~ Please don’t! I’m attempting to shut off the shield projector, but it’s in fail-safe mode; it won’t let itself be shut off. It’s arguing; can you believe that? But, honestly; I am doing my best. Please believe me. Please don’t kill me. I’m the only survivor, you know; our ship was attacked! I was lucky to get away. I’ve never seen anything like it. Never heard of anything like it either.

A pause. A pause of animal dimensions. Time for animal thoughts. Loads of time.

~ Final chance; turn off--

~ There; turning shields off now. I’m all yours.

The drone Sisela Ytheleus 1/2 turned off its electromagnetic mirrorshield. In the same instant, it fired its laser straight at the Affronter ship.

An instant later it released the containment around its remaining stock of anti-matter, detonated its in-built self-destruct charge and instructed the single nanomissile it still carried within its body to explode too.

~ Fuck you! were its final words.

Its last emotion was a mixture of sorrow, elation, and a kind of desperate pride that its plan might have worked . . . Then it died, instantly and forever, in its own small fireball of heat and light.

To the Affronter ship, the effect of the tiny drone’s laser was rather less than a tickle; it flickered across its hull and barely singed it.

The cloud of glowing wreckage the drone’s self-destruction had caused passed over the Affronter ship, and was duly swept by analysing sensors. Plasma. Atoms. Nothing as big as a molecule. Likewise the slowly expanding debris from the two groups of nanomissiles.

Disappointment, then; that had been a particularly sophisticated model of Elencher drone, not far behind the leading-edge of Culture drone technology. Capturing one would have been a good prize. Still, it had put up a reasonable fight considering, and provided a morsel of unexpected sport.

The Affront light cruiser Furious Purpose came about and headed slowly away from the scene of its miniature battle, carefully scanning for more nanomissiles. They posed no threat to the cruiser, of course, but the small drone appeared to have tried to use some of the tiny weapons to place information in, and it might have left others behind which were not inclined to self-destruct when effector-targeted. None showed up. The cruiser back-tracked along the course the drifting drone appeared to have taken. It discovered a small cooling cloud of matter at one point, the remnants of some sort of explosion apparently, but that was all. Beyond that; nothing. Nothing everywhere one looked. Most dissatisfying.

The Furious Purpose’s restless officers debated how much more time they should spend looking for this lost Elencher ship. Had something happened to it? Had the small drone been lying? Might there be a more interesting opponent floating around out here somewhere?