Extra Vehicular Patch Job

Taking a deep breath, Jimmy opened the airlock.

The only sounds he could hear were slight wirring from the joints of his suit, his breathing, and his heartbeat.

The oxygen mask he had inside the suit was already smelly, but Jimmy, like all newbie spacers, was making it worse sweating buckets. Good thing he was used to the smell, working with a mask since he was 10.

He suddenly shivered, and hurriedly hooked a cable from inside the airlock to the back of his suit. He'd heard of spacers who forgot to attach themselves and just died suffocating or freezing to death with no hope of making it back to their ship.

'Focus, dammit, don't make mama sad ending up a free floating popsicle'

He carrefully activated his magnetic soles and stepped out into the void. Well, void-ish, as he could see thousands of debris and assorted space junk being lit up by the red giant they were orbiting around.

He got out, and using the small ladder protruding out of his hull, turned around to change the life saving cable linking him to his airlock, to the one on the outside of the airlock.

After closing the Airlock, he slowly and clumsily made his way to the side of the ship were his bounty lay trapped, still leaking, albeit at a slower rate than before, if one were to judge based on the size of the bubbles.

He looked carefully through his camera at the drum, and winced when he realized the magnetic clamps left visible indents in the drum. However, no extra leaks were detected.

Sighing inside his mobile coffin of a suit, he made his way towards the leak.

That leak was a 1cm wide gash, with a length of a hand. The patchjob plates he brought were more than enough.

He unstrapped one from his back, slowly brung it around and pulled up the gun object up to it.

Evidently, that gun was a "multifunction laser cutter/welder". At least to Jimmy it was.

He fiddled with the controls one handed, and put the business end toward the plate. After pressing the trigger, a small red dot appeared on the plate, and widened after Jimmy unfocused the laser.

A small warning appeared in his HUD, reminding him he had to be quick, or all the power would be consumed by his tool.

He slowly changed the shape of the plate to match the curvature of the drum, as close a fit as he could make it with his self made tools.

Fifteen minutes later, he was satisfied, stopped the laser and waited for the plate to cool down before actually welding it.

The welding process took all his concentration, as he slowly went around the edges, but not daring go to slowly, because he didnt know how the liquid would interfere with the welding. Also, for something to be liquid at space temperature, what the hell was it made off? He didn't spot any markings on the drum, so he had no idea.

The plate and the drum were finally joined in unholy matrimony, and Jimmy clambered away from the drum and beheld his work. 'Heh, turned out okay I guess' he thought, strapping the tool to his left thigh again.

Clambering on top of his ship, he felt elated 'Time to get home and get paid!'.

But then, something caught his eye. His ship's High Intensity light was being reflected by the surface of something below him, just for an instant.

Grabbing a handhold of the ship's ladder, he flipped around thanks to the 0g, and looked straight below him, at the slag asteroid he was slowly orbiting.

What he saw was the pockmarked and cratered surface of the slag ball, and between two craters, a small, straight black hole. The light source implanted in the suit pauldrons shone in there, but as it had much less intensity than his ships light, and the angle wasn't perfect, he couldn't make out what was inside.

He didn't think too much of it dismissing it almost entirely from his mind. After all, that hole could be the leftovers of a plasma shot, or a slightly wierd collision. Who cares.

He flipped again and got back to the relatively safe insides his ship.

Once he got inside and cycled the airlock again, he wormed his way out of his bulky suit, and went back to his "command seat".

He still had a shiver seating into it, thinking of all the things that happened in there, after all, he got it for a few creds and some manual labor from the whorehouse in the so-called "Pleasure district". And no matter how hard he scrubbed, the leather straps still had some brown spots. A part of him even hoped it was blood.

'Time to go home I guess' he thought, eyeing his fuel levels, edging closer and closer to the litteral "point of no return", and that limit was veeery touchy, as it could be the difference between getting back to dock, and diving straight into the void, where, as everyone knows, nobody could hear anyone scream.

He was still fine, but still, creds are creds and a full tank of fuel was a pretty steep investment. Good thing his neighbor sold it to him for cheap. 'I really should ask him why he dotes on me this much. hopefully it's just because he sees himself when young looking at me. Then again what's the use for fuel when you're retired?'

