She spits a piece of shrapnel at them, not giving it enough force to penetrate, but certainly enough to make an alarming noise directly overhead.

    "Try again, Ma'am."

“We raise clones!” (Emotion Read: More immediately scared of Deskyl.) “Human ones. Have a small biofabricator, old one, not up to spec for military work?”

Better.

    "Have you been told what the clones are for?"

“No ma’am?”

    "But you've guessed. Tell us about it."

"Military Use? Pilots? We have a flight simulator set up for them, so it's gotta be something like that..."

    "Do you know of any other facilities like this one?"

"No. We, uh, don't know a whole lot?"

    "How do you contact your supervisors?"

"We get transmissions from a series of tightbeam repeaters. You, uh... I'd put you on the line with the boss right now, only you kind of shot off our main comm relay just a minute ago?"

"Mm."

    "What resources do you have available to evacuate with?"

"..."

"Y'know, this place is kind of a death trap if I'm being honest."

"Whoever built it was not up to code on Colonial Safety Regulations."

Lovely.

    "We'll see what we can do for you. Hold on." Deskyl signals for Devika to cut comms.

She does.

Deskyl sighs, frustrated.

    "She'd like to at least get the clones out; are there any options for that besides having them in here with us?"

“They’ve got a couple of escape pods but...” She remembers dark and fear and shortness of breath and gentle hissing giving way to silence. “...if the clones have the same implanted memories as me, they won’t want to be carried off that way.”

Yeah.

    "How viable is it to bring them in here?"

“We’d have to get close, and have the cooperation of whoever’s on the other side of the airlock.” She rememberers the facility getting supply shipments through a room on its highest level. She never saw that room, but it must’ve been equipped to form a vacuum seal with transports somehow. “It usually wouldn’t be safe to have a SLAYER cockpit so crowded but, given the way you’re able to negate inertial forces, we should be able to—”

“Getting another transmission. Different frequency than last time.”

She's got a guess about this one. Go ahead.

A trembling voice plays from the speakers on the cockpit wall.

"H-hello? Is this, uh... are you the ones outside?"

If she's trying to pass herself off as a clone, it's not working.

    "Yes, Ma'am."

She really isn't!

"I heard you talking to the chief just now? You said you'd let us live if we answered the right questions, but..."

    "Yes?"

"Nobody onsite knows much anything I don't think. I didn't even know about the clones until after I'd been relocated here..."

(Emotion Read: terrified, ashamed, willing to do anything to survive.)