The wrench floated weightlessly as he worked on the console, trying to get the computer to actually spark to life. These things were always breaking down, and the idiots who made these modules put them on the outside so that they couldn’t be worked on without doing an EVA.

EVAs were the worst part of the job. Not because of the concern over safety - that had been handled a long time ago by the universal tether. It was marginally more dangerous now than doing run-of-the-mill repair work on a newer model of sattelite. The problem was the suits. He didn’t have his own suit yet, so he had to use the loaners that were on hand with the company. The loaners were always in disrepair, and smelly.

He gave the panel a little smack and surprisingly the lights blinked on. DIagnostics swam across the screen as the targetting and navingation systems started up again. He waited for them to finish and then ran a couple of tests specific to the actual work order that he had. Everything seemed fine, and the fins moved to the commands from his universal remote as well, so he grabbed the wrench which was floating next to the panel and started replacing it.

He was almost back to the work ship when he saw the light flash. It was brilliant in the sky, and strangely red in it’s nature. Then the others started flashing all around him. He wondered why they all got set off for a couple seconds, looking around to see the ship that they were firing on. He quickly located a mhato cruiser that was slowly being turned to dust. In a spin now, it wasn’t going to last much longer.

A blip on the panel came up warning him that there was defensive activity in the area, and he remembered that he was in a bad place right now.