Lin’s patient stakeout of the sealed compartments paid off faster than she’d feared. After roughly two hours of quietly eavesdropping on conversations around the camp, many of which were in languages she was currently unable to translate, one of the vehicles finally received a visitor. The truck shifted and rocked a bit as someone hauled themselves up through the open canvas entryway at the rear, before squeezing through the stacks of supplies to reach the locked door. This individual might have been called rubenesque if they were just a bit less muscular. They were also one of the shortest of their species that Lin had observed so far. Their dark blue hands felt around in the dark as they navigated through the cluttered and enclosed space. For some reason they hadn't bothered with a light, despite their obvious need. This odd choice made the infiltration drone all the more difficult to spot and the squat figure unknowingly passed directly under the camouflaged and completely still infiltration drone. After a few minutes of fumbling their way in the dark they finally reached the door, stopping to grab a cord from around their neck and pulling out a thumb-sized oblong of material from where it had nestled on their chest. The infiltration drone’s sensors were gathering as much information as they could as the visitor pressed the oblong against a clearly marked spot on the door causing it to immediately slide to the left. Lin wasn’t able to determine what mechanism was used to achieve this effect, but by this point she strongly suspected that the technological paradigm on this world deeply incorporated the strange ‘magical’ properties that a number of organisms seemed to exhibit. Regardless, this opportunity was not one she would pass up. Lin instructed the infiltration drone to switch to fully autonomous mode after entering the heretofore sealed chamber, once the door slid closed Lin would be unable to maintain contact with the drone. The chamber seemed opaque to every electromagnetic wavelength she’d tried, and all of her communication methods, save hardwired connections, fell somewhere on that spectrum. Even a fairly hazardous, and rarely used, x-ray communication laser would be unable to penetrate, unless Lin wanted to take the step of burning a hole in the wall in order to punch the signal through. An infiltration drone was, for obvious reasons, often expected to enter situations where it either couldn’t or shouldn’t attempt to communicate with external controllers and observers. This meant that Lin was confident she’d soon have some answers as the drone scuttled along the ceiling of the truck and through the doorway, just before the door slid shut again. Once again Lin had to exercise her patience as she waited for the door to reopen and the drone to slip back out and re-establish contact.

Lin had detected and monitored four of these obscuring compartments, each on a separate vehicle and each apparently visited by a single dedicated individual on a daily basis. Lin was leaning towards the idea that the compartments, or their contents, were each assigned to some form of specialist. This particular specialist was one who Lin had tracked entering this compartment before, and they always lingered longer in their compartment than the other three did in theirs. This meant that Lin was not worried when more than an hour passed with no contact from the infiltration drone. Sure enough after more than an hour and a half Lin was suddenly reconnected to the infiltration drone as it left the small compartment and stopped acting autonomously. The unwitting door opener stepped out at the same time as the infiltration drone, still seemingly oblivious to the arachnoid skittering above them. Her main mission accomplished, Lin allowed the infiltration drones to carefully sweep through the camp, gathering as much additional data as possible before leaving as stealthily as they’d come. Departing long before even the first hints of dawn light began to rouse the sleeping members of the Protectorate expedition. Lin was fascinated by what she found when reviewing the information gathered by the infiltrator that had entered one of the strange compartments. She couldn’t wait to share this with Andrea, though judging by the time it would be several more hours before Lin would be able to gush about her findings. Sometimes she really wished Andrea would finally give up sleeping, it was frustrating when her friend missed out on almost a third of every day.

Andrea woke up long before the sun began to emerge above the mountain peaks. She had about half an hour of flight ahead of her, followed by a hike of several kilometers to reach the meeting point before the lead elements of the convoy. The plan was basically the same as the previous first contact. Andrea would set up in an elevated position visible from a distance and allow the Protectorate expedition to approach her at their own pace. As she climbed out of her bed and stretched, one of the small maintenance drones raised a tiny manipulator arm and waved a greeting. “Good morning to you too Lin.” Andrea smiled and made her way over to the kitchen area of the hab dome. Deciding to go with comfort food, Andrea ordered a pair of custom meal bars; waffles with peanut butter, crispy bacon, over easy eggs and maple syrup on all of it. She was always fascinated and impressed by how the meal bar synthesizers could incorporate all the correct textures and flavors of different foods into bar form without muddling them together. The main reason Andrea even bothered with traditional preparations of food when she was back home, was for the visual aesthetic. As she waited for the custom order to be fabricated, she walked over to the hab’s shower and luxuriated in the feeling of warm water washing away the last remnants of the night’s sleep. Eventually it became clear that Lin was losing patience when she flew one of her mini-drones into the hab dome and began flying circles, loops, and generally dancing around. Andrea laughed and shut off the shower. “Fine, fine I’m coming, let me grab the meal bars and you can tell me all about what you learned last night.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Once Andrea settled into her seat at the table and had the wrapper on the first meal bar peeled back, Lin finally spoke. “Well I’ve got some good news for you and some strange news.” Andrea raised an eyebrow in silent query as she lounged back in her seat and continued to slowly savor the crisp bacon and fluffy waffle of her breakfast. Lin huffed good naturedly at Andrea’s focus on breakfast before continuing. “I’ll start with the good news. I doubt the Protectorate expedition is any kind of covert military team. Based on the observed level of their general demeanor and level of discipline, as well as their poor showing when it comes to properly securing their camp, I suspect this group is largely composed of civilians. They are all armed and a few of them seem to have a better idea of what they’re doing, but considering the nature of some of the stranger organisms we’ve witnessed around here only a group with a death wish would venture into the wild unarmed. This makes it far less likely that they have been dispatched to harass the League's and Malepre's joint expedition. Instead I’d say they have a more investigative purpose in mind, I noted a great deal of gear that matched the sample collection and analysis tools Unla-Ela and their students have been using. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that they don’t expect to see anyone at all. Indeed they seem unaware this valley even exists. While I can’t yet translate a majority of the conversations I overheard, a few people conversed in their, I supposed you’d call it, official language. It seems they are definitely heading in this direction for a reason that remains unclear so far, but they know nothing about what they’ll find after they reach the mountains.

