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As the door closes, it is inexorably spun in, and you can see the drone stop in its tracks and try to scrabble for purchase on the floor, but because none of the legs are pressed – as they were in your earlier attempts with the other pocket door – the drone does not know enough to retract them and retreat, at least, not until it is too late to escape your snare. You crank the door as tightly as you dare, then you shove a crowbar into the mechanism, jamming it in place.
Pinched as it is, the drone is able to shimmy up and shimmy down the partially closed door, but it not able to do much more than that. After a moment or two of that, it starts to shake and shuffle itself again, but it is noticeably more gentle than it was during its attacks. Probably some precaution, against being made a snack for conduit worms if it ever became incapacitated.
Well, it is about to be a lot more than incapacitated. You get a second, longer crowbar, and very carefully, you reach out and grab the shaft of the spear – just to hold it even steadier, as a precaution – then you slip the bar into the bale, and fish around until you feel something solid. It has to be the main chassis of the drone. From there, you gingerly probe around until you feel something with a little bit of give. Hoping that it is just a wire connection, you press into a bit … and when whatever you were pressing into gives, the drone stops dead.
Not wanting to tempt fate, you prod it a couple of times, but it seems whatever you just did was enough to shut the thing down. Hopefully all you did was just knock a battery or a cable out of its socket. Satisfied, you pull the second crowbar out of the drone and then the first one out of the door mechanism, returning both of them to the toolbox you have been towing behind you – which embarrassingly enough looks noticeably worse for the wear after all of your fancy flying through these halls. It is still sound though – that is what matters.
You take this opportunity to consult the schematic, and after half a minute or so of puzzling out where exactly you are, you find to your surprise that your escapades through the hulk have taken you very close to the lift that you hoped would get you up the three decks to reach the bulkhead with the desalinator and the second power plant. You also glance at your master readout.
<span class="mu-g"><span class="mu-s">Suit Integrity: 100 %
Suit Charge: 61 %
Boost: 68 %
Air: 57 %
Cutting Gas: 62 %
Cutting Flux: 87 %</span></span>
That … Jesus, you are that close to half-empty on your air? How much time did you end up spending on this damned drone, anyway? Not wanting to waste time on panicking or beating yourself up, you stow the schematic away, crank open the pocket door, then grabbing hold of the spear, you punt your way down the hallway, to the bank of doors for the lifts. One of the lifts is at this floor, and thinking quickly, you poke your head inside.
