[quote=@Bingelly]
[b]Vitiafa of Endiohon[/b]
[hr]

“Lopez, send some more robots to the passenger boarding corridor as fast as you can. Ease the pressure on the crowd.” she ordered. "And we need more hands to guide those coming aboard."

She paused for a moment, clicking off her own communicator and taking a deep breath. She turned her head to face the quessir at the helm. “Keep that tunnel open until we need to crush a bug with it.”

[/quote]

[H3]Mark A. Lopez[/h3]
[hr]

“Engineering copies,” Mark muttered into the headset, not even looking up as he shoved another warning window aside. “I’ll push what I can. Just don’t expect miracles.”

He kicked over to the drone panel and dragged three more units into the active queue. The interface lagged, too many manual threads, too much going on at once—but he forced them into sync anyway.

“Alright… single-follow mode,” he grumbled, thumb tapping through configuration menus that should have been automatic. 

The lead drone chirped to life and rolled forward, the others clattering along in a loose formation behind it. Their cameras relayed flickering, shaky feeds as they entered the upper corridors. Civilians rushed past them, panicked and disorganized, but the machines carved out a thin bubble of space just by being big, loud, and obviously not human.

“Boarding corridor, follow the person in front of you, go by the side, keep moving!" Mark's voice came through the drones speakers. 

The first bug appeared at a junction, mandibles wide, legs scraping metal. Mark forced his focus into the control link and rammed the drone forward. The steel claw caught the creature center-mass, slammed it into the wall, and crushed it in two jerking pumps.

He didn’t breathe until the feed stopped shaking.

He logged onto another drone in the back, chasing motion and into anothed Metacer, shoving its claw straight into the thing’s mouth, and firing its flare. The bug lit up like a bonfire, thrashing out of frame before collapsing in a smoking heap.

“That… works,” Mark muttered, wiping sweat from his jaw.

He forced three more drones to split down different branches, herding civilians toward the ship and creating pockets where people could breathe without getting trampled.

“Vitiafa, you should see them on your end now,” he said, shifting to her channel. “They’re clearing the choke points. I can keep this up as long as the grid holds, but I’ve gotta hop between units manually. One drone at a time. The rest just mimic it. If you need a drone somewhere specific, shout. Otherwise I’m playing whack-a-bug down here.”