It took a few seconds for the humungous arthropod to detect two other presences. Soon he chipped into the com channel to get Frost on the line.

He hadn't seen the skala at first; not with his own senses. With his drones, his sensory perception wasn't relegated to his own body but distributed across multiple smaller ones, linked to the central nexus of his own conscious perception. He smelled, heard, and saw what they saw like a thousand eyes inside of his own linked to a brain already used to controlling multiple limbs, bodily organs, augmentative parasites and other such components with a precision at once naturalistic and borderline mechanistic.

"Vazyrin here. Skala group detected. Around 12 of them, no firearms. A click or so away from our position. I cannot tell if they are here to scavenge or if they are a territorial patrol. That's not all."

His drones had picked up another signature; something like a faint tingle on their waving, whispy antennae. This wasn't a scent but a strange tingling that was almost electric. Elecromagnetic in particular.

"There's something else - the pilot has gone to investigate it. I can't detect it properly from here with the atmospheric conditions however. Some sort of electronics. Someone ask them whatever it is they've made contact with."

Normally, he would have gone and told the skala to stay clear. He'd been among their kind before and this planet was not unfamiliar to him. It was a good place to hide away from Federation patrols and the locals understood that.

The problem was that getting up meant giving his positions away and with an unidentified, potentially hostile presence in the clear, that meant making himself a target in an area with poor cover and visibility.

"I can try to contact the skala through my drones. Maybe I can stall them or we can work out an agreement. What's your call?"

"No, no, its not damaged, I'm just resetting the phase buffers. My shielding is off by a few terahertz and it sucks because one thing that can damage it will, and this transport ship isn't exactly the most maneuverable."

The android stepped out and pulled the helmet off.

"Of course I wasn't kidding when I said I'd use a neutron beam from orbit. I've got Another ship in orbit. No crew. I'm the only one who can control that ship right now. Every single aspect is linked here to me. Just come out here and get out of the mech. It's scary. Even for someone like me."
@Letter Bee

Ascot opened the cockpit and climbed down, saying, "All right, you happy?"

He knew that this Android wouldn't hurt him out of hand - Psychic Empathy was great for a lot of things. Nevertheless, as the boy approached the Android, he said, "So, you just went here out of curioisity or to find a refuge? As for me, I came here for a job - escorting some supplies to a colony which turned out to have vanished. But it appears you don't know anything about that, so it seems I am at a dead end." A pause, before he continued, "By the way, my name is Ascot Rider. I'm sixteen years old and already a Mech Pilot."

"I can try to contact the skala through my drones. Maybe I can stall them or we can work out an agreement. What's your call?"

As for Michael, the young man had managed to sneak his mech behind a large outcropping, and was using his cameras to zoom in at the Skala - Whom he did not want to harm - and the band of criminals who were already conducting what seemed to be a salvaging operation. Should he try and contact them, or stay hidden for a while longer? Needless to say, he was on watch, trying to get a sense of what exactly the environment was. It seemed as if the criminals had a lot of potential cover due to the wrecked ships all around them, making just shooting at them dificult and increasing their chances of survival. Needless to say, Michael did not fancy fighting a battle of attrition, even if it was one he was confident of winning...

@Blizz

"That's better." He paused, part of him didn't want to answer the question. Though it seemed necessary for continued diplomacy.

"I didn't have much of a choice. I woke up with a warship tied to my brain like an extra limb, in a decaying orbit around a comet headed for it's own cosmic death. I spent a long time just repairing systems on my own so I could get out of there, but it took a long time and I ran out of resource, so I scanned any nearby planets for anything I could use. And came here. A military android stuck in a sector of space he has no knowledge of. And for that matter, the ships database was wiped before I woke up. Like it was abandoned for a reason that not even I should know, and I woke up inside there."

The android paused again, breathed out to release tension, and spoke. "A-150 Shikishima, Primary Strategic officer, and only remaining crew member that I know about of the Heavy cruiser Lotaronin, which is up there, in orbit, and armed to the teeth just in case anything I don't like appears out of any FTL or sub-light travel. I'm 18 as far as I know, at least that's how long I've operated to my recent memory."
@Letter Bee

Frost dipped into the cargo bay and began peering through the canvas around the crates that she split open with a knife. Electronic parts, tools, food, frozen water, even fucking cash stored in the back. This was good, but she wondered what the others were looking at right now, guns, maybe lots of guns? She’d have to clear a path to get this stuff freed from the ship. But-



That couldn’t have been avoided, really. Skala took whatever they could when they could take it. Living here was rough, especially when you’re trying to start a colony and don’t already have a foothold. Frost didn’t want a firefight breaking out, but none of them had guns. Maybe they were coming to see what’s happening, or maybe they were here for the ships. Frost was hoping they could skirt around anyone and get out of orbit before someone got in their way. ”Great, yeah- see what you can do. If they just got sticks ‘n knives or whatever we’ll be fine. Don’t wanna get nasty though, don’t start shooting til they start swinging, got that?”

As Michael hid from sight, he could see the Skala wandering forward, evidentially towards the crash. Their motives remained unclear.