The drone's optical sensor flared blue.
A soft, chirping alarm tone began to build.
Rohan was moving before he'd fully processed what was happening, spear already in hand, driving the blunt end into the drone's housing hard enough to crack its casing and silence the alarm mid-cycle.
It wasn't fast enough.
Somewhere above him, deeper in the ship, a second alarm — louder, more insistent, unmistakably human in its origin rather than automated — began to sound.
"Unregistered biological signature, lower deck seven, section C," a voice announced over what Rohan assumed was the ship's internal comm system, clipped and professional in a way that made the situation sound almost administrative. "All security personnel converge. Non-lethal protocol authorised. Repeat, non-lethal protocol authorised pending identification."
Small mercy. They want to catch me, not kill me. For now.
Rohan didn't wait to see how long that mercy would last.
