone, having pulled up the cables and microchips from inside of its hard shell. Mr. Mokes was barely making progress on his drone, watching Santos work, trying to figure out how he could disassemble and surgically find the problems in each robot so quickly.
"Now, they won't go back home to their wives because all the guys they know are f$ckin' 'um are outnumbered by the women that pop up. It's like karma is just constantly having a field day with these guys. They're very lucky for that," said Santos.
Mr. Mokes grew curious. He wondered, "Is that really all of them nowadays? That's how they are in there? I figured they would've changed their behaviors by now!"
Santos replied, "That's exactly how they are in the Army, the Air Force, Space Force, Marines... don't even get me started about the Marines. I had a stupid thing happen between me and them. I was about to sleep with this really hot broad from New York City while I was down in Kentucky visiting an old friend of mine, and these Marines showed up to hit the spot I was at with their normal bullsh$t that they do, clouding the environment with their smoke--"
"Yeah?" Mr. Mokes replied, looking at Santos with a look of suspicion. "Marines in Kentucky, alright."
Santos continued, "Yeah, and so, these a$$holes took my broad from me with a few lines and drinks, she left my side to go sit with them, and they stole her from me just like that. Man, I was so sour, I wanted to get even with these pr$cks and send them to baked Alaska with no remorse." He made Mr. Mokes laugh. Santos added more to the story, "She was easily going my way back to my place, thank you very much, and no thanks to those a$$holes. They're-- they're about as good as dogs these guys, exactly what you'd expect--"
"Yeah? And then what happened?" Mr. Mokes asked. "We all know they do that, and if it's like that nowadays, too, I'm happy to be up here without all that going on, with you."
"Right? Then, after I lost her, her name was Isa-Isabelle. Yeah. I went and bought a few more drinks from the convenience store for when I would go home that evening, and I spent around thirty bucks on myself after spending sixty on her, all in hard liquor that she tanked like it was water... all for her to cheat me, to be fair, dumb idiot that I am. Right? So, then I walked over to the parking lot and got lucky, found the marines that walked in to grab her away from me... doing something, grabbing something from their car, and I cracked! I couldn't take it anymore, had just gotten fired from a brand new job I got doing people's houses, making good money, all for stupid reasons involving someone else. I was so mad, I was mad at them, the chick, Isabelle, and the world, and so I tried slashing their tires with the uhh--broken bottle, I guess. Didn't work, so I had a little pocket knife and javelin, jabbed it into their tires and blew out the left and right side. They were f$cked going back home, that's for sure, but I didn't wait around, instead, I took flight and went back home, called up my other broad," Santos ranted on, smiling near the end of the story.
"Yeah? So, you already--you had two of them? How were you even scoring any women at all?" Mr. Mokes said, prodding a jab.
"Well, you know, pr$ck you, she was there, black Mexican chick that was down and out... like me, got stood up, I picked her up, and I gave her a good evening for the troubles. We both got what we wanted, and the marines drove off with some stupid b$tch on their busted tires. You know, pretty little Mustang. I'm not a nasty guy, I want everything to go nicely for me, just like you Mr. Mokes, only thing is, you know how papa rolls like a rolling stone," Santos went on and continued, "I roll with it, roll with it, roll with it, and keep getting work. No flat tires here! You know? It's all for more work, I don't do nothing else anymore, God bless the USF and what they've done for me, because now I don't even gotta look."
"God bless the USF! That has a nice ring to it!" Mr. Mokes said.
Santos was with it, telling Mr. Mokes, "Now, you know I wouldn't do that to ya, you know. I love and I keep what I love, and that's good for me, good enough for us. Doesn't matter to me if past is past, just as long--just as long as you stay good with me and keep right. You know?"
Mr. Mokes smiled at Santos, knowing he picked up what he put down. He moved toward the right side of the workbench and grabbed another piece of the station to work on. He set it down neatly on the desktop and asked Santos, "How do you get yourself one of these asteroid girls?"
Santos said, "Well, you don't. You don't know what's inside that, so you leave it to me, since I know how to grease 'um up. You get to fly this f$ckin' ship we got, and that's fair, you take lead there! I stick to the stations if I want someone or something to see, so I don't get screwed over anymore, you know, by the asteroid miners. You think the Marines were bad? You gotta see some of the other workers, like the stardock and starport workers and the construction engineers? They'll cut right in and take your lady while you're mid-stride with her, like a bunch of bullies, and you gotta take it up the a$$ or leave, because they're greedy a$$ motherf$ckers. And the lady miners are so hot, but they really fight you on anything, they'll dig your grave while you stand there watching," Santos explained to Mr. Mokes. Mr. Mokes got mildly uncomfortable about the subject changing to the stardock, starport, and construction workers.
