The next couple of minutes, as everyone waited for Lin to carefully carry over the restrained guards, felt slightly awkward to Andrea. She wasn't entirely sure what to say, or how to say it, to reassure Unla-Ela and their companions. Andrea had just very starkly demonstrated a wide range of dangerous capabilities and shown that she was not a lone explorer. Regardless of other factors, that sort of surprise revelation about a newly met stranger in the wilderness was likely to make the alien beings more cautious of her. Ultimately Unla-Ela and the rest were too preoccupied checking each other over for injuries and commiserating over their shared experience to require Andrea to immediately address the situation. Instead she took the spare moment to think while she ran a self-diagnostic routine on her implants and body.

Her implants reported negligible wear from the experience. Her organic body had experienced some strain on the muscles and ligaments but nothing that wouldn't heal on its own within a day. The excess adrenaline and cortisol levels were being scrubbed from her system to reduce stress, and fatigue, in the short term and to help prevent the development of PTSD symptoms longer term. This post action routine was considered standard and had long proven effective in mitigating the long-term psychological impacts of high stress events.

While the diagnostics ran and Andrea luxuriated in the feeling of the stress being literally drained from her body, she began to consider what approach she should take to the conversation she was anticipating. She would need to talk about the capabilities that she displayed and wanted to minimize any perception they might have gained of her as a threat. Andrea’s conspicuous role in saving their lives would speak loudly in favor of her benevolent intentions, but she was well aware that a failure to address any newfound fears about her unknown capabilities could fester into dangerous hostility. Andrea’s training told her that unknowns were usually the most frightening, at least to humans. As she was lacking a psychological manual for Unla-Ela’s species for the moment, Andrea decided that she might as well work from the diplomatic methods she knew worked for humans. At worst they’d be no less effective than randomly deciding what to do.

Based on what Andrea had been learning about their society, the concept of complex machinery would not be an alien concept, nor would weapons that could generate massive explosions. Indeed based on what Lin had told her about her findings so far, Andrea wouldn't be surprised if there were wild animals that could generate explosions with the strength of artillery shells.

Andrea's primary concern was that the demonstration of the refined compact construction, diverse capabilities, and sophisticated behavior of the drones would unsettle or intimidate Unla-Ela and their companions at some level and cause them to be more wary of Andrea. She figured that, to a certain extent, a response of that nature would be inevitable. She would mitigate that as best she could by exchanging information with Unla-Ela, Andrea couldn’t be a mysterious threat if she stopped being a mystery. However her primary tactic would be to continue emphasizing her good intentions and acting in good faith.

Andrea suspected that Lin's rough handling of the two guards she rescued, no matter how understandable under the circumstances, would need to be addressed immediately. Good intentions alone would ultimately prove meaningless if they were not reflected by subsequent actions. That did not mean Andrea in any way regretted Lin's actions. Their top priority was preserving all of their lives and Andrea felt it was likely Unla-Ela’s group would recognize, after a little consideration, that rough treatment was far better than being dead.

A notification from Lin was followed, seconds later by some quiet exclamations from Unla-Ela's huddled group, indicated that the pair of unfortunate guards and the drones carrying them had come into view. Lin gently deposited the cocoons on the ground and began using the combat drones’ manipulator arms to carefully cut away the steel cable, taking pains to move the one guard's broken arm as little as possible.

Unla-Ela and the others exclaimed as the guards' figures were revealed smeared in blood from their injured fingers as the improvised steel cocoons were cut away. The more injured guard had, perhaps fortunately, passed out from pain at some point. The other guard was very much conscious and clearly in such a state of abject terror that for a moment upon being cut out of the cocoon they did nothing but lay there frozen, staring up in horror at the drone perched over them, its arms sweeping away the remnants of the cocoon. Andrea had to give them credit though despite obvious and extreme distress it didn’t take them long to come back to themselves and take action. Despite losing most of their equipment at some point before the drones scoop them up it seemed the guard still had a backup weapon strapped to their hip. They tore it free of its pouch and whipped it out to their side with an obviously practiced flick of the wrist. A metal baton telescoped out deploying to a length of about 50 cm past the handle, the strange weapon was tipped by a sphere of smooth polished wood.

With a yell of desperate rage the guard swung the baton up at the manipulator arms of the drone as hard as they could. To both Andrea and Lin's shock, instead of the dull thunk of wood hitting metal, there was instead a loud series of grinding popping cracks, and the drone in question immediately raised damage alerts for one of its manipulator arms. The relatively delicate, but still combat rated, exoskeleton of the manipulator arm showed high strain but no deformation, on the other hand the inner workings of the arm near where the baton's tip struck were a different matter. From what the diagnostics could tell the inner workings of the arm near the point of impact had been scrambled into a slurry of warped and broken machinery.

