Sarah7

“What do I do?” Sarah whispered into her mouthpiece. She stood very still while the metallic spider began talking again.

“You are an intruder. Drop your weapons and surrender.” the voice toned.

“I don’t have any weapons!” she yelled. The machine seemed confused by the response.

“These drones are programmed primarily for attack. It expects you to resist so it can open fire. But it is also very old, so there’s no telling how it’s going to react.” Max said into her earpiece.

“But you said, I’m part of the crew right? How can I let it know I’m friendly?” she whispered.

“Wait. I’m accessing the ship’s file archives. Hold it. Try saying this: Defence Override. Code A37-Omega Tri Blue” Max replied.

“Defence Override! Code A - 37OmegaTriBlue!” her words ran together as her heart beat rapidly in her chest and her back felt cold against the wall.

The spider-like creature immediately lowered itself to the floor with a metallic clank, and the lights went off.

“What did I do?” she asked.

“It’s only a temporary reset. You have to get out of there! Run!” Max cried, in that strange voice of his.

Already the lights were beginning to flicker on again and the drone’s legs were twitching.

Frantically, Sarah scanned for the exit with the “S” overlay and bolted from the room. Dust flew everywhere as she staggered around a corner to a darkened hallway. Debris littered the floor. Pipes long since empty of their contents lay in disarray. Parts of the ceiling were completely missing or collapsed to the floor.

“I can’t -” she was going to say ‘see’ but somehow her earpiece and eye overlay detected the lack of light and a tiny light shined out from the top of the eyepiece to illuminate the dusty, broken hallway.

Behind her the wall exploded as an energy bolt from the awaked drone narrowly missed her and struck the far wall. Sarah screamed and ran down the hallway, jumping over broken pipes, pieces of the ceiling, and rusty boxes. Another explosion sounded behind her as she turned a sharp corner.

Her breathing came in short gasps.

“Max! Help!” she cried.

“I can detect your location from your headgear. Continue down this hallway and turn right at the end. Two doors down on the left is a weapons room. Go!”

“Weapons?” she asked but took off running as she heard the metallic *Tink* *Tink* of the drone’s feet coming down the hallway.

The next few minutes were like a nightmare. The hallways were completely dark and filled with debris. Her small light was bright enough to light the way, but Sarah kept tripping on wires or bumping into collapsed machinery that always seemed right out of her range of vision. Her collection of small cuts and bruises was quite large when she finally made it to the weapons room. The door stood ajar at a strange angle, as if a giant hand had forced the door open.

Her headlight revealed a small room with rows and rows of metallic racks. Each rack seemed to contain a different kind of weapon. Sarah was beginning to get a strange feeling - on top of the fear that was eating away slowly at her sanity - that she had seen this room before, that these weapons were not completely unfamiliar to her.

“You’re going to have to defend yourself, Sarah. I know you can do it.” Max said.

“Why? Why do you think that?” she cried.

“I can already tell. You’re a survivor. You’ve made it this far. By all rights, you should have been dead 100 years ago.” Max said flatly.

Somehow that sent a calm over Sarah’s thoughts. Methodically, she scanned the seemingly endless rows of weapons. Some were far too large for someone her size to lift, let alone use. Others were simply too decayed to be of any use. After a few more frantic moments of searching, she found a small pistol on one end of a wall that still had a dim light showing some charge was left.

The wall above her exploded with an energy blast from the drone as it entered the room. Weapons and metal flew everywhere while Sarah screamed and ducked down instinctively. Something came over her in that moment. Without thinking she vaulted backwards away from the falling debris like an acrobat, flying cleanly backwards over another rack of guns and landed in a roll that left her standing upright with her arms outstretched forward, holding the pistol.

With a cry, she pulled the trigger of the weapon and again unconsciously braced her body for the recoil. An angry bolt of energy burst from the gun and struck the drone squarely in the midsection. It recoiled with a loud burst of metallic sounding static and fired wildly around Sarah.

Deftly, she dodged the energy bolts. She launched herself toward the robotic creature with a practiced ease that a detached part of her found appalling. Again, tumbling like an acrobat, she flipped over another row of weapons and rolled forward, almost a foot away from the drone and let loose a barrage of shots that ripped into the metallic body.

In a dozen heartbeats since she had grabbed the pistol, she was now standing over the smoking ruin of the drone, panting, and her finger was still pulling the trigger over and over again even though the pistol was already completely out of charge.

Suddenly, she came back to herself somehow and she dropped the gun to the dusty floor and looked at her hands. “What? What am I doing?” she said to herself.

“What happened Sarah, are you ok? I do not detect the presence of the attack drone any longer.”

“I -” she started “I … destroyed it. I found a - a hand pistol with some charge left. And. And I somehow... attacked it.” Sarah closed her eyes and sank to the floor, oblivious to the dust she was kicking up.

“How? How did I just do that?” she said out loud, but she was talking to herself. She started when Max responded.

“It’s in your blood, Sarah.”

Her eyes snapped open. “What? What does that mean?”

“I told you, Sarah. You are a survivor.” Max replied.

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