Earlier that morning, Skeet and Flywheel were executing the plan they had put together the night before. They both slept for a few hours but wanted to get an early start. 4 more drones were on their way to the mountain entrance as dawn broke over the lander.

“They should be arriving at the entrance here in a moment here.” Flywheel said. “I hope this works.”

“The real trick is getting them to open the door again.” Skeet muttered as she was going over the drone settings one more time. “Ok, that might be the first trick in a series of tricks.”

The drones cruised through the entrance, and they closed in on the gateroom. Still concealed as best as they could, they set up one drone in a previously identified shadowy area on the steel wall. They were about to consider their options to get the door open when it opened on its own.

A Shing’risgi walked through that appeared to be much like a spear adept. And then they kept coming through. A total of 5 followed by a squad leader like Sigroth . Then, someone else came through. This one was bigger. The other Shins were smaller on average than humans. This one was much taller. Their skin was a darker green with a darker orange feathery mane flowing from their head and down their back. The leader appeared to have spiky spines evenly spaced on their head and going down the center of their back sticking out just beyond their feathers. Their armor looked finer with a golden sheen that wasn’t a mirror finish but looked better made than Sigroth’s or the spear adepts’. Their shoulder armor looked to have layers of leather and padding under their pauldrons. They had thick bands of metal on their upper arms and bracers with spikes that seemed to be standard on all the Shin armor. Their armor also had plates attached to leather hanging from a belt to cover their thighs. They were followed by 5 more spear adepts and another squad leader.

“Get the drones in there!” Flywheel urged.

Skeet was so taken aback that she almost forgot. Ok, she did forget. She coordinated 2 more through the door and hid the last one in the outer gate room. “Eek!”

She almost hit one of the gate guards in the face. He must have felt a breeze from it because he looked around for a second. Skeet moved them up and into the shadows above.

“I need to call Mako.” Skeet muttered to herself.

She pinged Mako’s com. “Mako, there is a party of Shins that just left the mountain.”

“How many?” He replied.

“It looks like 2 squads of 6 and another leader. He looks bigger than the others. Sending you a cut now.”

Mako watched the vid and considered his course of action. The Colonists have been significantly overpowered compared to the locals. But this is the largest force they have encountered yet. He suspected that there was no way these Shins were likely to backdown without a fight when he told them the Dwellers were off limits. The Shing’risgi seem to have been operating unopposed and it was unlikely they were to step down from the top of the heap willingly or be diplomatic in anyway.

“Let’s see if we can make an impression on these guys.” Mako pinged Mushishi who was acting defense archon at the lander. “How fast can you get me 10 guys armed and armored to the following rally point?” Mako pinged him with coordinates that were closer to the tower than Tedexa Goran.

“I can call a couple guys in from patrols. Or I guess I could ask for volunteers. Wait, we can redirect the patrol for that quadrant as well. I just need to grab a half dozen guys from here. If we double time it...say...2 hours?” Mushishi responded.

“That should work. Make sure they have PROAKS and sidearms. We may need to deal a little shock and awe.”

“You got it. Patrol will be enroute in a minute the rest will meet up in 2 hours.”

Mako went back to Skeet. “Skeet, you keeping overwatch on the Shins?”

“Yup.”

“Let me know when they are 2km from the rally point.”

“You got it.” Skeet said as she set one of the drones, they just sent to the exterior gate room to stay with the group heading toward the tower. She turned to Flywheel. “Did you get the drones set up on the wall?”

“I did. The signal is better. I think it should remain undetectable to the guards. Who knows if any of these people can hear ultra-low frequency. But it’s passing through the wall and being picked up without too much issue. It’s still using a lot of power. We can cycle the four drones on that side in charging/listening/exploration cycles.”

Skeet activated the 2 drones she’d had to put in sleep mode because she couldn’t keep up the transceiver power required to get through the mountain in addition to the charging the drones that required wireless charging. Adding the extra 2 drones solved that issue. She’d hoped to cycle the other drones on the exterior side of the gateroom as well. With one flying overwatch on the Shin party, she’d have to dispatch one more. It should be there within the hour. The drones were built for stability and stealth, not speed.

