Robots and Expendables First!

[Proselyte]

Bingo! Your Reward is Danger

---

Missile proximity alerts flared within the drone's CPU scarce moments after exiting the rift. In a modest response time for such a hack job machine, it surged into processing the relevant and fast-approaching data. Catastrophic collision imminent on anterior port side. Evading. Emergency thrust vectoring successful. Avoiding impact against shield screen by 78 degrees of deviation. Munition detonated. No damage sustained.

A bleak crimson red gulf of space dominated by an overwhelmingly bright star comprised the system, made even brighter by continual coronal mass ejection that seared across the backdrop of the dogfight that Lasso-1 has just abruptly emerged into. Moreover, the system was dominated by alien structure profiles detected at long range, some of them in extremely close proximity to the trajectory of the star's mass ejection and seemingly drawing from it. It was of little import right now, however, until it could escape from the middle of this brawl. Two squadrons of Rheinland ships were tearing into eachother, some modified and bearing weaponry of a distinctly non-human origin, carrying out their maneuvers in deathly silence.

Their opponents though were plenty talkative, their comm-chatter parsing itself over the drone's local transceiver.

>"New contact, close!"
>"Where the hell did that thing come from?!"
>"Gamma-3, Valkyries three o'clock high."
>"Hostiles seen!"
>"From the rift, Gamma-1! Earhart has sent us a tourist."
>"Transponder reads as Zoner - a scouting craft do you think?"
>"Maybe it will do us a favor and eat a missile, make our lives easier!"
>"He's breaking off!"
>"I'm on his tail."

Lasso-1's first priority was clear: escape the danger zone at its best possible speed. A direction of travel was rapidly chosen and simple evasion protocols enacted. This was necessary, as one of the ghost Valkyries turned its attention opportunistically to the fleeing robot. Searing violet energy bolts passed just around the meager shield screen, but as the fighter closed in, the mining drone rapidly cycled its solitary cruise engine. A disruptor was bound to follow, but the luckless Valkyrie then caught two missiles from its six-o'clock. One against its shield and another into the rear starboard fuselage. A secondary internal explosion splashed the entire aft of the Rheinland fighter across the battlespace in a MOX-fueled eruption, its forward momentum still carrying it helplessly in Lasso-1's wake.

>"Boom! Target down."
>"That drone's rabbiting, it's getting away!"
>"Focus on the enemy. We'll track it later!"

The autonomous drone, now free of weapons range, rapidly opened the distance between it and the deadly furball still ongoing near its exit rift. Traveling at full cruising burn put it beyond radar range and into relative safety, and the system lay before it while the battle carried on.

A problem, however, had existed from the moment the ship had been deposited here by Earhart's mystifying travel network. Automatic attempts to send a message to any Zoner relays within range came up with not a single one of them detected, the same as in the Earhart system itself. Conventional communications were being disrupted, the guilty culprits most likely being the immense output of the local pulsar, as well as the dark matter storm sheathing the system in all directions. Either that, or the drone was hopelessly beyond range. The presence of living Rheinland pilots would have confirmed otherwise if the machine possessed the cognitive capability to recognize this.

But that's expensive, and if Lasso-1 was special in any way to the Zoners that made it, it was for being inexpensive.

Regardless, transmitting any collected data was still a no-go. The only choice available was to search for an escape.

--

The drone scurried across the system on free-flight, searching for any anomalous gravitic reading that could indicate a jump hole through which to flee. The luck that was with it wandering across the furthest of stars, though, seemed to have abandoned it. Every direction promised only more danger, and its lengthy search for a jump hole revealed nothing in the few safe grids nearby between the dark matter at the system's edge and the fatal cosmic emissions of the young pulsar.

In absence of options, it picked another quadrant of the system to scan, and cruised towards it to perhaps find its escape, before those fighters from earlier might pursue it.

What it found, instead, was a viciously supercharged dark matter pocket that intersected Lasso's drive course. With its sensors blinded by the background radiation, the poor drone couldn't help but slam straight into it. The corrosive clouds rapidly eroded the molecular structure of the drone's pitiful armor, but the real trouble began when the external H-Fuel tanks burst under this shroud. Thrown into violent disarray from the force of the sudden rupture while at cruise speed, the change in heading brought the drone perilously close to the pulsar beyond safe ranges. Previously weakened surface plating became intensely brittle and nearly cracked apart under extreme exposure to radiation. Though it managed to pull away, its meagre nanobot complement was expending nearly all of its energy on maintaining hull integrity. The fuel tanks were a total write-off, and at this rate of damage accrual, running dry on fuel was unlikely to really matter.

Lasso-1's lifespan was becoming dangerously short. Something in this hell was bound to finish it off, before long.

Unflappable in its commitment to preprogrammed objectives, even in its increasingly decrepit state, the automated explorer still made record of nearby points of interest and unknown phenomena. A massive planetary fragment or asteroid of some kind was catalogued on long-range sensors, surrounded by alien energy signatures and replete with unknown defense turrets. These nearly swatted the curious craft at maximum range, again saved by its compact size making it an inconvenient target. Fleeing from the weapons fire, Lasso's adapting course returned it to where it had entered the system, towards the rift that had deposited it here. Unfortunately for Lasso-1 and with a puzzling inconsistency, this rift appeared to only deposit travelers in one direction as judged by its jump monitoring system. Dangerous results were likely if it attempted to force entry, and so it lingered here in the abode of the dead.

Where once there was a dogfight, there was only wreckage now. Ruined Rheinland fighters, both human and those twisted by alien design, littered the area. It had been perhaps an hour or two since Lasso fled the vicinity. Only silence remained. There was no sign of which side had won the engagement, or where they had come from. Eerily, not a single escape pod remained to be found near any parent ships. The machine didn't tarry here long.

Finally, the search revealed another curious rift, and Lasso's stability monitoring system detected a very salient traversable tunnel. When the drone dived into it with what might be mistaken for eagerness, though, its extraspatial journey simply deposited on the far end of the same system. Whether this is due to proximity or properties of the local star, the refitted mining drone is insufficient to examine the why. Its escape was denied, either way.

No matter its efforts, there was no jump hole promising escape from this place that it could find, only death and increasing magnitudes of stellar and dimensional phenomena that it isn't equipped to understand.

And yet somehow, by fortune or rugged design, it's still in one piece. But only just.

Exposure to more dark matter pockets had completely worn out every last repair nanobot, and fuel reserves were reaching dangerous levels. Even if it could escape from this system, the writing was on the wall: it would never survive a Sirius-wide journey to return to HQ. Protocol dictated that in absence of any obvious fallback points, upon expenditure of fuel, it would begin to transmit an open SOS to any receiving craft. While not ideal, no other option remained for the disposable scout...

...at least, until the radar cross-section of a distant modular depot graced the scout's long range scanners.

Though it had no luck investigating signs of habitation before, its approach to this point of interest was conspicuously bereft of retaliatory fire. Even more curious, it seemed to be completely abandoned, docking controls entirely relinquished to any craft that happens by. Luckily, there were still emergency docking override priorities written into the drone's behavior. A leftover mining drone prerogative that guaranteed its survival if site conditions turned hazardous and operators were overwhelmed. A simple consideration from a past life, but it's created an exploitable opportunity that might just keep this explorer intact.

Remotely activated from Lasso-1's emergency ping, the depot's docking bay doors creaked open, and the ailing scout disappeared inside, with still nary a soul living knowing its whereabouts.

It wasn't long before that would change.