As Andrea began her race against the oncoming stampede,the combat drones that Lin had directed towards the pair of fleeing guards had reached them and began following the pair from above as Lin attempted to devise a workable plan to rescue them both. It was a tricky problem: how to go about grabbing someone with the limited tool set of a combat drone when the putative passenger would have neither relevant equipment and training, nor be likely to cooperate in the first place.
Like the other guards that had accompanied Unla-Ela, the panicking duo were large, muscular, and heavy specimens of their species. Two combat drones would have to work in tandem in order to lift and move each of them. Before that could happen the pair needed to be secured so that the drones could even try to lift them in the first place. The combat drones were models of efficiency and effective tools in conflict situations. Inconveniently in the current situation, they were much less suitable for search and rescue missions, particularly when the ones being rescued wouldn't recognize them as friendly. Non-lethal subdual, restraint, and transport was well outside the usual mission profile the combat drones were intended to engage with.
The external speakers on the drones could be used in an attempt to communicate with the guards using the clumsy grasp of the language that was available to Lin through the translation routines Andrea had been working on. However Lin was confident that they were unlikely to trust strange flying objects chasing after them shouting reassurances in broken language. She was even more confident that in their already panicked state the chances of getting them to cooperate in their own rescue were non-existent. She was going to have to subdue them, somehow, preferably without injuring them much.
If she could get them subdued for a solid minute Lin was confident that she could haul them to safety. The cargo lifting systems on the combat drones did include four small manipulator arms, so the work of rigging carrying lassos and arranging the tow cables to distribute weight evenly between pairs of drones could be accomplished quickly enough. Though it would take Lin's active direction of the process as the task was outside what the automated systems on the drones were capable of doing themselves.
While Lin was busy working out an acceptable rescue plan, Andrea was laser focused on pushing her body to its limits. Carrying Unla-Ela weighed her down substantially and changed her center of gravity. Despite this encumbrance Andrea was still capable of reaching nearly 36 kilometers an hour, her feet pounding the rocky ground as the half a kilometer to relative safety rapidly disappeared under the relentless pace. Keeping an eye on the overhead view from the high altitude drone Andrea tracked the rapidly closing range of the fractious stampede of beasts. By this point they were close enough that she could see the leading animals directly. Their large expressive eyes dilated in some intoxicating mixture of rage and fear, as the conflict between their groups whipped them all into an increasingly intense, all consuming frenzy.
It was going to be close, really close. The, by now, deafening cacophony of pounding hooves, stentorian hooting calls, and shattering rock were an almost physical presence that would be completely overwhelming had Andrea not benefited from her ability to filter and dampen sounds. This had the side effect of allowing Andrea to hear her passenger hyperventilating while breathily chanting to themselves with an intensity that brought to mind some sort of prayer or comforting turn of phrase, meant to ward away death or the fear of death. It seemed to be in a new language and Andrea added a quick entry to her log of personal notes to ask about it when they weren't seconds from being churned into hamburger.
Her brief distraction was ended when her situational awareness system directed her attention towards a particularly fast beast that had, along with a scattered handful of others like it, gotten well ahead of the main body of the stampede. This particular creature was brought to her attention because it was on a collision course, Andrea could not afford to lose time by redirecting or slowing down and she was already running as fast as she could, given her cargo. With her usual excitement at the prospect of attempting new feats of physical prowess Andrea realized she was going to have to try something wild to get them out alive.
As the large beast bore down, The scream of terror from Unla-Ela testified to the seeming inevitability of their collision. At the last moment Andrea drove her augmented legs down and launched herself up up and over the two meter tall beast. As she flew clear of the loudly hooting obstacle Andrea extended her legs, using her hang time to set up for a landing that would hopefully not shatter Unla-Ela's ribs. Having arranged for the gentlest possible landing she could manage, Andrea spent the remaining time assessing how she would get them through the last 100 or so meters to comparative safety. A rough course mentally laid out Andrea slammed back down allowing her leading leg to flex till she was nearly crouching on it, Unla-Ela's pained grunt spoke to being winded as they slammed down hard on Andrea's shoulder but the absence of any cracking sounds reassured Andrea that she'd kept things gentle enough.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
At this point Andrea stopped consciously thinking and dropped into a flow state. She leapt over another charging animal landing on the back of a third such creature before launching herself over a fourth and fifth. Her sprinting figure then landed in front of a sixth creature that passed so closely behind her it triggered the collision alarm sensors on her back. Andrea kept running, dodging, and jumping with an increasingly distressed Unla-Ela bouncing on her shoulder. It was several more seconds before she came back to herself and noted that they had cleared the worst of the danger area. She didn't slow her pace just yet, the edge of a stampede is not a well-defined border and stopping to congratulate herself prematurely would be foolish. Andrea kept up her pace until they had reached the edge of the forest where the rest of Unla-Ela's group was waiting, with visible trepidation, alongside the Donkey and the hovering pair of combat drones. As she gently lowered a bruised and shaky but otherwise unharmed Unla-Ela to the ground Andrea was finally able to give some attention to Lin’s efforts to save the other two guards.
