In a flash, you've got your answer. Since there isn't enough time to get into it properly, you quickly write out your response.

Keep them talking. Introduce yourself.

Tendou looks slightly confused by the instructions, but does so anyway, opening comms, clearing his throat, and saying, “I'm Tend- Umm, I mean, my callsign is Strider.” Even as he's speaking, you feed him the next thing to say, so he goes on, “I'm sorry, I'm new to all of this, so I'm kind of confused. Can I ask some questions?”

The time it takes for the other pilots to respond, gives you an opportunity to start laying out the plan for your pilot.

You're a young rookie, you can ask a lot of questions without coming off as strange. That's our biggest advantage here.

Ask about his mission. Are missions to clear Hex normal? And solo?

Once the other pilots finish telling Tendou that he can ask some questions, he responds, “So, Boa, you came here to clear out Hex? Is that like, just a normal mission we get as pilots?”

“Yeah,” the other man responds, with Mouse coming in after to explain further.

“Keeping the areas around the city free of danger is pretty much our most important duty as pilots.”

“Ahh, I get it. So they sent you out solo? Isn't that pretty dangerous? Is it because you're a really strong pilot?” he asks with feigned innocence.

“Well, no,” Boa concedes, “I wasn't on a mission. I just came out because, uhh, I thought there'd been more hex out this way lately, and I wanted to make sure they wouldn't become a problem.” Your pilot doesn't look convinced as he listens to the man speak.

With another prompt, Tendou nods like he likes that point, and says, “Still, it was really hard to find this place, I'm surprised we found you at all! Don't you have some kind of, like, uhh, and emergency signal or something? Some way to call for help?”

There's a short pause before Boa answers this time. “I do, but the signal won't make it back to town from here.”

“Oh, that's true,” Mouse chimes in again, “I'm not getting anything over the radio here. All these cliffs must be blocking it.”

“Woah, you must be really good then, coming to a place like this without any backup.” Even as he speaks, he's shaking his head. He's only been a pilot for a day, and thinks the whole thing sounds like a farce.

Without missing a beat, Tendou asks the next question, before you can even suggest it, “Actually, what about money?”

“Money?” Boa questions, from the sudden topic change.

“I mean like...” You throw a few extra pointers on-screen to help him clarify, and he says, “So, I haven't been a pilot long enough to know how sustainable it is. Fuel, ammo, repairs; I hope taking missions will make me the BP to cover the maintenance this thing's going to need.”

The other pilots make noncommittal sounds, like they still don't know where he's going with this tangent. “So,” he presses on anyway, “I was wondering how you're going to afford the repairs since it wasn't an official mission. You said you destroyed some Hex, is there a reward for that? Like a bounty, or maybe their parts can be salvaged?”

“Oh,” the other man intones. It's blatantly obvious when Tendou puts it that way, even if he spoke around the point. There must be some way to make money off of this. Otherwise, any outing which isn't a mission, already being paid for by someone else, is going to come out of the pilot's own pocket, and there's no way that can be financially sustainable.

Therefore, Boa must have come out here with a plan for making money off of it.

“W-well, uhh...” the man sputters. He wasn't prepared for the rambling questions of a newbie pilot to put him in a corner like this.

“Hmm...” Mouse comes in. “Depending on the type and damage, some hex parts can be salvaged and reused. But unless you plan on using a replacement part for your own ray, repair costs for damage like that,” gesturing to Boa's legs, “are going to be hard to cover from just the scrap price alone. Let's keep going,” she suggests. “I want to see there's anything recoverable. Boa, we'll be back in a bit.”

The other pilot doesn't respond, only offering a resigned sigh, bringing his ray to slump against the side of the narrow pass.

With a wave, Mouse leads on. A short way on, she changes comms over to a private channel again. “Good work, kid,” she says, leaving it at that.

You both walk further, looking from side to side, until you find what you're looking for. Metal is strewn all about on the ground. Nothing as large as a ray frame, unless Boa literally blew them into bits. More likely, they were smaller robots, perhaps like the one that initially attacked Tendou in the hangar.

If these were sized anything like that one, what you see here gives an indication that there were a lot of them.

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There is silence over comms for some time as you both walk through the debris. Nothing large enough to consider a single, salvageable part. The only other marks you see are the telltale chunks blasted out of the cliffs, reminding you that Boa was carrying a shotgun on his way out of town. He must have lost it in the battle.

You continue to follow the trail of destruction, the path itself snaking downhill, turning into a deep ravine, until you find...

“What the hell?” Mouse scoffs across comms. It's a building. A big building, buried amid the high, surrounding cliffs.

“Some kind of, uhh, facility?” Tendou offers. It looks reminiscent of the hangar you came from, largely boxy and concrete, but apart from that, there are no visible markings to tell you what the place is for.

You're just stepping into the small clearing at the entrance when Mouse stops short and hastily backpedals, metal arm sweeping back and clashing against your chest until Tendou backs up with her. He mimics her, pressing against the cliff face.

Another transmission comes, and even though it's a private channel between you, her voice is a whispered hiss. “Hex.” She pulls her gun from its holster, so you do the same, grabbing your Mitchell.

