“How far ahead of the Vesuvius are we?” Asked Frost.
“Says they should be here any minute, just like I said five minutes ago,” Answered Silver.
“Boys, boys, they'll get here when they get here,” Ashley chided.
“Unless they're not coming here at all,” Silver muttered.
“Only place to refuel along their course for at least fifteen light years,” Frost replied. “Wait, I might have something.” He checked the tactical display and focused in on a large cargo ship. “There she is, marked the Vesuvius,” he highlighted it on the main display and started activating other systems.
“I see it, thanks Frost. I'll follow our registered holding pattern until they start getting closer,” Ashley said as she watched the other ship's position on the display.
“Remember, anything we do has to happen outside of the station's regulated space, otherwise we'll have the Port Authority launching fighters on us,” Silver put in.
“Yup, that would be bad.”
Everyone on the bridge watched for several minutes as the Vesuvius slowly turned and started to gain momentum towards one of the outer pylons. She was still a couple thousand kilometres away from any significant traffic.
“Okay, report thruster problems to the station,” Ashley said as she deactivated her starboard thrusters. The ship started drifting in the general direction of the Vesuvius.
“Is that maybe a little early?” Silver asked.
“We can't wait forever. Besides, there are already a few ships headed that way,” Ashley said as she carefully faked a struggle for control while she used only partial thrusters to guide the ship in the right direction.
“She's right, and the station has dropped the ball,” Cynthia, the replacement communications officer, said with a snicker. She wasn't nearly as qualified as Burke but she did know all the basics and had some minor code cracking experience. Her previous position was near the bottom of the pile in the maintenance team, so sitting in communications was a much better job than scraping around the outside of the hull pumping divots flat, doing cleanup, welding or running cable.
She replayed the station's reply over the speakers. “ Samson, if you're in trouble, start transmitting a cautionary warning to anyone near by and fix it. We're not liable for any damage that happens outside of our space. If you want a repair team the wait time is six and a half hours.”
“Well, Captain predicted that right,” Ashley said, shaking her head. “These ports don't care about being Samaritans.”
“Here's a ship we can shadow,” Silver said, marking a small cargo hauler on the display. “They're going to pass within five kilometres.”
“Looks good,” Ashley said as she spun the ship and hit the thrusters. “Hopefully it looks like I'm piggybacking their course so we can make repairs without hitting anything.”
Finn looked at the passive scans from the Vesuvius and shook his head. “There's something wrong here. The Vesuvius ' cargo train is too massive for what it's supposed to be. This math just doesn't work unless it's mostly empty.”
Frost looked over and nodded. “You've got that right, that ship should be just under a kilometre long, not four.
“Think we should take a chance and radio Captain?”
“Nope. He sees it, if it were a problem we'd know it. Stay the course and watch those power systems.”
“Getting close, ready with the maxjack Frost?” Silver asked.
“Aye.”
“Okay, coming up on the mark, we'll only have one shot at this,” Ashley said as she brought the starboard thrusters back online. “Starting in now.”
The Samson flipped over and turned so the maxjack was pointed directly at the dorsal aft side of the Galleon, right above the linkage to their long cargo train. Ashley watched as all the Samson's engines rotated into the exact positions she needed and fired as soon as they were in line.
As Finn watched through the precision scanners the Vesuvius grew until it filled the screen in the space of three seconds.
“Too fast! Way too fast!” Silver screamed.
Ashley decelerated the rest of the way, first with manoeuvring thrusters then with everything else. “Don't get your undercarriage in a twist, contact in three, two-”
No one heard her say 'one'. Instead the sounds of a collision filled the ship and Finn watched his integrity screen turn red for the entire bottom half of the hull. A second later most of the warnings disappeared, leaving only three flashing yellow sections.
The structure of the ship vibrated hard for a second as Frost worked the controls for the maxjack then clapped his hands together. “We're locked right down onto their hull! Nice job Ash!”
“Holding on repair teams until we're clear or critical,” Finn said aloud.
“Message coming in from Vesuvius.” Cynthia declared before airing it over the bridge audio system. “-or we'll scrape you off ourselves! Again, we are transporting prisoners, nothing of value, detach or we'll scrape you off!”
“I have a reply for ye, slaver,” Frost said as he activated the plasma cutters on the maxjack and locked a second pair of crusher arms onto the ship. “Oh, this is gonna hurt.”
The main display showed beams of light from the Vesuvius's turrets miss the Samson by less than five meters. “Looks like I hit their blind spot dead on,” Ashley said with a grin.
“Yup, no way they can hit us until we detach.”
“The Vesuvius isn't broadcasting a distress signal, they obviously don't want to risk anyone seeing what they're hauling,” Cynthia reported.
“We're through their outer hull and two main supports have been cut. Time to shake 'em up,” Frost said, gesturing to Ashley.
She nodded and rotated the main engine pods so they would redirect the path of the hauler into dead space instead of station territory. “Finn, watch hull stress. This ship was made to haul cargo, so this should be fine, but no one hauls cargo with a maxjack.”
“There's reasons for that,” Frost added.
She increased the main engine thrust slowly and the hull stress didn't show any shear or abnormal strain.
“They're firing their engines, trying to overpower us.”
“Time to start digging, tell me when the power levels on that ship start dropping,” Frost said to Finn as he refocused the cutters on the maxjack and turned the power and plasma flow all the way up. He was trying to dig for critical power systems.
“Running a scan cycle on the Vesuvius.” Finn reported, he was so nervous his palms were sweating, but he focused on his job, monitoring his station and listening carefully, making sure he was aware of what was going on second by second. The ship groaned as the strain on the engine pylons increased. He checked the stress on the hull and was surprised as it was well within tolerances. The maxjack mounts were holding as well.
“We're at full power, I don't know if we can change their course.” Ashley reported. “You'd better hit something important before we cross into the station's territory.”
“Working on it,” Frost replied. The density scan in front of him, meant to show hard points and structural information on the other ship, showed him where he'd want to cut if he were looking for supports and soft parts of the hull. There wasn't much information on systems or critical components so it wasn't very helpful in that respect. “Hey Finn, best guess? I'm drillin' blind here.”
Finn leaned over to see Frost's station more clearly and looked at the diagram. It was really a picture of overlapping shadows the darker spots and lines representing more dense metals. He pondered for a moment and pointed to a very light section with several small dots. “There, you might hit some control circuitry.”
Frost aimed the plasma cutters again and turned the power levels up to full. His eyes went wide. “Well kid, you were wrong I think, but I did manage to cut straight through a compartment and decompress the section. Time to wedge it open and see what I can do.” He extended the pry arms into the large open space he had broken into and turned them on.