Making money, or trying to at least

In a dinky, box like ship, that he called his, Jimmy Bolt, has been trying for the past 30 minutes to grab a cargo drum full of who knows what.

He was sure it would be worth a ton of Energy Credits, it would be the biggest score of the year!

"Come on, partner, grab the little can, eaaaasy, eaaaasy, F**K!"

And he failed to grab it, again, aaand again, chasing it at the enormous speed of 1.3 meter/second relative to the star, which is the speed of a brisk walk.

How did he manage to miss every time? Was he cursed? Did he not check the manipulators properly before going out?

"Oh crap", he says "Initiate diagnostic for Manipulator 1&2!"

A grindy, buzzing voice answers :

"Diagnostic in progress.. Please wait. Diagnostic in progress, please w-

Manipulator 1&2 operating capacity : 100%.

Attachment diagnostic:

Manipulator 1 attached device : not recognized,

Manipulator 2 attached device: not recognized.

End of File"

"Of f**king course" he rages, with the broken voice of a teenager going through puberty, "Greedy old scrooge did not have the software for the clamps".

He was angry with himself for not checking the software and rushing the diagnostics before going out. He wished he had an AI to do that for him, and help check his work.

Well, Jimmy sure as hell was not going to let this drum of unknown energy filled liquid get away from him.

He stabilized the ships rotation, drew a vector in his mind, and locked the controls. Closest debris were at least a few kilometers away, so he was fine.

He pulled up his left arm closer to his face, opened up a plastic panel on his suit, and met with a cracked screen. Soon he found a file list displayed on it.

Jimmy thus began intense scrolling

"Come on, clamps, clamps, clamps..."

HahA! Magnetic Clamps scans! Found em!

He pushed on the small screen and saw, ah, I guess you could call it a schematic, but what it really was was a colored 2D scan of a three fingered metal claw, with wiring and tubes looking like worms around the "straight" metal parts.

After quite a few minutes of staring and swearing, Jimmy finally saw the power and control cables, and where they were connected.

He'd have to do this the slow way. Initiate Nerd Mode! At least that's what the other scrap scroungers would call it.

He pushed the plastic panel closed, unlocked the speed controls, and looked at the "wristcam screens" on his Augmented Reality display.

"Ship, Input power to control port 35 on manipulator 1. 0.2 power units, standard"

"Inputting power to control port 35 on manipulator 1. 0.2 power units, standard"

And Voilà, the sodding fingers closed up.

"Name previous command 'Close hand 1'! "

After he did the same to hand #2, he created a command to close both hands at the same time, then made and 'Open hand' command for those pesky hands. Easy

He grinned "Now you're mine, creds!"

He unlocked the flight controls, matched rotation speed with his runaway treasure, which was thankfully not rolling randomly after he bumped it around for so long. After slowly, ever so slowly controlling the manipulators, the hands were finally in position around the Squirrely Blue Drum.

"Close Hands!" he barked, sweat bubbling on his brow.

The finger moved slowly around the drum. The boy was utterly focused on the display and the only sounds he could hear was his breathing and heartbeat.

"Stop Closing Hands!"he barked

"Unknown Command" The dry voice of the low grade AI answered.

"What? Nononono, huuh. Cr*p, AH! Ship! Stop Command 'Close Hands'"

A shrill beep was the only answer he got, and the finger stopped.

He looked with hope upon the display again, and suddenly "YEEEEES!" he almost cried with joy.

His third sortie in this old wreck of a ship was finally paying off, he got a Drum of unknown liquid!

He calmed down after a little while, and got the arms to secure his prize to the side of the box like ship, opened his cargo hooks on the side, and pulled the drum in there, "securely", still leaking, but at least it's not flying away.

He put the ship into a nice orbit around a kilometer-sized, high mass, hull slag asteroïd, and took a breather.

Twenty whole seconds later, he got out of his reclined seat after unstrapping himself, and, since the ship has no artificial gravity, used handholds to move around. He stopped in front of a metal cabinet, opened a panel full of metallic looking square patches, with uneven edges, selected a few of em. He then took out a handgun-looking contraption, if it was built by a mad scientist that is, wires and parts jutting out from everywhere.

After letting go of those, they floated in the rancid dry air in the cabin.

He then pushed off the cabinet, grabbed a hook in the ceiling, and went "up" in front of a hatch with "airlock" graffitied on it, on the side of it, on the ceiling, was his spacesuit.

It was only a spacesuit in the strictest sense, it looked neither protective nor did it have a jetpack for moving around in space. But he got it for free after helping his old neighbor settle in the shack next door. And it was slightly Radiation shielding, insulated, and "vaccum checked just last week!"

It did look like he had no head and a huge chest and shoulders. And the arms just came out of the front part. 'Must be a bitch to wear with gravity with how top heavy it looked', Jimmy thought

After sliding in the opened back, putting the helmet (again, no transparent faceplate, only a camera), and did the full checklist, which included checking the air tanks, power cells, mobility and the air seals, did he push off downward to the plates and gun looking implement.

Strapping the plates to his back and the gun to his thigh, he readied himself for his sortie, his EVA.

Psyching himself up thinking about his money leaking out of his hard acquired cargo, he got into the airlock, and cycled the air out with a tap on an AR screen, projected inside his faceplate, overlayed on top of his vision. In effect he didn't need a transparent faceplate, as long as his camera worked.

All that was left was to get out **there**, weld a patch on his leaky cargo, get back in, and set off to the Trash Moon.

Simple, Right?