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Wanting to avoid further damage to the drone, and potential harm to the guard, Lin directed the drone to lift off and get clear. As it was doing so the guard managed to swing their weapon once more. The second hit smashed into another manipulator arm. Having seen the strangely effective weapon in action, Lin had directed the drone to sacrifice limbs in order to block future strikes from impacting the body of the drone. If this strange weapon damaged something too critical it could send the combat drone plunging down onto the guard. Having successfully intercepted the second attack, the second manipulator arm pumped out internal damage alerts and collapsed limply to dangle beside the first limb, as the drone rose into the air out of the guard’s reach.

Unla-Ela called out to the desperate figure as they leapt to their feet the baton raised, their head sweeping around frantically searching for threats. After a few moments Unla-Ela’s calls seemed to break though their berserk state and they slowly lowered the baton. “No attack, animal is animal tool, saved from stampede.” Unla-Ela’s explanations to the still tense guard were partially understood by Andrea and Lin, as was the guard’s dubious response. “Attack from behind, capture like defiler.” Andrea made another note to herself, to ask about what a defiler was at a more appropriate time. Meanwhile Unla-Ela continued to talk their subordinate down “You are free, not host of eggs, not eaten.” they gestured at the six combat drones hovering overhead. “Animal tools, obey Andrea, see and hear I did, you see and hear, animal tools not attack.” As Unla-Ela spoke, the guard looked over at Andrea. Seeing an opportunity she spoke for the Unla-Ela and the guard’s benefit “Withdraw, I call if need help again.” Andrea then gestured slowly with a sweep of her hand and a pushing motion before sending the command to the drones to very slowly begin backing away and gaining altitude. At her gesture the guard tensed up and when the drones began to move they even began to raise their weapon again, but the slow and obvious withdrawal soon had the poor alien almost collapse with relief. Andrea noticed that Unla-Ela and the rest seemed to relax a bit as well, once the combat drones had retreated far enough to be distant silhouettes in the sky. “Whatever a defiler is, it must be a common enough threat that they all seem to be at least uncomfortable with anything reminiscent of it. Maybe it’s like how most people back home cringe every time flesh scorpions come up. ” Lin mused in their voice chat. As Andrea shuddered at the thought of flesh scorpions she slowly walked over to Unla-Ela and the guard. Meeting the guard’s eyes Andrea spoke to them directly “I apologize, my animal tool hurt you, help fast or stampede kill, not hurt. What name have you?” After taking a moment to parse Andrea’s still clumsy speech in their language the guard responded. “Wenou my name is. Forgive I do, better animal tool hurt, worse stampede kill.” Wenou’s body language seemed to indicate that their acceptance of her apology might not be entirely sincere, their boss was standing beside them listening in after all, but they did seem to be genuinely grateful for the rescue. Andrea felt that mixed feelings were better than straight up hostility, and since it seemed Lin may have triggered a phobia for Wenou, it was impressive how readily the guard was able to overcome such intense emotions. This made their earlier panicked flight seem almost out of character.

Andrea messaged Lin “On the plus side I’m not as worried about having intimidated them. You may need to drastically increase your threat assessment of these beings. I would be shocked if the unexpected effectiveness against our drone was limited to just that one backup weapon that Wenou used.”

At this point Unla-Ela joined Andrea and Wenou's conversation. "Violent help is still help, we have gratefulness to you. We have much question feelings about you and the animal tools of you." Andrea grinned wryly at those words and took the opportunity to continue the mutual language lessons as she responded. "Question feelings, mean curiosity. This one, I, will answer many questions at time in future. Danger shared have trust built, I want to meet at camp of you, after this day."

Unla-Ela and Andrea fell into their discussion, continuing to correct one another on the use of their respective languages as they planned their next meeting. Over the next half an hour they established a new schedule and protocol for their subsequent meetings.

At first Andrea had considered proposing meeting inside their camp, but Lin nixed the idea on the grounds that if some unforeseen problem arose the unknown properties of their weapons could pose a real threat to Andrea. Lin was firm that she found that risk unacceptable and wanted to allow more time to learn the language, and culture of these people before fully trusting them.

Taking Lin's security concerns into account Andrea worked out a daily meeting with Unla-Ela. Andrea would arrive at the perimeter of their camp at least an hour after first light and make herself known to the guards, who would be told to expect her, by calling out a watchword established by Unla-Ela who would be informed of Andrea's arrival. Unla-Ela would come out alongside some guards and students/apprentices. Together they would continue their mutual language lessons and begin probing more deeply into one another's cultures and technologies.

Having arranged for future meetings, Unla-Ela led their party back to their camp earlier than usual. The stress of the stampede and their narrow escape had left them all exhausted. While the injured guard was awake, with their broken arm set and bound, they were clearly going to slow down the party even further as they made the hours-long hike back to their camp. Andrea waved farewell before hopping on the Donkey and beginning her far less long and arduous journey back to base camp as Lin directed the combat drones to sweep back into guard positions around her partner.