Taking Space 2

Blackened Shipwreck

A giant volcano of orange and red erupted from the sun several thousand SU away and a wave of heat rippled through space slamming into the damage ship slightly tilting to the left.

"No no no nooo," Daniel gasped.

The shipwreck's shadow shifted and one of the drones shifted into direct line of sight of the sun, it's outer casing turned cheery red then the whole thing vanished leaving only black chard dust as the heat literally evaporated it.

"Ah, come on!" Dan spat.

"So much for you being a master pilot," Steven mocked.

"I like to see you do better. Controlling fifteen drones at once is hard enough without having to worry about a volatile sun. I bet you lose every last one of them."

"Fourteen, you just evaporated one remember and no I'd rather not but I bet Alf can do it better than you can."

Daniel harrumphed.

"Actually Soul Knight I don't calculate my chances at this task all that higher then Lord Maddog's. While my reaction times are indeed much faster humans have an innate ability to sense the flow of nature and subconsciously account for changes."

Daniel frowned. "Really?"

"Yes indeed," the artificial intelligence answered and brought up a new screen depicting Daniel's flight trajectory. "As you see here almost a minute ago you made a slight course deviation that at the time made no sense however if you had not done so two more drones would have been lost."

"Oh," Dan said as he glanced at the screen out of the corner of his eye. The said deviation actually happened because he had lost focus for a few seconds as he stared at the shipwreck but he wasn't about to tell Steven or Alf that.

"That's good," Steven said. "Now burn retrograde and aim up the harpoons."

"Burn what now?"

"Turn around and use the drone's main thrusters to align your orbit perfectly with the wreckage."

"He means stop and launch the harpoons," Catherine said as she walked into the giant circular command room.

"Ah," Daniel answered as he brought the drones to a stop and began to individually line up there targeting reticles of each of the drone's trying to aim for the least chard parts of the ship where the magnetic harpoons would have the greatest chance of latching onto. "You know you could have just said that."

"I did," Steven said crossing his arms.

Catherine walked out onto the curved floor and up to her station. She leaned over and flicked on a few screens and after a moment said, "Honey drones four and eight need to latch on a little closer to the other edge of the ship otherwise the center of mass won't be in the proper place when trying to pull it and the whole thing will wobble."

"Okay," Dan said as he made the adjustments. "How about this?"

"Good." She glanced over at Steven.

"All right activating the electromagnets now. Shoot."

Daniel nodded and long black strands shot away from the drones and slammed into the wreckage of the bounty hunter's ship.

Green lines of text flashed on one of Stevens screens over his workspace. "All sensors are showing solid connections start pulling away but be careful if you shift to the left or right at all we could lose all the drones and the ship."

"I know I know," Dan said nonchalantly as he activated the drones' thrusters. Very very slowly the ship started to pull away from the sun. Daniel frowned and turned the thrusters all the way up and still the ship barely crawled along behind the drones.