"Oh, wow, no different from the rest of my travels anywhere else. You try to get ahead and they pull you under! That's how it was back at home!" Mr. Mokes reinforced, speaking defensively. Santos nodded in agreement and gave him an uhuh! Mr. Mokes told Santos, "Dude, I'm telling you, these station workers and the miners aren't as bad as they were back at home! They were awful! I couldn't stand how bad they were toward me, toward everyone, as though they hated everyone else who wasn't in their little crews! And they would be yelling at me from their little crews, only a few dudes, making trouble. I didn't want any trouble, I was just there to do my work! And they thought I was aaalways on crack, it was bad!"
"Yeah, well, that's what it was like dealing with the military, too. They made everything look like it was all going okay, and then you find out that they were stealing your chick behind your back, and pressuring people into taking your land, your possessions, securing their own selves. They were theeee most selfish motherf$ckers I had ever known. The normal day-job workers were alright, bullies though, in comparison to those Marine and Army motherf$ckers, I'm telling ya," explained Santos in more detail. He gave Mr. Mokes a comfort he was rarely able to receive from people, and that's what made him appreciate their duo.
Mr. Mokes kept on with the conversation, "Oh, those Army guys were real bullsh$tters, let me tell you. Them and these guys I knew at an old skate park used to get into it at the base skate park, and I would just be listening to them go back and forth arguing about who was more superior in their health. The Army guys were all talk in comparison to the Marines, but all the base rats, you know, the littles, they were all--always trying sooo hard to do better than everyone else. At least at my old home town skate park, the kids there were able to get along with each other, you know?"
"I know... only that they're all bullsh$ttin' if you're not getting any pay. Easily, they made that clear, because I didn't make a dime from 'um. So, f$ck these military motherf$ckers, and I just say I'm doing contract work for the government, because that's what I'm doing. Go and tell the station people all of that, for you, you'll get something," ranted then directed Santos.
"Okay, and now what I do with these hunking piece of machinery? What piece is this?" Asked Mr. Mokes, pulling up what looked like a robotic arm that was connected to a claw pincher device. "It looks like the arm... for this robot. Right?"
Santos said, "This piece here is what holds together the shaft and the balls."
"Oh, really?" Mr. Mokes played along, chuckling.
"Well, it connects to a long rod piece, acting as a sheath that slides down above the ball looking pieces you see sittin' there in some of the corridors, and that's how they connect the oxygen tanks underneath it then slide 'um on out when it's time to replace 'um after they've run out. Old tech, but it works," Santos explained in his usual energetic run-on way without conveying his dirty sarcasm in too obvious a way.
Santos continued, "No, you dolt, it's simple robot stuff, I'm just messing with you. What are you doing in the engineering bay, anyway? What are we doing here, pal? You gonna fix everything yourself? After this, we're going back to delivery duties. You good with that?"
"Well, now, I guess that's the freedom that the USF gave us. That's great! So, we can leave all these here? Why did you unpackage these other things, then? If we're not going to do anything with all of this--?" Mr. Mokes said anxiously.
Santos said hastily, "We're taking the boxes with us to place everything we need to deliver inside, because the f$ckers in charge threw all of it everywhere on top of the delivery shelves, and our ship looks like it's a mutt on the inside as it is on the outside. Pisses me off when they do that, not organizing the sh$t cleanly, leaving everything all scattered about here and there. You figure if Amazon could do it, so would they, but you know monkeys without wrenches, they wrap around the rods quicker than they'd pay attention to keeping a clear roadway."
"Well, these corporations aren't always being watched the same way. USF and corporations, I noticed, is like... they're like cracks in the sidewalk, where the grass grows wherever it can," Mr. Mokes told Santos, pushing the boxes up onto the conveyor dolly.
"Hey, what the f$ck are you doing, numbskull?" Asked Santos.
Mr. Mokes paused what he was doing and stared at Santos blankly with his mouth half agape. His eyes widened and he said, "I thought you told me that we were delivering the items."
"No, no, no, Mokes, no. You listen well, but not well enough, I told you we're going to deliver these robots back to the storage room and prop them up once we're done evaluating and reassembling them, and that's after we get all these new parts out of their packages. You like working with packages, right? Tear those up over there and give me the parts over here so I can look them over," Santos directed to Mr. Mokes with fierce speed in his speech.
Santos kept on, "Hey, Mr. Mokes! Peter! Peter, what are you doin'?! What are you doin'?! Get back to the cockpit and take a nap, Peter! Go take a nap while I do the work here, I'll get it done faster than the two of us combined!"
Mr. Mokes chuckled slowly, amused by Santos's rambling, charming nature. It's exactly why Mr. Mokes enjoyed cruising with Santos. Santos cranked up the volume on the music and continued working, humming along with the guitar solo of the current song, while Mr. Mokes smiled and watched Santos do his thing.