Handyman, For Sci Fi London
Written for Sci Fi London’s 48 Hr Flash Fiction competition. There was a 2,000 word maximum, along with a specified title and some dialogue. Although I used all 2000 words for the entry, I ended up with a few extra which I think read a little better. I don’t know if it’ll be included anywhere else, but for now it’s a proud member of the Pickle Jar.
***
“Still nothing. No response from the fleet.”
“We have no other choice. Hail them again.” Captain Mills repeated his previous order as he passed by the flight deck of his aging transport on yet another attempt to repair their damaged reactor. “Either we have a miracle or someone picks us up, else we’ve not gonna make it off this rock.”
The copilot, Lieutenant Sam, looked back from the panel, fear continuing to creep into his eyes. Mills never called him by his real name… hell, he couldn’t even remember it. The whole crew just called him “Sam.” The days around them had grown long; the initial surge of survival energy, pumped relentlessly through their veins upon their landing, had slowly dissipated and given way to strain and fatigue.
Their assignment had been simple enough: use a small, aging and disposable transport, the Wrentham, to map sectors of an extensive asteroid field, under the watchful gaze of their parent fleet, in preparation for a more extensive deployment. That plan had all changed when an unexpected offender tagged their power plant and sent them careening into one of the larger rocks. The tiny craft had barely popped above the noise on their scanner and didn’t stay around to explain itself, content in its random act of violence.
Their pilot, who had gone by the callsign Vegas, had gotten them onto the ground although not without losing his life in the attempt. He had done an admirable job every step of the way but the last klick had them slide to a stop across a frozen wasteland, scraping off a layer of critical components built into the fuselage of their ship along the way.
Mills scanned the horizon over Sam’s shoulder, seeing nothing but the unforgiving forest of metallic shards reaching up against an infinite black sky above. “I wish we had another choice,” he repeated himself, “I’m heading back out.”
He cinched the protective helmet across his skull, retrieved the blaze-orange tool kit from the wall and cycled through the airlock. Alone again with the empty sound of his breathing, Mills carefully descended the stairs and dropped lightly onto the ground.
Five days they had spent on the blasted rock, gathering up the bits and pieces of their shattered vessel in the hopes they could patch things up enough to get it airborne once again. Mills lumbered aft beneath the hull, checking his progress from the previous days as he went. Most of the panels lost upon landing were never again to be seen, but he had located and hauled enough back to at least reinforce and protect the life support systems. All of that was secondary to the reactor.
Their primary power generator had ruptured so no-go on the lifting-off, at least until Mills found the hole, cleaned and patched it. Unfortunately, the genius who had designed the ship had made the core externally-serviceable only, which inevitably led to the commanding officer climbing up a warped aluminum ladder in a less-than-agile suit to find and fix the damage.
That’s not to say he didn’t understand the layout of the ship. The Wrentham had not been developed for combat and the reactor was among the most robust components onboard. Coupled with that, the risk of radiological exposure of the cabin in an emergency meant that the aft quarter of the ship was completely sealed from the interior. Mills sat the toolbox down on the gritty plain and opened the top compartment containing a printed tech order for the ship.
The gloves of the one-size-fits-non environmental suit, which m have been modeled from medieval gauntlets, transformed every page turn into a tedious labor of hell. Containing his shortening temper, Mills found the page he sought, held the operation in his memory and bounded up the ladder once again. Without delay, he keyed in the series of commands on the service terminal and released the pair of safety levers.
With a sharp jolt through the frame, the fuel-drum-sized assembly released and dropped from the Wrentham’s hull, lightly sweeping to the ground by way of a system of actuators. Even before it cleared the chamber, Mills could see the whole side had been ripped apart by their undetected antagonist. Sliding back down behind it, he culled the boiling rage in his head while he concentrated on the task.
Finding the relevant passage in the T.O., Mills broke the reactor down, first removing the damaged case and then continued by assessing the internal mechanisms. He set each component aside in the order it was removed so as not to lose his place in the lengthening operation.
“Sir, still no response from the fleet. They must be considering us combat lost.” Sam’s voice came in again over the radio.
“Brilliant. Well, that just means it’s up to us to survive, doesn’t it?” Mills grumbled as he continued to work. “The second I get this operational, you are dropping the throttle and getting us out of here.” He added, using a small driver to remove the fasteners along a small damaged panel set into the side of the reactor.
Without warning, it popped outwards as if under tension and slipped through Mills’ hands, skipping out into the darkness of the alien landscape. He cursed aloud, stumbling back, at once searching for the misplaced component. Seeing nothing, Mills went back to the manual and turned the page.
Stuck in the upper margin was the warning: Caution: The injection plug is held under light spring tension. Care must be taken during removal and replacement to maintain positive control of assembly.
“Dammit all!” he growled again, “Just perfect… Small print? Who ever reads the bloody small print?” Mills turned about, scanning the horizon, already hearing Sam’s voice in his head. “Pipe down. I just lost an injector trying to clean out the core. Don’t say anything until I tell you!” He ordered and switched off the channel.
