I Get a Charge Out of You

The synthetic vision provided to Enzo by the pair of drones' optics packages juddered in his mind as a cascade of error notifications in scrolled through his field of view in livid red capitals. The drones were somewhere above him, he knew, strung together across the gap between inner and outer hulls by almost fifty feet of metal grapnel cable. He felt a tingling sensation as the charge between them dissipated, then a twinge in his wrist as the one attached to the outer hull pulled a manipulator arm free, leaving the 'paw' that it had once terminated in arc welded to the hole where the micro-meteor had punched through. The other drone was less lucky; Enzo felt a soreness around his torso as the drone on the inner hull tried - and failed - to extract its own body from the spot where it, too, had become welded in place.
"The dockmaster isn't going to be happy with that." Lanae hadn't spoken during the operation out of what Enzo assumed was a fear that she would be a distraction. "We'll have to account for the drone armor and manipulator later, I suppose."
Enzo grinned. "Yeah... but, if it holds, at least he'll be alive to complain about it?"
"How did you know that would work?" Lanae asked. "You couldn't have used one of the patches?"
"Too much debris to maneuver one in there without the risk of puncture, which would just put us back in the same predicament. Also, all four of the inner drones' manipulators would still be fused there when they made contact with the edges of the patch, assuming we had one large enough to cover that gash."
"Why do you assume that?"
Again, Enzo pointed inefficaciously from his control couch. He wondered if she could actually tap into his teleoperation feed or if she was just relying on external cameras, in which case him gesturing towards something in his vision wouldn't mean much to her. "That stream of blue light means particle radiation, yeah? Specifically, charged particles? Those are usually deflected by the ship's magnetic field or drawn away as part of the drive's ramscoop cycle, but they're impinging on the hull now. That would impart a tremendous static electric charge on the outer hull - probably positive, because the forward laser banks strip away electrons. When I closed the circuit between them with the tow cable, the charge would be eager to balance out. The current generated would be incredible, perhaps enough to weld metal together. So I thought, maybe I could get physics to work in my favor for once and use some metal to hand to plug the holes?"
Lanae didn't say anything for a moment, perhaps immersed in consideration. "And you didn't use some of the broken conduit sections for this?"
"No," Enzo replied to her admittedly perfectly valid question. "That would work for the outer hole because it's small, but hunting down a big enough piece to plug that huge crater in the inner hull layer would take time - maybe time the folks in the sphere section don't have. Look, do you think it will hold or not?"
"Yes," she said, "I won't argue with success."
Enzo nodded, examining his work with the still somewhat scrambled multispectral scope feed from the drone that could still move about. "Those should hold until we get some people down here to effect more permanent repairs," he agreed, "if the whole mission isn't just screwed anyways, that is." He started unstrapping from the control couch and switching back to his suit's emergency oxygen cannister.
"Wait, where are you going?" Lanae asked. "You're not just going to leave me here to take care of the rest, are you?"
"No," Enzo replied, heading for the door leading to the passageway that would take him into the sphere section. "I'm leaving because I need to get to where I can get line-of-sight to the CIC to take new order. Don't you worry, one of us will be around later to clean up this mess."
"When?"
It was a valid question, and one that Enzo didn't have an answer for. He looked back at the speaker, then at the readout in the corner of his vision where his dwindling reserve oxygen level was displayed. "I'll get back to you on that..."