Dav tightened his grip on the big monkey wrench, the gloves of his vac-suit creating a magnetic grip on the tool as planned. Besides the mag-grips in the gloves and the air-cycling system of the suit, everything else was currently toast – including the EMA-pistol that was holstered in Dav’s flight vest when he first stole the ship. The handheld weapon that accelerated a small dart to hypersonic speeds, that was capable of tearing through two walls or five men before losing speed and being lodged in something was also fried. The poor little computer that controlled the magnetic acceleration rail inside the gun was dead to rights.

Tractor beams worked on a very precise combination of gravitational manipulation and magnetic locking – essentially, they created a magnetic corridor through which an object “fell” into the beam. Overloaded, this fried everything electrical or electronic on the object being pulled. It also kind of crumpled it, which is why Dav’s poor little bomber was making very bad creaky noises.

Only the vac-suit was rated to survive this kind of radiation, since it was supposed to keep a spaceman alive for at least two hours once a breach has occurred – and since a breached warship usually spilled all sorts of dangerous and usually radioactive stuff, those suits also doubled as hazmat suits – which meant that you could save on costs and just use the one suit.

They weren’t good for long though, which meant that if his suit ran out of juice or air, and the ship that was currently hauling him in didn’t have those either, he was probably dead.

All the while, the titanic ship outside his canopy was growing larger and larger, bigger than most metropolitan-class space-stations Dav had visited; it’s belly had opened up a massive hatch, at least half a kilometer wide. Much less his 30-meter bomber, a 100-meter long corvette or even a smaller destroyer or frigate could squeeze through no problem. It was amazing, but as Dav got closer, he couldn’t help but get the feeling that the feel of the ship was odd. It’s features seemed off in a way he couldn’t put his finger on. The hatch he was being pulled through was bent somehow, and didn’t seem to be fully open – as ridiculous as that statement was about a hatch bigger than some cruisers.

As his Ship passed below the titan’s countless manipulators, it felt like he flying inside a ship graveyard – the grasping arm-structures like outreaching dead hands.

Finally, his vessel was pulled into the cavernous “Hangar” of the titan. As it passed the entrance, the massive portal began closing, and soon clunked closed. Dav could feel the vibration somehow despite the lack of atmosphere.

Dav’s ship was gently deposited on the surface of what seemed to be the flight deck of this vessel. The hangar was pitch black, the lights of his vac-suit shooting beams of light that barely penetrated the dark. At least those still worked.

Seeing no point in delaying, Dav popped the canopy emergency release. The blast-bolts in the canopy seal detonated, cracking the seal and letting the air in his bomber out with a hiss. Unfortunately, the mechanism was compromised, as the canopy was only half-open – a few whacks with the wrench and that was “fixed”.

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Dav immediately noticed that the canopy, now sent flying, was taking it’s sweet time falling back down. It seemed that gravity on board was at the very most 30% of Terran norm, a standard one gee. Leaping down, he set down gently on the flight deck, which seemed to be some sort of metal. His suit’s mag-boots immediately locked to it, which explained why his ship was so stable. It was magnetized to the floor!

And so, there he was – Alone, limited air, no weapons or supplies, in the middle of the nowhere-est of nowheres. The stuff of adventures, the very essence of all those adventure Holo-vids and novels he’d read to pass the time – all along commenting to himself how he’d do better.

Dav collapsed to his knees, stifling a panic attack. His forehead was coated in cold sweat and the abrupt motion made the bile of his stomach rise to his mouth. At the very least the type-13 rations would make sure he couldn’t physically soil himself for the next 3 days. Taking a minute to calm his nerves, he took a sip from the suit’s precious water reserves and got to his feet once more.

As he did, Dav came face to face with massive humanoid figure, matte black. It was aiming a single, man-sized arm at him. At the very end of that arm was a long pipe with a metal cage at its end. Knowing a gun barrel when he saw one, Dav slowly put down the wrench and got back to his knees.

This just wasn’t his day.

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Apparently the universal gesture of submission to one’s captor was clear to the black giant.

It holstered its long metal weapon (somehow, Dav still managed to chuckle at this despite himself) and produced a rectangular plate from its back with one of its arms. The plate was placed on the floor and began floating. The giant lifted Dav by his back and placed him of the plate, which bobbed a bit before deploying some clear barrier around the spaceman.

With Dav bagged and tagged, the black giant stomped silently back into a hallway, its haul quietly floating behind it.

After a few minutes, Dav couldn’t take it anymore and tried turning on his suit’s external speakers.

“Who are you? Where are we? Where are you taking me?”

But either the atmosphere was too thin for sound to transmit or the creature didn’t care, because it didn’t react at all.

After a few minutes, Dav noticed his throat was dry, his suit lost 10% of its battery from the speaker use and that his efforts were useless, so he made use of his remaining time more effectively and began crying to himself and apologizing to his mother for being an idiot and dying in the middle of space and not visiting her more.

He’d joined in with the fleet about five years ago and was a damn good pilot, survived his share of combat orbital missions and even crashed twice in enemy territory and lived to tell the tale, but he still got vid-calls from his parents that featured his teary-eyed mother telling him how much he made her worry sick for not replying immediately to her last message. She’d gotten a program installed on her com terminal that let her calculate how much time it took her ungrateful son to get the messages from his worried mother, and figure out when the lout was ignoring her in favor of risking his life in that gods-awful ‘navy’ of his.

Of course, she also disapproved of his relationships with some of the less-than-nice ladies from those adult establishments on the stations and planets where his combat carrier group stopped to resupply and get some R&R, but so did his bank account – which was the original reason why he got the stupid idea to jack the damn reactor to begin with.

As he was thinking about that redhead from the last stop and how much he’d love to die in her arms instead of the massive black giant thing in front of him, a hatch opened on the end of the corridor they were walking down, and a bright light shined from the opening.

Dav’s eyes, used to the dark, immediately got blinded – apparently the light filter of the helmet was also busted.

The black giant marched him right through the bright doorway.