Ducking down low, you shuffle forward, to peer around the corner where the cliff walls turn, opening up into the clearing. Mouse follows along, aiming over you with the long rifle.

Then you see the Hex. There's just one, but it's a ray frame. It's halfway across the clearing, moving... strangely. It's up against the left hand cliff face, the same one you're hiding by now. Its arms wave out in front of it, one carrying something, the other empty. It's scrabbling along the surface

It looks like it's blind?

Focusing your attention closer, the reason becomes obvious. The frame's head is ruined, almost entirely missing, with what's left shredded nearly beyond recognition. The cause is almost certainly the Bush shotgun in its hand, the same one Boa was missing earlier.

It holds the weapon halfway up the barrel, as if it grabbed onto it and never put it down. You'd guess that happened in the moments after it disabled Boa's legs, and consequently had its head blown off. It must have gotten a hold of the weapon somehow.

You explain your guesses to Tendou, zooming your view in on the front monitor. The zoomed in image lacks resolution; a lot of it is a garbled mess of color, so you also highlight the points you've noticed, info popups informing him of what he's looking at.

He closes comms and asks, “So, it's blind? What other kind of senses does it have?”

It's a Viper, a cheap all-rounder, so it shouldn't have any specialized sensors. If it's like me, it should mostly be operating with pressure and balance sensors, which allow for proprioception. It may also have its hearing, if that wasn't disabled with the visual sensors, or if those weren't located in the head.

“Hmm...” While he's beginning to think that over, you catch movement in your periphery, and give a warning beep, flashing the whole right side of your monitors to draw Tendou's attention that way.

He turns to see Mouse raising her gun, training it on the Hex in the distance like she is about to fire.

“Wait!” he barks, which you snap to recording, in time to send off the transmission. He jerks on the controls a moment later, bringing an arm up to hold her back.

“What?” she asks, sounding annoyed at being stopped.

“Aren't we trying to salvage something usable? Why would we just light it up like that?” He sighs. Obviously unhappy, she sighs back at him, but lowers her gun. “Look, it can't even see. I'll just go over and finish it off,” he proposes. “If something goes wrong, feel free to start shooting, alright?”

“Fine, but I can't guarantee I won't hit you if you're that close.”

He closes comms again and sighs. “Well, I said it,” he grumbles to himself. “Time to see if I can actually pull it off...” Easing the controls forward, he brings you up to standing once more, and you begin to walk.

What's your plan?

“Well, if I can just take out the AI in the cockpit like last time...” he says uncertainly. Of course, he knows how he had to pummel that frame to cave in the cockpit, so it's not likely he'll be able to do this too cleanly.

Even so, he raises up your left arm, with the pair of lengthy blades connected to your wrist. They look much more reliable than the cheap Ibex blades you broke before, but still, it's a pretty big unknown how well they will get through the frame's armor. You begin charging up the motors in that arm anyway.

One step at a time, you walk over, Tendou and Pilot Assist working together to keep your footfalls as light as they can be, given your weight.

Either the Hex can't hear you, or you are staying quiet enough, because you reach close proximity without it even turning in your direction.

“You think this armor is thinner than the front?” Tendou questions, eyes trained on its lower back. While the front and back are both pretty similar in your own specs, the Comet model is a known 'useless' frame, so generalizing from yourself feels like a flawed idea.

I'm not sure for the Viper, but it would make sense. It's not an area that should be hit as often as frontal facing armor during normal combat.

“Whoo, alright,” Tendou sighs, then taps the monitor off to the side, where you have the small phaser listed. You take that to mean he wants it activated, so you start charging it to full power. He shakes himself briefly in the seat, Pilot Assist reporting that his heart rate is skyrocketing, even as you take up position directly behind the Hex.

One big breath in, then on the exhale, he slams forward. Your own arm follows, one huge punch from your left, blasting into the small of the Viper's back. Your blades sheer through the thin armor, sinking deep. The huge robot stumbles from the force, long enough for you to draw the arm back, leaving the crumpled, shredded armor behind.

You're already following with your other hand, its blow crunching deep, and the outer armor completely collapsing into the gap where the cockpit is. You wrench you fist upward. The Viper is swinging blindly, an awkward blow glancing from your shoulder as he shouts for the phaser.

It activates, sliding out from your wrist, within the ravaged cavity in the Hex's belly, and he pulls the trigger.

The blast, low power as it is, annihilates the surrounding cockpit, and the enemy ray goes still.

After a few long moments of silence, he pulls on the controls, and you draw back your arm, allowing the robot to slump to the ground. You flash up a message.

Good Job.

You leave it at that. You don't say it, but that was very well executed. It's only been a couple days since he first touched your controls, but those attacks were accurately placed and the movements were efficient. Much less sloppy than his earlier work.

He absently waves a hand near the comms window, eyes not moving from the Hex yet. You open comms and give a beep to let him know. “There, I got it,” he says. After one more shuddering breath, he blinks a few times, and turns away to look at Mouse again.

“Huh, good move, Strider. That will make for some nice salvage,” she responds, stepping forward, into the clearing.

That just leaves the strange building you've found...