The merciless cold of the dim surrounding landscape, lit by little more than the spotlights on his head, grew ever more imposing as he scanned for the metal component. Mills had a pinprick vision into the darkness of space and methodically worked his way outward, going over every square centimeter for his prize. Why didn’t he read the instructions? Why did he let Sam wreck his concentration? Such were questions for another time. His stupidity was for later; survival was for the present.
The dark pressed in as he retreated from the Wrentham’s floodlights, still searching at every movement. Mills barely noticed the slope in the ground until his foot landed on a bit of loose ore and kicked him from his feet. Down the embankment he tumbled, picking up speed and sending more rock and debris outwards in all directions before leveling out and rolling to a stop at the bottom of a wide depression.
Mills cursed aloud again and scanned about for any sign of the injector, or for that matter, any landmark at all. Seeing nothing, he pounded his fist into the dirt, as if the pain would bring with it a change of fortune. He could crawl back, he decided, and comb every millimeter of the plain he had missed. There was still a chance of escape, he forcibly convinced himself.
He made it only minutes before he felt a presence, as if he were no longer alone. Mills’ head snapped up at the sensation and spied a figure deep in the shadow of a nearby rocky outcropping. “Who’s there?” he called out, then chastised himself before switching his radio to the emergency channel. He repeated the question.
The figure didn’t respond but slowly approached, carrying with him a silver equipment case. Mills could tell the man was wearing a federal pressure suit, although it was an older model and caked with grime from a lifetime of hard work on the fringe. The man’s face, dimly visible behind the tinted visor, was as aged as the equipment but looked to possess a steely determination, permanently branded deep behind his eyes.
“How’d you get out here?” Mills asked, “There are no colonies out this far, are there?”
“We have a small settlement on the far side of the asteroid,” the man finally stated in a rusty baritone, “We’re miners.”
Local settlements had appeared nowhere in the mission briefing and Mills took the statement with caution. He squared off, facing the older man. “Are you lost?”
“No, Captain, I am here for you.” The inflection rose on the last word, as if the figure had arrived in service of Mills and his burned-out ship. “Our ship was destroyed just as yours was. With no way to continue onward to our destination, this became our home.”
“This?”
“The asteroid field. Through our trials, we have survived. When we saw your ship become damaged on approach, I was sent to find you,” the man explained. “Your reactor was hit, correct? That’s the only thing that wouldn’t have already killed you.” He came closer and handed over the bruised aluminum case, setting it on the ground at Mills’ feet. “This is our last retrofit kit. It should allow you to repair your ship and be on your way.”
Mills’ head stormed with questions around the strange coincidence of their meeting. Reactors were standardized on ninety percent of fleet and civilian ships, but the odds of crashing on the one rock in the system holding a colony was a hair above nil. “I… I don’t know what to say. Don’t you need it?”
“No, son.” He replied, “Our facility has no use of it anymore. Take it and be on your way.” The man stepped back, watching as Mills retrieved the box.
“Can I at least get your name?” The captain asked, as his gaze flashed between the package and his strange companion. Before his eyes could return, the figure had all but vanished into the shadows of the rocks. His blood ran cold as an eerie chill fell upon his soul. Without another option, he grasped the case and scrambled back up the rocky embankment towards his damaged vessel.
The lights from Sam’s helmet were easily visible, flashing about the plain below the ship. “I told you to stay on board!” Mills shouted towards him, “Get ready to fly, I think I’ve got what we need.”
Mills ignored the pilot’s questions as he approached and set the servicing kit beside the reactor. Inside was packed a full set of injectors, radiation shields, and a finely-milled sleeve for the core which he set about replacing, this time without the disaster of losing hold of the parts. Each component fit perfectly and in minutes, he again ascended the ladder and retracted the assembly back into its proper place. He felt a rumble as it seated and roared to life and didn’t waver on the slide back to the ground.
Slamming the tool chest closed and grabbing the last of the parts, Mills sprinted to the loading ramp and cycled into their depressing hovel. This time around, the lights were working and the air was moving, for once not running off the emergency batteries. “One shot, Sam!” Mills announced as he bounded towards the flight deck, “Get us out of here or we’re not getting another chance.”
Sam needed no coercion and drove their ship hard into the inky sky, sending Mills, still on the move, sailing into the rear wall of the deck. The Captain’s skull hit hard against the bulkhead and he crumpled to the floor, oblivious of what transpired until a bright light flashed inside his eyes.
He opened them to see a pair of medics kneeling over his body, intently studying whatever trauma had been inflicted. He mumbled incoherently, feeling a brace which had been wrapped securely around his neck.
“Cap’n, you’re awake!” one exclaimed, “Lucky shot you made, enough for your man to get on a flightpath back to port.”
“We have to go back.” Mills gurgled, “There’s a colony out there. The one helped me fix the Wrentham.”
The two medics shared a curious glance before the one on the left replied. “Fleet hasn’t sent a colony this way in probably a hundred years.”
“You saw him,” the second interrupted, “The miner, right? You saw him?” Mills’ perplexed face provided the only needed response, “Must be a half-dozen patrols have mentioned him over our deployments out this way. The guy who made the first encounter looked him up and came to think he was the last of a group of settlers, living long in the well of a gravitational anomaly.”
The medic looked over his work once more, “Then again, there’s no such anomaly on the charts. Maybe you should just be thankful he found you when he did.”
