After a moment, Gestra nodded at this, vigorously. The drone swivelled in the air at the man’s side to show him it was looking at him. “Does all this sound acceptable? I mean, I could put them off completely; tell them they’re just not welcome, but it would be terribly rude, don’t you think?”
“Y-yes,” Gestra said, frowning and looking distinctly uncertain. “Rude. Suppose so. Rude. Mustn’t be rude. Probably come a long way, should think?” A smile flickered around his lips, like a small flame in a high wind.
“I think we can be pretty sure of that,” the drone said with a laugh in its voice. It clapped him gently on the back with a field.
Gestra was smiling a little more confidently as he walked into the accommodation unit’s main reception area.
The reception area was a large round room full of couches and chairs. Gestra usually paid it no attention; it was just a largish space he had to walk through on his way to and back from the airlocks which led to the warship hangars. Now he looked at each of the plumply comfortable-looking seats and sofas as though they represented some terrible threat. He felt his nervousness return. He wiped his brow as the drone stopped by a couch and indicated he might like to sit.
“Let’s have a look, shall we?” the drone said as Gestra sat. A screen appeared in the air on the far side of the room, starting as a bright dot, quickly widening to a line eight metres long then seeming to unroll so that it filled the four-metre space between floor and ceiling.
Blackness; little lights. Space. Gestra realised suddenly how long it had been since he’d seen such a view. Then, sweeping slowly into view came a long, dark grey shape, sleek, symmetrical, double-ended, reminding Gestra of the axle and hubs of a ship’s windlass.
“The Killer class Limited Offensive Unit Attitude Adjuster,” the drone said in a matter-of-fact, almost bored-sounding voice. “Not a type we have here.”
Gestra nodded. “No,” he said, then stopped to clear his throat a few times. “No pattern… patterns on it… its hull.”
“That’s right,” the drone said.
The ship was stopped now, almost filling the screen. The stars wheeled slowly behind it.
“Well, I—” the drone said, then stopped. The screen on the far side of the room flickered.
The drone’s aura field flicked off. It fell out of the air, bouncing off the seat beside Gestra and toppling heavily, lifelessly, to the floor.
Gestra stared at it. A voice like a sigh said, “… sssave yourssselfff…” then the lights dimmed, there was a buzzing noise from all around Gestra, and a tiny tendril of smoke leaked out of the top of the drone’s casing.
Gestra leapt up out of the seat, staring wildly around, then jumped up on the seat, crouching there and staring at the drone. The little wisp of smoke was dissipating. The buzzing noise faded slowly. Gestra squatted, hugging his knees with both arms and looking all about. The buzzing noise stopped; the screen collapsed to a line hanging in the air, then shrank to a dot, then winked out. After a moment, Gestra reached forward with one hand and prodded the drone’s casing with one hand. It felt warm and solid. It didn’t move.
A sequence of thuds from the far side of the room shook the air. Beyond where the screen had hung in the air, four tiny mirror spheres bloated suddenly, growing almost instantly to over three metres in diameter and hovering just above the floor. Gestra jumped off the seat and started back away from the spheres. He rubbed his hands together and glanced back at the corridor to the airlock. The mirror spheres vanished like exploding balloons to reveal complicated things like tiny space-ships, not much smaller than the mirror spheres themselves.
One of them rushed towards Gestra, who turned and ran.
He pelted down the corridor, running as fast as he could, his eyes wide, his face distorted with fear, his fists pumping.
Something rushed up behind him, crashed into him and knocked him over, sending him sprawling and tumbling along the carpeted floor. He came to a stop. His face hurt where it had grazed along the carpet. He looked up, his heart twitching madly in his chest, his whole body shaking. Two of the miniature ship things had followed him into the corridor; each floated a couple of metres away, one on either side of him. There was a strange smell in the air. Frost had formed on various parts of the ship things. The nearer one extended a thing like a long hose and went to take him by the neck. Gestra ducked down and doubled himself up, lying on his side on the carpet, face tucked into his knees, arms hugging his shins.
Something prodded him about the shoulders and rump. He could hear muffled noises coming from the two machines. He whimpered.
Then something very hard slammed into his side; he heard a cracking noise and his arm burned with pain. He screamed, still trying to bury his face in his knees. He felt his bowels relax. Warmth flooded his pants. He was aware of something inside his head turning off the searing pain in his arm, but nothing could turn off the heat of shame and embarrassment. Tears filled his eyes.
There was a noise like, “Ka!” then a whooshing noise, and a breeze touched his face and hands. After a moment he looked up and saw that the two machines had gone down to the airlock doors. There was movement in the reception area, and then another one of the machines came down the corridor; it slowed down as it approached him. He ducked his head down again. Another whoosh and another breeze.
He looked up again. The three machines were moving around near the airlock doors. Gestra sniffed back his tears. The three machines drew back from the doors, then settled down onto the ground. Gestra waited to see what would happen next.
There was a flash, and an explosion. The middle set of doors blew out in a burst of smoke that rolled up the corridor and then collapsed backwards, seemingly sucking the whole explosion back into where the doors had been. The doors had gone, leaving a dark hole.
A breeze tugged at Gestra, then the breeze turned to a wind and the wind became a storm that howled and then screamed past him and then started moving him bodily along the floor. He shouted in fear, trying to grab hold of the carpet with his one good arm; he slid down the corridor in the roar of air, his fingers scrabbling for a grip. His nails dug in, found purchase, and his fingers closed around the fibres, pulling him to a stop.
He heard thuds and looked up, gasping, towards the reception area, eyes streaming with tears as the wind whipped by him. Something moved, bouncing in the lighted doorway of the circular lounge. He saw the vague, rounded shape of a couch thudding into the floor twenty metres away and flying towards him on the howling stream of air. He heard himself shout something. The couch thudded into the floor ten metres away, tumbling end over end.
He thought it was going to miss him, but one end of it smashed into his dangling feet, tearing him away; the storm of air picked him up bodily and he screamed as he fell with it past the shapes of the three watching machines. One of his legs hit the jagged edges of the breach in the airlock doors and was torn off at the knee. He flew out into the huge space beyond, the air pulled from his mouth first by his scream and then by the vacuum of the hangar itself.
He skidded to a stop on the cold hard floor of the hangar fifty metres from the wrecked doors, blood oozing then freezing around his wounds. The cold and the utter silence closed in; he felt his lungs collapse and something bubbled in his throat; his head ached as if his brain were about to burst out of his nose, eyes and ears, and his every tissue and bone seemed to ring with brief, stunning pain before going numb.