Lafayette Jones

 


Lafayette “Lala” Jones

Ship’s Mechanic, C.S.S. Hell’s Belle
Age: 65 (Biological 45) | Height: 6’3” | Build: Barrel-chested, heavyset
Homeworld: Mars (Olympus Mon Megacity)
Alias: Lala

Overview

Lafayette Jones is a man out of time—literally. Technically 65 years old but biologically 45, thanks to a 20-year stint in Cryo-Rehab, Lala walks through life like he’s still catching up. He’s a relic from an era when starships were bolted together with muscle and grit, not just schematics and cost projections.

Despite a soft-spoken demeanor and a preference for keeping to himself, Lala is the indispensable soul of the Hell’s Belle’s engine room. He doesn’t need diagnostic charts. Give him the hum of an ion drive, the rattle of a coolant pump, or the faintest tremor in a reactor’s pulse, and he’ll tell you what’s wrong—and how much it’ll bleed your wallet.

Early Life & The Fall

Born in the underlevels of Olympus Mon, Mars’ sprawling megacity, Lafayette grew up amidst the thrum of reactors and the hiss of vented atmospherics. His father was a factory foreman, his mother a recycler tech. Fixing things wasn’t a trade—it was survival.

At 18, he landed a solid job with Becker Aerospace, working on the T-61 passenger line. For fourteen years, Lafayette was a cog in the machine, wrenching ships into the sky and earning a living the honest way. Then the cutbacks came. Quotas tightened. People disappeared. And soon, Lala’s name was on the redundancy list.

He says he only wanted to “talk” to his supervisor. Calmly. Respectfully. But evidence suggested otherwise.

A struggle. Blood. Fibers. DNA matches. No alibi. No credits for a top-shelf lawyer. Corporate Police didn’t blink. The sentence was swift: 20 years Cryo-Rehab on the Cold Mile.

Cryo-Rehab: The Cold Mile

Cryo-Rehab isn’t prison. Not exactly. It’s cheaper.

They freeze you. Hook your brain into a Virtual Reality LAN. You live in simulated environments, “guided” by AI counselors designed to scrub your psyche clean. You relive your mistakes. Over and over. You’re encouraged to “change outcomes.” It’s rehabilitation by digital erosion.

The social component—the Yard—forces inmates to interact, negotiate, and adapt. It’s supposed to prepare you for reintegration. But for Lala, twenty years of looping through VR distortions left deeper grooves than anyone expected.

When he thawed, the world had kept spinning. Faster. Meaner. Louder.

Life After the Freeze

Lafayette drifted after his release. The jobs he’d known were gone or automated. The corporate doors stayed shut. He kept his head down. He studied every starship maintenance manual he could get his hands on, scavenged old drive cores for practice, and stayed out of trouble.

That was until Hank Lewis needed a man who could keep an old Coleman Schmidt Freightrunner in the black with chewing gum, borrowed parts, and stubborn willpower. Lafayette didn’t sign on for glory. He signed on because ships make sense. They don’t lie. They don’t judge.

Now, aboard the C.S.S. Hell’s Belle, he’s found a place where his skills still matter.

Personality & Traits

  • Quiet & Observant: Lala doesn’t waste words. He listens. He watches. He fixes.

  • Calm Under Pressure: Emergencies don’t faze him. Cryo-Rehab dulled that reflex. Machines break. You fix them.

  • Stubbornly Precise: He’ll rebuild a conduit six times until it hums just right.

  • Doesn’t Start Trouble, Doesn’t Tolerate It: He’ll walk away from most fights—but if cornered, expect efficiency, not flair.

  • Haunted by the Cold Mile: He struggles with abstract emotions and large crowds. Virtual scars don’t heal easy.

Equipment & Tools

  • Old-school Mechanics Kit: Customized tools, many self-made or salvaged.

  • Cryo-Pad: A battered tablet loaded with schematics, some dating back to his Becker Aerospace days.

  • Impact Wrench: Modified with magnetic clamps for zero-g repairs.

  • Personal Habits: Always carries a thermos of thick Martian black brew. Hates “synthetic” anything.

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