“Ok, let’s tag these drones.” Skeet said. “The one at the interior wall in Indigo1.”

“Indigo?”

Skeet stopped and looked over at Flywheel. “What?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s sounds a little bland.”

With a flat look she asked, “Ok, Suggestions?”

“Um, I don’t know...uh,” Flywheel scrambled for a name since he didn’t expect to have the chance, “Iguana Invader?”

She turned back to what she was doing. “The one at the end of the tunnel is Indigo2. The other 2 charging are Indigo3 and Indigo4.”

“Indigo 3 and 4 are up.” Flywheel jumped in and tried to forget his terrible suggestion. “Let’s swap 2 and 3 and upload the new firmware to 4. Set them on the roof there in case something goes wrong, and we lose connection to 4.”

“I kind of wish we’d done this last night. It would be better to use the cover of darkness to try and move through the portal.” Skeet lamented.

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“Yeah, but we had to make sure we had good charges on these and a way to get into the interior. We can wait til it gets dark again and test the LIFI communication between the two drones in the meantime. Maybe we can even look around the city a little.” Flywheel offered.

“Ugh. I like doing things thoroughly. I hate doing things on someone else's schedule.”

Flywheel laughed.

“What?” She looked back clearly irritated.

“Your mad that a planet’s rotation is inconveniencing you.”

She glared at him trying to think of some retort to counter his ridiculous statement. She decided to settle. “Shut up.”

Mahina rechecked her equipment and her pack. This time she decided to add pockets of extra ammo and grenades on her armor. The damage to her previous armor had forced her to completely replace it. She also set Booster and Arkana with a very similar loadout with armor but not with the same weapons.

“So... why can’t we use the hand cannons.” Booster asked.

“They are a bit much. Plus, they are more for close in action rather than longer range attacks. I think it’s better if we try to keep our distance until you become a bit stronger. Your primary weapons should be the PROAKS and you have the Standard 8mm sidearms plus I found the machete rather useful.”

“But only one sidearm?” Arkana mentioned.

“Neither of you have the onboard processing power for dual targeting. Booster still needs physical triggers. I think this is the best way to go about this. But if you truly wish to add other weapons, I will not interfere.”

“We have to start somewhere,” Booster said feeling a little conspicuous that he was so low tech. “I think it is just the nerves talking. Hopefully we can do this a few times and then upgrade our weapons.”

Mahina rechecked their equipment and made sure everything was tied down and set properly. Then they headed out. She pinged Skeet and assumed she could see her party on the cams. “We are heading out, Skeet. Any trouble areas we should avoid or investigate?”

Skeet replied. “There is almost certainly going be an action with the Shins north of the lander. The northwest patrol is heading that way now. Panzer is leading a group that way to join them. I doubt they will need help. But it might be interesting.”

“That might be a bit much for our first day. We are going to head southwest. Maybe we’ll thin those dragons a bit more and see what else comes up.” Mahina replied.

“You need an eye in the sky?”

“I have a few drones if we need it. I think we’ll be ok.”

“Good luck!” Skeet signed off.

“This is Bravo 3-1. We had wildlife contact 5km out from the designated rally point. Pinging you with our location. Medical support is needed. A herd of Red Tricorns just stampeded over us. You might want to alert Bravo 4 as they were headed due east after they hit us.”

Skeet replied. “Copy Bravo 3-1. How bad’s the damage?”

“Mudder and Chakkar took the brunt of it. Mudder is still unconscious and Chakkar is having severe back pain. We immobilized his armor.”

“Copy Bravo 3-1. We’ll have medical personnel enroute to you asap.” She switched channels and explained the situation to Mushishi.

“Ugh, let me see if we can find someone. I’m short on personnel at the moment.”

“We could see if Mahina can escort them?” Skeet suggested.

“By herself?”

“She has 2 others with her, but she could probably do it with just herself as well.”

