Quoted By:
Once you have recovered and satisfied yourself, you begin the process of pulling the drone into the door frame. To that end, you address the drone once more over your radio in Primitive.
"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."
It seems however, that trick only works when the drone is not touching anything. You might have expected as much, but it was still worth trying. Still, with the drone on the other end of the spear, you are feeling pretty good about yourself – until you drag the drone into the open doorway. As soon as you have it where you want it, the drone changes its tactics again. It immediately stops all shuffling, instead it focuses exclusively on slamming itself back and forth in the doorway, doing everything it can to dislodge itself. Suddenly, you find yourself at an impasse. If you cut your boosters, and deactivate the magnets on your boots, then surely the drone is going to pull itself free from the spear and retreat back into the hallway. But you can’t reach the ratcheting crank from here.
As you watch, your stomach sinking into your boots, the pocket door begins to buckle under the onslaught, and finely shredded pieces of conduit worm – either loosened from where they were trapped in the bale or stirred up into the stripped down room – billow into the room. Alarmed, you disengage one of the boots, hoping that you are going to be able to walk yourself over to the crank, and fearing that doing so means that you are going to lose the drone.
The second the boot disengages, you are pushed <span class="mu-s">back</span>.
Jesus Christ. The drone isn’t attempting to get out – it is trying to get in. Teetering on the brink of panic, you do your best to keep walking towards the crank regardless, magnetizing and anchoring one boot at a time. But you are taking too long. By the time that you get halfway there, the drone has completely busted the door open and is pressing against you. Desperate, you decide to try to shift the thing towards the smaller hole you cut into this room instead, figuring that you might have better luck getting it stuck between two of the struts than you would getting it back in the doorway and the door closed again.
The drone is basically trying to rush you. Twice you try to shepherd the drone one step at a time – and you manage to make some progress, but the drone manages to flank you and before you know it, you are the one being walked into a corner. In a final bid to make some tangible progress, you deactivate the magnets on both of your boots, and you reengage all of your boosters, hoping to outmaneuver the drone – and for one moment, you manage to get the damned thing stopped.
But before you can do anything else, the spear slips – into the bale, and you and the drone start moving towards one another again.
