Quoted By:
Before you completely lose yourself to indecision, you take a deep breath and marshal your thoughts together. Speed is going to decide this, at least, more than strength. If you can’t get the damned thing closed on the drone, then it doesn’t matter how much force you have behind it, does it? More than that, you might be able to get somewhere without even completely immobilizing the drone. If the drone detects the pocket door being closed as it is passing through it, it might be enough to trigger a stop of shuffling – which would at least be a real step in the right direction. Ready as you are ever going to be, you crank the pocket door as far as it will go – almost all of the way open.
The drone holds position, softly gyrating.
It seems like you are between a rock and a hard place right now. You are probably going to need to get at least a little out into the hallway to draw the drone in, but at the same time, you are going to need to be within the room, standing at the crank to get the door closed. Really, for this to work, you basically need to be in two places at once. It is almost enough to make you wish that you had someone else with you – not that fucking chiseler Horne, of course, but someone you could depend on. Unfortunately, there really isn’t anyone. There are very few people on the <span class="mu-i">Commissioner</span> that inspire that kind of confidence, and it just so happens that none of them have an EVA cert. That you know of. And admittedly, you don’t know the rest of the wreckers very well. Perhaps that has been a mistake.
Staring at the pocket door, illuminated in the harsh lights of your suit and the harsher light of the drone’s eye, you cannot help but grimace at that thought. But you force it aside. If it is, if it isn’t – either way, you cannot do anything about it now. For good or for ill, you have to see this and probably the rest of this shift through on your own. Suddenly struck by the overwhelming urge to get this over with, you position yourself as best you can inside the room, then you set your improvised lance.
"Start of Line. Range of address, four cubits. Target of address, drone. Purpose of address, locomotion full stop and power down. Time of address, effective immediately and effective immediately. End of Line."
As soon as the drone seizes up again, you open the throttle for your boosters and punt yourself towards the drone.
But you haven’t even gotten all of the spear into the hallway – let alone yourself – when the drone snaps back into action. From stillness to full-bodied quaking, with a tempo and force that look to be enough to tear any biological body apart. Whatever confidence you had evaporates, and almost without conscious thought you decide to abort your attack. As the drone careens towards you, you pull the throttle of your suit’s boosters open again, this time in reverse, desperately trying to backburn your momentum away.
