Born To Be Wild

dberstories (56)in #story • 6 years ago

Get your motor runnin. Head out on the highway!

"You see it?"

"I see it."

Lookin for adventure, and whatever comes our way!

"Engaging stabilizers."

"Give her some spin, you're off."

"I got this, baby."

"Baby? What millenium is it?"

"Watch this."

I like smoke and lightning, Heavy metal thunder!

"Contact in five, four, three..."

"You're off mark."

"...two, one..."

"Dirk, you're off mark!"

Born to be wild!

Derek "Dirk the Jerk" Janson pulled the stabilizer stick all the way to the right, kicking the port air jets to max thrust and sending the junk freighter "HDDVD" into a hard clockwise spin.

Jen Lane, new and presently regretful co-pilot of the jallopy junk freighter HDDVD managed cut off her frightened yell into a yelp as she flew out of her chair and was pinned to the port wall.

The edges of the collection port spun and lined up with the payload an instant before contact, allowing the old satellite to smoothly enter the bow docking bay and then clatter against the portside wall as the HDDVD kept on spinning.

"...contact."

"You're fucking crazy!"

"Yeah baby!"

"Baby? Go fuck yourself!"

Dirk engaged the starboard thrusters and the HDDVD's spin corrected, suddenly unpinning Jen from the port wall where the spin had unexpectedly stuck her. She took her seat again and this time buckled up.

Born to be wild!

Thirty minutes later they both stood in the bow docking bay wearing thin pressure suits. Their magnetic boots engaged and disengaged on the steel floor with loud clanks.

"Let's see what we got here." Dirk pulled a high intensity spot light off the wall. It weighed nearly one hundred pounds, but he hefted it easily in micro gravity and switched it on.

A super bright beam of light pierced the near absolute darkness of the sealed docking bay. Dirk widened the beam until the blazing white circle dimmed, but covered the entire piece of orbital junk they'd collected.

Jen squinted against the new brightness. "Really? You don't have bay lights?"

Dirk looked around for a place to affix the spot. "Sorry babe, this isn't the Enterprise."

Jen spun around angrily, as fast as magnetic boots let you do that sort of thing. It was not very fast. "I don't know what that is! But if you call me babe, or baby, or honey, or anything other than Co-pilot again, I'm gonna toss you out an airlock."

Dirk didn't seem to notice the threat and velcroed the spotlight to the wall. Then be clomped around to face Jen. "Co-pilot?"

Jen muttered an exasperated curse and clanked over to the catch. "Asshole."

Dirk shrugged and looked over at the hunk of abandoned space metal."No solar panels, fuel cell?"

"Maybe." Jen placed her right palm on the surface of the large central cylinder and fed the audio signal it collected to her helmet speaker. A distinct electronic whir could be heard. "She's still running."

Space flotsam came in countless shapes and sizes - but this was big. Not accounting for some outcroppings of broken metal on the surface, the thing was easily 50 meters long and 40 wide. A big ole cylinder floating through low earth orbit.

Dirk could hardly contain himself. He looked all over it for an identifier, but the surface was completely debrided. "This thing is pretty old. Never seen anything like it in low-Earth."

Jen walked the length of the cylinder and found nothing beside some impact damage near what she was considering the top of the cylinder. It was a dent about a foot wide and a few inches deep.

With a silent neural command she turned on the black light on her left wrist and started back the way she came, scanning with her arm outstretched for some kind of hint. She got about ten feet and stopped cold. "Dirk."

Dirk was running a series of EM scans and frowning at the results. "It's mildly radioactive." The scan showed seven distinct sources of radiation - one at one end of the cylinder, and then six individual sources arranged in a ring inside it. "Maybe fusion, but the arrangement is strange."

"I doubt it."

"It's a little old I guess."

Jen gave a light whistle. "More than a little - you've got to see this."

Dirk took a step towards the sattelite, then lifted his right heel up and attached it to the satellite cylinder itself. Step by metallic step he walked over to Jen, first parallel to the bay floor facing the ceiling, then perpendicular, and then parallel again, face down, before re-orienting, feet flat on the "ground."

Jen's blacklight cast a faint circle on the side of the steel cylinder. In the upper left hand quadrant of that circle, two symbols glowed neon. A five pointed star, and a hammer crossed over a sickle.

"Is that what i think it is?" Jen asked.

Dirk's grin melted away. "Jesus fucking christ."

Jen stepped away from the centuries old satellite, but then almost laughed at herself. If this was what they thought it was, a couple of feet would make about as much difference as a lemon in a cyclone. Jen cleared her throat nervously. "We should jettison it."

"About the only thing worse than hauling a dozen nukes," Dirk started, his hand rubbing his forehead, "is tossing them back into an unstable fucking orbit." Then he looked hard at Jen. "I may be a dickhead, but I'm not an asshole."

The distinction wasn't clear to Jen, but the gravity of the comment was. Neither of them wanted an accidental nuclear war on their hands.

In the bright flood light Dirk and Jen stood in total, awkward silence before the hulking remnants of the secret Soviet satellite of doom that shouldn't even exist. Both of them ran their various options mentally. Report the find to the Justicar and risk the whole ship being quarantined, possibly seized without recompense. Try to sell on the black market, and risk summary execution if discovered. Dump it back into orbit and risk the whole thing falling on midtown Detroit or someplace.

"Shit. Dumpster it is I guess."

"Yep."

Born to be wild!"

It had taken several hours for the HDDVD to sneak quietly past orbital command and make it to the edge of the sun's gravity well. A few hundred miles closer and they would be permanently trapped in the Sun's gravity, unable to leave with their meager engines, destined to either float interminably in a slow, decaying orbit for decades - unless they were feeling hasty, in which case they could just speed forward and vaporize themselves.

But Dirk had no intentions of being vaporized today. Alone in the cockpit, he swung the HDDVD to a stop and entered a far orbiting trajectory. Then he radioed down to Jen in the dock.

"You ready?"

Jen stood in a vacuum suit, the protective UV visor completely down. Even with the visor, once those doors opened, their proximity to the sun was going to make it very... uncomfortable. The faster they got done with this the better.

"Ready."

Born to be wild!"

"Open the bay doors."

"Copy. Doors open." The intensity of the heat was almost unbearable even inside of Jen's suit. She raised with heavy magnetic clomps towards the front of the satellite and hid in its cool shadow.

"Hold on to your panties." Dirk yelled dramatically and increased thrust to maximum on all engines, twisting the ship toward Earth out of the suns orbit.

In the dock, the satellite, all of its moorings to the interior of the docking bay having been undone, it floated speedily out the docking bay door, toward the not very distant sun. Again the sweltering heat as Jen ran back to the manual door controls.

"Dumped. Doors closed."

Dirk let out a whoop as the HDDVD sped back toward Earth. "Yee-Haw!"

Jen waited for the dock to re-pressurized and then ripped off her blazing hot helmet. "Stupid mother fuc..."