I was to be sent away on a spaceship, sent to some far off planet or space station for a reason I cannot recall. An android, designed to look female, young, attractive, was tasked with making sure I get there. I think we were fleeing trouble of some kind; I recall fires that stretched across the horizon that were visible from the spaceship's hatch before it closed. I think that life on that planet was about to extinguished, and my skills were desperately needed elsewhere. I had a son, who was with me. The trip would be long and the human passengers had to be sedated in order to conserve resources. The android had me lie down on a bed where she injected me with the sedative. I began to feel drowsy: my limbs were heavy, and it was becoming hard to get them to answer my commands. As my consciousness began to waver, she told me that the ship only had life support resources for one person. It was imperative that I reach the destination alive, so, she said, my son would not. Thinking about it now, it was very odd that the ship should only support one person, as it was quite large, having multiple rooms, but the reason was never explained.

I fought to get up against the sedatives; I could not let this happen. It seemed I could barely muster the strength to speak now, let alone move or resist. There was a noise, perhaps something hitting the hull of the ship, that distracted the android's attention. I flopped over from my back onto my face and gripped the corner of the bed, trying to pull myself off of it and onto the floor. I half fell of the side of the bed and stumbled shakily onto my feet as she turned back around. It seemed for the moment I was winning in my battle against the drugs. The android looked at me dispassionately and repeated that I must get to the destination. She said that this was the only way and asked me not to resist, but I think she knew it was no use.

I hesitated for a moment. How strong was she? How fast? No idea. Best to try to get the upper hand first. Were there any weapons on board? I struggled to recall exactly what we had with us when we came in, but it was all very hazy. I ran past her, through the cabin, my eyes darting to every shelf and cabinet looking for anything to use against her. She didn't make any move to stop me but slowly followed. I ran until I reached the kitchen area, which, perhaps uncharacteristically for a spacecraft, had a knife block full of knives. I pulled out the two longest one and spun around, feet spread wide in a low crouch. I had no idea how to fight with knives, nor what sort of threat my opponent posed, but I tried to get ready and look as threatening as possible.

She still approached slowly. Her eyes were the calm surface of a pond at daybreak; neither the crazed look in my eye nor the knives in my hands had caused the slightest ripple on their surface. Her leisurely gait finally brought her within arm's reach, and I lunged at her, slicing up at her chest and face with one of my knives. She deftly sidestepped the blow and moved past me. I turned to find her now where I had been, holding two knives of her own. Then came a flashing torrent of blades slashing this way and that, which I tried desperately to parry, but mostly I was just widely swinging this way and that. With each blow I retreated a little further, just out of range of her knives, retracing my path through the cabin.

Well, she was much faster than me, that much was obvious now, and, since I had no idea what I was doing, I wondered if the only reason I was alive was that she was still trying to keep me that way. In desperation I lunged forward a bit and brought my knives together will all the force I could manage, pinning both her blades together in between. As I released them I slashed toward her, up the blades and across the backs of her hands and jumped back away from her. Now I waited in anticipation of her reaction. How much damage had I done? There was, of course, no blood or any sort of working fluid, in fact, but what had appeared to be skin had torn more like aluminum foil, revealing LEDs and hints of circuitry in the darkness inside the openings. Still impassive, but now looking a bit more determined, she said only, "Fine." Through that foil-like skin on the back of her hands burst small spinning saw blades on little moving arms. There were three of those sinister little blades on the back of each hand, undulating in and out from the skin, seemingly hungry for flesh. And then she was at me again, the two knives joined by six saw blades, and it was everything I could do to block them only enough to retreat as quickly as possible. As my back approached the wall I thought, "I wonder if she still wants to take me alive?"


So I have to wonder what all this means. But perhaps, to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a spaceship robot knife fight is just a spaceship robot knife fight.

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