>>5564339"So how do we actually get to the maintenance tubes? I couldn't find a way through when i was on Lumi's ship."
"According to Tezza, his men discovered the hatch behind a false wall in the mechanical room."
"Well..." You sigh. "I guess that means we're pushing ahead. Stay behind me, i've got the heavy armor."
"Affirmative, Captain."
SHODAN has to disengage her hardlight shield to save on energy, since her body can't actually generate that much continuously.
You however, have an antimatter bottle strapped to your back. And your suit's hardlight shield is big enough for the both of you, so it's not a problem.
SHODAN brings up the engineering crew's map of the ship, which she overlays onto your HUD, allowing you to see where you're going despite not knowing this particular ship's layout.
Which is helpful, because this ship clearly wasn't designed to be used by people.
Unlike the other drone ships you visited, this one doesn't have a waiting room or any stasis pods at all, just a lot of relatively small, winding hallways leading to a lot of seemingly dead ends.
You'd probably get turned around in here if you didn't have that map overlay.
You do occasionally come across one or three more killbots behind a closed door, but it's nothing a few well-placed shots can't handle.
That is, until you come across a blast door which blocks your entrance to the mechanical room somewhere ahead.
"...This door wasn't on the map. What's going on?" You ask.
"The enemy appears to have initiated some sort of security lockdown. Oxygen concentration has also been dropping significantly since our first encounter with them."
"You good?"
"My internal battery will last for quite a while. If need be, i can leech some energy from your suit. There is no need to worry, Captain."
"Alright. But what do we do about this?"
"I could attempt to hack the door's control panel, or we could spend some time to simply cut through. Perhaps-"
SHODAN is cut off by the sound of a second blast door slamming shut behind you.
At the same time, the blast door in front of you slides open, revealing a different kind of enemy.
"Shit! SHODAN, GET DOWN!"
The large, heavily-armored tripedal robot aims one of it's arms at you, both being weapons of some sort...
But this one in particular is clearly some kind of miniature railgun.
You immediately crouch down and angle your hardlight as much as possible, trying to get the slug to skip off of it... but when the railgun fires, along with a flash of light, you see your shield shatter instantly.
Fortunately, your heavily-armored forearm was also angled to deflect the slug upwards, which it seems to have done.
Your arm is blown down and away, and you feel the duranium frame dent inwards from the force, just slightly.
There's barely time to register the deep gash in your left forearm's armor, nor the hole the slug left in the ceiling behind you before the machine in front of you open fire again, this time with it's other arm.