“I’ll ping her. Can you find a landing zone for the shuttle in the area?”

“Copy that.”

About an hour later, Mahina, Booster, and Arkana were strapped into jump seats in the cargo area of the AstroDynamics AD-55 Heyerdahl named Everglades. At this stage of the scrum, the only shuttle available was to be used for medical emergencies and other mission critical incidents. There were 4 additional medical personnel with them. Booster had such a big grin on his face it looked painful.

“You, ok?” Mahina asked.

“Uh, oh yeah.” He gathered his thoughts for a second and contain his giddyness. “I’m on a Heyerdahl, with a loadout of weapons, flying over an alien jungle on a rescue mission. I’m freaking spectacular.”

His enthusiasm was contagious. They all felt excited to be here. For some reason, skimming over the forest canopy in a shuttle really added to the hype.

Their comms came alive with the voice of the pilot. “We are just 6 minutes out. We’ll be landing about half a kilometer west of the target. The crew will keep the shuttle secure and ready to lift off. Skeet has made sure the landing zone is secure. Follow the ping, retrieve the injured personnel, follow the ping back to the shuttle. Let me know if you have any questions.”

A few minutes later they landed and quickly reached the site with the injured without incident. As the rescue crew began the return trip to the shuttle. The other guards, now numbering 8 since the other 6 from the Lander had caught up, continued on to the rally point.

Skeet pinged Mako. “The Shins are 2km out from the engagement area. Estimated time to visual contact is 22 minutes.”

“Copy that, Skeet.”

Panzer jumped into the convo. “Patrol is moving double time to the rally point. We are still about 30 minutes out.”

“Copy that, Panzer.”

Skeet added. “These guys aren’t talking. At all. They have been moving at a steady clip toward the tower in silence. It’s kind of weird.”

“Huh, well, I imagine we are going to meet all types around here.” Mako replied.

Before long, Mako stood in the middle of the road with Boomer and Riff behind him by about 5 meters and to each side of him. Zerk and Howie were back another 15 meters with one standing on each side of the road. Everyone had PROAKS hot and pointed upward except for Mako.

The Shins didn’t slow down and spread out a bit. The Gold leader was in the lead. The 2 squad leaders spread out a few meters to each side of him and the spear adept spread out to each side in a pattern like ducks migrating. The Leader stopped some 5 meters in front of Mako.

They sized each other up. Mako wondered if this was like Earth where the first person to speak would reveal themselves as being on the back foot. He waited.

“Out of my way or I will kill you.” Gold leader stated.

“Called it,” Jhakaas said on the com from somewhere.

“No one took that bet.” Riff replied.

“You could try.” Mako said to the leader. “My name is Mako Nagata. I am one of the leaders of the Colony Ship Oracle.”

“Move. Now.” The gold leader flashed their teeth in a snarl.

“I won’t be doing that. The Dwellers on this world are now off limits. Go back to your world. If you want to trade or otherwise work with us, we would be glad to negotiate that. If not, we will leave your world alone and you will leave this one alone.”

They hissed and looked at each other. But it wasn’t a menacing hiss. It was...laughter? The hissing went on for a good half minute.

“Can these guys get any more super-villainy?” Jhakaas commented.

“Did you kill the other squad sent to retrieve the Dwellers?” The leader asked.

“They attacked us. We were forced to kill some of them. Then the others attacked us even knowing they had no chance. We’re hoping to avoid that here.”

“That was a grave error and one we cannot allow to go unanswered. You will all die.”

“That is a mistake. We will not attack you preemptively.”

“I am Nawrok Theen, The Tempest of Wrath.” Their eyes started to glow blue. Electricity started to crackle around their body. The leader lifted their arms showing the spikes on the outside of their forearms glowing and sparking. “You’ve made another mistake by not fleeing when you had the chance.”

Mako held up a hand. “Listen! Do not attack us! You will not survive.”

More hissing.

Nawrok Theen’s glowing eyes turned an intense white and there was a veritable electric cloud around him.

Mako only saw Theen right in front of him for a second before his vision went black.