Lin was running out of time, she was relieved when the virtual tactical space showed Andrea in the clear along with the others, but that was very much in the background of Lin’s attention. She had finally decided on a course of action. It was risky, and would likely be traumatic for the guards, however Lin believed that hurting and terrifying them temporarily was better than abandoning them to die. Her decision made, a single combat drone each targeted one of the two guards then stooped down like a giant bird of prey or, considering their vaguely insectile appearance, like giant wasps. The fear blinded guards were busy running as fast as their terror fueled legs could drive them, their sides heaving desperately for air as the rumble of oncoming death robbed them of their senses. This meant their screams of startled terror were fairly subdued despite the intensity of their feeling.They simply lacked the breath to properly give voice to the deep animalistic desperation this surprise attack inspired. The impact of a combat drone trying to pin you to the ground at running speeds is not gentle and one of the guards wound up landing badly, the sensitive audio pickups on the drones hearing the crack of breaking bone coming from their arm as it was awkwardly wedged against the ground and hammered by the force of both the drone and guard slamming down.
The impact stunned and winded both of the guards. This meant they were able to only weakly struggle for a few moments as they recovered and caught their breaths. Lin took advantage of this opening to begin the next stage of her plan; the unfortunate pair wouldn’t like this part any better than the first. Much like a spider winding up a live victim, the drones pinning the guards down began using their manipulator arms to wind their towing cables around them starting with their temporarily immobilized legs and working up to their heads even as they recovered from their shock and began to frantically struggle and scream hammering at the body and limbs of the combat drones. Both guards managed to tear out nails scrabbling at the undersides of the combat drones, leaving them streaked with blood. The guard with the broken arm nearly managed to break the other arm in their struggles, before the drone grabbed it with a manipulator arm and safely secured it in the rapidly forming metallic cocoon. With both unfortunates securely cocooned in less than a minute, the other two drones dropped down with their tow lines and in short order the cocoons were each securely slung between a pair of combat drones. By this time the first of the charging animals out ahead of the stampede were beginning to run past. Lin directed the drones to haul the thoroughly traumatized guards straight up just barely clearing the path of a particularly large creature as it rushed ahead. Lin quickly had the drone pairs haul the cocoons clear of the stampede path and then began to more carefully move them towards a rendezvous with Andrea and the rest of Unla-Ela’s party.
Having observed with chagrin Lin’s successful, if rather horrifying, rescue, Andrea let out a sigh of relief. Unla-Ela had just finished catching their breath and was gingerly standing up, calling over to their companions to reassure them they were alright. Pointing toward where the two guards had originally run Andrea spoke to Unla-Ela “Two person safe, little hurt, more animal tools bring.” This last was said pointing at the pair of combat drones hovering overhead, their tow lines being wound up neatly and stowed by the drones' winches and manipulator arms. It was obvious that Trophirte and Ela-Nu had thrown off the cables the moment they’d touched the ground, though they continued to stare up at the hovering drones with a mixture of wariness and fascination. Before Unla-Ela made their way over to check on the others, they gestured to Andrea before wiping their hand over their mouth. Andrea had learned that was a method of expressing gratitude non-verbally, and returned the gesture in reverse to accept the sentiment.
Giving some space to the aliens for a moment, Andrea finally had the space to send a hug pictogram to the team chat “Thanks for the help Lin, you really made a huge difference in keeping all of these people alive.” As Lin focused on wrangling the cocooned guards over, tracking the stampede, and sweeping around the rendezvous point to check for threats she took a moment to send a hug back. “You’re welcome Andrea. I’ve always got your back. Now let me focus for a minute, these two big lunks are wiggling around and it’s making it hard to keep them in the air.” With a wry chuckle at the tactlessness of Lin’s complaints, Andrea turned her thoughts to how she was going to keep this sudden display of power from disrupting the rapport she’d been building with Unla-Ela.