Andrea continued to eat her breakfast but responded by messaging Lin “That’s great news! If they’re interested in exploration and discovery, rather than political machinations then they’re much more likely to be open to a peaceful and genuine exchange with a strange alien being.” Lin bobbed the flying drone in lieu of nodding. “My thoughts exactly, not only do they strike me as being unable to pose you much of a threat, but also unlikely to be interested in trying to begin with. I’m still going to maintain the extra surveillance and attack drone backup forces for the meeting location, since I already set them up we might as well utilize them.” Andrea shrugged “Sure, I don’t think it’ll interfere with my work making first contact, and an excess of caution is usually better than its lack.” Lin couldn’t help her skeptical snort at that last statement. “That is real rich coming from Miss Regularly Endangers Her Life.” Andrea finally swallowed her bite and grinned. “Do as I say, not as I do, is a time honored standard. Now tell me the ‘strange’ news you mentioned.”

Lin forwarded a sensor feed recording to Andrea, “This is from the interior of one of the four large compartments in the Protectorate expedition’s vehicles. I dedicated extra focus to these since I had been unable to get any readings on the interiors and noted the regular dedicated attention that seemed directed to their contents. I now suspect that the compartments are actually standardized armored transport cradles that have been bolted into the vehicles’ cargo compartments.” As Lin spoke Andrea was busy scrubbing back and forth through the footage switching between various imaging wavelengths from time to time, trying to get a handle on what she was looking at. The perspectives all seemed to be from a high angle, and Andrea realized that they must have been taken by one of Lin’s infiltration drones skulking on the ceiling of the room. They showed a small brightly lit space with a tool rack attached to one wall above several large barrels each covered in distinctive labels. A tiny bit of clear space just barely allowed access to the tools and barrels. While the overwhelming majority of the small chamber was dominated from floor to ceiling by a mass of what looked like a mix of vines and saplings all tangled into an odd topiary that looked like a crude rendition of a bipedal creature without a head. In the first images Andrea could see a short figure reaching to the small tool rack and grabbing a contraption that reminded Andrea of a large clamp. A few shots later Andrea realized it was a spreader as the figure was now standing in front of the topiary, the spreader was inserted into the plant near the center of mass and partly wedging an opening into the middle. The following images showed the small blue gardener measuring out quantities of liquids and powders from the different barrels. Once they’d collected a number of substances, they carefully reached into the opening they had pried into the greenery and deposited everything they’d collected inside the plant. “The drone’s automated systems weren’t able to get a good look at what was being done in that plant, so I have to guess. The chemical sensors noted a high concentration of nitrogen in one of the powders, so I’m leaning towards a mixture of fertilizers and perhaps medicine or other supplements.” Lin’s voice sounded as baffled as Andrea felt. Why were they growing a plant in artificial lighting in a closed chamber, and why were they hauling the extra burden along on an arduous trip into the unknown? The duo were silent for a few moments asking themselves those questions before Lin broke the silence. “There are lots of possibilities, and that’s before we even get to the possibility that it has some sort of ‘magical’ properties that we can’t anticipate. It’s a bit too outside any paradigm I know, so I think we’ll just have to proceed without making any particular plans around it other than keeping a close eye on the containers, which I was already doing anyway.” Andrea continued to examine the oddity as she unwrapped her second breakfast bar and began to eat it while walking out of the hab dome and heading towards the heavy lift drone. She messaged Lin. “I agree, there’s no point in changing our plans when we have no idea what changes would make sense. I’ll review what little we know about the Protectorate’s official language on the flight out, just in case the trade language isn’t enough for some reason. I’d say wish me luck, but you’ll be right there with me.” With a light crunch Andrea popped the wrappers from her breakfast bars into her mouth and settled into her seat as the heavy lift drone hummed quietly to life and shot up into the sky.