She’d known it was coming since the alarm had sounded, but the ghostly wind as the ship’s atmosphere rushed toward the breach in the hull was somehow more sinister than she’d imagined. It was the black wind of death, their precious, lifegiving oxygen spilling into the void of space.<br/><br/>With a grimace, Dawn slipped her rebreather into her helmet, watching helplessly as others struggled to do the same. She needed cover, a shadow, something... anything to give her an advantage against what was sure to climb through the breach... but the spartan corridor offered her nothing.<br/><br/>Instead, she rolled past the hole and into a crouch, readying her rifle. If she wanted to live, she needed to be as small a target as possible. She motioned for the others to do the same, but few were paying attention to anything other than the eerie machine sliding into the ship.<br/><br/>Two soldiers<i>did</i>manage to crouch near her just in time for the drone’s vile lasers to arc by where their torsos had been moments before. Others weren’t so lucky. She heard the distinct thump of bisected limbs tumbling to the floor and ground her teeth together. There was no use looking; the ache in her chest would only get worse.<br/><br/>Even as the first drone was brought down by a high-powered round, two more followed. The tide would not end before they were all dead. Lining up the sight on her rifle, she fired three neat rounds, one after the other, into one of the new drones. She barely rolled away from its counterattack, its lasers scoring the ground inches away from her.<br/><br/>This was pointless. The generator was what mattered if they wanted to survive. She fired a few more times at the drone’s joints, hoping to unbalance it to give them so time, and began to dash down the hall. The others would have to follow her while there was still time. Even if they tried to hold their ground, it would mean nothing if the generator was destroyed.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>