Lieutenant Orswik carefully started the "taxi". He told his men to wait until he has made an all-systems check and only then allowed them to climb on, tether to and connect their oxygen line to the craft. Once they did, their lives were completely in the hands of Orswik.
"We're making two passes. First, we'll just assess the damage. We'll report whatever we see. Feel free to try and grab any debris in our way but say if you do. There are the beepers and butterfly-nets here. Second run, we'll do the actual repairs on whatever we can. Expect to see something ugly."
OOC:Roughly a heavily-modified version of "taxi" I'm talking about.
"Beepers" are small, hand-held radar units meant to find tools flying around in vacuum.[/spoiler]
During their first circuit, things were indeed very ugly. It appears that the O2 lines and the N2 lines ruptured. Then mixed. Then got a spark somewhere. Then exploded.
While Orswik relayed what he saw both trough is Mark I eyeball and what the thermal camera mounted on the taxi relayed to the engineers inside, his men beeped and caught whatever debris was floating around with their modified, long-pole butterfly-nets.
The laser pointers proved to be somewhat useful: it turned out that there were pockets of gas around the area, some of it apparently clinging to the hull or right in Orswik's way.
The foam-cannon proved useful, as it was designed to: the foam was a very special kind, coherent but pretty fluid, but as it froze, it became somewhat spongy and sucked up gas around it as it froze, yet did not stick to anything too hard.
The taxi had to be "stopped" several times in order to absorb the gas-pocket's in its path.
The second run was when it was decided to go and start patching up holes, but it started mostly with clearing debris and collecting freezing foam.
It was during an examination of electric cables for damage (appearently, there was concern of the outer insulators being damaged) that the incident struck. In one moment, everything seemed fine. In the next, Orswik was desperately noting that while his thermal cameras looked okay, the laser pointer's beam could be seen around the ensign inspecting the electric cables.
Orswik moved his own laser pointer around and noticed that the beam was increasingly visible around his lone ensign. He realized what was happening too late.
"Initiating a test-fire. One, two, thr..." said the ensign before Orswik could order him to stop him.
All that could be seen was some smoke coming from the cables, a yelp from the ensign and a silent, glowing fiireball so violent that it could be felt trough the tether. For a moment, little could be seen.
Then the ensign emerged, apparently jumping off in quick realization of what was about to happen. However, the blast still got him: he was scorched, twisted violently around and pushed away from the taxi to some distant star.
The fireball burned for a few moments more, giving a strange glow to the space station's hull, risen slightly and then disappeared.
Orswik ordered the ensign to do nothing and allow his tether to do the work. Orswik and the other ensigns looked with silence at the scorched ensign's tether.
The tether started to straighten up. However, all eyes moved away from either one of its anchor points to a mid-section, part that was caught in the blast. It had small holes in it and bits falling off. As the tether tightened, it stretched.
Then the tether broke and ensign, who was unresponsive, began a small voyage to stars beyond.
Orswik screamed at the ensign to let out his magnet-anchor.
Orswik was given a choice: he would start foaming up the area that just blown or aim it at the ensign, who may deploy his magnet-anchor to be caught. The magnet-anchor grabber and the foam-cannon were mounted on the same unit, so he could only do one.
He decided to do something more dangerous: he unfastened himself from the taxi and manned the foam-cannon himself. It was already looking towards the space-station, so Orswik let out a squirt. The recoil pushed Orswik closer to the taxi, allowing him to get a footing and twist the cannon towards his scorched ensign.
He waited as the madly-twisting, flinging ensign moved silently more and more away. The other ensigns shouted trough their radios for him to deploy his magnet-anchor.
There was nothing, no response. It was even possible that the ensign was dead.
Orswik however aimed and waited.
Then a miracle happened. Perhaps by accident, but the ensign pushed a small lever around his left buttocks: a long but thing chin launched out from a small pocket, ending in a ball of iron.
Orswik aimed and fired the grabber.
He missed, by a fraction but enough for the grabber to large miss.
Orswik cursed profanities in his native language as he reeled in the anchor.
He aimed and waited. The anchor was beginning to twist around the scorched ensign, making aiming slightly difficult.
Instead of madly firing before the ensign was out of range, Orswik waited and studied how the now-deploy anchor moved. Then fired again, at an apparently empty spot.
However, when the grabber got there, it grabbed the steel wire.
The other ensigns cheered.
But in zero-gravity everything moved slowly. It was still possible that the grabber would fail: it only got the steel wire, not the anchor itself. And the wire was slipping. Orswik desperately highened the connection power of the grabber, hoping to stop before the wire would detach.
Then the wire ended and before the grabber could move on to the anchor, it detached.
Orswik madly pulled the grabber's power to the maximum.
Perhaps he did so correctly or perhaps it was luck, but the grabber caught the magnet-anchor, a cone-shaped piece of magnetized steel and shown no signs of letting go.
Orswik waited until the line tightened and relaxed before he reeled the ensign in.
It turned out that the ensign was still alive inside. His limbs moved on their own accord and when Orswik began to inspect him, there was a living face behind the pexiglass of the helmet.
Orswik turned off his radio and touched helmets with the ensign, asking for suit and oxygen pressure. The ensign shouted some numbers back, although barely audible trough the helmets. It appeared that suit oxygen tank pressure was OK but the ensign had a slightly worried face when asked about suit pressure.
Some emergency patches were applied and Orswik decided that the very least, his ensign will need a new suit before work would continue.
He strapped the ensign in with a new tether, called the rest to him and foamed the burned area.
"Okay boys, that was enough for now. We're going back in."
With that, the taxi hurried back to its starting location.
And you'll have mass drivers in about four months when the DSCV Napoleon gets back. As for nuclear weaponry... well, consider yourselves lucky A) disarmament didn't go that far and B) bunker busters have been vastly improved. Insert your own base that stands a good chance of having survived, Zaune, as long as it's well away from A) oceans and B) fault lines the odds are reasonable. Nellis, maybe? They have B2s and might have nukes. Yellowstone works but only if nobody with a decent knowledge of geology says it wouldn't prevent the big explosion.
