New Flash Fiction

Hutch didn’t even stumble. “Snag it with the winches.”

“The winches?”

“They’re not particularly new technology, Captain. Winches uses electrical motors to—”

“Hutch, I know what a winch is for Pete’s sake.” I watched him shrug, unsure what the problem was. “I didn’t even know we had one. Will it work?”

“How in the hell do I know, Coleman? There’s only one way to find out.”

I shrugged, and then smiled. Like most times, he had a point.

*****

“Gently, Mr. Slidel. We only need to get close.” I was worried about my helmsman – he seemed like he was letting the stress get to him.

“Winches, sir?” Slidel asked.

As if on cue, four of the crew emerged onto the deck below us from launch airlocks one, two, seven, and eight wearing old-school manned-maneuvering units. The plan was simple – they would each run a cable from the airframe retrieval system built into each airlock elevator out to a corner of the lifepod. Once the winch was activated, it would pull its share of the load down to the deck. It gave us about fifty meters to work with. It would have been nice to use the mag-grapple, but there wasn’t a receiver built into the pod. It was, after all, nominally just a cargo container. 

“They’re from an airframe retrieval system, Mr. Slidel. Imagine a damaged fighter – you might need to get it onboard without flight systems control. Running a cable to it is a crude, but effective, way to get it back. The winch sucks the cable in, pulling the fighter back into the airlock and Bob’s your uncle.”

“I show range at 150 meters, sir.” Slidel reported.