EM effector; communicating. Sisela Ytheleus 1/2 readied its shields, for as much as that was worth; probably delay proceedings by, oh, a good nanosecond if the Affronter ship decided to attack it . . .

~ Machine! What are you?

(Well, that was spoken like an Affronter, certainly; it’d bet they hadn’t tangled with the artifact/excession yet. Oh well. Play it by the conventions:)

~ I am Sisela Ytheleus 1/2, drone of the Explorer Ship Peace Makes Plenty, a vessel of the Stargazer Clan, part of the Fifth Fleet of the Zetetic Elench, and in distress, it communicated. ~ And you?

~ You are ours now. Surrender or take flight!

(Definitely still 100% Affront.)

~ Sorry, I missed that. What did you say your name was again?

~ Surrender at once or take flight, wretch!

~ Let me think about that.

(And thinking was exactly what it was doing; thinking hard, thinking feverishly. Stalling for time, but thinking.)

~ No!

The effector signal strength started to soar exponentially. It had plenty of time to slam down its shields.

Bastards, it thought. Of course; they like a chase . . .

The drone fired the missiles embedded in its rear panel; the two hundred tiny engines brought unequal amounts of matter and anti-matter together and threw the resulting blast of plasma boiling into the vacuum, careening the machine away across space directly away from the Affronter craft. The acceleration was relatively mild. The drone had no time to test the anti-matter reaction chamber it had constructed; it threw a few particles of each sort into the chamber and hoped. The chamber blew up. Shit; back to the drawing board.

Not much damage - not much extra damage, anyway - but not much extra impetus either, and it wouldn’t be using the chamber again. The acceleration went on, building slowly. What else? Think!

The Affronter ship didn’t bother to set off in pursuit of the drone; Sisela Ytheleus 1/2 dropped its plan of leaving a few nanomissiles scattered like mines behind it. (Who am I trying to kid, anyway? Think; think!)

Space seemed to buckle and twist in front of it, and suddenly it was no longer heading straight away from the Affronter ship; it was parallel to it again. Those animal pus-bags are playing with me!

A flicker from near the Affronter ship’s nose. A centimetre-diameter circle of laser light blinked onto the drone’s casing and wavered there. The drone instructed the nanomissile engines to shut off and flicked on its mirror shields; the laser beam tracked it unsteadily and narrowed until it was a millimetre in diameter, then its power suddenly leapt by seven orders of magnitude. The drone coned its protesting mirrorfield and turned rear-on to the ship again, presenting the smallest possible target. The laser modulated, stepping up to the ultraviolet. It started strobing.

Playing with me, just fucking playing with me . . . (Think! Think!)

Well, first . . .