Fiction "Gravity 101"

"The board was all green a couple seconds ago." Art tried to have an even tone over the comm. HQ would not be pleased over his denting their new toy. First came a thud, then came a scraping sound that was clearly metal on metal. Never a good sound in orbit. Now it was back to silence except for Angel-4.

"Full damage report!" Angel-4 demanded. That was impossible. The ship was still in motion and the debris field was drifting off in a direction away from view. It would take half an hour to properly deploy ball-bots, zero G maintenance robots, to check things out.  That was not going to happen.

"None of the aft thrusters are reporting, but they still work." Art read from the screen to his right. That same screen would be displayed in front of Angel-4 several thousand kilometres down. The thrusters are semi-autonomous and very adaptive. You have to feed them to a tree-chipper to stop them from at least trying their little transistors out to make the ship go in the correct direction. They might be dangling by their control clusters and still moving the ship accurately.

Art mumbles "Ask me if the catch is OK." He knows its coming. Salvage/Repair/Maintenance (SRM) is cut-throat and he just knows ...

"What happened to the T-3?" blares the headset. Angel-4 waists little time getting to the point.

Arte slams the manual manoeuvring controls and squawks "Turning for a better look." and then making sure the mike is off continues in an angry mumble "Show me how much you just lost us Art."

Art's mind wonders. The only reason they have people in these tugs is the unions. Things like this is why people are constantly taken out of loops all over the place. You can't get a burger made by a human. Not for years.

Then something comes in to view through the window. A lump of expensive electronics, that kind of resembles a stepped on hamburger, spins majestically ever shedding little sparkly bits. 

The thought bubble above Art's head would be full of jumbled symbols and resemble a stepped on hamburger right about now. He fidgets for controls. The one he wants isn't there. He really wants to be beamed away to an island with no outside contact and lots of coconut palms. Maybe a pineapple tree. A vision of a homemade hamburger with thick pineapple slice distracted him for a moment.

"Status!" shrieks the voice of an agitated Angel-4. Art nearly jumps out of his skin, beads of sweat lining the inside of his visor. Those things are not supposed to fog up under normal circumstances.

Art replied "Give me a minute." in a tone that spoke volumes. He only meant to shut Angel-4 up for a second to let him think, but the cat leaped from the bag. Art expected Angel-4 to come back on screaming, but only silence. Typing up the pink slip, surely.

What did this contraption do anyway?

Art tapped a couple keys and came up with a description. Normally he didn't give a tinkers damn, but now that he would be paying for evaporating lawn ornament for the rest of his career, he thought it might be nice to know.

It was a movement monitor satellite. That is, it monitored people's movements. They dotted the skies looking down and keeping tabs on the citizenry every moment. This one did not belong to the government, it was private. "Is that even legal?"he muttered to himself.

Art thought for a second, but Angel-4 clanged and interrupted his thought. "TXI-16, " Art thought it was a good sign they are using his call name. "... Art, " Crap. "We have a visual. Get all the pieces you can and prepare to hold foe inspection."

"Understood." Art's voice surprised him. He sounded like someone who still had a job. Can't even flip burgers these days.

### To be continued. Maybe.

OK, it stinks. I am not a fiction writer. I dabble and come up blank most of the time. I'm still putting it on the blog for no good reason.