Halter Sprock had no sense of adventure. It had been ground down to a fine powder, just like everything else around here. He made up country western lyrics and sang away the hours as he drove the trawler, a Sanya series, model P2.
He was leaving Listening Outpost Chiral. He would have known it even if he’d been dropped in half asleep and hungover; there were crushed pieces of machinery crunching under his trawler’s treads and poking out of the regolith like cheap ceramic dandelions. They were the remains of another trawler, a model D9K. It toppled over the lip of the crater 18 months ago and no one had bothered to clean up the wreckage. Everyone just kept running it over, grinding it to dust.
Today, Halter was hauling a burnt out deep cycle battery the size of a trailer home. Maintenance Complex Rampart was 47.5 klicks away. It would take all day, plus overtime. He tidied up the mess in the cabin and pressed a button to eject the compressed garbage cube out onto the surface.
I’m leavin’ Bud Light cans in my trawler tracks
Drivin’ west through the dust in my trucker’s hat
Somethin’ hm mmm mmmm underneath the stars
Ain’t no cowboy boots never been so farrrrr
From home
Soo farrrr from home
Notes: I used an image as a writing prompt for this piece. You may be able to find the image on the artist’s ArtStation page.
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