Before heading off however, his curiosity got the best off him, and he maneuvered the spacecraft towards that wierd hole he found, matching velocity with the slow revolution of the slag mass.

And indeed, there was something very shiny in that hole. He got a bit closer, 5m or so away.

He extended one of his arms as far as he could get it, and saw.. Absolutely nothing. The camera didn't transmit anymore. He thought he spotted something getting on it, but he wasn't sure, could be a glitch in the software.

"Again? Ship, Diagnose Manipulator 1 for deviations"

"Diagnostic in progress, please w-, All systems for manipulator 1 nominal"

"What? How the fuck can this mess be nominal? Bloody camera, did the lense give out?"

He retracted the offending arm, and looked at it with the other manipulator. From outside, it looked like a snail doing a staring contest alone. The camera looked intact, no hanging wires or sign of damages.

"Wierd.." Jimmy was even more intrigued, and even more when the black square on the display, which was what the camera had been displaying, came back to life again.

He had a thought, and put the same manipulator in the hole again. And again, black square.

'What. Is. This. Shit.'

Curious, and as all teenagers, hoping to have found a hidden treasure, he dug a small hole on the surface of the slag ball, officially now upgraded to wierd, camera bugging asteroid using the plasma projector (Manipulator 3, by the way), and stuck a Buoy in there. It was one he assembled himself, one of the many he made working at the scrapyard, he estimated it to have enough power for 2 months, it was a silent buoy, only reacting if it detected a signal from his ship.

'Time to go home, maybe i'll make it for lunchtime tomorrow.'

He spent a good hour getting out of the trash cluster he was in, and he then programmed a long, controlled burn towards his home, the Trash Moon.

'I'm so glad Mom taught me the basics in orbital mechanics when I was a kid. Told me dad taught her. Well at least that's one thing she tells me about Dad that doesn't feel like alien fairytales'.

He had increased the range of his passive scans, up to 20 kilometers, which was absolutely nothing compared to the distance he was about to travel, which was about 328 millions kilometers, or 328 Marks. He was lucky, if he had found this scavenging spot 2 months later, it'd be at least 1.5 times the distance.

"Ship, Cruise mode" Jimmy said, strapping himself in his BDSM seat turned command seat.

At least this seat came with a round mesh-like structure, allowing Jimmy to set it so he would always be facing the acceleration.

"Acknowledged" the dry voice of the ship answered "Stowing manipulators .. Complete. Computing flight pattern according to loaded flight plan.. Complete. Please make sure every object is safely stowed, and prepare for initial burn. Awaiting final confirmation".

"Initiate Burn, see you in 8hours".

He endured the acceleration badly, as usual, used to the 0.3 G of the station. Passing out almost instantly, leaving his life to the flight program and calculations he made, and triple checked.

'I hope Mom and Betty are ok'. Jimmy thought before the emptiness inside his mind matched the void outside the safe shell of his flying steel and ceramic box.

He then took a long, well deserved "nap". Nothing on collision course with him once again, which was lucky, because at the speed he was travelling, he wouldn't even know it before he'd die vaporised by the collision. Risky for sure, but he had no choice if he wanted to get his mother away from that creep loan shark.

Waking up a good 9 hours later, he left his seat, groaning under the ever present feeling of helplessness and the pain his tortured body endured when he was passed out, crushed by the acceleration of long burns.

He floated towards an opening at the middle of his craft, opened a hatch, filled with an ungodly amount of scrap electronics, mechanical parts, metal prosthetics and other odd looking scraps. He then took out his workbench of tools from a slot on the ground. He then spend about 8 hours grinding, soldering, bending, and generaly tinkering around with the scrap, trying his hardest to make items that were either easy to sell, or that he would need.

It was soon enough time to decelerate in order to approach the Trash moon. He gritted his teeth, stored everything, drank a little bit of nourishment fluids and nutrient paste.

He locked himself in his seat, and initiated a reverse burn. Collapsing once more into oblivion after a few minutes of bone grinding pain.